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CHAPTER 17

F OLLOWED BY an angry mob, the Frenchmen brought their prisoner to the Court of First Instance in the Palais de Justice. People pushed and shoved one another, trying to get a better view of the proceedings. The air in the room quickly became hot and stale from so many bodies packed into such a modest enclosure. The men placed the rug upright in the middle of the court, before the magistrate.

A chuckle passed among the prosecutors, advocates, and court reporters. “Quel est ceci?” asked the magistrate, not amused.

The public prosecutor, a gowned and whiskered gentleman, stood up and said a number of things in French, which, muffled though the unintelligible words were, Hatter could hear from within the confines of the rug.

“Ou est le prisonnier?” the magistrate asked.

The public prosecutor pointed to the rug. Again, the court regulars laughed. With a heavy sigh, the magistrate warned the gentleman not to make a mockery of the court. The prosecutor apologized and explained that he had no intention of doing any such thing, but that the prisoner was tres dangereux and the carpet the only means that had been found to subdue him.

A man stepped forward and declared that the prisoner possessed violent, other-worldly powers. The gallery of onlookers, none of whom had witnessed the fight on the rue de Rivoli, came alive with loud assertions of “C’est vrai! C’est vrai!”

The magistrate, however, had seen quite the parade of motley life from his perch in court and merely wondered if he might not treat himself to a little fried mutton along with his usual wedge of brie and bottle of bordeaux at his favorite cafe, Le Chien Dyspeptique.

“Je voudrais voir le prisonnier,” he said.

The prosecutor cleared his throat several times and said that, with all due respect, he did not think releasing Hatter from the rug was a good idea. The magistrate huffed and ordered the prosecutor to remove Hatter from the rug or he would find himself in prison for contempt of court. The rug was laid on the floor. The gallery of onlookers surged, people squeezing forward, sensing that something dramatic was about to happen.

They were not mistaken. No sooner was Hatter unrolled from his confinement than he jumped up and- Thwink!

His wrist-blades sliced the air, blurry with speed. He grabbed a dagger from his backpack and threw it, skewering a painting on the wall next to the magistrate’s head-an action that caused the wise man to hunker down beneath his bench for safety.

Before the court police gathered their courage to attempt recapture, Hatter corkscrewed out the nearest window and landed on the sidewalk at a run. The onlookers crowded at the window, hoping to catch a last glimpse of the mysterious man. The magistrate peeked up over his bench to see if his life was still in danger. After surviving such a day, he decided, a plate of fried mutton was well-deserved.

Rumors began to spread about a man with spinning knives on his wrists who appeared out of puddles. With the passing months, and after numerous sightings of Hatter had been reported but never officially proved, the rumors fossilized into legend. Civilians claimed that he could defeat an entire regiment on his own. Military men wondered aloud what more Napoleon might have accomplished if he’d had the man in his ranks. Young boys imagined themselves in his shoes, playing the part of a superhero. In drawing rooms, wealthy, educated ladies and gentlemen put aside their usually reserved manners and attempted to imitate his acrobatic spins and twirls, and even, on occasion, his somersaults. Maidservants all over

France gathered in dim kitchens and told one another romantic stories about the legendary figure, with whom they’d fallen in love. A woman must have broken his heart, they imagined, because surely no man would behave as he did for any reason but the suffering of unrequited love? Upon turning in for bed,

these lovesick servants left candles burning in their windows, and had Hatter been able to fly over Paris in the middle of the night, he would have seen a sleeping city dotted with these flickering lights of longing-pinpricks of warmth in the cold dark, illuminating the way to women’s hearts. But Hatter would have felt anything but deserving, for he was wrestling with an unfamiliar emotion: inadequacy. He had failed to keep his promise to Queen Genevieve.