Dear Jeanne,

Mostly, I wonder what really happened once Bougainville left you and Philibert off on Isle de France. Did he desert you? Did he expose you? Or was your story perhaps not spread about, making it possible to remain in disguise as if nothing had happened and to continue as his manservant? Hard to believe you would have agreed to prolong such painful sartorial constraints. Yet given your zeal for science you might have, and even taken a new name, hiding in plain sight to accompany him on further adventures, like the trip to the volcano on Isle Bourbon. On the other hand, when he dedicated an interesting shrub to you he seemed nostalgic, writing that your plant name had significance “autrefois,” which suggests that you were in his past. But then what did you do? It was falsely reported that you married the owner of a forge on Isle de France; someone else spoke of your “personal papers” ending up in Strasbourg. Writers write the damnedest things....