Paris: The Novel

well.
    But they had let him see his son.
    “Are you going to watch?” he asked the boy.
    “I don’t know. Do you want me to?”
    “They’ll take me from the Châtelet to Les Halles in a cart, so that everyone can see me. You can watch that. Then go away. You know what they’re going to do to me? Hang me for a while, then cut my head off.”
    “I know.”
    “I don’t want you to see that.”
    “All right.”
    “Go away just before we enter Les Halles. Otherwise you’ll be tempted to stay.”
    “Will you look for me in the crowd? I don’t know where I shall be.”
    “No. I shan’t look for you. Don’t try to wave at me or anything. I shall stand proud. Promise?”
    “I promise.”
    “Did you see Master Villon?”
    “No. I don’t think he’s in Paris.”
    “He’ll go the same way as me, you know.”
    “You’d have been all right if it wasn’t for that cursed de Cygne.”
    His father shook his head.
    “I’d have swung for something sooner or later. I could have swung so many times before.”
    “If he comes back, I’ll kill him.”
    “No you won’t. That’s an order. I don’t want you to swing as well.”
    “What am I to do, Papa?” The boy’s voice suddenly started to break down.
    “Get yourself apprenticed to a trade. You know where the money’s hidden. Enough there to pay a master to take you on. I was going to get you apprenticed to someone next year.”
    “Why?”
    “Not much money in thieving really. And you never have any peace. And then … there’s this.” He shrugged. “It’s my fault. I’ve taught you all I know about thieving, which is a lot, and it’s still a waste of time.”
    “I dunno, Papa.”
    “Yes, you do.”
    “I wish I had a mother.”
    “Well you don’t, so do as I say.”
    “I suppose so.”
    “As for de Cygne. Leave him alone. You’ll probably never see him again, but leave him alone. But there’s one thing you’ve got to know. About the nobles—not just de Cygne, all of them. They don’t care. Just remember that. Do what you have to do with them, because they have the power. I don’t know if they’ll always have it, but they do now, and they’ll have it as long as you live, my son. So don’t ever go against them. But just remember, no matter what they say, don’t ever trust them. Because they don’t care about you, and they never will, because you’re not one of them.”
    He looked up. The jailor had come in.
    “Say good-bye to your father now,” he said to his son. They kissed. “Now go.”
    An hour later Richard heard the crowd roar, and knew that he didn’t have a father anymore.

Chapter Nine
    •  1897  •
    As the month of October began and Jules Blanchard considered his family, he decided that he wasn’t worried about his daughter, Marie. She was everything a young woman of her age should be.
    Her hair had changed. The golden curls of her childhood had given way to light brown hair, parted in the middle and fluffed into soft waves. But her eyes were still china blue. She had a perfect peaches-and-cream complexion, and her father adored her. No doubt she’d be married before long, but he could only pray that whomever she married wouldn’t take her far away.
    The boys were different. They’d both gone to the Lycée Condorcet, near their home, and done well. But after that, their paths had diverged entirely.
    Gérard had been everything his father could reasonably have asked. He’d been eager to go into the family business and he’d worked hard at it. Jules could already rely on him to keep everything running smoothly. Only months ago, he’d married an entirely suitable girl from a good family with plenty of money. He gave his father no worries.
    But his younger son was another matter. He worried about Marc.
    He hadn’t minded when Marc had been accepted by the École des Beaux-Arts. He liked the art school’s classical facade, which stared so handsomely across at the Louvre from the Seine’s Left Bank. The place had prestige. It sounded quite well to say that his younger son had been there. But somehow he’d supposed that after this, Marc would want to engage himself in the business or administration of art, rather thanput paint on canvas himself. True, Marc had done a fine portrait of his mother, which now had pride of place in the salon of the family’s big apartment. But Jules would rather see his son as a gifted amateur than a professional painter.
    His wife was of the same opinion. Only his sister