Paris: The Novel

both the lawyer and his daughter to the top of it after the completion. And he was about to depart when he glanced at Luc.
    “You are the brother of this hero, aren’t you? I remember the day when you were lost, and your brother went to look for you.” He put his hand on Thomas’s shoulder again. “This is a loyal fellow. I hope you are grateful.”
    “I am, monsieur.” Luc smiled charmingly.
    After Eiffel had departed, Ney indicated that they also would be leaving. But it was clear that he was well satisfied with the service that Thomas had performed for him.
    “Perhaps we shall see you again,” he remarked to Thomas. “And you too, my young friend,” he added to Luc.
    During all this time, Édith had not said a word.
    “You are looking very well, Édith,” Thomas said to her. “I hope your mother and your aunt are also well.” Receiving a nod from her he added, “Please give them my respects.” And it seemed to him that, perhaps, she gave him a smile.
    He and Luc hung around the place for most of the afternoon. He introduced his brother to some of the men he worked with, and listened to the band. That night, Eiffel had promised a splendid fireworks display from the top of the tower’s platform. But before that, Thomas and Luc crossed over the river and went into a bar to eat. As they finished eating, Luc remarked: “I think that if you asked, Édith would go out with you again.”
    Thomas looked at him thoughtfully.
    “Why are you encouraging me to do that,” he asked Luc, “when you think she doesn’t like you?”
    “Because I think you are unhappy without her.”
    Thomas gazed at his brother fondly. Then he gently punched his arm.
    “You’re a good fellow, you know,” he said.
    “Me?” Luc considered, then shook his head. “Not really.”
    “I think you are.”
    “No, I’m not a good man, Thomas. In fact,” he paused for a moment, “I don’t even want to be.”
    Thomas held up his glass of wine and looked over it.
    “I don’t understand you, little brother.”
    “I know,” said Luc. “Will you see Édith?”

    It was late July when people started to notice that something was wrong at the Eiffel Tower. All Paris knew that it must be completed in another eight months. And it still had to grow another six hundred feet. Yet day by day, as people looked out toward the huge stump from all over the city, it hardly seemed to be growing at all. Rumors began that the great engineer had hit a technical problem. After so much work—and so much publicity—would the great exhibition begin next spring with a huge unfinished stump at the entrance? Was France going to be the laughingstock of the world?
    Certainly young Thomas Gascon was worried.
    And yet, despite his reverence for the tower and its designer, there were moments when he scarcely cared. He had other things on his mind.

    It was the first Sunday in August when he and Édith went out for the afternoon together. She was coming from her aunt’s, so they’d agreed to meet on the corner of the avenue de la Grande-Armée. As the huge continuation of the Champs-Élysées swept down from the Arc de Triomphe toward the west, it reached the sprawling old village of Neuilly before ending at the huge wooded park of the Bois de Boulogne.
    It was a hot summer’s day. A perfect afternoon to enjoy the delights of the Bois.
    For when Napoléon III and Haussmann had come to the old hunting forest at the western edge of the city, they had known exactly what to do.
    “I want something like Hyde Park in London,” Napoléon III had said, “but bigger and better.” Of course.
    The Bois de Boulogne was considerably bigger than the English park. At its southern end they laid out the great racecourse of Longchamps, which was reached by a long and magnificent avenue. Together with Chantilly to the north of Paris, and Deauville up on the Normandy coast, it was to offer some of the most fashionable race meetings in the world.
    If Hyde Park had the Serpentine water, the Bois had two artificial lakes, joined by a waterfall. There were scores of delightful alleys of trees. In the northeastern corner a children’s zoo had developed into an anthropological theme park where one could admire some of the picturesque cultures of distant lands.
    This was where they started.
    There were plenty of people there as they went through the turnstile. Some were families from the professional classes, with children in sailor suits and muslin dresses; others were