Paris The Novel

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 surrounding rooftops. The old man asked a peppercorn rent, and it was only a short walk to the Pont d’Iéna, which gave straight onto the building site.

After that, Thomas went to see his parents every Sunday, and always gave his mother any spare money that he could.



Every morning, when he came onto the site, Thomas felt a sense of pride. As everyone knew from the newspapers, it was only three years since, in America, the 555-foot Washington Monument had surpassed the ancient pyramids and the medieval spires of Europe to become the tallest building in the world. But Monsieur Eiffel’s tower wouldn’t just beat the record. It was going to soar to almost twice that height—a triumph for France.

Yet the site was strangely quiet, almost deserted. In the huge open space, the tower’s four mighty feet looked like the stumps of some vanished fortress in the desert. And as the four spread legs of the tower began to grow from those feet, with the workmen up in the iron girders, the ground below was often nearly empty.

“Why is there nobody here?” a visitor once asked Thomas.

“Because Monsieur Eiffel is a genius,” Thomas proudly replied. “There are only a hundred and twenty of us workmen on the site at any one time. And we alone build the tower.”

Prefabrication. This was how it was done.

Out at the factory lay the network of girders, in their prefabricated sections fifteen feet long and weighing no more than three tons. Each day, the huge horse-drawn wagons would arrive at the site with just enough sections for that day’s work. Big, steam-powered cranes would lift the sections up into position, and under the watchful eye of their foreman, Jean Compagnon, Thomas and his fellow workers—the flyers, as they were proudly called—would swing their hammers onto the hot rivets to fix them in place.

“The precision is astounding,” he told his family. “Every piece fits exactly, every hole is drilled to perfection. I never have to pause in my work.” He grinned. “The whole tower will go up like clockwork. It has to,” he added. “The exhibition starts in eighteen months.”

Soon after he began work on the site, he took his brother, Luc, around it, and showed him how everything was organized. Luc was much impressed.

“And how’s your head for heights?” Luc asked him.

“No problem,” Thomas told him. “None at all.”



The foreman of the flyers, Jean Compagnon, was a sturdy workman who looked like a battle-hardened sergeant. His watchful eyes missed nothing. But Monsieur Eiffel himself was also on-site most days. Thomas took care never to interrupt the great man, but if Eiffel saw the young worker, he’d always give him a friendly nod.

As the huge lower legs began to grow, upward and inward, it appeared as if the tower’s four feet were the corners of a vast iron pyramid. Day after day the sections went in. By the end of August, the legs were over forty feet high.

Early one evening, as he was looking at the progress before going home, Thomas heard a voice at his side.

“Well, young Gascon, are you enjoying being a flyer?”

“Oh yes, Monsieur Eiffel. It’s so well organized, monsieur.”

“Thank you.” Eiffel smiled. “I’ve done my best.”

“But I suppose this is the easy part,” Thomas ventured. “When we get higher …”

“Not at all, young man. This is the hardest part, I assure you.” Eiffel pointed to the rising legs that sloped in toward the center. “Those legs are inclined at an angle of fifty-four degrees. Does anything strike you about them?”

“Well …” Thomas didn’t like to say. But the great man nodded encouragingly. “Won’t they fall over?” he finally dared to ask.

“Exactly. They will fall over, I calculate, on the tenth day of October. To be precise, when they reach a height of ninety-two feet.” He smiled. “But they will not fall over, my young friend, because we shall prop them up with big wooden pylons. You have seen the flying buttresses of Notre Dame?”

“Oui, monsieur.”

“They will look a bit like that, only they will be inside the legs. Then we shall continue to build the legs up to the height of the first huge platform, which will hold them all together. That will be at a height of one hunded eighty-two feet. And it will be necessary to put scaffolding under the middle of the platform while we build it, of course.” He paused. “It’s not easy to do all that, I assure you.”

“I understand, monsieur.”

“Then comes something rather special. I have to make sure that the platform is absolutely, and perfectly, level. How to do that, young Monsieur Gascon? Give it a shove?”

“I don’t know, monsieur.”

“Then I will tell you.” He pointed to one of the tower’s four great feet. “Under each foot is a system of pistons, operated by compressed water, which allows me to make minute and subtle adjustments to the height and angle of each leg in three dimensions. Surveyors will take the most careful measurements.” He gave a broad grin. “Then I’ll go up and check with a spirit level.”

“Oui, Monsieur Eiffel.”

“Any other questions?”

“I have one, monsieur.” Thomas pointed to the great cranes that hoisted the girders up into position. “Those cranes will go only so high. Nowhere near the height to which we’re building. When we get to the height of the cranes, what happens after that?”

“Bravo, young man! Excellent question.”

Thomas politely waited.

“You’ll see,” the great man said.



It was already growing dark as he crossed the Pont d’Iéna to the Right Bank. Ahead of him, on the slope overlooking the bridge, stood the strange, moorish-looking Trocadéro concert hall, built a decade ago for the last World’s Fair.

Thomas smiled to himself as he passed this exotic palace. Ten minutes later he was at his lodgings. But he didn’t go in. He was feeling hungry. If he walked for another five minutes up the rue de la Pompe to where it crossed Victor Hugo, there was a little bar where he could get a steak and some haricots verts. He’d earned it.

Still feeling rather cheerful, he trudged contentedly along. On his right he came to the railings of the Lycée Janson de Sailly, and this made him smile again.

All Paris knew the story of the grand new school that had recently opened on the rue de la Pompe. The rich lawyer whose name it bore had discovered his wife had a lover. His revenge had been sweet. He had disinherited her, and left his entire fortune, down to the last sou, to build a school—for boys only! Though the lycée had only just opened, it was already fashionable. Thomas wondered cheerfully what had become of the widow.

There was still a glow of gaslights coming through the windows. No doubt the cleaners were finishing their work. As he watched, he saw the lights starting to go out. He paused.

Why did he pause? There was no reason at all, really. Just idle curiosity, to see the cleaners come out.

A moment later they did. Two women, one old, one younger, though he couldn’t see their faces. The older one crossed the street. The younger turned up it. He continued walking. He came level as she reached a lamp outside a doorway. He glanced at her. And stopped dead in his tracks.

It was the girl from the funeral. It had been so long since their brief encounter that he’d almost put her out of his mind. He’d wondered if he’d even recognize her. Yet now that he saw her, even in the lamplight, he hadn’t the slightest doubt. He’d looked all over Paris for her, and here she was, hardly a mile from where he’d first seen her.

She was a few paces in front of him now. He drew level again. She looked across sharply.

“Have you been following me?”

“No. I was walking up the street when you came out of the lycée.”

“Keep walking, then.”

“In that case, you will be following me,” he said cleverly.

“I don’t think so.”

“I will do as you ask, but first I have to tell you something. We have met before.”

“No we haven’t.”

“You were at the funeral of Victor Hugo.”

She shrugged.

“And …?”

“You were in the front row, on the Champs-Élysées. A soldier made you move.” He paused. She gave no reaction. “Do you remember a man hanging out from the railings of the building behind?”

“No.”

“That was me.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” But she was thinking. “I remember a crazy man. He was saying vulgar things to a man below him.”

“That’s right.” He smiled. “That was me.”

“You’re disgusting. Get away from me.”

“I went looking for you.”

“So now you’ve found me. F*ck off.”

“You don’t understand. I went back to the same place in the Champs-Élysées for weeks. Did you ever go there again?”

“No.”

“Then I went from district to district, all over Paris, for over a year, in the hope of finding you. My little brother came with me sometimes. I promise you this is true.”

She stared at him.

“I work on Monsieur Eiffel’s tower,” he continued proudly. “He knows me.”

She continued to stare at him.

“Do you always piss on people’s heads?” she asked.

“Never. I swear.”

She shook her head.

“I think you must be crazy.”

“There is a bar over there.” He pointed up the street. “I was going to eat something. I’ll give you supper. It’s a respectable place. You’ll be quite safe. When you want to leave, I won’t follow you.”

She paused.

“You really looked for me all over Paris, for a year?”

“I swear to you.”



In the bar, he could see she was giving him a thorough inspection, but he pretended not to notice. They sat at a small wooden table.

He supposed she was two or three years younger than he was. There were even more freckles on her face than he remembered. Her eyes were hazel, but up close he could see different lights in them. A hint of blue or green, he couldn’t decide which. Perhaps both. But it was her mouth that he especially noticed. He’d remembered that it was wide, but there was something potentially sensuous about her lips that excited him. And she had white, even teeth. He hadn’t been able to see that before.

She was sitting across from him, leaning back slightly, as though to keep him at a distance. He could hardly blame her for that.

“My name is Thomas Gascon,” he said.

“I am Édith.”

“You come from this quarter?” he asked.

“We’ve always been here.” She shrugged. “Since it was a village.”

“I’m from the Maquis. On Montmartre.”

“I’ve never been there.”

“It’s all right. People come up there for the dancing, and the views. But our family name is Gascon, so Monsieur Eiffel says we come from Gascony.”

“Monsieur Eiffel seems to be important to you.”

“I worked for him on the Statue of Liberty. Then I got sick, but he let me work on the tower as a favor. He was talking to me this afternoon.”

“He must think well of you, then.”

“I’m skilled. That’s why he hires me. It’s important for a man to have a skill. If he can.”

“My mother and I clean. And I work for my aunt Adeline too. She has a very good situation.” She paused. “Maybe I shall inherit her position one day.”

“Would you like to do that?”

“Certainly. She works for Monsieur Ney, the attorney.”

“Oh.” This meant nothing to him, but in her mind, evidently, he was as significant as Monsieur Eiffel.

She took a little wine, but she refused to eat, explaining that she was on her way to her aunt, who would be expecting to feed her.

She asked him some questions about his work and his family, then said that she must leave.

“I hope I shall see you again,” he said.

She shrugged.

“You know where I work in the evenings.”

“I don’t get off work until late in the summer months,” he said.

“I don’t get off work until late anytime.”

“Can I see you safely to your aunt’s?”

“No.” She seemed about to get up, then paused. “Tell me one thing,” she said. “Why did you waste your time looking for me all over Paris?”

He considered.

“I will tell you,” he answered. “But another time.”

She laughed.

“Then perhaps I shall never know.”



But he did see her, a week later, and this time she consented to eat something, but only a crepe. And toward the end of their little meal, she said: “You still have not answered my question.”

“About why I looked for you?” He considered for a moment. “Because, when I first saw you, I said to myself: ‘That’s the girl I’m going to marry.’ It was therefore necessary to find you.”

She stared at him in silence for a moment.

“You tie yourself to a railing and hang there offering to piss on people’s heads, and then you catch sight of a person you’ve never seen before in your life, and you decide to marry her?”

“That’s it, exactly.”

“You’re insane. I’m eating with a lunatic.” She shook her head. “No chance, monsieur.”

“You can’t refuse.”

“I certainly can.”

“Impossible. I haven’t asked you yet.”

“Ah. What an a*shole.”



The next week, however, when she found him waiting for her one evening, she told him that, if he liked, they could meet on the following Sunday afternoon. “Meet me in front of the Trocadéro at two,” she said.

Sunday was a warm September day. She was wearing a pale striped dress and sash.

On the slope below the Trocadéro’s Moorish concert hall as it looked across the river to the site of Monsieur Eiffel’s tower, there were some pleasure gardens, which contained two big statues, one of an elephant, the other of a rhinoceros.

