Paris: The Novel

theaters too, Britain was pushing back against the fascist enemy. In Africa, Hitler’s Italian allies had retreated under British attack, and Hitler had been forced to send German troops there to hold the line.
    And France herself was still fighting. Admittedly, the Vichy government was supplying troops to the German side. But the Free French Naval Forces had brought fifty ships and nearly four thousand men to serve with the British navy. And if there had been Polish airmen in the Battle of Britain, there were soon French pilots flying Spitfires too.
    In London, de Gaulle’s government in exile had taken the great, double-barred Cross of Lorraine—the region from which Joan of Arc herself had come—as its symbol; and as de Gaulle had hoped, French colonies like the Cameroons, French Equatorial East Africa and New Caledonia had sided with him, with others likely to follow. In the Middle East, Free French Forces had joined the fight in Syria and Lebanon.
    In Paris, however, life had continued quietly. The de Cygnes and theBlanchard families were not troubled at all. Indeed, the German authorities seemed positively anxious to court them. Marie saw an example of this early in the new year.

    Since the German occupation, Marc had retreated into private life. He still turned up for cultural events from time to time, but mostly lived in dignified isolation. She doubted whether the Germans thought that a liberal intellectual like Marc was a supporter of the authoritarian government; but he was getting too old, and was too self-centered to give them any trouble.
    In fact, it was the Germans who tried to coax him into more activity. Marie became aware of it one evening in February.
    It had been months since Marc had invited them to a social gathering at his apartment, so she and Roland both went, and took Charlie with them. There was a crowd of people there, mostly from the world of the arts, but she was surprised to see a couple of German officers in uniform. A moment later, all was explained, as Marc signaled them to join him.
    “Allow me to present my sister and her husband, Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Cygne, and her stepson, Charles—the German ambassador.”
    Whatever one might think of Hitler and his inner circle, they could be clever when they wanted. The appointment of an ambassador to France at all was a well-calculated gesture to preserve the fiction that France was still a sovereign state ruling herself—with a little help from her German friends. But their choice of ambassador was inspired. Otto Abetz was urbane and cultivated, and he had a French wife. His job was to reassure the French and help them accept German rule.
    Abetz was quite young, only in his late thirties. He was immaculately tailored, and might have stepped straight from a Parisian salon. With his appreciative bow and greeting to Roland and his son, he conveyed in an instant that he was well aware of who they were, and that they were considered as aristocratic friends of the regime who shared its values and, still more important where trust is concerned, its prejudices. To Marie, he then turned with practiced charm.
    “Madame, I hope you will help me persuade your brother to take a more active role in Paris life again. We all need him. He was good enough to accept an invitation to the embassy”—as if he could refuse, she thought—“and I begged him to let me come to see his wonderful collectionof pictures. My wife has already read two of his monographs, which she says are as elegant as they are scholarly, and I have them by my bedside to read myself.”
    Marie could tell that even Marc, who had seen more winters than most in the art world, was not entirely immune to this flattery.
    “It has not been easy to persuade him from his retirement for a number of years,” she offered, “but I always tell him that if he does not take exercise, he will grow old.”
    “Voilà!” The German turned to Marc with a broad smile. “I do not ask you to listen to me, my friend, but you should listen to your sister, who is wiser than either of us.”
    The following month, Marc was seen again at a reception Abetz gave for the cultural and academic elite of the city. He still didn’t go out much, but no doubt Abetz was content that he served the German purpose well enough.
    Despite the ambassador’s charm, there were still plenty of reminders that an iron fist lay behind the velvet glove. German street signs directed one to all the new German