Paris: The Novel

ignore the last six of the Ten Commandments, and woe betide them if they did. Paul Petit came from a family of twelve children. He had eight of his own. Like his father before him, he was a hardworking craftsman. There was enough money to put food on the table, and clothe all the children decently. But not more. One slip, and the family would descend into chaos. That was all it would take. “The gutter,” he would warn his children, “lies just outside the door.” If he was stern, therefore, it was to ensure the family’s survival.
    And when he had to be, Paul Petit was hard. Very hard. He was about to cast his daughter out of his house. He had to, if only as an example to her sisters.
    As he set off to walk to see Jules Blanchard, he was still shaking. It wasn’t only Corinne’s crime that was tearing him apart. It was the fact that she had lied to him. And not just once, but coolly and calmly over many weeks. It enraged him, and it hurt him.
    He remembered the start of it so well. She’d taken a message from him to a customer near the Parc Monceau and taken a long time to return. But when she’d explained her long absence, he’d been rather pleased.
    “Father, I met Monsieur Blanchard in the street, and he made me return with him to see his wife. She needs extra help in the house two afternoons a week, and wondered if you could spare me.”
    The Blanchards were highly respectable, as well as valued customers. If Corinne could earn a little extra money in this way, her parents had no objection at all.
    The arrangement had lasted three weeks when Corinne told them that Gérard, their recently married son, and his wife could use her for a third afternoon. Weeks had passed, Corinne had brought home some modest wages from this work, and it had never occurred to her parents to question the business.
    Once, just once, he might have detected something, when he remarked that he wondered if there were any store fittings that Monsieur Blanchard might need at Joséphine, and whether he might call upon him. He’dnoticed Corinne suddenly go a little pale. But his wife had promptly remarked: “I’m sure he has you in mind, Paul, with his kindness to Corinne, and her being in his house every week. I don’t think you should go calling on him for other favors. He might feel it was too much.”
    “You’re right, my dear,” he’d agreed at once, and put the idea out of his mind. “Keep your ears open, though,” he’d said to Corinne.
    So when, this morning, his wife had told him that Corinne was pregnant by Marc Blanchard, that she’d been modeling for him in his studio, and that she’d never been near the house of Monsieur Blanchard or his son Gérard, Paul Petit had found it quite difficult to believe that it was true.
    “And when did this start?” he had demanded. “How could such an idea enter your head?”
    “I used to speak to him a little when he came here. I knew he painted people in his studio,” Corinne had confessed. “But then I met him in the street that day I went to the Parc Monceau. He was going to see his parents. He suggested that I come and model for him. It sounded …” She wanted to say interesting, or exciting, but didn’t dare. “I didn’t think you would allow it …”
    “Of course I should not allow it!” her father had shouted.
    “So I made up the story. I thought it would be just for a few afternoons, and then it would be over.”
    “So you went and sat in a chair and he made drawings of you … How did this lead to what has happened now? Did he force himself on you?”
    “No, Papa. It wasn’t quite like that. Artists’ models … they are not dressed, you know.”
    “You were undressed?”
    “And then, the third week … one thing led to another …” She trailed off.
    “You became his mistress.”
    “I suppose.”
    “You suppose?” And only his wife throwing herself between them had prevented him from striking her. “You bring shame upon your family,” he cried. “Shame upon your parents, upon your poor brothers and sisters. And ruin upon yourself. But do not think that I will allow you to ruin this family,” he told her furiously. “For when a branch is rotten, it must be cut off.”

    The rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine was a very long street. It began out in what had formerly been a faubourg, a suburb, on the eastern side of the old city. Long before the Revolution, it had been an artisans’ quarter, where most of the carpenters, furniture