“I remember my father bringing me here to look at these,” Édith told him, “when I was a girl.” She smiled. “So I like to come and see them sometimes.” She shrugged. “It brings back good memories.”

“Is your father still around?”

She shook her head.

“There’s an aquarium,” she said, pointing to a long, low building. “Have you ever been in there?”

He hadn’t. They spent a pleasant half hour looking at all manner of exotic fish. There was a small deep-water black squid that fascinated him. And exotic jellyfish with poisonous stings. Even more exciting was an electric eel that could kill a man. The power of these sea monsters attracted Thomas, and he pointed them out eagerly to Édith. “They’re even more impressive than the sharks,” he said. She looked, but preferred the brightly colored tropical fish.

When they had finished, Édith led the way. He noticed that they were going toward the rue de la Pompe.

“When my mother was my age,” she remarked, “this wasn’t part of Paris at all. It was all the village of Passy.”

“Same with Montmartre.”

“Did you know,” she said proudly, “that Ben Franklin, the great American, used to live up the street from here?”

“Oh.” He’d heard of Ben Franklin, though he couldn’t remember much about him. “I didn’t know that.”

“On the west side of Passy, there was a small palace where Marie Antoinette used to stay.” She glanced at him. “You can tell I am very proud of Passy.”

“Yes.”

“So. I am going to show you something even more important.”

They kept walking until they came to the lowest section of the rue de la Pompe. Looking up the street, most of the houses were set in gardens. Some were hard-faced granite residences, newly built town houses for rich people. Others, somewhat older, were less formal suburban villas with shutters on the windows, set in leafy gardens where fruit trees suggested a more rural past. But the place where she stopped was the gateway to a courtyard containing some stables, and beyond which he saw a kitchen garden.

“Do you know who lived here before the Revolution?”

“No idea.”

“Charles Fermier, himself.”

Thomas paused, unwilling to expose his ignorance. She was watching him.

“Well, who was Charles Fermier?” she prompted.

“I don’t know,” he confessed.

“The ancestor of my father.” She smiled. “He was a farmer. This area was mostly farmland then.”

“He owned the land?”

“Oh no. Most of Passy was owned by a few big landowners. He rented his land. But he kept a lot of cows. We’ve been here ever since. Well, except my father. We don’t know where he went.” She shrugged a little sadly.

“Your family didn’t continue to farm?”

“My grandfather looked after the horses at a château on the far side of Passy. Then my father worked in a merchant’s house until he left.”

They walked up the street. Just past a handsome horse chestnut tree they came to the house where Thomas lodged.

“I rent a place in there,” he said.

“It looks nice.”

He thought of his tiny room where he had just space to lie down.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I’m afraid the owner won’t allow me to bring any women into the house.”

“I’m a respectable girl. I wouldn’t go in if you asked me.”

They walked on.

I make good money working for Monsieur Eiffel, he thought. I could rent a nicer place if I didn’t give my spare money to my mother. It was a moral conflict he hadn’t thought of before.

“Where do you live?” he asked.

“My mother lives over by the Porte de la Muette,” she said a little vaguely, “and my aunt Adeline in the other direction. I go between the two.”

Before they reached the Lycée Janson de Sailly, they turned right and soon came into a street of small stores, where they found a little place to sit down, and Édith ordered tea and a pastry.

“I have enjoyed my afternoon,” she said. “But I have to go to my aunt now.”

“The one who works for the lawyer.”

“For Monsieur Ney.” Her tone was respectful.

“I should be curious to see such an important gentleman.”

“I must go,” she said suddenly.

“When shall we next meet?”

“Wednesday is a good evening,” she answered. Then she was gone.

And so their meetings continued for several weeks. On Wednesdays she would come out of work with her mother as usual, and then continue alone to her aunt Adeline’s. Thomas would meet her. They would sit and talk for a while. She would let him accompany her some of the way toward her aunt’s, but never the whole way. Some Sundays he would go to his family in Montmartre, on others she would agree to meet him, and they’d wander about together quite happily. It was clear that, for the time being at least, Édith was keeping him at a distance, and he was content to be patient. He supposed that it was only natural caution on her part.

But he also had a sense that there were aspects of her life that had not been fully revealed to him yet.



In the month of October Thomas made two discoveries on Monsieur Eiffel’s tower. Both of them took him by surprise.

He had arrived as usual one morning when he saw a knot of people gathered by one of the tower’s four feet. As he approached, he saw both Jean Compagnon and Monsieur Eiffel watching closely while a gang of workmen that he’d never seen before were assembling a large piece of machinery.

Thomas had been working on this leg the day before, but Compagnon directed him to join another crew. By the lunchtime break, however, the new piece of machinery was fully assembled, and Thomas eagerly went to inspect it.

Eiffel saw him and gave a nod as he addressed the men who had gathered around.

“Well, my friends, I was asked a little while ago how we should raise the girder sections into place when the tower grew higher than the cranes. Here is the answer. It is a creeper crane. It will run on rails inside each leg of the tower. And when the tower is completed, those same rails will carry the elevators that the public will use—unless they choose to take the stairs. Since the tower’s legs are at an angle, the crane and later the elevators will also run at an angle. Just like a funicular railway.” He smiled. “As we build up, they will accompany us. The arm of the crane will extend and allow each section to be raised, with the crane, so to speak, creeping along just behind. The cranes can also swivel, if desired, three hundred and sixty degrees.”

From that day, Thomas worked his way up the tower’s huge iron leg with the creeper crane for company.

He made the second discovery in the last week of October.

One feature of the building site was the care that Eiffel had expended on the safety precautions. By its nature, work on iron structures like this was dangerous. It was a lucky builder who could complete a great iron bridge without at least one worker badly injured. And in the case of the tower, its height dictated that any fall would surely be fatal.

So Eiffel had designed an elaborate system of movable barriers and safety nets. His aim was to do the near-impossible, and complete the project without losing a single man. After all, his workers were all used to operating on high structures. With care and attention, he believed his ambitious safety record could be achieved.

Until then, Thomas had worked with the same crew. They got on well together, and evidently Jean Compagnon had been satisfied with their work. He’d have let them know soon enough if he wasn’t.

One morning, there was a man short on a crew who worked near them, and Compagnon told him: “I’m putting you on the crew that’s short today.” So Thomas had gone up with them. He wasn’t concerned. His own crew had worked on the outside edge of the building, while the crew he was joining worked on the inside edge, only yards away. Indeed, it crossed his mind that they might even have asked for him. The work, naturally, was identical. As they went to their workstation, he looked back at his old crew and waved.

When he got to his position on the inner edge of the tower, he glanced down.

And froze.

A second later, his left hand was gripping the edge of a girder just above his shoulder; his right had found a metal strut just behind him, and was clenched around it so tightly that he could feel the metal edge biting painfully into the flesh. But he could do nothing about it. He couldn’t loosen his grip. A cold panic seized him, as though all his strength were suddenly draining away through his feet. He stood there, unable to go forward or back, his breath coming short.

Thomas Gascon had never experienced panic before. It had never occurred to him that the sensation of working on the inner edge of the tower’s slope would be any different from working on the outer edge as he had been up till now. But yesterday, he’d had the network of girders under him. Today, there was nothing under his feet. Nothing except forty yards of empty space.

He’d supposed he had a good head for heights because he could stand on a hill and look down. And 120 feet wasn’t so high, in any case. But this was like stepping onto a tightrope.

And then he realized that two men were looking up at him. Monsieur Eiffel was smiling. But the eye of Jean Compagnon missed nothing, and he wasn’t smiling.

“What’s the matter?” his voice was sharp. “You want to come down?”

And at that moment Thomas Gascon knew that he was about to lose his job.

“Mais non!” he cried. And then, he hardly knew how he did it, except that he knew he must, he made himself lean out a little, and somehow let go of the girder with his left hand and saluted Monsieur Eiffel. “Bonjour, monsieur,” he called. “I’m just waiting for your creeping crane to send me something.”

He could see Eiffel smile and nod, but Compagnon’s gimlet eye was still fixed on him suspiciously. So Thomas, wondering if Compagnon could see the white knuckles of his right hand, which was still clenched tight onto the metal strut, carefully turned and looked at one of his crew. And when he took his eyes off the yawning chasm underneath him, he felt a little better. The man was looking at him curiously also, so he forced himself to smile.

“When I worked with Monsieur Eiffel on the Statue of Liberty, he told me it would be the most famous project he ever did. Now he builds this.” He managed to loosen his hand from the metal strut and shrugged. “When we’re finished I shall ask him: ‘So, monsieur, what will you do for an encore?’ ”

The men laughed. He felt calmer now. For the rest of that day, he would glance down every little while, and gradually he got used to it.

That weekend, when he was up at Montmartre and Luc asked him, “How’s your head for heights?” Thomas just smiled.

“No problem,” he said.



In the second week of November he decided to take the plunge.

“I have to go to see my family on Sunday,” he said to Édith. “Would you like to come? I can show you Montmartre.”

She looked down thoughtfully.

“It’s a long way,” she said.

“Not really. We can take a tram to Clichy and walk up the hill.” He could see her still hesitating. “I think you should come if it’s not raining. But if it’s raining, there won’t be any view to show you.”

“I could come if there’s a view.”

“Exactly. I’ll have to have lunch with my family, but then I can show you around. If it’s a clear day, even in November, there are usually some artists painting outside.”

“All right,” she said.



They hailed a tram just north of the Arc de Triomphe. Since the trams had no official stops, but were hailed by people as they went along, the drivers used their discretion. For a respectable elderly lady, they’d pull up the horses, but not for young poor folk like Thomas and Édith. As she stepped onto the moving platform, Édith slipped, and if Thomas hadn’t caught her with his arm, she might have fallen. He used the opportunity to pull her close, and she didn’t seem to resist. But moments later she was sitting demurely beside him in the tram, and when he tried to put his hand on her leg, she gently removed it.

They got out of the tram at the Place de Clichy, and walked up the hill. As they neared the top, he guided her around the picturesque little streets and she remarked that even when she was a little girl, parts of Passy had still looked like this. The windmills on the hill delighted her. But as they started down the slope into the sprawling shantytown of the Maquis she said less, and it seemed to Thomas that she became a little thoughtful.

“It’s not a palace, where we live,” he said.

“Who wants to live in a palace?” She gave him a smile.

When they came to the house and went up the steps, they found the two Gascon parents, Luc, and also Nicole. They were all rather surprised that Thomas had brought a young woman with him, but Thomas told them easily that Édith was a friend from Passy, who’d never been up to Montmartre. “I said I would show her around, and that she could come and eat with us first,” he said to his mother. “Is that all right?”

“But of course.” His mother was all smiles. God forbid that any French family should not have food on the table for a guest. Though it was as well, Thomas thought, that it was Sunday, or there might not have been enough. “Did you go to Mass today?” she asked Édith.

“Oui, madame. With my mother,” Édith answered.

“You hear that?” said his mother to Nicole. “Perhaps you will accompany me next Sunday, instead of lazing in bed.”

“I was tired, Maman,” said Nicole irritably.

“Passy, eh?” said Monsieur Gascon. “Elegant quarter.”

“We used to have a farm there, monsieur,” said Édith, “but not anymore.”

“And what do you do, if I may ask?” inquired Thomas’s mother.

“I help my mother, madame. She’s the caretaker of the Lycée Janson de Sailly. But I also help my aunt Adeline. She has a very good position with Monsieur Ney the attorney, and it may be that I can take her place one day.”

