Paris: The Novel

round temple had been built. It looked like a scene out of some lush, Italian landscape painting.
    They had brought some bread and cheese to eat in the middle of the day, and a bottle of beer. But before beginning their picnic, they agreed to visit the park’s best-known attraction. Crossing to the island by a long, suspended footbridge, it took them little time to find it.
    The grotto was a magical spot. Situated just inside a small cave in the rock face, its high chamber was festooned with stalactites. Still more striking, a high waterfall cascaded water from sixty feet above into a pool at the back, from which it flowed away over rocks. If a nymph from classical mythology had suddenly appeared from behind one of the grotto’s rocks and started dancing with her companions, it would hardly have seemed surprising.
    And most wonderful of all, it was artificial. The cave was the entrance to the old quarry. The stalactites were sculptures. The waterfall was created by hydraulic engineering. It was romantic, certainly. But the romance was not that of forest and cave and majestic mountain. It was theater.
    “Perhaps,” said Luc mischievously, “the maiden you’ve been seeking lives here in the grotto. Wait a minute and she’ll come out of the waterfall.”
    “Let’s go and eat,” said Thomas.

    They crossed the bridge again and followed another path until they came to a green lawn, where they sat down. High above the island, they could see the craggy peak where the little temple stood. All around them,the leaves on the trees were gleaming gold. They ate their bread and cheese, and drank their beer. Thomas stretched out and looked up at the sky.
    There were more gray clouds than before. He watched idly as a large bank of clouds approached the sun, screened it in a haze and then obscured it. He waited for the cloud to break, but it didn’t. He felt a draft of colder, damper air and heard a light rustle in the leaves. The leaves weren’t golden anymore, but had taken on that strange, luminous yellow color that he’d often noticed when there was electricity in the air. He stood up.
    “It’s going to rain. We’d better head home,” said Luc.
    “Not yet. We’ll visit the temple first.”
    Luc looked up at the high crag.
    “That would take a while,” he said.
    “Not long,” answered Thomas. “Let’s go,” he commanded.
    They crossed over the bridge to the island again. And then they took the steep path that led them up the hill. It was quite picturesque, like climbing a mountain ravine, and Thomas was happy even if Luc was not.
    They were halfway up when, from the west, they heard a distant rumble of thunder.
    “Let’s go back down,” said Luc.
    “Why?” said Thomas.
    “Do you want to get caught in a thunderstorm?”
    “Why not?” said Thomas. “Come on.”
    So they continued up the steep and winding path until they emerged at the little round temple. And just as they did, they heard the thunder again, and this time it echoed and reverberated all around the huge, broad valley in which Paris lay, so that if he hadn’t felt the wind from the west, Thomas would hardly have known where the weather was coming from.
    The temple was a small folly, modeled on the famous Temple of Vesta in Rome. From this high vantage point, Thomas could see the broad summit of Montmartre, and looking to his left, between high trees, he glimpsed the towers of Notre Dame in the distance. He knew there were many strange figures on the top of those towers: Gothic gargoyles and all manner of stone monsters, looking out over Paris, and it pleased him to think that, perched up here on this crag, he might be as high in the sky as they were.
    The gray clouds were overhead now, but a few miles to the west was a great line of darker clouds. Beneath it, a curtain of falling rain stretchedacross the city. Above it rose layers of black cloud banks. As Thomas gazed at these, he saw a flash within, followed by a crack of thunder.
    The curtain of rain was advancing up the far side of Montmartre. On the hilltop, the tall scaffolding on the site of the rising Sacré Coeur stood out like a group of gallows. And while Thomas watched, the big site seemed to dissolve, and the hill with it, as the rain swallowed them up.
    Then came another flash; and this time, with a tearing crack, a great stanchion of forked lightning snaked down the sky and struck close by the towers of Notre Dame. And as Thomas imagined the stone figures up there,