In the Theatre, the Children's Ball would just be finishing, the main subscription ball getting ready to begin. The restless, fairy radiance of the newfangled gaslights falling through the windows and the warmer amber of the oil lamps on their chains above the intersection of the Rue Ste.-Ann and Rue Royale, showed him proud, careful mamas clothed as classical goddesses or Circassian maids, and watchful papas in the incongruous garb of pirates, lions, and clowns, escorting gorgeously costumed little boys and girls to the carriages that awaited them, drawn up just the other side of the gurgling gutters and tying up traffic for streets. With the Theatre's long windows open he could hear the orchestra playing a final country dance-"Catch Fleeting Pleasures"-and he could identify whom they'd got to play: That had to be Alcee Boisseau on the violin and only Philippe Decoudreau could be that hapless on the cornet.

January winced as he picked up his music satchel from beside the wall where he'd dropped it in his excess of knight-errantry, wiped a trace of blood from his lip and thought, Let's not do that again. The Mohican Princess was long gone, and January hoped, as he made his way toward the lights and voices of the courtyard that lay behind the Salle d'Orleans' gambling rooms, that Richelieu had gone into the gambling rooms or upstairs to the Salle as well. The colored glimmer of light from the courtyard, slanting into the dark of the passageway, showed him a couple of green-black cock feathers from the woman's headdress lying on the bricks at his feet

The woman had called his name. She had been scared.

Why scared?

To any woman who would come unaccompanied to the Blue Ribbon Ball at the Salle d'Orleans, being thrown up against the wall and kissed by a white man was presumably the point of the evening.