“Janson de Sailly,” said his father. “I hear that’s very chic already.”

Thomas watched his mother making her own calculations with this information, while Nicole was eyeing Édith’s skirt and blouse, and her shoes. The clothes looked all right to him. What Nicole thought of them he couldn’t guess. Judging by his mother’s expression, she hadn’t made up her mind yet, but wasn’t especially impressed.

“This year I started work as a housemaid in a doctor’s house near the Place de Clichy,” Nicole announced.

“That sounds like a good position,” said Édith politely.

Nicole shrugged.

“It’s all right.”

There was enough food. A big plate of haricots verts appeared. There was even meat, though Thomas saw his mother discreetly cut two of the portions to a smaller size, to provide for Édith. There was a fruit pie. He was glad that his family could eat respectably on a Sunday, and supposed that the money he gave his mother must be helping them to do so. They talked of this and that. His mother discovered that Édith was an only child.

Luc had been observing Édith, but unusually for him, he’d been rather silent so far. Édith asked him what he was planning to work at when he grew up.

“I shall work in Montmartre, like I do now,” he answered cheerfully. “And then I am going to be a great comedian, and make a fortune.”

“Oh,” said Édith.

“It’s better than working,” said Luc.

“He’s joking,” said Thomas, though he wasn’t sure that his brother was joking at all.

To make conversation, Thomas told them how they had taken a tram, and how Édith had nearly fallen.

“Ah,” said his father. “Thomas is working on his great tower, and people will come from all over the world to see it, but when they see how we move around the city, we shall be ashamed.”

“Why?” asked his wife.

“In London they have steam trains that take you all over the city. They go underground, many of them. We still have nothing like that.”

“And in New York,” Luc chimed in, “they have elevated trains.”

“The English and the Americans can do what they like,” said Édith, “but why should we spoil the beauty of Paris with soot and steam and hideous rail tracks everywhere? They may be more modern, but we are more civilized.”

“I agree,” said Thomas’s mother, with approval. “Life is more civilized here.”

After the meal, Thomas and Édith stepped out into the unpaved streets of the Maquis, and he walked her up the hill to the Moulin de la Galette. The day was clear but cold, and although it was a Sunday, there weren’t many people up there. Then he took her through the little square where the artists liked to paint. There were just three men out there, wrapped in heavy overcoats and scarves, but doggedly applying paint to canvas. They looked at them for a few minutes, then proceeded to the great building site of Sacré Coeur. Though the huge stone walls of the church were steadily rising, all one could see at present was a great fortress of scaffolding in a sea of mud.

But from the edge of the hill beside it there was still a magnificent view.

“There are the towers of Notre Dame.” Thomas pointed them out proudly. The golden domes of the Opéra, only a mile away, and Les Invalides farther off. “And there”—he indicated the site some way to the right of Les Invalides on the panorama—“that’s where Monsieur Eiffel’s tower will soar above them all.” He smiled. “I know the Maquis is a bit primitive, but I love Montmartre. There’s nowhere else in Paris like it.”

“You’re really proud of the tower, aren’t you?”

“Of course.”

“That’s nice.”

Before it grew dark, he took her back to Passy. On the avenue Victor Hugo, she thanked him, let him kiss her on the cheek, and parted from him. He thought she had enjoyed the visit, but he couldn’t be sure.

The next Sunday, she wasn’t free, and so he went to see his parents. His mother waited until the meal was nearly over before she brought up the subject.

“That girl you brought here: Are you interested in her?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe.”

“You can do better,” said his mother firmly.

“You just say that because she isn’t the daughter of the widow Michel,” he answered with a shrug. He glanced at his father, but his father refused to meet his gaze. He turned back to his mother. “You seemed to get on.”

“You can do better.”

After the meal, he went for a walk with Luc. He hadn’t been entirely surprised by his parents’ reaction. Nothing less than the widow Michel’s daughter was ever going to satisfy them now. But he hoped for something better from Luc.

So he was taken by surprise when Luc finally spoke.

“Was that the girl we went looking for?” Luc suddenly asked.

“Yes. How did you guess?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you think of her?”

Luc paused. Then he looked a little sad.

“She doesn’t like me,” he said.

“Why do you say that? She didn’t say so to me. Not a word. I think she likes you.”

But Luc shook his head.

“No. I promise you it’s so. I can tell.”

“I’m sure you’re wrong,” said Thomas. But he was puzzled.



Three days later Édith asked him if he would be free to visit her mother and her aunt that Sunday.

It was mid-afternoon when they met. She was waiting for him at the top of the avenue Victor Hugo. They walked around the great circle under the Arc de Triomphe until, directly across from the Champs-Élysées, the massive avenue de la Grande-Armée stretched down to the west. Turning down the avenue, they walked a few blocks, turned right and proceeded a little way. The houses in the street, though respectable enough, had a gray and dingy air that Thomas found depressing. One house on a corner, somewhat larger than the others with an impressive central door, also had a gateway beside it, leading to an internal courtyard, protected from intruders by a tall screen of iron railings. To the right of this iron screen was a door, and a bell chain, which Édith pulled. Somewhere within Thomas heard a small, harsh clang. Moments later, the door was opened.

“This is my mother,” said Édith.

One could see the likeness at once. The same freckles, the same wide mouth. But time had not been kind to Édith’s mother. She’d been pretty once. He could see that. Then she’d become blowzy. But in recent years, she’d started to let herself go. She had dyed her hair with henna, some while ago, and the gray roots showed as cruelly as a wintry wind, winnowing the autumn leaves. The eyes that had once been bright were puffy. The skin on her neck was criss-crossed with deepening lines, and sagging.

“So you’re the boy who works on the tower.” She managed a smile.

“Oui, madame,” he answered politely.

She led them down a narrow passage into a room. It contained a sofa with a curved back, two formal chairs, a sideboard on which a decanter, a bottle and some glasses stood, and a small table. The window, framed by heavy damask curtains, gave onto the yard, but the thick gauze in front of the glass only let in a modicum of light.

“My sister-in-law has a beautiful situation, n’est-ce pas?”

So Aunt Adeline was the sister of Édith’s vanished father. Thomas hadn’t realized that.

“Beautiful, madame,” he said.

“My aunt is the concierge,” Édith explained. “She really looks after the whole place.”

“It’s a big house,” said Édith’s mother. “A big responsibility. But she has the head for it. That’s for sure.”

“And Monsieur Ney lives here?” said Thomas.

“Monsieur Ney owns the establishment,” said Édith’s mother, with the pride of someone with a rich friend. “His office is next door. And he has his own house nearby, where he lives with his daughter.”

“His daughter is called Hortense,” Édith explained.

“Ah, Mademoiselle Hortense,” said her mother. “She will make a fine marriage, one of these days. That’s for sure.”

“Perhaps I should show Thomas the house,” suggested Édith.

Her mother glanced at the sideboard, and nodded.

“Tell your aunt that we are waiting for her.”

Thomas followed Édith up a small staircase, then along a passage that took them into the back of the main house. With a smile, she opened another door, and he found himself standing on a broad landing looking down a big staircase toward the front door.

“It’s a handsome entrance,” he remarked. “Do you ever come in that way?”

“Oh no. The front door is always locked,” she told him. “Come.” She went to a door on the right, knocked softly, and entered.

The room was spacious. The paneling on the wall was a little cracked in places, but the general effect was grand. A picture of an eighteenth-century aristocrat with a face of perfect serenity hung over the fireplace. Colored prints of ladies in court dress graced the walls. In front of the window stood a small, elegant rococo writing desk and chair. Against the wall to the right of the door was a fine walnut armoire. And on the side of the room across from the fire stood a magnificent eighteenth-century canopied bed where, propped up on pillows and cushions, sat a lady of distinction swathed in lace. She was reading a small, leather-bound book.

“Ah. La petite Édith,” said the lady whose face, were it not for the obtrusion of some poorly fitting ivory teeth, would have exactly resembled the serenity over the fireplace.

“May I present my friend Thomas Gascon, Madame Govrit?” asked Édith politely. “He is working on Monsieur Eiffel’s tower.”

Madame Govrit de la Tour gazed at Thomas over her book.

“I am sorry to hear it, young man,” she said, quite calmly. “I have seen the pictures in the newspapers of this tower of Monsieur Eiffel, whoever he may be.” She spoke the builder’s name as though she considered it unpronounceable. “You should find other employment.”

“You do not like the tower, madame?” Thomas offered.

“Certainly not.” She laid the book facedown on the bedspread. “When I think of what France has built in the past, young man—of the Louvre, or Versailles—and then I see pictures of this monstrous spike that will no doubt rust before it is even constructed, this barbaric seaside vulgarity that is to hang in the sky over Paris, I ask myself, what has France come to?” She picked up her book again. “You seem to be respectable, but you dishonor France. You should stop this work at once.”

“Thank you, madame,” said Thomas, as he and Édith withdrew.

Once the door was closed, Édith giggled. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not really.” Thomas shrugged. “It’s what half Paris of thinks.” One could read articles saying the same thing in the newspapers every week.

“I know. But she has her own way of saying it. She’s our aristocrat,” Édith said with a note of pride.

“So what is this place? Old people live here?”

“Yes, but it’s very special. Monsieur Ney comes to a private arrangement with each person. Some of them give him a sum of money, others have a house, or land, or income of some kind, and then they come to live here, and he looks after everything for them. He’s a lawyer, so he always knows what to do.”

“How many are there?”

“About thirty.”

“Don’t they have families?”

“Some do. But they all know they can trust Monsieur Ney. They say,” she continued quietly, “that one old lady was so happy that she left Monsieur Ney her entire fortune when she died.”

Thomas said nothing.

They looked into another room, not nearly as lavish as the first, where an old lady was sitting in the single armchair facing the window. She seemed half asleep.

“Madame Richard can be difficult. My aunt has to give her a little laudanum,” Édith explained.

As they went down the passage, a short, fat woman waddled out of one of the rooms. She was dressed in black, with a face so fleshy it was perfectly round. Could this be Aunt Adeline? he wondered.

“Have you seen my aunt, Margot?” asked Édith.

“Non. Haven’t seen her,” the small round woman answered placidly. “Bonjour, monsieur,” she said to Thomas, as she passed.

“That’s Margot, the nurse,” Édith explained. “I wonder if my aunt could be upstairs.”

They reached the top floor of the house by a steep and narrow staircase. The passage was windowless, though some light came from a skylight at the end. Édith called out her aunt’s name a couple of times, but there was no reply. She turned to go back down the narrow stairs. But just before he followed her, out of curiosity, Thomas opened the nearest door.

The room was almost bare. The window, which had surely not been cleaned that year, lacked any curtains. In several places, the walls were stained with damp. In the middle of the floor was an iron bedstead, painted black, covered with a red blanket under which, like a discarded garden rake, lay a bony old woman, whose gray hair hung in thin strands over the side of the horsehair mattress. She was very still. If she breathed, she made no sound. There was dust on the floor, but not a crumb to tempt a mouse. One thing, however, caught his eye. On the wall opposite the bed, in a thin metal frame, hung a cheap print of a Virgin and Child behind glass that had been polished till it gleamed.

“Thomas,” Édith called, “what are you doing?”

“Nothing,” he said, and closed the door. “Who’s that in there?”

“Mademoiselle Bac. She’s very poor. Come.”

