Paris: The Novel

mother did not respond. She walked on a dozen paces. Was she going to tell him not to think of vengeance? Not at all. Her love had been passionate, and passion takes no prisoners. The righteous strike down their enemies. It is their destiny.
    “Have patience, Jacques,” she answered. “Wait until the time is right.”
    “I shall wait,” the boy said. “But Roland de Cygne will die.”

Chapter Two
    •  1883  •
    The day started badly. His little brother Luc had disappeared.
    Thomas Gascon loved his family. His elder sister, Adèle, had married and moved away; and his younger sister, Nicole, was always with her best friend, Yvette, whose conversation bored him. But Luc was special. He was the baby of the family. The funny little boy whom everybody loved. Thomas had been almost ten when he was born, and had been his guide, philosopher and friend ever since.
    In fact, Luc had been absent the evening before. But since his father had assured them that the boy was with his cousins who lived less than a mile away, nobody had worried. Only when Thomas was about to go to work had he overheard his mother’s cry.
    “You mean you don’t
know
he’s at your sister’s?”
    “But of course he’s there.” His father’s voice from his bed. “He went there yesterday afternoon. Where else would he be?”
    Monsieur Gascon was an easygoing man. He earned his living as a water carrier, but he wasn’t very reliable. “He works exactly as much as he has to,” his wife would say, “and not a second more.” And he would have agreed with her because, in his mind, this was the only reasonable thing to do. “Life is for living,” he’d say. “If you can’t sit and have a glass of wine …” He’d make a gesture, indicating the futility of all other occupations. Not that he drank so much. But sitting was important to him.
    He appeared now, barefoot and unshaven, pulling on his clothes and ready to argue. But his wife cut him off.
    “Nicole,” she commanded, “run to your aunt at once and see if Lucis there.” Then, turning to her husband: “Ask the neighbors if they have seen your son. To your shame!” she added furiously.
    “What shall I do?” Thomas asked.
    “Go to work, of course.”
    “But …” Thomas wasn’t happy about leaving without knowing that his brother was safe.
    “You want to be late and lose your job?” his mother demanded crossly, then softened. “You’re a good boy, Thomas. Your father is probably right that he’s at your aunt’s.” And seeing her son still hesitate. “Don’t worry. If there’s a problem, I’ll send Nicole to find you. I promise.”
    So Thomas ran down the hill of Montmartre.
    Although he was worried about his little brother, he certainly didn’t want to lose his job. Before becoming a water carrier, his father had always been a laborer, in and out of work all the time. But his mother had wanted Thomas to have a skill, and he’d become an ironworker. Just under medium height, Thomas was stocky and strong, and he had a good eye. He’d learned fast, and although he wasn’t yet twenty, the older men were always glad to have him on their team, and teach him.
    It was a fine morning in late spring. He was wearing an open shirt and a short jacket. His baggy trousers were held up with a broad leather belt; his worker’s boots scuffed the powdery dirt in the street. He had only two and a half miles to walk.
    The geography of Paris was very simple. Beginning with the ancient oval of settlement on the banks of the Seine around its central island, the city had gradually expanded down the centuries, enclosed by walls that were built in a series of ever-larger concentric ovals. By the late eighteenth century, just before the French Revolution, the city was enclosed by a customs wall, approximately two miles out from the Seine, at whose many gates there were toll booths controlled by hated tax collectors. Outside this large oval lay a huge ring of suburbs and villages, including, to the east, the cemetery of Père Lachaise, and to the north, the hill of Montmartre. Since the Revolution, the hated old customs wall had been dismantled, and just before the recent war with the Germans, a vast line of outer fortifications had enclosed even the outer suburbs. But many of them, especially Montmartre, still looked like the ancient villages they were.
    At the bottom of the hill of Montmartre, Thomas crossed the untidy old Place de Clichy, and entered a long boulevard that