Paris: The Novel

but she never found anyone who interested her enough.” His father had shrugged. “She’s an attractive woman, but too independent.”
    Marc knew his aunt had friends who were writers and artists. When he’d shown some talent for drawing at school, it was always her opinion he wanted on his efforts. He could easily imagine Aunt Éloïse as an abbess in the Middle Ages, or as one of those eighteenth-century women who held salons where the great men of the Enlightenment would come. Had she had lovers? If she had, no one in the respectable Blanchard family had ever breathed a word.

    It was only a moment’s walk to the Petit Pont bridge, where they stared over the water to the Left Bank. Aunt Éloïse tried to engage Gérard in conversation again.
    “The Île de la Cité is just like a boat in the river, isn’t it?”
    “I suppose so.”
    “You know, Gérard, that on its coat of arms, Paris is pictured as a ship. Do you remember the city’s Latin motto? ‘
Surgit nec mergitur
’: Whatever the storm, the ship sails on. It never sinks. That’s exactly the story of Paris.”
    Gérard shrugged. Most Parisians were proud of their city and its treasures. People came from all over the world to see them. But the truth was, he didn’t really care. He knew Aunt Éloïse and Marc despised him for it. No doubt little Marie would as well, one day. Well, let them. He knew what he was going to do with his life. He was going to run the family business.
    No one else in the family could do it. His grandfather had seen it, right from the start: “Gérard’s the one with the sound head,” he’d told the family, when Gérard was only ten. Marc was no use. He was like Aunt Éloïse: full of useless ideas and distractions. Little Marie, as a girl, didn’t need to be considered. Even his father, Gérard privately considered, was a poor custodian.
    Jules Blanchard had waited until his father’s death before he had fulfilled his dream. Three years ago, his elegant department store had opened. Cheekily, he had chosen a site on the boulevard Haussmann behind the Paris Opéra and only a stone’s throw from the great Printemps store. Like Printemps, he offered high-quality clothing at fixed prices that the middle classes could afford, including some lines for which he’d signed exclusive deals. He’d called the store Joséphine.
    Why Joséphine, his family had asked? After the empress Joséphine, of course, he’d explained. She’d been the wife of Napoléon, she was exotic and, if she had faults of character, she was always elegant. It was the perfect name, he’d told them.
    Jules had borrowed hugely to finance it. It had to be confessed, he’d had the devil’s own luck. Just a year after Joséphine opened, the mighty Printemps emporium had burned down, and was still being rebuilt. With the main competition temporarily removed, Joséphine’s business had surged. “Make hay while the sun shines,” Jules had remarked cheerfully.
    But Gérard wasn’t impressed. He hated retail. The wholesale business, which thank God his father had kept, produced cash; the retail business ate the cash. Wholesalers could lend money. Retailers borrowed. A wholesale premises was a simple, functional building that lasted a lifetime. A department store was like a stage set. His brother, Marc, loved the glamorousstore, and Gérard’s secret dread was that he might want to run it one day. At all costs that must be prevented.
    For Gérard’s plan was simple. One day, when his father retired or died, if the department store hadn’t ruined them in the meantime, he was going to get rid of it. Sell it if possible; if not, close it.

Chapter Three
    •  1261  •
    It was spring in the year of Our Lord 1261, saintly King Louis IX was on the throne of France and day was dawning. The young woman rose from the mattress on the floor.
    Martine could see a thin slit of light between the wooden shutters at the window. There was no sound from the yard below; but from across it came the noise of her uncle’s loud, rhythmical snores, like the rattle of a portcullis being raised at one of the city gates.
    Still naked, she went to the shutters and pushed. They opened with a crack. Her uncle’s snores faltered, and she held her breath. Then the rattle resumed, thank God.
    She had to be careful. She mustn’t get caught.
    Martine looked back at the mattress. The young man lying there was asleep.
    Until last year, Martine had been married to a rich