By the time they got back to Aunt Adeline’s quarters, the lady in question had arrived there. She gave Thomas a brief look and having, he suspected, seen everything she needed to know, asked him to sit down.

She went to the sideboard and picked up the bottle of cider.

“Will you take a little cidre doux?” she asked him.

“Perhaps the young man would prefer a cognac,” Édith’s mother suggested hopefully.

“Non,” said Aunt Adeline firmly. “Cidre doux.”

“Yes, thank you,” said Thomas.

Aunt Adeline poured cider into small glasses for them all. She wore a starched white shirt and a long navy blue dress. Her dark hair was pulled back severely into a bun. Her eyebrows were thick, and her large dark eyes watchful.

“Where do you live, young man?” she asked.

“I lodge in the rue de la Pompe, madame. But my parents live in Montmartre.”

“Not in the Maquis, I hope.”

“In the Maquis, madame. But they are quite respectable,” he added. “They sent me to school and made me take up a skilled trade.”

“I am glad to hear it.”

“You have run this home for Monsieur Ney for many years, madame?”

“I have. It’s a great responsibility.”

“That’s for sure,” chimed in Édith’s mother, though Aunt Adeline tried to ignore her. “He started with a much smaller place, you know. He was a lawyer in the backstreets of Belleville then. Just two rooms in a tenement. One for Mademoiselle Bac, and the other for a widow whose husband left her quite a good little business. An ironmonger’s. But she couldn’t run it. No idea. He did everything for her. Ran the business, looked after her. And when she died, she left it all to him. That was the start of his fortune. Then he moved to a bigger place, near the Gare du Nord. And now this.” She nodded. “But he is very loyal. He always took poor Mademoiselle Bac with him. She started in a tenement in Belleville, and now she lives in a big house near the Arc de Triomphe!”

“That’s enough,” said her sister-in-law.

“He’s got brains, Monsieur Ney,” continued Édith’s mother, feeling rather pleased with herself. “I asked him once, ‘What’s the secret of the ironmongery business, Monsieur Ney?’ And do you know what he replied? ‘It turns out,’ he said, ‘that it’s nails.’ Think of that. Just nails.”

She seemed finally to have exhausted her store of information. Aunt Adeline looked relieved. Thomas didn’t mind. He thought it was rather interesting.

“Shall I tell you something about Monsieur Ney?” said Édith. “You’ve heard of the great Ney, who was one of Napoléon’s marshals?”

“Of course.”

“Monsieur Ney and he are related. Isn’t that right, Aunt Adeline?”

“I believe it may be so. Monsieur Ney is too discreet to say it.”

“And he runs a good business here,” said Thomas.

Aunt Adeline gave him a sharp look.

“Monsieur Ney is wonderfully kind,” she said with a hint of reproof. “No one who has the good fortune to come here need ever worry again.”

“He’s an angel,” cried Édith’s mother, taking her cue at last. “An angel.”

“And he has a daughter?”

“That is correct,” said Aunt Adeline. “Mademoiselle Hortense is a charming young lady.”

“She will inherit a fortune, and make a fine marriage,” said Édith’s mother.

“No doubt,” said Aunt Adeline.

Thomas wondered if any food was to be forthcoming. It didn’t look like it. And he was just wondering what he was supposed to do next, when there was a sound from the entrance. Aunt Adeline looked surprised. They heard a key turning in the outer door.

“It must be Monsieur Ney,” she said. “He doesn’t normally come at this hour.”

A moment later, there was a soft footfall in the passage, then a light tap at the door, which Aunt Adeline quickly opened, and the owner of the establishment entered the room. Édith and Thomas stood, and Édith’s mother, unable to rise quickly enough, conveyed from her chair by an obsequious bow her cognizance of the profound respect that was due to him.

Monsieur Frédéric Ney was a small-time attorney of just under average height, but his presence gained its force from the fact that he was so remarkably thin, and that his pale face, which reminded Thomas of a fish, was too long for his body. His trousers fitted so tightly that they were almost like the stockings of the former age. His coat today was a dark chocolate color.

He surveyed them all. Could some sixth sense have told him that an alien presence had entered his domain? His eyes fixed upon Thomas.

“Bonjour, Monsieur Ney,” said Édith with a winning smile—and a faint upward twitch of the corner of the lawyer’s slightly fleshy mouth suggested that she was in his good graces. “May I present my friend Thomas Gascon. He works on Monsieur Eiffel’s tower.”

Monsieur Ney inclined his head.

“My felicitations, young man.” His voice was so quiet that Thomas had to lean forward slightly to be sure he heard. “Opinions may vary about the tower, but I believe that we must not be afraid of progress, so long as we never forget tradition.”

“That’s for sure,” said Édith’s mother.

“I took him to see Madame Govrit,” said Édith to Ney. “She doesn’t like the tower at all,” she added with a laugh.

Again, the lawyer’s lip twitched.

“Madame Govrit has a fine room, monsieur,” said Thomas, hoping to be agreeable. And he seemed to have succeeded, for the lawyer suddenly became quite animated.

“It is indeed, young man, as befits a person of her station. I am proud to have such a room in this house. All our rooms, I hope, are satisfactory, but hers is, I may say, the best.”

Thomas knew that he shouldn’t, but he could not resist.

“I also saw Mademoiselle Bac. Her room was not so nice.”

It was foolish of him to challenge Ney, but if he expected the lawyer to be embarrassed, he underestimated his man.

“Ah, poor Mademoiselle Bac,” said Ney with a shake of his head. “She came to me many years ago, with little enough, but I took her in. And now …” He smiled. “It is I who pay for her food and keep.” He made a little gesture with his hands as though to say, “What can one do?”

“He is an angel,” murmured Édith’s mother.

“And I am sure that she is grateful, Monsieur Ney,” said Aunt Adeline, “even if she cannot express it.”

“I am glad you say that,” Ney responded with feeling. “I am glad because there are two things in the world that I especially value.” He turned to Thomas. “Take note, young man, for these will see you safely through life. The first is gratitude. And I hope that all the residents here may have cause to feel gratitude.”

“There is nothing that Monsieur Ney will not do for them,” cried Édith’s mother. “Nothing is too much.”

“I hope I provide everything they need, and more than that—if funds permit,” said Monsieur Ney. He turned to Thomas again. “The second quality, young man, is loyalty—such as I am fortunate enough to receive from Madame Adeline here. Gratitude and loyalty. These are everything.”

Thomas had the feeling that if people were ungrateful or disloyal to Monsieur Ney, they might live to regret it.

“Are you grateful and loyal?” Ney suddenly asked Thomas.

“I am grateful to Monsieur Eiffel for giving me a job,” said Thomas. “I should certainly be loyal to him.”

“Voilà. We are in perfect agreement,” said Monsieur Ney. He gave Thomas a glassy stare, then smiled at Édith. “What an excellent young man.” He turned to Aunt Adeline. “When I made my rounds yesterday, you may remember I was called away. And that is why I have come in today to see the three or four of our residents that I missed. Mademoiselle Bac was one of those.”

“Do you wish me to accompany you, Monsieur Ney?” asked Aunt Adeline.

“No. There is no need.”

“She always has her picture of the Virgin and Child,” said Édith. “Margot polishes the glass whenever she goes in. You know how Mademoiselle Bac always seems completely still, but I can see her looking at the picture.”

“Religion is a great comfort,” said her mother with a wise nod of the head.

“Indeed,” said Ney, as he stepped toward the door, and Thomas secretly wondered if the comforting picture would remain.

“And Mademoiselle Hortense is well?” asked Édith’s mother.

“She is.”

“Ah,” said Édith’s mother, “she has everything. She is beautiful, she is kind …”

Monsieur Ney left the room.

A few minutes passed in desultory conversation, then Aunt Adeline pulled out a little silver watch on a chain and looked at it.

“I have duties now, and Édith will be helping me,” she said.

Thomas took the hint and began to rise.

“Perhaps the young man would like to stay with me and have a cognac,” said Édith’s mother.

Aunt Adeline looked at her as one might at a waterlogged old ship sinking inconveniently in a harbor.

“Sadly, I have to go, madame,” Thomas lied.



Outside in the street, he paused. He’d nothing special to do. Dusk would soon begin to fall. He went and stood opposite the handsome front door. Looking up, he was fairly sure he could identify the big window of Madame Govrit’s room. As for Mademoiselle Bac’s dingy attic, that would be up in the roof, toward the back, well out of sight.

Judging by what he’d seen of Édith’s mother, he supposed the lodgings she and Édith shared were not a lot better.

He walked back past the archway and turned the corner. This side of the building consisted of a high house wall, punctuated by some small, narrow windows, which continued as the courtyard wall. As he moved along the house wall, he calculated that just before the courtyard began, he must be level with Aunt Adeline’s quarters. Just above his head there was a small window that was slightly open. He guessed that it probably belonged to her kitchen. He paused there for a moment, wondering if perhaps he might hear Édith’s voice.

But it was Aunt Adeline’s voice that he heard.

“You heard him, ma chérie. That stupid comment about Mademoiselle Bac. He was just trying to be cheeky to Monsieur Ney.”

“Monsieur Ney called him an excellent young man,” Édith’s voice replied.

“Yes. Out of kindness to you. But he was not pleased, I assure you. And you cannot afford a young man who annoys Monsieur Ney.”

Édith said something else, but Thomas couldn’t hear what it was.

“My child,” answered Aunt Adeline, “I don’t care if the young man went to the moon to look for you. We have one fool in the family already. Forgive me, but that’s your mother. We can’t afford two. Let us not see this Thomas Gascon again, if you please. You can do better.”



For the next three days, Thomas waited uneasily. He believed in fate. His parents might not like it, but he wanted Édith. Did she feel the same way?

On Wednesday, he waited near the lycée in the evening. Édith and her mother came out together as usual. But instead of separating, they went home together, and not wanting to encounter the mother, Thomas hung back. If Édith caught sight of him, she gave no indication. The next night the same thing happened.

Friday was a cold November day. An icy wind entered the city from the east. It hissed cruelly through the girders of the tower as he worked, biting his hands, and snaked down the boulevards, stripping the brown leaves from the trees.

Work ended at dusk and as soon as he got across the river he found a bar where he could get a large bowl of soup to warm himself up. Then he walked up the rue de la Pompe. The lights in the lycée were just being extinguished as he got there. He was determined to speak with her this evening, whether she separated from her mother or not. But a few moments later he saw her come out alone. He went straight up to her.

“Oh,” she said. “It’s you.”

“Of course it’s me. Where’s your mother?”

“She’s sick today.”

“I’ll walk with you,” he said. Then, as they passed a bar, he remarked that he needed to warm up, and guided her in.

“Only for a minute,” she said.

They sat at a table and he ordered them each a glass of wine.

“It’s good to see you,” he said. “I was glad to meet your family.”

“Yes.”

“What are you doing this Sunday?”

“Looking after my mother probably.”

“We could meet for a short while, perhaps?”

She hesitated.

“I don’t think so,” she answered. “Everything is difficult at the moment.”

“You haven’t time to see me?”

“Not at present. I’m sorry.”

“Do you want to see me?”

“Of course, but …”

He understood. He had thought that this was the woman whom fate had chosen for him. He had felt it to be so. Yet it seemed that his belief had been nothing but a foolish illusion.

