Paris: The Novel

child upon the throne.
    The sun was being extinguished. The darkness was closing in.

    It was almost the end of August when the strange thing occurred. Hercule Le Sourd had asked his grandson to take him to a different place that day: the stately square of the Place Royale in the Marais quarter.
    When they got there, he directed his grandson to a particular spot, and then got out and stretched his legs a bit.
    “Why do you choose this place to stop?” his grandson inquired.
    “Something wrong with it?”
    “No.”
    “Then mind your own business,” said his grandfather.
    What had happened to that strange woman? he wondered. Probably dead by now. And no doubt I’ll be following her soon myself, he thought. And it occurred to him that in every corner of Paris there must be places where people had made illicit love—people who were long since turned to skeletons and dust. And if they were all to be resurrected in the body at the same time and in the act of love, what a strange panting, and moaning, and grinding of bones there would be. And in the warm, thick air of that August afternoon, it seemed to him that just for a moment, he could sense all those vanished bodies like spirits all around him, but as spirits with substance, however light. Was it possible that memories, and souls, could take a vaporous form and float about? If they could do it anywhere, it would surely be in the sultry warmth of the intimate, arcaded brick-and-stone enclosure, on a silent August afternoon.
    It had not happened only once. The lady had come back for him the next day, and the one after that. Three times they had made the journeyfrom the Pont Neuf to the Place Royale. Three times they had made passionate love. He had been young then, and vigorous.
    Then she had disappeared, and he’d never seen her again. He did not know who she was, and made no attempt to find out. What would be the point? He was left with three strange, magical memories, as if he’d been transported like a knight in a romance, into another world.
    He stayed there some time. Then he said he wanted to go home.
    The cart had just started up when he turned to his grandson and remarked: “Look at that.”
    “What?”
    “Over there.” Hercule pointed to a spot just in front of the arcades, about fifty paces away, where a figure was standing.
    “I don’t see anything.”
    “The small man, the old one, dressed in red.”
    “There’s no one there, Granddad.”
    And then Hercule understood.
    “You’re right,” he said. “Trick of the light.” But he gazed down at the little red man as they passed him, and the red man stared back.
    So that was him, Hercule thought. Usually it was kings and great men who saw the red man, just before some terrible event—often their own death. But he’d heard stories of ordinary people seeing him.
    What did the red man’s presence mean this time? The death of the king, like as not. Perhaps his own as well.
    “I wouldn’t be surprised,” he said aloud.
    “What?” asked his grandson.
    “Nothing.” If he was about to die, Hercule thought, he was glad he’d come to this place of memories today. “The best three fucks I ever had in my life,” he said aloud.
    “What?”
    “I don’t think the king’s going to live much longer.”
    “Well, he’ll die knowing he left his mark on history,” the younger man remarked.
    Hercule Le Sourd nodded thoughtfully. No doubt that was true, so far as it went. But what that mark on history would be was still hidden behind the dark clouds.
    “No man ever knows his legacy,” he said.

Chapter Eighteen
    •  1914  •
    On the seventh day of September, 1914, one of the strangest sights ever seen in the history of warfare took place in the city of Paris. Thomas Gascon, his younger son Pierre, and Luc were standing at the top of the Champs-Élysées to witness it, at almost exactly the place where, a quarter century ago, Thomas had watched the funeral cortege of Victor Hugo. But the procession today was of a very different kind. And it was not the figure of Édith that he was straining to see, but that of his son Robert.
    For the French army was going to war.
    In taxis.

    In the summer of 1914, Europe had been at peace. If France had been watching her neighbor Germany with alarm, as Germany’s army and navy swelled, she had not been idle. Indeed, her battle plan if hostilities with Germany ever resumed was to race eastward and recapture Alsace-Lorraine. Attack: that was the word,