He was drawing closer, and in a dark flash his hand went out, and my head went back, and I saw the sky and the city of Paris upside down.
I was falling through the air. And I went down and down past the windows of the tower, until the stone walkway rose up to catch me-
He had looked as ever like an angelic boy as he'd said all these things, and there flashed before my memory the first time I had ever laid eyes on him in the dusty shadows of Notre Dame de Paris, a vagabond angel without wings.
Ah, sad lost child, roaming the catacombs beneath a great city and an incomprehensible century. Maybe your mortal form is more fitting than I supposed.
Slowly I pressed my lips to his whitened silky skin and breathed in the old unmistakable taste and scent of him, something sweet and undefinable and utterly personal, something made up of all his physical gifts and those given him afterwards,
He went on, speaking to me alone, from his mind as much as with his voice. I couldn't tell if anyone else there could even hear him. But I heard him. I would not forget a single word.
We took him with us to the livery stables, and there I put him on my mare. But he looked as if he would let himself fall off at any moment, and so I mounted behind him, and the three of us rode out.