That was bad enough. But why was she rejecting him? Because her aunt didn’t approve of him. Because Aunt Adeline thought he was stupid. Because he had not shown enough respect to Monsieur Ney. And the fact that she was right, that he shouldn’t have blurted out his foolish comment, only made his sense of resentment worse.

“Your family don’t approve of me,” he said.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t say it, but it’s the truth.”

She didn’t answer.

“Tell me,” he asked, “are you going to live your entire life under the thumb of Monsieur Ney?”

“He employs Aunt Adeline.”

“To help him steal money from a lot of helpless old women?”

“No.”

“Yes. That’s what he’s doing. And if you spend your life working for him, that’s what you’ll be doing.”

“You think you know everything, but you don’t.”

“You think he’s going to look after you? You think he’s going to look after your aunt? I’ll tell you how she’ll finish up. Like Mademoiselle Bac.”

“You don’t understand,” Édith suddenly cried out. “At least Mademoiselle Bac has a roof over her head.”

He shrugged.

“I’d sooner be in the gutter.”

“You probably will be. My aunt’s right. You’re a fool.” She got up. “I have to go now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I have to go.”

So Thomas sat there feeling very angry, and it did not occur to him that when she was twenty yards down the street Édith had burst into tears.



That winter seemed long to Thomas Gascon. He was high above the Paris rooftops now, on the cold, iron tower. As he gazed down, gray day after gray day, the winter trees by the building site, and the long sweep of the Seine, looked bare and sad.

The work was hard. When the creeper cranes raised each section of the iron framework into place, the workmen swarmed over it. The sections came from the factory held together with temporary bolts, all of which had to be replaced with rivets.

It took a gang of four to rivet. First, the apprentice heated the rivet in a brazier until it was almost white hot, and swollen. The holder, wearing thick leather gloves, picked the rivet up with a pair of tongs and fitted it into the hole that was perfectly aligned between the metal girders or plates to be joined; then he’d block it in place with a heavy metal counterweight while the first of the two strikers would use a hammer to fashion a broad head on the other end of the rivet. Last, a second striker with a heavy sledgehammer would hammer the rivet down. As the hammered rivet cooled and shrank, it would grip the metal plates together tighter and tighter, finally exerting a force of three tons.

Each team had its own particular hammering sound, so that the men themselves could often tell without looking exactly who was working at any given moment.

The work was intense, and come rain, sleet or snow, it went on, eight hours a day.

Thomas was a striker. He usually liked to work with open-finger gloves, warming his hands from time to time with the heat from the fires used to heat the rivets. But he was obliged to abandon them for leather gloves, and often his fingers were numb. When the wind got up, it lashed his body as mercilessly as it would a sailor up a mast.

Early in the new year, however, the work of the flyers changed. For now they began to construct the tower’s massive platform.

To Thomas, this felt quite strange. It was as if, building a table, he had suddenly moved from the vertical confines of the leg to the vast horizontal space of the tabletop.

“It’s more like building a house,” he remarked. A house in the sky, to be sure—or rather, an enormous apartment block, constructed of iron.

The base of the platform was nearly two hundred feet in the air. In the central pit underneath, a huge square of scaffolding rose from the ground like a tree trunk, with branches spreading out to the underside of the platform’s edge, so that away from the platform’s center, he was still looking down at an almost uninterrupted vertical drop. But he noticed that, since his eye was constantly led to look across the growing horizontal floor of the platform, he was hardly aware of the chasm below.

Structurally, Thomas well understood, it was this platform that bound the four great pillar stacks together and would provide the base for the soaring tower above. But even so, as the work progressed, he was astounded by the scale of the thing. The walk around the side galleries, from which there were fine views of Paris, was over three hundred yards long. There was space for numerous rooms, including a large restaurant.

This huge band of hollow space was carefully locked into place. It was, as Eiffel had foreseen, a mighty task, and it took time. It was not until March that, having finally checked that the basic structure of his four-legged table was solid and perfectly level that Eiffel gave the order: “Proceed upward.”

Yet as the creeper cranes began their journey up the pylons again, Thomas noticed something else.

It seemed to him that the tower must be falling behind schedule. Eiffel’s assistant engineers would sometimes be fretful. Thomas would see them shaking their heads. He knew from the drawings he’d seen that the massive span between the ground and the platform was to be finished with an elegant semicircular arch across the outside edge. Yet as April wore on and the pylons climbed into the sky above the platform, the whole underside of the tower looked a mess. But whatever was passing in his mind, Eiffel himself was always calm, polite, serene.

Only once did Thomas see Monsieur Eiffel angry. It was during the lunchtime break, one day in May. Eiffel was standing alone, near the northwestern foot of his tower, reading a newspaper. Suddenly Thomas saw the engineer crumple his paper and slap it furiously against his side. Then, seeing Thomas watching him, he beckoned him over.

“Do you know why I am angry, young Gascon?” It was evident that he needed to get something off his mind.

“Non, monsieur.”

“They do not like my tower. Some of the greatest names in France hate it: Garnier, who built the Paris Opéra, Maupassant the writer, Dumas, whose father wrote The Three Musketeers. There have even been petitions against it. Do you know people who hate it?”

“Oui, monsieur. Madame Govrit de la Tour told me I should not work on it.”

“There you are. They even try to subvert my workmen. But this article in the newspaper today, young Gascon, surpasses everything. It says that my tower is indecent. That it will be nothing but a great phallus in the sky.”

Thomas didn’t know what to say, so he shook his head.

“What is the greatest threat to a tall structure, young Gascon? Do you know?”

“Its weight, I suppose, monsieur.”

“No. Not really. It’s the wind. The reason my tower has the shape it has, the reason it is constructed the way it is, all this is because of the wind, whose force would otherwise tear it down. That is the reason. Nothing else.”

“Is that why it is just iron girders, so the wind can blow through?”

“Excellent. It is an open lattice construction, so that the wind can blow clean through it. And despite the fact that it is made of iron, which is strong, it is actually very light. If you put the tower in a cylindrical box, as a bottle of wine is sometimes sold, the air contained in the box would be almost as heavy as the metal tower itself. Amazing, but true.”

“I would never have imagined that,” Thomas confessed.

“But even this is not the point. The shape of the structure, its slender curve, is purely mathematical. The stress of the structure exactly equalizes that of the wind, from any direction. That is the reason for its form.” He shook his head. “The arts and literature are the glories of the human spirit. But all too often, those who practice them have little understanding of mathematics, and none of engineering. They see a phallus, with their superficial eye, and think that they have understood something. But they have understood nothing at all. They have no idea of how things work, of the true structure of the world. They are not capable of perceiving that, in truth, this tower is an expression of mathematical equations and structural simplicity far more beautiful than they could even imagine.” He looked down at the crumpled newspaper in disgust.

“Oui, monsieur,” said Thomas, feeling that, even if he did not understand the mathematics of the tower, at least he was building it.

“You’d better go,” said Eiffel. “If you are late, tell Compagnon that it was my fault and that I send my apologies. It’s not as if,” he murmured to himself, “I want the building delayed any more than it already is.”

By the time Thomas got back to his station, he was a minute late. Passing Jean Compagnon, he began to explain, but the foreman waved him on.

“I saw you with Eiffel. He likes to talk to you.” He shook his head. “God knows why.”



Since their parting the previous November, Thomas had hardly seen Édith. Once in December, and again at the turn of the year, he had deliberately encountered her outside the lycée, but each time she’d made it clear that she didn’t want to see him anymore. After that, he’d avoided the lycée, and although he would occasionally catch sight of her in Passy, they hadn’t met.

Since he spent every Sunday with them now, it was clear to his parents that he wasn’t seeing Édith. But nobody said anything. Once Luc asked him what had happened to her, and Thomas replied that it was over.

“Are you sad?” Luc asked.

“Oh,” Thomas replied with a shrug, “it just didn’t work out.”

Luc said nothing.

As spring began, he had thought about looking for another woman. But so far he hadn’t met anyone he especially liked. Nor did he have much time or energy.

During May and June, the work on the tower picked up more speed. The men were now working twelve hours a day. The great arch under the first platform was accomplished, and the central scaffolding removed. Suddenly the tower began to put on a stately face. As the four great corner pylons swept up their narrowing curve into the sky, the next target was the second platform. At 380 feet above the ground, this would form a second four-legged table on top of the first. After that, the tower would soar in a single, narrowing fretwork shaft up to its dizzying height in the heavens. By the end of June, the second platform was already being built.

And this was admirable timing. For it was almost the fourteenth of July. Le Quatorze Juillet.

Bastille Day.

How fortunate it was for succeeding generations that when the ragged sans-culottes had inaugurated the French Revolution by storming the old fortress of the Bastille in 1789, they should have done it on a summer’s day. A perfect choice for a public holiday of celebrations, parades and fireworks.

“Monsieur Eiffel is having a party at the tower on the fourteenth,” Thomas announced to Luc. “Do you want to come?”



It was a bright afternoon. As they crossed the Pont d’Iéna, Thomas glanced at his younger brother and felt rather proud of him.

Luc was now fourteen. His face had continued to fill out, and a dark lock of hair fell elegantly down over his brow, so that at the Moulin where he often worked, the customers often thought he must be a young Italian waiter. Indeed, despite his youth, his years spent up there had given him a mixture of smooth worldliness and boyish charm that his older brother could only watch in wonderment.

Today, he had put on a white shirt without a jacket, and a straw boater on his head.

By the time they arrived, there were large crowds walking around the site. The lower parts of the tower were festooned with bunting, displaying the red, white and blue of the Tricolor flag. There was a refreshment tent and a band smartly dressed in uniform.

Whatever the papers might have said about the ugliness of the tower, one could see already that its huge, two-tiered archway was going to provide a magnificent entrance to next year’s exhibition. At 380 feet, the just completed platform was almost three quarters as high again as the towers of Notre Dame, and on a level with the highest cathedral spires in Europe.

All kinds of people were there, including the fashionable. Thomas and Luc stood near the refreshment tent. “I’ll introduce you to Monsieur Eiffel,” said Thomas proudly, “if he comes by.”

They’d been there about five minutes when Luc suddenly said, “Look who’s over there.” But when Thomas looked, he couldn’t see anyone particular in the crowd. “Over there.” Luc indicated a knot of well-dressed people. And then Thomas saw.

It was Édith. She was wearing a white dress that must have been given to her, since she could never have bought such a thing herself, and a small bonnet. She looked very pretty. Beside her was Monsieur Ney, and a pale woman in her late twenties who must, Thomas guessed, be his daughter.

“I’ll go and say bonjour to her,” said Luc.

“You can’t do that. She’s with Monsieur Ney,” Thomas cried. But Luc was already on his way.

Thomas watched, not knowing what to do, as Luc very politely took off his boater and bowed to Édith. He saw her say something to Ney, and then saw Luc bow to the lawyer and his daughter too. Then he saw Luc say something else, after which they all turned to look at him. Luc was smiling, indicating that he should advance.

When Thomas reached them, after a polite smile to Édith, he was careful to make a deeply respectful bow to Monsieur Ney.

“It is a great honor, monsieur, that you should visit the tower where I work.”

“I told Monsieur Ney that you had promised to introduce me to Monsieur Eiffel if he comes by,” said Luc. “And Monsieur Ney said that he hoped you would introduce him too.”

Thomas stared at his little brother, dumbfounded. He, a humble worker, was to introduce the rich lawyer to Eiffel? But he saw to his further amazement that Ney was smiling with amusement. Obviously this charming fifteen-year-old boy in a straw boater could get away with things that Thomas himself could not.

