Paris: The Novel

encouraged Marie to come to America, despite her age, so that she could see her grandchildren. Last summer, Marie had spent a delightful month with her, but told herfrankly: “I don’t think we shall see each other again, my dear. One gets a feeling about these things, you know.”
    Her mother had lived with her devoted housekeeper in the apartment on the rue Bonaparte right up to the end. Esmé had called in almost every day. And her departure had been entirely peaceful, in the first week of May, only hours after talking to Claire on the telephone. By the time Claire got to Paris for the funeral, Esmé had taken care of all the arrangements. There had been a large number of her mother’s friends and admirers. And then there had been her French family, of course.
    She had not often seen the other Blanchards. Ever since the days when she and her mother ran Joséphine, she had always found her cousin Jules well-meaning but rather dull. His son David, instead of following in the family business, had reverted to his ancestor’s career as a doctor. Claire found him easier to talk to, and his wife and children were charming. She had found it a surprising comfort to know that her mother’s family were still represented in Paris, and in the old house down at Fontainebleau.
    After that, she’d stayed another ten days to sort out the estate.
    There had been one quite unexpected feature of her stay, however.
    That weekend, a simmering dispute over university conditions had suddenly turned into a huge battle in the Latin Quarter. Staying in her mother’s apartment on the rue Bonaparte, Claire had been just outside the area of serious trouble, but only a short walk away from the excitement.
    The night of her mother’s funeral had been the worst. Vast crowds of students hurling
pavés
—the heavy cobblestones they tore up from the old roadways—had fought the police who’d occupied the Sorbonne. There were barricades everywhere, burning cars, and the terrifying CRS riot police swinging their heavy
matraques
had done serious injury to many young demonstrators. Within days, the unions and factory workers of France had joined in. A huge general strike had brought the country to a standstill, and even General de Gaulle himself had seemed about to fall.
    But the Quartier Latin had been the place to be. The students had been allowed to occupy the university. Night after night, she and Esmé had wandered into the quarter together. They’d gone down the rue Bonaparte to the chuch of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and had coffee and cognac in Les Deux Magots, and seen Jean-Paul Sartre coming and going more than once. They’d gone into the Sorbonne, and listened to students, workers and philosophers plan a new Paris Commune, and a new and better world. They might be somewhat Marxist, they were surely idealistic,but they were the eager heirs of the French Revolution, after all. And where else could one see this mixture of rhetoric, philosophy and French wit, except in old Paris?
    It was a time to be young. Before long, France would reelect conservative de Gaulle again. But if the protests against the Vietnam draft had ushered in a social change in America, Claire had a feeling that something similar was likely to take place in France.
    She was glad she’d been there to see it.

    It had been just as she was about to return to America that Esmé had sprung his idea on her.
    “I wish I could see more of you. And it’s obvious that you enjoy being here in Paris. Now that Grand-mère is gone, you need an excuse to come over. Why don’t you buy a little pied-à-terre here in Paris? You can certainly afford it.”
    “It wouldn’t make sense to do that if I wasn’t going to spend quite a bit of time here. At least two or three months a year,” she pointed out.
    “So why don’t you? There’s nothing to stop you.”
    “I really don’t think so,” she’d said.

    She’d talked to her children about it, back in America. But with their own young families to keep them busy, they didn’t think they’d be able to make much use of such a place.
    “Just do it if it makes you happy, Mother,” they’d said.
    But like most people who’ve been mothers, Claire didn’t find it easy to do things just for herself. So she’d turned to Phil.
    After drifting slowly apart from each other, she and Frank had waited until the children were grown before quietly divorcing in the fifties. Frank had married again. She’d had a few discreet