“If anyone asks, you’re here to commission a poem. You, lover. Me, Cyrano. Understood? You’re mad with love for—someone. You can pick the girl; I won’t dictate that part—”

For how can one dictate the dictates of the heart? whispered the poet in Augustus’s head.

Shut up, Augustus told it.

“—but you’d better make a good show of being lovelorn. That will explain your”—Augustus looked pointedly at Horace’s muddy boots, his inappropriate attire—“exuberant arrival. Everyone understands young love.”

For a moment, Horace looked as though he might argue. Augustus Whittlesby was universally agreed to be the worst poet in Paris, and, like so many young men, Horace harbored vague poetic aspirations of his own. But sacrifices must be made from time to time.

“So it will be,” he said manfully. “I’m here to commission a verse. Now, wait until you hear—”

“Did anyone follow you?” Augustus cut him off.

Horace shook his head. “No one suspects me.”

Augustus wished that he could share the younger man’s assurance. Ever since a plot to assassinate the First Consul had been uncovered last month, Bonaparte’s police force had been working overtime, cracking down on threats anywhere they found them, and sometimes even where they hadn’t.

Augustus knew he was lucky to have escaped the net this long. Ironically enough, that very longevity was a large part of his protection. He was like an old oak table or a particularly dingy patch of carpet; the Ministry of Police was so used to him that they scarcely noticed he was there.

Horace, on the other hand, had come over with a wave of émigrés who were being invited, in bits and pieces, back into Paris to lend aristocratic polish to Bonaparte’s new court. He was new and therefore automatically suspect. Bonaparte craved the recognition of the old aristocracy, but he also mistrusted them. With reason, in this case.