“Of course, monsieur,” he said, wondering how on earth he was to do such a thing.

“Do you know my daughter, Mademoiselle Hortense?” the lawyer asked.

“Mademoiselle.” Thomas bowed again.

One could see the likeness at once. The same long, pale face, narrow body, slightly fleshy lips. To his surprise, he found the combination strangely sensual, and though of course he gave no outward sign, he wondered whether she had sensed it. She was dressed in pale gray. It occurred to him that the dress Édith was wearing might be an old one of hers. She did not smile, but observed him coolly.

Ney turned to Luc.

“And what do you do, young man?”

“I work mostly at the Moulin de la Galette on Montmartre, monsieur. But I run errands for people and perform services for them.”

“What sort of services?”

Luc smiled, and paused for just a split second.

“It depends what they ask, monsieur,” he answered quietly.

The lawyer looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, and Thomas had the sense that, in some way that lay outside his own experience, Monsieur Ney and his little brother understood each other perfectly.

He still hadn’t said a word to Édith, and was just turning to do so, when Luc nudged his elbow.

“There is Monsieur Eiffel,” he said.

He was walking by, not ten yards away. Thomas took a deep breath, and went quickly over to him.

“Ah, young Gascon. I hope you are enjoying yourself.” The tone was friendly, but indicated that he was busy. There wasn’t a moment to lose.

“Monsieur, I have my brother here, but also an important lawyer we happen to know, who wishes to be introduced to you.” He looked pleadingly at Eiffel. “His name is Monsieur Ney. I am only a workman, monsieur, and I don’t know how to do such a thing.” He indicated the Neys to him.

A glance at the lawyer told Eiffel that this was a man who might be useful. Besides, it was his day to work the crowd. Placing his hand on Thomas’s shoulder in the most pleasant way, he went over with him.

“Monsieur Ney, I believe. Gustave Eiffel, at your service.”

“Monsieur Eiffel, may I present my daughter, Hortense.”

The great man bowed over the hand she offered him.

“Monsieur Gascon here has worked for me since the days when we built the Statue of Liberty,” said Eiffel with a smile. “We are old friends.”

“And this is Mademoiselle Fermier,” said Ney in return, “whose aunt is my most trusted assistant.”

Eiffel bowed to Édith.

“Are you by any chance connected to the great Marshal Ney, might I ask?” Eiffel inquired.

“Another branch, but the same family,” said the lawyer.

“You must be very proud of him,” suggested Eiffel.

“I am, monsieur. His execution was a stain upon the honor of France. I visit his grave and lay a wreath each year.”

After the fall of the great emperor Napoléon, the royalists had sentenced Marshal Ney to be executed. He had faced the firing squad bravely, pointing out that he failed to see that it was a crime to command French troops against the enemies of France. Most Frenchmen agreed, and he had since been interred with every honor in the cemetery of Père Lachaise.

They spoke briefly about the progress of the tower. Eiffel said that he hoped to welcome 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 small clerks and shopkeepers, others manual working folk like himself and Édith.

Édith was dressed in a blue-and-white dress which she had enhanced with a small hat with a ribbon around the crown. She carried a parasol. Thomas guessed that the hat and parasol might be discards from Mademoiselle Hortense. The effect was to suggest that Édith might belong to the class above her own. But he had often noticed that women tended to dress up more finely than their men. His own short jacket was clean enough, but his boots had never been shiny even before they became caked with dust. It suddenly occurred to him to wonder how his little brother would have dressed for a day like this.

Édith liked the place. There was a little Oriental temple, and a number of curious animals. But it was also clear that a large area was being prepared for a new display, and they asked a uniformed warden what this was going to be.

“Ah,” he said, with a twirl of his mustache, “that’s for the exhibition, the World’s Fair next year. Biggest show we’ve ever done. An entire village.”

“What sort of village?” Édith wanted to know.

“An African village. Native huts. The lot.”

“Any real natives?” Thomas inquired.

“But of course. They’re importing four hundred Negroes. At the last big exhibition, back in ’77,” he went on enthusiastically, “we had Nubians and Inuit Indians on display.”

“Like a zoo?” asked Édith.

“But of course like a zoo. A human zoo. And do you know, it brought in a million visitors. Think of that. A million!” Thomas had heard about the human zoos, as these exhibitions were called, that were to be found in several countries. But the scale of this one was certainly impressive.

“It will rival Buffalo Bill and his Red Indians,” the warden proudly declared.

As they left the zoo and started walking through the Bois, Édith turned to Thomas.

“Will you take me to watch Buffalo Bill when he comes?”

“Of course,” said Thomas.

He took note of the signal. When he’d waited outside the lycée the week after Bastille Day, he hadn’t been sure what to expect. She’d been cautious, and said she couldn’t meet him until early August, but she hadn’t said no. And now, after only an hour in his company, she’d just asked him to take her to a show the following summer.

A change of heart? Had Monsieur Ney indicated his approval? Or had Édith missed him? Well, he thought, he’d just have to wait and see. For the moment, he was glad.

He wondered if he dared put his arm around her. He glanced at her pretty hat and parasol and decided he’d better not. Not yet, anyway.

They came to a noble avenue. This, clearly, was where the fashionable ladies came to be seen in their fine carriages, while rich men and officers rode beside them. He wondered what it must be like to have no work to do, and realized that he had no idea.

But he knew how to treat a girl on a summer Sunday afternoon, and soon they reached the upper lake.

Fringed with trees, which gave it a rustic air, the lake was quite large. In the middle of its waters there was an island containing a café and restaurant in the form of a Swiss cottage. The overall effect was charming and romantic.

Thomas led Édith straight to the boatyard. Within minutes, they were out on the water with Édith sitting very prettily in the stern, under her parasol, and Thomas manfully plying the oars.

He’d been in a boat only once or twice in his life, but he took care and splashed Édith only a couple of times, which made her laugh. Since the day was hot, he took off his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves, and felt more comfortable like that.

There were plenty of other boats out on the water. Most of the oarsmen were gentlemen, some of whom had taken off their jackets just as he had. But to his surprise, several boats were being rowed by well-dressed women, who seemed to think it a fine joke to compete with the men.

After rowing about the lake for nearly half an hour, he moored the boat at the island, and treated Édith to an ice in the Swiss cottage.

When they came back to the boat again, Édith said she wanted to row.

“Have you done it before?” he asked.

“I’ve been watching you,” she said.

So he helped her into the boat, and stepped in after her, but the boat moved in the water, and Édith lost her balance, and Thomas caught her as she fell, which was just as well because she might have cracked her head on the wooden seat otherwise. And he got a bruise on his leg, but he didn’t mind. As they went down in the boat, he was underneath and she fell into his arms and he felt her body pressing into his, and his arms went around her, and for a moment or two they lay there like that. She was looking down into his face, and he was going to kiss her.

“Well, help me up, silly,” she said. But she was laughing with pleasure all the same.

Then she rowed him back to the shore. She splashed him several times. Once or twice he thought it was deliberate. And he was happier than he had ever been in his life.

They walked through the Bois after that. They were walking down a long empty alley when he put his arm around her. She didn’t stop him. After a little while, they stopped. There was still no one in sight. And he kissed her, and she kissed him back. But when his hands started to rove too much she stopped him. Then they walked back, and he kept his arm around her until some other people came in sight.

The sun was behind them when they walked back up the avenue de la Grande-Armée, and ahead of them in the distance the Arc de Triomphe shimmered as if it were going to dissolve in the sunbeams.

The next weekend Thomas went to see his family at Montmartre.

“Did you take Édith out?” Luc asked, when they were alone.

“Yes, to the Bois de Boulogne. We went on the lake.”

Luc reached into his pocket.

“Take these,” he said. “They’re the best.”

Thomas looked down at the little packet in astonishment. They were condoms.

“My little brother is giving me capotes anglaises?” It was a cultural curiosity that the French and English nations had decided to attribute these artifacts to each other. The French called them English hoods; the English, for reasons obscure, called them French letters. They were mostly made of rubber, could be reused, but were not too reliable.

“Why not? One of my rich customers gave them to me. These aren’t the usual ones. They’re finer. He told me they’re the best.”

Thomas shook his head. At the age of fifteen, his little brother was mixing with some strange company. But what could one do? There probably wasn’t a child of ten in all the Maquis who was innocent.

“She’s not that kind of girl,” he said.

“Keep them all the same,” said Luc.

So Thomas laughed and put them in his pocket. And as he did so, he wondered: Might he need them after all?



In September 1888, after several weeks of agonizingly slow progress, the tower suddenly began to increase in height at great speed.

It should have begun after Bastille Day. For above the second platform, the curve of the tower was such that it became much thinner. Instead of building horizontally, as they had in the lower sections, the flyers were now building almost vertically. The same number of men, installing the same number of sections, could add two, three or more times the height each day than they had done before. While some of the gangs, including Thomas’s, continued going up the tower, others were redeployed to the filling-in work on the great platform and the arches below.

Yet one problem had almost brought progress to a grinding halt.

It was the cranes. The ingenious creeper cranes were splendid, but they were slow. And now, as the cranes had to crawl up hundreds of feet, the flyers would quickly install the sections they brought, and then wait, uselessly, for the next sections to make their slow journey back again. The work was falling behind. Tempers frayed.

One day Jean Compagnon stopped Thomas.

“At least you look cheerful, young Gascon. You got a girl? Is that it?”

“Oui, monsieur.” Thomas grinned.

“Well, good for you.” He nodded thoughtfully. “I don’t like the look of the men, young Gascon. Do you know when there’s trouble at work?”

“Non, monsieur.”

“Well, I’ll tell you. It’s not when the men are working too hard. It’s when they haven’t got enough to do. I’ve seen it time and again. So think of your girl and stay out of trouble, you hear me?”

“Oui, monsieur.”

The solution that Eiffel found took time to put in place. But at last it was ready. And as soon as it was set in motion, the entire mechanics of the operation changed.

Machine-driven winches would hoist the sections vertically from the ground to the first platform. As soon as the sections arrived, they’d be reattached to a second lifting system which hoisted them vertically another two hundred feet up to the second platform. “And as we get higher, we’ll have another winch at about six hundred and fifty feet,” Eiffel informed them. The winching process would be accomplished in minutes. From there, creeper cranes could go up the tracks to where the sections were needed. The entire process could be completed in a little over a quarter of an hour.

Eiffel also announced a pay increase up to ten and sixteen centimes an hour. The tower was ready to soar.



But if the mechanics of the operation had changed, another problem returned.

It was one of the first mornings of this new regime, in the middle of September, when Thomas came down to the Seine and found that he could not see the top of the tower. Above the second platform, the girders had vanished into an autumn mist. He was rather excited as he went up the tower. It would be like working in the clouds, he thought. As work began, the fires for heating the rivets glowed eerily in the surrounding mist. There was only one thing he’d forgotten.

The cold. Up there, at over four hundred feet, the temperature was lower. Though he was working hard, it wasn’t enough to stop the damp cold seeping into his bones. He looked around him. The other men on the tower were feeling the same thing. When they went down for the lunchtime break, he could hear men cursing all around him. Was the terrible cold of the previous winter going to return—and so early?

There was a new fellow on his gang that week. Their holder had fallen sick, and been replaced by a cheerful Italian fellow, younger than himself, whom everyone called Pepe. “You must be used to better weather than this,” Thomas remarked as they went down.

