Paris: The Novel

you have the Temple area, once a suburb where the Templars lived, and near it the Marais, so called because it was oncea marsh. Most of the other quarters keep the names either of former villages or churches. And each has its own character—though many smaller quarters practically disappeared when Baron Haussmann knocked them down in the last century.”
    “But what about the arrondissements?” Frank asked. “That’s where I get confused. They have numbers, but there seem to be two sets. And they also seem to have their own reputations, don’t they?”
    Marc turned to Gérard’s son, young Jules.
    “To be precise,” Jules told him, “soon after the Revolution the inner parts of Paris were divided into twelve arrondissements—and people sometimes still refer to them as the old arrondissements. But in 1860, the whole of Paris was divided into a new set of twenty arrondissements. They start with the Louvre area and the western part of the Île de la Cité: that’s the First Arrondissement. Then they continue in a clockwise spiral, the first four on the Right Bank. The Third contains the Temple, the Marais is mainly in the Fourth. Then you cross the river to the Fifth, which is the Latin Quarter, the Sixth, which is the Luxembourg Gardens area, and the Seventh, which is maybe a little cold, but rich, and includes Les Invalides and the Eiffel Tower. Back across the river, you’re in the huge area that runs south to north from the river right up to the Parc Monceau, and west to east from the Arc de Triomphe, right down the Champs-Élysées to the Madeleine and the Opéra. That’s the Eighth. It’s socially grand.
    “Then you go around the city again. The Ninth to the Twelfth Arrondissements are on the Right Bank—the Twelfth runs out from the Bastille, along the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Antoine to the old Vincennes gateway. Then to the Left Bank: the Thirteenth, the Fourteenth, which is Montparnasse, and the Fifteenth.
    “Across the river again for the last five. The Sixteenth is long and runs right up the west side of the city to the Arc de Triomphe and the avenue de la Grande-Armée. The Bois de Boulogne lies beyond it. There are old villages like Passy, where Ben Franklin lived, in the Sixteenth, and the avenue Victor Hugo. It has a reputation of being smart and international. Above that, on the northwest edge of the city, is the Seventeenth, with the old village of Neuilly to the west of it. Neuilly is chic. The Seventeenth is respectable but dull.”
    “The Seventeenth is not so bad,” said his mother.
    “But it’s boring,” Claire whispered to Frank.
    “The Eighteenth,” continued young Jules, “you might say is the top ofthe city. It contains Clichy and Montmartre. Then on the outer northeastern edges of the city are the Nineteenth, which contains the Buttes-Chaumont park, and the Twentieth, which is the working-class district of Belleville, but also has the Cemetery of Père Lachaise.”
    “Normally,” said Claire, “though old people don’t use the arrondissements so much, if someone asks you where you live, you’ll say ‘in the Fifth’ or ‘in the Sixteenth,’ unless it’s a special quarter or place of interest. If you lived on the hill by Sacré Coeur, you might say you lived in the Eighteenth, but you’d probably say you lived in Montmartre. Same with Montparnasse. Or the Île de la Cité, or the Marais.”
    “But if you lived in Pigalle,” added Marc with a smile, “which contains the Moulin Rouge and some far less savory places, you might say ‘in the Ninth,’ which could mean you lived more respectably near the boulevard Haussmann.”
    “I get it now,” said Frank. “I’d better study a map.”
    “By all means study a map,” said Marc genially, “but personally, I recommend that you live in Paris.”

    The afternoons passed easily. Everyone would sit out on the long veranda, and old Jules would read his newspaper, and Marie would walk about in the garden or rest, and Frank was left to write in his notebook without anyone inquiring what he was doing or asking to see it.
    On Sunday, of course, the women went to church in the morning, and the whole family, except for Claire’s grandparents, would go for their traditional walk in the Forest of Fontainebleau.
    But despite their being often together, and despite the fact that he was slightly flirtatious with her mother, Frank never made the slightest move toward Claire. He was friendly, like a brother, but nothing