Paris: The Novel

merchant had run away with a poor miller’s son. It was a humiliation. His family was dishonored. But one had to respect his reaction.
    For Jacob the merchant was leaving Paris. He, with his wife and son, were setting forth for Aquitaine, where it was believed the couple were, and would not rest until Jacob had seen his daughter properly married in church. Then it was their hope to return to Paris where, if the young man was up to it, Jacob would take him into his business.
    Not many fathers would have done it. They’d have cast their daughter out. But it was generally agreed that he was showing a truly Christian spirit.
    The luckiest person in all this, people also said, was the miller’s son. He was going to get an heiress for his trouble.
    “If only I’d known,” joked one of the eligible suitors for Naomi’s hand, “I’d have run away with her myself.”
    It took Jacob ten days to close up his business and put his affairs in order. The merchant guild wished him a safe return. The royal authorities gave him a travel pass and wished him luck.
    In the last week of October, in the year of Our Lord 1307, Jacob the merchant set out in a horse and cart, taking the rue Saint-Jacques, theold pilgrim’s road that led up the hill past the university. Before passing through the gate, Jacob paused.
    “Look back at the city,” he said to his son. “I shall never see it again, but perhaps you will one day. In better times.”
    A week later, they reached Orléans.
    Two days after that, however, instead of continuing southwest toward Aquitaine, they took another road that led them eastward. Journeying south and east by stages they continued another two weeks until they passed into Burgundy. And then they traveled another ten days until finally, looking eastward early one morning, Jacob said to his son: “What do you see in the distance?”
    “I see mountains, whose peaks are covered with snow,” he answered.
    “Those are the mountains of Savoy,” his father said.
    By the time he reached them, he would be a Jew again.
    And feeling a great weight of corruption and fear fall from his shoulders at last, he murmured the words he had missed for so long.
    “Hear O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is One.”

Chapter Seven
    •  1887  •
    They were all furious with him. Madame Michel was not speaking to his parents. As for Berthe, no one knew what she thought.
    And how could he explain? He hadn’t liked Berthe so much, nor her mother’s business. He thought only of working on Monsieur Eiffel’s tower. But even if his parents understood, he wasn’t sure how much they’d care. His mother pursed her lips. His father looked glum. As well they might, having hoped he was going to feed them.
    “I suppose,” his father once suggested, “you could still be an ironworker and marry Berthe.”
    “I don’t think so,” said Thomas.
    “The girl goes with the business,” said his mother simply. “It’s obvious.”
    “You’ll just have to find another rich girl,” said Luc with a grin, but everyone ignored him.
    So it was partly to escape his family for a while that, within a week of starting work on the tower, Thomas made an announcement.
    “I think I’d better get lodgings closer to my work.”
    “It’s only an hour’s walk,” his father pointed out.
    “More than that. And the hours are long. Monsieur Eiffel’s got less than two years to build the tower.”
    “You’ll be paying rent to someone instead of bringing the money home,” his mother said quietly.
    “Just while I’m working across the river.”
    He was being selfish and he knew it. Nobody said anything.
    He found the lodgings without much difficulty.
    In almost every house and apartment building in Paris, up in the roof, there was a warren of servants’ rooms, some of them garrets with windows, others hardly more than wooden-walled closets. Those not being used by servants could be let out by their owners to poor folk. An advertisement led Thomas to the house of an elderly gentleman who lived alone, with only a single servant, across the river from the building site on an ancient street named the rue de la Pompe, which worked its way up toward the avenue Victor Hugo. Having given proof that he was respectably employed on Monsieur Eiffel’s great project, Thomas was able to rent a tiny attic room with creaking floorboards, just enough space for a mattress on the floor, and a small round window through which he could look out at the