“It’s true. But I am happy to work on the tower,” Pepe replied, and grinned at him. “My father build roads. He work in a hole. I no want to work in a hole. So I work in the sky.”

Thomas smiled and tried to be cheerful too.

That afternoon, the mist cleared, but a cold wind got up, moaned around the girders, and lashed the men as they worked. Everyone was blue with cold by the end of the day. Even Pepe stopped smiling.

The next workday—it was the nineteenth of September—when he arrived at the site, Thomas found a crowd of men standing at the foot of the tower. Jean Compagnon was standing apart, looking grim. The wagons bearing the sections for the day had all arrived, their teams of horses standing silently. But none of the sections had been picked by the crane, and nobody was going up the tower.

He saw Pepe.

“What’s up?”

“The men strike. They want more pay.”

In a few minutes, when the workers had all arrived, one of the older flyers, a tall, bony-faced man named Éric, addressed them.

“Brothers, the conditions under which we’re working are a disgrace. So last night a group of us got together and now we’re asking you to join us and call a strike. We have agreed on our main grievances. If you want to add to them, then now’s the time to raise your complaint. Do you all agree that I should read our grievances out?”

There was a chorus of approval.

“First: we are being asked to work under dangerous conditions. No one has ever had to work at heights like this. Yet the workers on this tower are being paid the same as if we were working on an ordinary building. Further, as soon as the winter ended, Monsieur Eiffel demanded that we work a twelve-hour day. And long hours cause fatigue—which in itself is dangerous on a high building. Eiffel is trying to squeeze every last drop of blood out of the workers on this tower, brothers. The workers are being exploited.”

There was a broad murmur of agreement. “And what about the wages?” someone called.

“Exactly. Second: Monsieur Eiffel has announced a small increase in wages. The top men will be getting sixteen centimes an hour. Note this. Per hour. But we are just about to go back to winter hours. Will you get any extra money for your trouble? Not a centime. We’re going to be exploited even further, under arctic conditions. And Eiffel doesn’t care. The only way to get his attention is a work stoppage.”

“You mean a strike?” someone called out.

“We stop work now. That’s a stoppage. If we’re not satisfied by the end of the day, you can call it a strike.” He looked around at them all. “Brothers, I open the meeting. Who wants to speak?”

Several men stepped up. One spoke of the need for hot drinks in the cold, another about the need for special clothing. Two more complained about the wages and the hours. Yet as Thomas listened, he didn’t feel comfortable with what was being said. Rather to his own surprise, he found himself coming forward.

“I agree about the cold and the need for hot drinks,” he said. “My hands were freezing last winter, and the higher we go, the colder it seems to get.” This was met with nods. “But I’m not sure about the extra danger.” He shrugged. “The safety barriers and netting are pretty good. Nobody’s fallen so far. But I mean, if you did fall,” he shrugged, “two hundred feet or four hundred feet, doesn’t make a difference. You’re going home in a box anyway.” A few of the men laughed at this, but Éric was not pleased.

“Don’t you want to be paid for the extra height?”

“I’ll take more money as soon as the next man,” Thomas answered, “but we signed on knowing what the wage was, and we’re getting more than the usual rate anyway.”

It was true, but it wasn’t what the men wanted to hear. There were some growls. Suddenly, Thomas found Éric standing beside him. The tall man put a large, hard hand on his shoulder.

“Now we all know that this young man is a friend of Monsieur Eiffel. So maybe he’s not exactly on the same side as us.” This caused a murmur of agreement that was none too friendly. Thomas was taken by surprise. He hadn’t realized that the fact he’d worked for Eiffel before, or that Eiffel sometimes chatted with him, might be turned against him like this. Éric was well into his stride now, though. “No, brothers, no, I don’t believe the young man means any harm by it. He’s a good young fellow. But, brothers, there are two things we need to remember. The first is that our demands are reasonable, and we all agree about that—well, perhaps my young friend here doesn’t. And second,” he gave the men a knowing smile, “this is a negotiation.” He paused to let the thought sink in. “My friends, Eiffel has to finish this tower. His entire reputation and his personal fortune are at stake. If he fails, he’s bust. And he’s running late.” He grinned. “We’ve got the bastard over a barrel.” He paused once more. “Anyone else want to argue?”

They didn’t. There were shouts of approval. Éric kept his hand clamped on Thomas’s shoulder.

“If the tower’s not finished,” Thomas said, too quietly for anyone to hear, “we shall have dishonored France in the eyes of the whole world.”

“It’ll get finished,” Éric replied, just as quietly. “But I’d keep my mouth shut, if I were you. Wouldn’t want you falling off the tower, would we?”

The work stopped that day. Eiffel turned up at the site an hour later and had an urgent conversation with Jean Compagnon. Then the two of them went to talk to Éric. The engineer looked furious, but it seemed he didn’t give way. The men stood around all day, but nothing happened. Late in the afternoon, the foreman told them they might as well go home for the day.

As Thomas was walking off the site, Pepe fell into step beside him. “Want a drink?” he said. As he had nothing else to do, he agreed gladly enough. Pepe lived in the sprawling quarter on the Left Bank to the south of the tower, and he took Thomas to a bar there.

“I didn’t dare say what you did,” Pepe told him, “but I think you were right.” Then they talked about his family, and the Italian girl he was hoping to marry, and Thomas told him a little about Édith, but not too much, and they agreed that they’d all meet one Sunday, and Pepe would take them to a place where they could get an Italian meal for not too much money. After parting the best of friends, Thomas walked back, crossed the river in the usual way and made his way home.

He came to the rue de la Pompe. His lodgings were not far ahead. He passed the darkened gateway to the yard that had once been the farm of Édith’s family.

The strong hand that clamped on his shoulder took him completely by surprise. He lunged forward to run, but felt his other arm held in a grip he couldn’t break out of. Someone powerful, very powerful, had moved out of the shadows. He twisted, punched hard over his shoulder at where his assailant’s face might be. But the unseen figure anticipated him. He kicked back hard with his right boot, and felt the body behind him shift skillfully. Whoever it was knew how to fight. And he was just opening his mouth to shout for help, when a familiar voice spoke into his ear.

“Keep still, you fool. I need to talk to you.” Then the grip relaxed, and he turned to face the burly figure of Jean Compagnon. “Stay in the shadow,” the foreman said, so Thomas stepped into the gateway.

“Couldn’t you have met me in a bar?” Thomas asked, having recovered himself.

“Bad idea. Never know who might see you. The men already think you may be a stool pigeon.”

“But I’m not.”

“That’s not the point. It was brave, what you did today. Took me by surprise. But now you’ve got to be careful.”

“You mean Éric might push me off the tower?”

“No. Not unless you annoy him. You were quite useful to him today, you know. You provided a focus. Anyone who thought of disagreeing with him would be pointed at as one of your friends. A stool pigeon of Eiffel’s. That suits Éric very well.”

“The son of a bitch.”

“That’s politics. Éric won’t hurt you, but one of the men might. You never know.”

“What do I do?”

“Nothing. Keep your mouth shut and your eyes open. I’ve enough troubles without having to look out for you all the time. I did that once already.”

Thomas was silent for a moment. Was Compagnon letting him know that he’d noticed him that day he’d panicked when he’d looked down in the early days of the tower’s building? Probably.

“What’s going to happen about the strike?” he asked.

“Eiffel’s furious. But Éric’s right. He’ll have to settle. It’ll take a day or two.”

“Won’t Éric just do it again?”

“I don’t think so.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I’ll make sure. Now, lad, I’ve got a home to go to. Are you going to keep your mouth shut?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t talk to me. Don’t talk to Eiffel. Keep your head down. Now beat it.”

So Thomas walked up the rue de la Pompe. He supposed Jean Compagnon stayed in the shadows for a while. He didn’t look back.



The bargaining lasted three days. In the end, the men were given a bonus that would reach an extra four centimes a day. They were given waterproofs, and sheepskin clothes, and mulled wine to warm them up. Eiffel also set up a canteen on the first platform.

The men went back to work. Although Thomas was aware that he was regarded with suspicion, nobody gave him any trouble. During the month of October, the tower rose rapidly.

Thomas saw Édith regularly now. One Saturday night they went out with Pepe and his friend Anna, a pleasant, round-faced Italian girl, who took them to a little place that served Italian food, which neither Thomas nor Édith had ever eaten before. It was a good evening. He discovered that Pepe had a good voice and liked to sing Neapolitan songs.

Thomas would often kiss Édith. But so far at least, he had never had the chance to use the capotes anglaises that he sometimes secreted in his pocket. For Édith would never let him go all the way.

They went to see her aunt again. This time Édith’s mother was not there. Aunt Adeline probably wasn’t overjoyed to see him, but she didn’t show it. Monsieur Ney, however, chancing to look in again, welcomed Thomas politely and urged him, “Next time you visit, young man, do not forget to bring your little brother.”

So when, halfway through November, he and Édith agreed to meet the following Sunday at her aunt’s, he told her: “Say to Monsieur Ney that I will bring Luc with me.”



On Sunday, he met Luc near the Arc de Triomphe. As they walked down the avenue de la Grande-Armée, Luc was in a cheerful mood.

“I don’t know why Ney wants to see you,” Thomas admitted. “But I thought I’d better not disappoint him.”

“He has no particular reason,” Luc assured him. “Do you remember the giant squid that attacked the submarine in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea?” One didn’t need to have read Jules Verne’s classic tale to remember the giant squid. Popular illustrations had made highlights of the story familiar to almost every child in France. “People like this notaire spread their tentacles out to catch anything they can. If he thinks it’s possible I might be of use to him one day, he’ll want to get one of his tentacles around me, that’s all.”

“How would you be of use to him?” Thomas asked.

“Who knows? I’m just a young fellow who does things for people, and I don’t ask questions. That’s all he needs to know.” Luc smiled. “He’s right. I might do something for him one day. As long as he pays me.”

“If you say so, little brother,” said Thomas.



Édith met them at the door. She greeted them both, offered her cheek to Luc to kiss, as he was Thomas’s brother, and took them inside.

“Monsieur Ney is out, but he’s coming here shortly,” she told them. “But Mademoiselle Hortense is here. She’s calling on Madame Govrit, and my aunt says you should go up there to relieve her. Madame Govrit likes to see new people.”

The old lady was propped up in her handsome bed as usual. She had a lace cap on her head. On the bed lay some magazines that Mademoiselle Hortense had brought her, and as they entered, the lawyer’s daughter was sitting very upright, with perfect posture, on a chair beside the bed. Thomas and Luc bowed to them both politely. Madame Govrit stared at them.

“I remember you,” she said to Thomas. “Are you still building that monstrous tower?”

“Yes, madame. It’s my job. I’m sorry.”

The old lady gave a sniff.

“Well, you’d better come closer so I can hear you better. And who’s this?” She indicated Luc.

“My little brother, Luc, madame.”

“Is he building the tower too?”

“Non, madame.”

“I’m glad to hear it. He has more sense than you.” She looked appraisingly at Luc. “He’ll be very handsome, this one, don’t you think?” she remarked to Hortense. Hortense bowed her head slightly to indicate that it might be so. “He looks sly. I like him. Are you sly, young man?”

“I am whatever a lady likes me to be,” said Luc in his smoothest manner.

