Paris: The Novel

Cygne, monsieur,” Roland answered.
    “A noble. Well, there were nobles who served the emperor, too. Promotion was on merit, whoever you were.” He nodded. “Our country was respected then. Not like now. To think that I should have lived to see the humiliation of Paris and Alsace-Lorraine given to the Germans.”
    “Our history master says that we must avenge the dishonor of 1870,” Roland told him. Hardly a week went by without the class getting a lecture on the subject. It was a lesson given in schools all over France. “He says we must recover Alsace-Lorraine.”
    The old man looked at him, perhaps privately measuring whether this new generation was up to the task.
    “The honor of France is in your hands now,” he said finally, and glanced toward the doorway to indicate that the interview was over now.
    Hardly knowing that he was doing so, Roland stood at attention as theold man walked stiffly away. And he waited a little time after he was gone before heading out himself.
    As he did so, he noticed a young man, with dark, close-cropped hair and eyes set wide apart, dispassionately watching him. As he drew level, he couldn’t resist sharing what was in his mind.
    “Did you see that old soldier?” he asked.
    The young man inclined his head.
    “He knew the emperor Napoléon,” Roland said.
    “No doubt.”
    “C’est quelque chose,”
Roland remarked. “That’s something.”
    The stranger didn’t reply.

    The next day school broke up at noon. When Roland returned home, his father was absent, but had left a message that he’d be returning after lunch and that they were going out.
    When his father duly arrived to collect him, however, and Roland asked where they were going, he was only told, “To see a friend of mine,” which made him rather curious.
    Was this friend a man, he asked himself, or might this be a lady?
    He’d often wondered about his father’s romantic life. Though the Vicomte de Cygne was devoted to the memory of his late wife, whom he’d adored, he was no hermit. A good height, elegant, quite rich and certainly aristocratic, his father kept his military bearing and mustache, but he always moved gracefully and knew how to make charming conversation. He must surely, Roland guessed, be attractive to women.
    Like most aristocrats, the vicomte would have considered it beneath him to be an intellectual, but it wasn’t unfashionable to keep up with the goings-on of the literary and artistic worlds, and he would often go to exhibitions and occasionally put in an appearance at one of the salons where writers and artists could be encountered. A few months ago Roland had found a copy of
Les Fleurs du mal
on his father’s library table. He’d heard at school that these poems of Baudelaire were pagan, and indecent. But when he nervously asked his father about them, the vicomte seemed quite unconcerned.
    “Baudelaire is a bit of a dandy. But some of his poems are exquisite. Have you heard of the composer Duparc? No? Well, his setting of Baudelaire’s‘L’Invitation au voyage’ is one of the loveliest things one ever heard. He has perfectly captured the sensuousness of France.”
    Such conversations hinted to Roland that there were aspects of his father’s life that might be hidden from him. His father’s occasional absences, the fact that his nanny would say approvingly, “The vicomte is a proper man,” his father’s jaunty manner, sometimes, when he went out, had made Roland wonder if he kept a mistress somewhere. He understood that his father would never bring his mistress, even if she were a fashionable and aristocratic lady, into the home where his son was living and which was still sacred to the memory of his late wife.
    But was it possible, Roland wondered, that his father had decided he was now old enough to encounter such a person? Was this the friend they were going to see? It was a prospect that filled him with curiosity and some excitement.
    Or was there another, more serious possibility? Was his father taking him to meet someone he meant to marry? A stepmother? What might that mean for his future?
    When they left the house, the vicomte had still given him no clue. And knowing that his father liked to tease him a little, he knew that it was quite useless to ask him for any further information.
    The Vicomte de Cygne’s favorite coach was a fast, light, covered phaeton. It was drawn by two gray carriage horses—the family had always used grays since the eighteenth