Paris: The Novel

me, won’t you?” she asked, although she would much rather have had a salad. And when he had finished that, she persuaded him to eat a strawberry flan with Chantilly cream. Getting young Charlie to eat, of course, was not a problem.
    They took their time, chatting of nothing in particular, but being careful to ask Charlie what he thought of the Gobelins factory, and making him part of the conversation.
    As she and Roland had coffee, he asked her if he might smoke a cigar, and she was fascinated when, instead of an elegant lighter, he pulled a strange little object made of a shell casing out of his pocket. “I always carry this with me,” he explained with a smile, as he laid the lighter on the table. “It brings me luck.”
    And it was then that Charlie asked a question.
    “The man at the Gobelins factory said that the Communards burned the place down. That’s not so long ago. Do you think something like that could happen again?”
    Marie and Roland looked at each other.
    “Yes,” said Roland.
    “I don’t know if you heard about it, Charlie,” said Marie, “but just this weekend, Zinoviev, who’s an important man in Communist Russia, wrote a letter to one of the British Labour leaders outlining how they should work together for world revolution. That’s what they want.” She nodded firmly. “The whole of England’s in an uproar. There’s a general election in two days, and this will probably put the Conservatives back in power.”
    “Today’s paper says that Zinoviev claims it’s a forgery,” Roland remarked.
    “But he would say that, wouldn’t he?” Marie answered.
    “This is true.”
    “But are there many Frenchmen who really want a communist revolution,” asked Charlie, “like in Russia?”
    “Certainly,” said his father. “You and I would both be killed, my son. And Madame Fox too, I’m afraid.”
    “You know such men, Father?”
    Roland picked up the little lighter and looked at it thoughtfully.
    “Oh yes. I have known such men. And there are many of them.”
    “People at school say that the Jews are behind the revolutionary movements,” said Charlie. “Do you think it’s true?”
    “No less a person than the great Lord Curzon, who’s the British foreign secretary, has just made a speech about the Zinoviev letter,” said Marie, “where he reminds us that most of the inner ruling circle of the Bolsheviks are Jews. So he seems to think there’s a connection.” She shrugged. “He would know more than we do. I have a few Jewish friends who I’m quite certain are not revolutionaries.”
    Slightly to her surprise, the aristocrat wasn’t content to let it go at that.
    “Lenin himself, of course, was not Jewish in the least. In fact, he was technically a Russian noble, you know. To the surprise of his audiences, his revolutionary speeches were made in a highly aristocratic accent.” He smiled at the irony of this truth. “But you must be very careful, my son,” he continued. “Your school friends are partly thinking of the famous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a document which outlined a Jewish plan to take over the world. It was a complete forgery. We know this for certain now.”
    “Lots of people still believe in it, however. Especially in America,” Marie pointed out.
    “
Oui, madame
. But that is partly because Henry Ford, the motor manufacturer, is obsessed with it and tells all the world it’s true. But it’s still a forgery.” He paused a moment. “I am sensitive to this because, as you will remember, I myself was entirely persuaded of the guilt of Dreyfus when I was a young man. I thought he was a traitor because he was Jewish.”
    “So did half of France.”
    “That in no way excuses me. It is now absolutely established that he was innocent.”
    “So you do not think the Jews are behind the revolution, Father?” His son wanted clarity.
    “There are many Jews who are in the revolutionary movement, especially in Germany and Eastern Europe. It may also be true that, because Jewish families have historically been more mobile, that there is a Jewish network that will operate, along with other networks, in spreading international revolution. Many people think it, but I do not know if it is so or not. For there are plenty of revolutionaries who are not Jewish. There are also many Jews who are not revolutionaries. You must be guided by the evidence, my son, not by rumor or prejudice.”
    “But you do think that there is a danger of international