This morning I went to the docks early, hoping to see evidence of the ships and the men that I heard arguing in my dreams. The docks were very quiet but I did see one person. It was not a pirate and not a sea captain. It was my friend Louis-Charles, who is about my age.

Louis seemed to jump in at my side out of nowhere. I was so surprised by his sudden appearance, but I was also very happy to see him. I did not know that he had come to Melioria.

Louis- Charles seemed to arrive out of thin air

It had never been clear to me how Louis-Charles, a boy my age, could come to Venezia at sunrise and have dinner in Paris, afternoon tea at Versailles, and come back to Venezia to explore the canals with me as the sun was setting. Well, I say I did not understand. In the first days of our friendship when we would chat or explore together, he would surprise me suddenly and say: I must go to Versailles now, and trot off across the Rialto. Sometimes I would run after him because he had forgotten something, but I would never find him. It seemed strange. But the word Versailles meant nothing to me. I thought it was a section of the city that I had never visited. It was only when Louis-Charles spoke about sailing the Seven Seas with pirates that I finally asked the Contessa Foscari about Versailles. She told me that it was far away, across the mountains, across the plains in Paris -- the court of the French king.