Seventy years after Jean-Pierre's passing Emile Meadows, arguably the richest man in America but grieving the untimely death of his wife the previous winter, decided to make an early summer voyage to his ancestral village. Only Brian's father James, at sixteen the youngest of Emile's three children, accompanied him. James was a top-ranked wrestler on his school team and first-string fullback. Emile knew he could depend on James for all the help he needed to manage provincial France with legs that had been entirely useless from the time he was a child. Emile's mission was to locate the bones of his great-great-grandfather, the last Viscomte du Chateauneuf du Pré, and have them buried in the old castle cemetery next to those of his wives and his son, beneath a suitable monument. Finding the remains was easy – the parish priest took Emile and James to the far corner of the village churchyard where each generation of the inhabitants of Chateauneuf-du-Pré had pointed out to the next the unmarked grave of the last Viscomte, executed in the Terror.

It cost Emile almost two months, and more than he cared to think about in fees, bribes, and wages, to arrange for the requisite permits, to have the monument inscribed and placed, and to arrange for workers to exhume the remains and move them to the old castle grounds. There were many trips to Bordeaux and a couple to Paris, but there were also lots of days of waiting in the village. On many of these lazy summer afternoons the village priest was their guest at the hotel restaurant. Père Edouard Rambouillet had almost finished a course of studies in Montreal when the First World War broke out. Having no way to return home until the war would come to an end, he asked to work in the Anglophone townships of Quebec so as to perfect his English, which he now spoke rather fluently though with a considerable French accent.

Père Edouard had invited the two American gentlemen to dine with him soon after their arrival in Chateauneuf-du-Pré. He relished the opportunity to practice his English, and he shared the villagers' intense curiosity about these American scions of the old seigneurial line. The hospitality of the presbytery table was decidedly modest, however, though the people of the impoverished village did support their priest as best they could. Emile decided that frequent invitations on his part could do a lot for the curé's health as well as his language skills. Père Edouard's knowledge of the village and the area around it was encyclopedic and everything in the outside world interested him. His conversational skills needed no improvement.

One languid afternoon the three lingered over brandy at an outdoor sidewalk table. At intervals children in twos and threes, clad in the short shorts and sandals French kids favor in summer, scampered by on their way to swim in the river. The sound of a sandal slapping hard on the sidewalk opposite, accompanied by the steel wheels of a toy express wagon rumbling on the concrete, caught Emile's attention as it had several times before. In the wagon a boy of eleven or so gripped the wooden sides as he sat on his bare heels. The wagon was pulled by a boy a year or two younger who from their resemblance had to be his brother. "Who are those boys?" Emile asked Père Edouard.

"They are the brothers Bouchard," the priest replied. "Would you like to meet them?" Without waiting for an answer he called, "Guy! Jean-Claude! Venez ici, mes enfants!" The boys looked at each other and then at the priest, who gestured impatiently for them to come. "Look out, Guy!" the boy in the wagon cried out in French as his brother pulled it across the rough cobbles of the street, "Watch you don't pitch me out!" Guy's attention was not on his brother but on his lame left foot flopping loosely in its sandal, the source of the slapping sound when he walked. He placed it carefully at each step as he crossed the street so as not to turn his ankle on the stones.

When the boys reached the table the three could see that the wagon was no plaything, for its bed was carefully lined with sheepskin. Père Edouard introduced them, "Messieurs, may I present Jean-Claude and Guy Bouchard," then to the boys in French, "These are M. Emile and M. Jacques Meadows, father and son, visitors to our country from America." Each boy shyly shook hands with the distinguished strangers. "M. Meadows, may we treat them to a café au lait?" inquired the priest. "Of course," Emile replied heartily. "Garçon, café au lait for these two young men and some biscuits for all of us."

James brought a fifth chair to the round table. Guy and Jean-Claude swiftly executed a much-practiced maneuver as Jean-Claude put his strong arms around his brother's neck and Guy lifted him enough to get his right arm under Jean-Claude's legs behind the bent knees. With strength that would be surprising in any child his age, let alone one with a lame foot, Guy lifted his brother from the wagon. As Jean-Claude's legs swung down lifelessly from the knees Guy shifted him in one swift and sure motion into the chair next to James's. This was the more remarkable as the visitors realized that Guy's left arm dangled uselessly at his side, paralyzed as were Jean-Claude's legs which were deformed with long-standing atrophy and contractures. Guy sat down between his brother and the priest, using his right hand to pull up his left forearm and lay it across his lap.

"Mon père," asked Emile, switching to English in mid-sentence, "What happened to these children?"

"The infantile paralysis. Guy was one year old, Jean-Claude two years six months. Their older sister and five other people in the village died of it that summer. The doctor says that if they had received prompt treatment they would not be so disabled today. But the war...," he trailed off in a sigh. The boys, hearing their names, looked at the priest for an explanation as they sipped their café au lait and slipped one biscuit after another into their mouths. He said to them in French, "The American gentleman kindly wanted to know how you came to be crippled, and I explained to him."

"Would Jean-Claude be able to use a wheelchair if he had one?" Emile asked the priest, who translated the question for the boy.

"Ah, m'sieu'," the boy said with longing, staring at the checkered tablecloth as he brushed a tear from the corner of his eye.

Père Edouard said, "We have been collecting a fund for them for years, but it is very hard. And the doctor says Guy should have the arm taken off. A stump there will be more useful to him than what he has now, for he could move it with his shoulder muscles, and it would give him less pain. But the surgeon is in Bordeaux, there are many in need, and that man must eat, too."

