Paris: The Novel

many wives he knew. Whatever her faults, he counted himself lucky to have married Édith.

    After lunch he took all but the youngest two children for a walk up the nearby hill of Montmartre. There was a funicular, nowadays, that ran up the left side of the steep, high slope, but one had to pay. Besides, as he told Monique when she complained, they wouldn’t get any exercise if they didn’t go up the steps.
    The sun was out, catching the soaring white domes of the church of Sacré Coeur. High on its hill, it gleamed over the huge oval valley of Paris.
    “Most of my life,” Thomas remarked to his children, “this hilltop was just a huge field of mud and wooden scaffolding. I used to wonder if I’d ever live to see the church finished. They didn’t take the scaffolding down from the big dome until you were born, Monique, when I was thirty-five.”
    “And you were even more pleased to see me than the church,” she insisted.
    “Except when you misbehave,” he answered genially.
    The transformation of the site was almost complete. The platform, upon which the great Byzantine shrine stood, had been laid out as handsome terraces and flights of steps, like hanging gardens. A splendid statue of Joan of Arc gazed out over Paris from beside the church door. And though not visible to the eye, a subtler change had also occurred.
    As four decades of republican government had gradually weakened the power of the Church, even the message of Sacré Coeur had been altered. Men like Father Xavier and Roland de Cygne remembered that it proclaimed the triumph of a conservative Church over the radical Communards. But most Parisians who nowadays gazed up at the shining white temple on the hill supposed that it was a memorial to the Communards’ heroism—a view which radical governments were glad to encourage.
    Since living in Pigalle, Thomas Gascon usually brought his childrenup here a couple of times a year, and the ritual was always the same. They would wander over the top of the hill, visit the Moulin de la Galette where their uncle Luc had started work, visit the Maquis to view the house where their father had been brought up, and then complete the circle of the hill, walking by the little school where Thomas had learned to read and write.
    For the first five years, the tour had always ended with one dramatic moment in front of Sacré Coeur before they descended.
    Pointing across the rooftops of Paris to where the Eiffel Tower soared into the sky, Thomas would cry out: “Take a good look at the tower, my children, and remember. For it won’t be there much longer.”
    Everyone had known. In 1909, the twenty-year license that Gustave Eiffel had been granted would be up. The city authorities would then order the tower to be dismantled. Even if he couldn’t be the foreman, Thomas had wanted to apply to work on that job. “I put that tower up, and I’ll take it down,” he used to say. But it would break his heart to do it.
    So a chance meeting early in 1908 had brought him great joy. He’d been working on a project to the south of the Eiffel Tower, and if the weather was fine he would walk past the tower at the end of the day. One evening, he saw Monsieur Eiffel just ahead of him in the dusk. He couldn’t resist going up to him to pay his respects; and to his pleasure, Eiffel recognized him at once.
    “Well, Gascon, it’s good to see you again.”
    “It is possible, monsieur, that you may see more of me next year. For I shall certainly apply to dismantle the tower, although it is a terrible shame to do it.”
    Eiffel smiled at him.
    “Then I have good news for you, my friend. I have just concluded an extension of the contract, until 1915.”
    “Another six years. That is something at least, monsieur.”
    “And I have other plans too. Do you realize the usefulness of the tower, my dear Gascon, for radio communications?”
    “I had not really thought of it.”
    “Well, I can assure you that the tower is the finest radio mast in the world. And I have a few other things up my sleeve. Trust me, my friend, and I believe I can save our tower. Just give me a little time.”
    And some time later Thomas had read in the newspaper that the army and navy had declared that the tower was essential for their military communications.
    Once again, the genius of Eiffel had triumphed. The tower was now sacrosanct. It was part of the defense of France.
    So today, before they returned home, Thomas Gascon could pause, point to the