SPOILERS!!!
Madeleine does not find anything extraordinary about Dr Reinhart's experiments. As an anatomist he uses animals, and even though in most cases the animals end up dead, that is nothing strange. He also makes automatons, and that is another reason why he likes observing animals.
Madeleine writes to Camille, the policeman, but there is nothing she has found in the direction he indicated. When the thirty days are up, Dr Reinhrart receives a letter telling him that he has been chosen as the King's clock maker, and it seems that it was a suggestion of Madame Pompadour, and Madeleine understands that it is the woman who had her spying on the Reinharts.
Veronique and her father move to the Louvre, and despite what she had agreed at first, Madeline is ordered to go with the Reinharts and continue her reports. The king visits Reinhart and asks him to work on a project, which he keeps secret from everybody, even Veronique. The girl is frustrated because she wants to be his assistant but he keeps saying that he is too inexperienced and he promised to keep the project a secret.
Things change when Madame Pompadour learns that Veronique is pretty, and she is afraid that the king may turn his attentions to her. So she convinces the king to tell Reinhart to let his daughter have anatomy lessons with Lefevre and participate in the project. Veronique is overjoyed, but it seems that soon she is regretting the whole thing. I wonder what this project is. Madeleine is determined to find out because that is what Camille asks her to do, and she is frustrated because she is forced to stay away from her nephew longer than she was made to believe at first. Yet, Camille threatens to tell Veronique and Reinhart that she is a police spy.
During this time children are disappearing. Two traders' boys and a seamstress assistant are gone overnight. The police think that they have run away, but people are starting to say that they have been kidnapped by a rich man, or even they think that the police are taking these children and handing them to aristocrats. Then Victor, a young slave that helps Reinhart from time to time, disappears. Madeline goes with Joseph, the valet, to ask around, but he is nowhere to be seen. Joseph thinks that Victor wouldn't run away because the punishment for runaway slaves is too terrible to risk.
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