At eight-thirty in the morning on Thursday, February 6, 2003, Renee Alcala arrived at the Encore!!! Network, to deliver the original copy of the The Meek Shall Inherit to the office of Nina Pagonis. She was surprised to find the office already occupied, and Nina's assistant busy at work. Somewhat sheepishly, Renee handed him the packet. He opened the envelope, took out the manuscript, and inspected the smudged and slightly skewed text of the title page.

"...a Proposal for an Historical Telenovela in the American Language, by Damien di Savoia Underwood..." he said, reading out loud. "So you... found this... on Western Avenue? Above a lavanderia?"

Forty-nine years later, as she crossed the Mississipi in the back seat of Fr. Bresnahan's Oldsmobile, Sister Eunice Larkin remembered those two articles about Matilda of Canossa and that moment of self-disgust, a flickering recollection, dancing or shuddering between the warm soft glow of piety and the harsh cold light of reason. La Signora must have known that Eunice was on some kind of cusp—that she hungered, in a way, for both versions, both Matildas, both worlds. The girl, holding on to her childhood, wanted to believe in a holy warrior princess; the young woman, who already knew that Dubuque held no future for her, wanted to scrub away the lies. What La Signora could not have anticipated was the intensity of both reactions.

Well, thought Sister Eunice, looking down into the swirling waters that divided a continent, that was how it began—the crisis of faith that led to my vocation.

Sister Eunice looked at the countryside. Here, near the Mother House, the farmland was rich and flat. Big houses. New barns. Even the fences were crisp, well-maintained. Her own mother, who had been born on a hilly farm, a hard place, beautiful but rocky, had always resented the farmers who owned this land. "Those rich people," her mother would say. Sister Eunice wondered what they were like now, these farmers. Rich like the Italian rich? Of course not. Rich like the Catholic families of Chicago and Philadelphia and Boston who sent their daughters to study in Florence? Perhaps.

When I get back to the Hotel Mercure Strasbourg Quartier St. Jean, three of the Rabbit Warriors are sitting in the sidewalk cafe outside.

"Zere he is!" calls out Bendedikt when he sees me. "Ze steward of ze empire!"

"Did you sleep in ze BierWagen?" asks Manuel.

"Ah!" says Andreas, "Ze perfect cure for jet lag! Sit down and join us for breakfast, bro. Ve are drinking Strasbourg beer! Vill you have vun?"

Finally, we get everybody checked in, and head up to our rooms. My room is on the fourth floor—it's kind of angular, like somebody tried to hide the attic beams of an old building by disguising them as geometric modernism—but it's nice. Actually really nice. I haven't done the euro-dollar conversion yet—my brain is still too foggy from lack of sleep to do the calculations in my head—but it seems affordable, as long as this is the only room that is still on my credit card at checkout time. I've got to talk to Henry about that.

Well, eventually a someone from the hotel shows up with one of those carts to help me with the luggage, and together we roll it into the lobby, and I head to front desk.

Henry is nowhere to be seen, but Bertha's talking on her cell phone, and when I look at her and try to give her the International Tourist Sign Language for "Is this the right place?" (surveying the room with upraised spreading palms and quizzical eyebrows), she nods and points to the desk. So I go and book a single room for myself, and then the clerk asks me about the rest of my party.

We're supposed to meet Henry and his entourage at the Hotel Mercure in Strasbourg. Well, it turns out that there are several Hotel Mercures in that city—first I navigate through the narrow streets to the Hotel Mercure Strasbourg Centre, on the picturesque ile that holds the upscale shopping district, and we've almost got the minivan unloaded when Bertha gets a call on her cell phone. It's Henry, saying he's at the front desk, and wondering where we are.

We're off the autobahn now, heading on the B28 highway toward toward the Rhine river—and Strasbourg, France. You know something, I'm actually kind of excited about driving across a national boundary in contemporary Europe, now that it's all unified. I've never done it before, and I'm curious as to what actually happens. And I'm even more curious as to what Bruno and Lambert think of the unification of Europe. I tell the two monks what I know about the border situation, and how I expect we won't even have to stop when we go across Rhine into France.

"So how does that compare," I say, "to your experience? You know, the borders of 1076?"

Lambert, in the seat beside me, is now taking his duties as navigator seriously—he opens a paper map, flapping and snapping, to compare it to the GPS.

"Exit 51," he says, looking at the map. "There it is—right there."

He seems to be in a good mood. Maybe this is a good time to get to know him better. As a writer, a thinker.