I was preparing to give a talk at wonderful Orchard House, the amazing and magical half-house half-museum in Concord, Massachusetts, dedicated to Louisa May Alcott and her extraordinary family, and during the course of it was planning to mention Louisa’s friend Ladislas Wisniewski, a young Polish soldier whom she met while she was traveling in Switzerland in 1865, with whom she might, or then again might not, have had a romance, and who might, or then again might not, have been the model for