In French Guy asked the priest, "M. l'Abbé, may one ask how the gentleman from America came to be crippled?"

Emile's rudimentary French discerned the gist of the question and he responded to the flustered Père Edouard, "Please tell him I have not used my legs since I was five years old. It comes from something I was born with." He had long since come to the understanding that this stock explanation was certainly true enough.

"Ah," the boys said in chorus, casting a sympathetic look at Emile. By now they had finished the café au lait and biscuits and began glancing at Père Edouard for a cue about what to do next. The priest said to Emile, "I'm sure these gamins are grateful for your company but they do not want to miss their swimming." Then to the boys in French, "You may go on now."

"Merci, mon père, merci, messieurs," they said as Guy scrambled from his chair and limped off to retrieve the wagon. James, long practiced with his father, rose to lift Jean-Claude from the chair and gently let the boy's legs fold under him as he placed him on the sheepskin in the wagon. Guy and Jean-Claude shook hands with the priest and the American visitors, saying, "Merci, merci, au revoir, messieurs."

As the little wagon rumbled on down the street Emile asked the priest, "What would it take to complete your fund for those boys?"

"Ah, Monsieur, ten times what we have now. Monsieur, I wish to tell you something no one in the village knows. Those boys, they are your cousins, descended from the last Viscomte."

"How could that be?" Emile asked. "All of our family fled to America except Jean-Pierre, who died childless."

"Ah, Monsieur, Jean-Pierre died without heirs, but not childless," the priest replied. "First Mme. La Chance died, the mother of the priest executed in the Terror, then Michel married, and Jean-Pierre lived alone in the presbytery for some time before the village finally got another priest. In that period he lived, let us say, the adolescence which life had denied him in its proper time. In the end he was with Marie Bouchard, the great-great-grandmother of Jean-Claude and Guy. Her husband Claude Bouchard was, how to say, crazy for his wife. In truth every man in the village was. But from childhood Marie found poor Jean-Pierre's crippled legs fascinating, from the day he came from the palace to live in the village. If Claude knew he himself was not the father of their youngest son Bertrand he never let on, for fear he might lose her I am sure. I doubt, though, he would ever have imagined who was the true father. Shortly after Bertrand, the boys' great-grandfather, was born, a priest was finally sent to the village and Jean-Pierre settled into his service."

"But you say no one in the village knows this," Emile protested. "How do you know?"

"Ah, Monsieur, come, I will show you." Emile and James accompanied Père Edouard to the sacristy of the village church, where he opened a cabinet and pulled out a century-old tome of handwritten records. "Here, Monsieur, is the record of Bertrand Bouchard's baptism, and here, where the father's name is recorded – but see for yourselves, voici." He pointed to a near-microscopic inscription in the same hand as the rest of the entry, just under Claude Bertrand's name, "J-P du Cn du P."

"Jean-Pierre du Chateauneuf du Pré?" Emile asked. "How would the priest of that time know this?"

"I cannot say, Monsieur, but many of my predecessors were, how to say, royalistes in secret, and each has pointed out what you have just seen to the next and told how the line of the old Viscomtes persists in Chateauneuf-du-Pré. For many years public knowledge of it would have endangered the descendants. Now it is no more than a historical curiosity. Yes, it is an idle curiosity which would damage the relationships of the families here if it were to come to light. So, Messieurs, now it is your secret to keep."

Early the next morning Emile and James boarded the little local train which stopped at Chateauneuf-du-Pré several times daily as it chugged and chuffed its way to and from Bordeaux. In the evening of the following day they returned to the village and went directly to the presbytery. Père Edouard, surprised to receive an unscheduled call from the rumpled American visitors so late in the evening, showed them into his parlor.

"M. l'Abbé," Emile said, "You will pardon my directness but I am very weary. I need to finish our business and rest. Guy Bouchard has an appointment next Tuesday morning, first with this bracemaker in Bordeaux," handing him a card, "and then with the surgeon of whom we spoke. He is prepared to operate on Guy Wednesday morning. Jean-Claude should go with Guy to the shop where the bracemaker works, and they will adjust the wheelchair which has been selected for him there by someone who knows something about them. I would suggest that their mother go with them and plan to spend two weeks while Guy recovers from his surgery. Someone capable of lifting Jean-Claude, perhaps his father, perhaps yourself, should go also and be ready to accompany him on his return Tuesday night or Wednesday. Whatever lodging they will need has been arranged," he said, handing the priest another card.

"But, but Monsieur, the money...," the priest gasped.

"Is taken care of. People will draw their own conclusions, but you will not affirm our connection with this, nor shall we ourselves. You must simply say that the fund has at last become sufficient. Now, mon père, I am exhausted and must rest. Come dine with us at the hotel tomorrow, and tell us of your progress." After two took their leave the curé stood in his doorway in stunned amazement, his eyes following James's back as he pushed his father's wheelchair down the village street to the hotel. "Americains," he muttered as he shut the door at last.

By the dinner hour the following afternoon all had been arranged to conform to Emile Meadows's plan, as Père Edouard reported over their meal. The owner of the factory where they boys' father worked had heard of what was about to happen and gave him the week if he needed it before he could ask for it, so both parents would accompany the boys to Bordeaux on Monday. An aunt would add their three younger children to her six for the duration. Jean-Claude's father would bring him back Thursday morning after they had seen Guy through his surgery, while their mother would stay in Bordeaux for the two weeks of anticipated hospitalization.