Paris: The Novel

of May. Visitors looked in awe at the vast iron tower under which theypassed. They had to wait until the fair’s second week before they could go up it, but even if they didn’t ascend, they found plenty in the huge fair to interest them. There were the exhibits from all corners of the world. There was a replica of a Cairo street and Egyptian market, with cafés serving Turkish coffee and entertaining the customers with belly dancers. The site was so huge that a delightful miniature train took passengers from the Champ de Mars to the esplanade by Les Invalides, where they found Oriental rickshaws.
    The fair might be celebrating the centenary of the French Revolution and its ideals of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, but the honor of France demanded that visitors should also be reminded of her far-flung colonies; and so there were large and exotic exhibits from the colonies of Algeria, Tunisia, Senegal, Polynesia, Cambodia and others. If the British had an empire, so did France.
    But while the Eiffel Tower was the staggering glory of the fair, it had to be admitted that the pavilion which astounded everyone was the one supplied, at his own expense, by Thomas Edison, who was sailing from America to Paris himself in August. The range of inventions on view was staggering, and in keeping with the shared republican values of America and France, it showed how, very soon, the advances of modern science would bring electricity, telephones and other wonderful new conveniences not only to the wealthy, but to the masses. Most fascinating of all was the new phonograph with its cylinders, which no one had ever seen before.
    The huge numbers of Americans who were filling Paris to see the exhibition might feel delight and gratification that the man who’d built the Statue of Liberty and their own Thomas Edison were the stars.
    And then of course, just twelve days after the opening of the fair, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show was due to open on a Saturday afternoon.

    On the evening before, Thomas went up to Montmartre to see his family. He ate with his parents and sister. Luc was working, and Thomas decided to stay the night up at the house so that he could see his brother. It was after midnight when Luc arrived, and as it was warm, the two brothers sat out on the wall nearby under the stars to chat awhile.
    “I went to the tower this afternoon,” Luc informed him. “It’s only been open two days, and you still can’t use the elevators, but I wanted to go and see.” He smiled. “Most people only walk up to the first platform, butI went on to the second. It’s still not open above that. And guess who I met there?”
    “Tell me.”
    “The man himself. Monsieur Eiffel. He was walking up to his office at the top. He’s certainly fit. He told me he does it every day.”
    “You spoke to him?” After his disgrace, Thomas was a little nervous of what the great man might have had to say.
    “Certainly. He recognized me. He said I could walk up to the top with him if I liked. So of course I did.”
    “I see.”
    “And I saw the plaque with all the workers’ names on it.”
    “Ah.” Thomas sighed. “I didn’t tell you yet. But unfortunately …,” he began.
    “I saw your name.”
    Thomas started. His name? Could there have been another Gascon working on the tower he didn’t know about?
    “My name? You are sure?”
    “It was Monsieur Eiffel who pointed it out to me. ‘There’s your brother’s name,’ he said. ‘Don’t forget to tell him you saw it.’ ”
    “Oh,” said Thomas.
    “So I went up to the top and he went up into his office and I walked around the viewing platform. Quite a view. It must be like that when you’re up in a balloon.”
    “What did you do then?”
    “I came down, of course. What else?”
    “Nothing.”
    “
Il est gentil
, your Monsieur Eiffel. He’s nice.”
    “Yes,” said Thomas. “He is.”

    Édith wasn’t sure. Aunt Adeline was.
    “This is the time to end it. You made a mistake, but now that is over. You’re not pregnant anymore. You’re free. He’s a nice boy, but he seems to have a talent for getting in trouble, and he hasn’t a sou.”
    Even Édith’s mother did her best to give her good advice.
    “You know that butcher up at the top of the rue de la Pompe? Well, his son has his eye on you. And that junior master at the lycée, the one withthe little beard, I see him looking at you when he leaves the building. You should encourage him, you know.”
    “A