There was an inn in Bablyon, in the shadow-years between the rise of Ur and the fall of the Second Temple. It was not our Babylon, you understand--not Babylon in the reality of rocks and tables. It was another city of the same name, and like all Babylons it had wonderful hanging gardens. For in all the mirrored worlds, there are certain things inviolate: Hanging Gardens in Babylon, a Sphinx in Egypt, a Wall in China, and in Paris something akin to Notre Dame. The essence is the same; it is only the details that differ.

In this Babylon, then, there was an inn; and the inn was owned by a red-haired man named Jansen. He was not Babylonian by birth (you could have known that by his name and hair, dear reader), but had arrived in Babylon by desperate routes from the far North, ending with a boat trip down the Euphrates in the company of goats and watermelons. With him had come his servant Randle, who was both his bondsman and his cousin, though only by marriage. And Jansen had brought a thin black northern wolfhound and a scarlet bird who spoke five languages imperfectly. These, then, were the intransient inhabitants of the inn, which Jansen had named "The Tiger of Paradise".