Paris: The Novel

refused.
    “I’m very honored,” she told him, “and very touched. But you need a wife who can devote herself to you, and your estate, and your son. And with Joséphine to look after, I can’t do that. I wouldn’t be any use to you.” She had smiled. “If it weren’t for all that, I think I should say yes. But I know it wouldn’t be fair to you.”
    “I did not make any conditions in making my offer.”
    “I know. But that doesn’t change the circumstances.” She had put her hand affectionately on his arm. “I should like it very much if we could be friends.”
    “Of course.”
    “And I think you are right. May I say it? You should marry. God knows, there must be any number of charming women in Paris who would leap at the chance.”
    “But it was you I was asking,” he pointed out.
    “There are many better choices all the same.”
    “Well then,” he said crossly, “if you are so certain about it, you’d better find me a wife.”
    “You want
me
to find you a wife?”
    “Why not? You tell me you are my friend, and that although you can’t marry me yourself, there are all these other women I should marry instead. Very well. Show them to me. I trust your judgment. You choose the wife, and I will marry her.”
    She had laughed. But as she was growing fond of him, she did select one or two women, introduced them, and sent him out with them.
    The first one he told her frankly was beautiful, “but there was no spark between us.”
    The second he liked better. But she was “just a little too stupid.”
    “Ah,” she cried, “you are
difficile
!”
    “Perhaps, but I must ask you to try again.”
    The third took her a month to find. The woman was aristocratic, amusing, elegant—perfect in every way. He took her to the opera and to dinner. To her surprise, he turned up without warning at her apartment the following evening.
    “Well,” she asked, “how was this one?”
    “No good.” He shook his head.
    “What’s the matter with her?”
    “She’s too intelligent.”
    Marie burst out laughing. “You’re not
difficile
; you’re
impossible
.”
    He made a face. “What can I do?”
    She took his coat by the lapels, pretending to shake him. And whether she was taken by surprise when he held her and kissed her, or whether she was not, they had become lovers that evening.
    “I shall be your mistress, but only until you find a wife,” she declared.
    But then Claire had left for America. She hadn’t realized what an effect that would have. Life at the Joséphine store was not the same. They tried to replace her, but none of the replacements worked. Before long both she and Marc came to the same conclusion. They weren’t having any fun. The store was still doing well, yet they could both foresee that it would slide into mediocrity. They’d decided to close it.
    So now she had nothing to do. And she was lonely.
    She had no right to be lonely, she told herself. She had her brother and her aged parents, and even Gérard’s widow and children. She had many friends. She had a lover.
    But her only child—and her grandchildren, when they came into the world—would probably remain three thousand miles away. The store which had filled her days was no more. She hadn’t enough to do.
    Roland, reading her mood, had proposed again, and this time she had accepted. Cleverly, he had pretended that his affairs were in less good order than they actually were. And the château, he assured her, needed athorough renovation. She had a project now, to keep her busy. She felt a sense of purpose again.
    And indeed, there were all kinds of decisions to be made. The first was what to do with the mansion in Paris. For ample though de Cygne’s resources were, the place had become drainingly expensive to maintain. “The sensible thing would be to live in the country, and to maintain an apartment in Paris,” she told him.
    “I wouldn’t know how to live in an apartment,” he complained. But she guessed that he knew very well that this was what he ought to do, and that her role, as the new wife from the upper-middle class, was to organize the business while he told his aristocratic friends that she had made him do it. Since many of those friends had long ago done the same thing, Roland could still claim that he was one of the last holdouts from the old regime. For the truth was that, apart from a few industrialists, or the great Jewish families like the Rothschilds, who had a magnificent mansion above the