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The next day was lost. Part of my grant obligations included giving a series of five lectures to art history students on a study abroad program. The day after my visit to Madame Rosier, I was informed by the program leader that my first lecture had been rescheduled, in order to cover for one of the other professors who had taken ill. I had only two days to prepare a talk on women artists and the female nude. I spent the next twenty-four hours holed up in the apartment I was subletting on the Île Saint-Louis, going over my notes and accompanying slides. Needless to say, I had no time to check out the bookshop in Madame Rosier’s street, or even to go back to the hospital, which I felt very guilty about. I planned to go see her the afternoon right after my lecture.
Only seven students sho
