“Do you mean to imply a little hedge maze is enough to baffle you?” Maxwell inquired, and led the way, with a confidence he did not feel, to the left.
First there was the tedious process of working their way out of the maze. At least they encountered no armed resistance, Napoleon having apparently not appropriated the palace as an Imperial residence, which was the other risk Maxwell had known he was taking. The Belvedere had been a museum of art and antiquities back during young Maxwell Carrington’s Grand Tour—a very long time ago, by any measurement of time—and it seemed to be one still. Well-dressed couples strolled its Versailles-style gardens and laughed their way through the hedge maze. They were all speaking French.
Then there was the tedious walk back to the city center, the tedio