“Oh, what cheek!” exclaimed the old lady with delight. “What a young villain.” She addressed Hortense again. “Do not marry the young one, my dear. He’ll lead you a dance. The older one looks more stable, I think. Not so amusing, but …” She shifted her gaze back to Luc. “Ah, but he has mischievous eyes.”

Mademoiselle Hortense slowly turned and looked at the two Gascon boys. Her eyes rested on Luc, but only briefly. Then she transferred them to Thomas.

Her eyes were a very deep brown. He hadn’t noticed before how dark they were. Almost chocolate. The color was deep, but the eyes gave nothing away. He could find no emotion in them, nor any expression on her long, pale face. She was wearing a fashionable riding habit, whose narrow waist and swelling line accentuated her small breasts. Even more than before, the pale lawyer’s daughter seemed to suggest erotic possibilities to him. She rose.

“I must leave you with these two young men, madame,” she said in a low voice. Yet as she passed him, Thomas thought that she paused, just for a moment, before moving to the door. And however absurdly, the thought came into his mind: Perhaps, if she liked him … after all, she must be nearly thirty, and wasn’t married yet … what a surprise for his family if, having turned down the daughter of La Veuve Michel, he were instead to waltz off with the heiress of rich Monsieur Ney, the notaire.

Luc meanwhile was wasting no time in amusing old Madame Govrit.

“Do you play cards, madame?”

“I used to, young man, but I haven’t any cards now.”

Luc reached into his pocket and produced two packs of cards.

“Tiens,” she cried, “this young man has everything. You have two packs?”

“Oui, madame. Shall we play bezique?”

She clapped her hands with pleasure.

“Excellent.”

As bezique was played by two, Thomas contented himself with supplying a tray, which was placed on the bed, and with watching while the old lady and his brother played. He couldn’t tell whether Luc was letting her, but the old lady was taking more of the tricks and becoming quite animated. This continued very agreeably for almost half an hour. At the end of the game, the victorious lady gave them both a smile.

“That’s enough, young man,” she said to Luc. “But you have given me great pleasure.” She nodded at Thomas. “I hope you have not been too bored, monsieur.”

“Not at all, madame. My little brother has too good an opinion of himself, so I like to see him defeated.”

“And what do you think of this tower your brother is building?” she asked Luc. “They say it is seen from all over Paris, but I can’t see it from my window.”

“It’s already taller than the highest cathedral spire in Europe,” Luc told her. “You can certainly see it from the avenue de la Grande-Armée.”

“I want to see it,” Madame Govrit declared. “I want to see it now. We still have a couple of hours of light. Will you young men take me to the avenue?”

“Certainly, madame,” said Luc. “It’s not far away.”

Madame Govrit turned to Thomas.

“Do me the kindness, young man,” she commanded, “to tell them that I wish to go out.”



For a moment, Édith was speechless.

“Go out? Nobody ever goes out. I don’t think they’re allowed to.” They went to find Aunt Adeline.

“Everything that the residents need is here,” she told them firmly. “And if not, it is bought for them. I’m sure Monsieur Ney would not hear of it.”

“You’ll have to tell her, Aunt Adeline,” said Édith. “We can’t.”

Even Aunt Adeline hesitated at the thought of this ordeal. But the situation was quickly put in other hands by the arrival of Monsieur Ney himself.

“Ah, you are right, this is difficult,” he agreed, as soon as Aunt Adeline had told him the situation. “Normally we do not let the residents out,” he explained to Édith and Thomas, “because most are infirm, some confused. Funds do not permit that we should employ staff to take them out on the streets, and they cannot go alone. Imagine if we had them wandering all over Paris. But Madame Govrit …”—he nodded thoughtfully—“she is perhaps a special case.” He looked at Thomas. “She really wants to go out?”

“I am afraid she was most insistent, monsieur.” Thomas realized that, inadvertently, he was falling into their way of talking, but he couldn’t do anything about it. “She had been playing cards with my brother. And now she wants to go as far as the avenue to get a glimpse of Monsieur Eiffel’s tower—though I do not think the sight will please her.”

“Couldn’t we tell her it’s cold, and that she should wait until another day?” Édith suggested.

“With another resident, yes,” said Monsieur Ney with a faint smile. “But Madame Govrit won’t forget, I assure you.” He turned to Thomas again. “I cannot spare Édith or her aunt, but might I ask if you and your brother would convey her to the avenue?”

“Of course, monsieur.” His chance to get in favor. “With pleasure. We should take the greatest care.”

“Thank you,” said Ney. “I will go and speak to her myself.”



They escorted her carefully down the main stairs. She insisted that she would walk with her sticks, but it was as well that the two Gascon brothers went one on each side of her. For the occasion, the handsome front door had been opened. “My aunt says the last time it was unlocked was when Madame Govrit first arrived,” Édith had whispered. Down the front steps they went into the street, where they helped her into the large wheelchair that Monsieur Ney had provided.

It was certainly a magnificent conveyance. With two large side wheels and a single front wheel, the body of the chair was of handsome wicker basket construction. It took a minute or two before Madame Govrit was ensconced, wrapped with a shawl around her neck and a blanket to cover her body. But when all was ready, with Thomas pushing, the chair moved slowly away from the spectators at the front door with the solemn dignity of an ocean liner leaving port.

The wicker wheelchair was heavy. Thomas and Luc took turns pushing it. Madame Govrit meanwhile, rather flushed from the cold air, was observing the proceedings carefully. They negotiated one street, turned into another, crossed by a small church. Madame Govrit remarked that it was cold. Thomas politely asked if she wanted to turn back.

“Never,” she cried, though Thomas noticed a minute later that she had closed her eyes. For a minute or so she nodded off, but was wide awake again by the time they reached the broad avenue de la Grande-Armée.

It was a quiet, Sunday afternoon. The trees in the avenue were bare. To the left, up the avenue’s gentle slope, the Arc de Triomphe filled a portion of the gray November sky. Across the avenue, the long, low line of buildings stared dully at their counterparts. Here and there, carriages haunted the empty thoroughfare like boats on a deserted waterway. There were few pedestrians about.

Thomas pointed across the avenue and to the left.

“There it is, madame,” said Thomas. “There’s the tower.”

Had there been a sun in the west, its low rays might have bathed the girders in its softening light, so that they appeared like a mighty Gothic spire, full of romantic promise. But there was no sun. All that was to be seen, a mile away over the rooftops, was a grim, industrial tower attacking the heavens with its jagged iron spikes.

“Mon Dieu!” cried the old lady in horror. “But it’s frightful! It’s terrible! It’s worse than I could have imagined!” She slapped her hand on the arm of the wicker chair. “Ah non!”

“When it’s finished …,” Thomas began, but the old lady wasn’t listening.

“What a horror!” she screamed in rage. She started to struggle forward, fighting with the shawl and blanket, as if she meant to rise and tear the offending tower with her own hands. “They must be stopped,” she cried, “stopped! Ah!”

She got tangled in the shawl and fell back into the chair. Thomas looked at Luc in consternation. Luc shrugged.

“She chose a bad afternoon,” said Luc.

Madame Govrit seemed to be almost panting after her exertions, but then apparently gave up in despair at what she had seen. She shuddered under the blanket. Thomas tried to straighten her blanket and shawl for her.

“I’m sorry, madame,” he said. “Do you want to return?”

But Madame Govrit refused to answer him. He looked at Luc for help, and Luc leaned down.

“You know, madame,” Luc began, but then stopped and gazed at the old lady thoughtfully.

“What?” asked Thomas.

“She’s dead,” said Luc.



December passed without incident at the tower until the twentieth of the month. On that day, one of the flyers claimed that he had been shortchanged an hour on his timesheet. Within the hour, it seemed that the men might go on strike again. This time, Eiffel promised a princely bonus of one hundred francs to each worker who continued until the building was finished. But anyone who didn’t go back to work at once would be fired. Whatever arrangements Jean Compagnon had made seemed to give him confidence, and Éric did not press his case so hard this time. The few workers who held out were duly fired, and replacement workers appeared at once. As Christmas came, the tower continued to rise.

But Eiffel did one other thing that impressed Thomas very much.

“I shall paint the name of every man who worked on the tower from start to finish on a plaque, for all the world to see.”

“Just think of that,” Thomas told his family. “I shall be immortal.” His mother said she was pleased for him, but his father was profoundly moved. “Ah, now that’s something. The first time our name has ever been written up.” It seemed to Thomas that his father was even more pleased by this addition to the family honor than he would have been if he’d married Berthe Michel.



If the start of the New Year was normally the day of greeting in France, the Christian festivals were well observed. Early in December came the Feast of Saint Nicolas; early January saw the season of Epiphany. As for Christmas, it was quieter than in some other lands, and was perhaps the better for it.

Monsieur Ney did not stint when it came to Christmas. On Christmas Eve, before celebrating the Midnight Mass at his church, the local priest came earlier in the evening to say a Mass for the old people in the house, which he did in the hall by the front door. As for the Réveillon feast that celebrated Christ’s birth after the Midnight Mass, this was deferred for the old folk until lunchtime on Christmas Day.

Up in Montmartre, the Gascon family would be celebrating the feast with their neighbors up at the Moulin de la Galette into the early hours. So when Édith told Thomas that he was invited to join Monsieur Ney’s lunchtime feast on Christmas Day, he didn’t hesitate to accept.

For a week after the death of Madame Govrit, he had been afraid that the lawyer might blame him in some way. But since he and Luc had taken her out at Ney’s own request, this would hardly have been reasonable. And while Ney was certainly upset to lose his prize resident, whose aristocratic name and presence lured others to place themselves in his hands, there had been compensations.

For soon after her death, it was discovered that, in addition to the moneys she had paid Monsieur Ney upon her arrival, she had also left a most generous bequest to Hortense.

“She was always very fond of Mademoiselle Hortense,” Aunt Adeline explained. The residue of her estate was to pass to the daughter of a poor cousin who had no idea she was to receive anything.

“Madame Govrit was kindness itself,” Monsieur Ney declared. “She thought of everyone.” As executor of the will, he had told Aunt Adeline, it would give him particular joy to convey her bequest to this poor relation, as far as funds permitted.

Meanwhile the other residents were reminded, by the cautionary tale of what had befallen Madame Govrit, how wise it was of Monsieur Ney to insist that they should not go out.

When Thomas arrived, he found Édith and her aunt already helping those who were not bedridden into a long, narrow room off the hall, where a dining table had been set up. By the time this process was complete, there were nearly twenty old folk seated. Monsieur Ney took the head of the table, and Aunt Adeline the other end. Mademoiselle Hortense was not present. Secretly Thomas had rather hoped that she might be, as he wanted to observe her some more.

“Sadly, my daughter is unwell,” Ney explained. “I think it was brought on by her distress over the loss of her friend Madame Govrit, but she suffered a bad cold, and I was obliged for her health to send her to the south. I hope the warmer weather in Monte Carlo may restore her.”

The lawyer had brought in two women from his own house to help serve at table. Édith and Margot, the old nurse, took food up to the bedridden in their rooms. Thomas offered to help them, but Ney wouldn’t hear of it.

“You’re our guest,” he directed, and Thomas was seated between Édith’s mother and an old lady who seemed quite content to masticate her food while he talked to her, without making any reply.

The food was good. They began with oysters, accompanied by a glass of champagne. Then turkey with chestnut stuffing, and boudin pudding, with which a red bordeaux was served. The old folk were given just a glass, but Ney indicated to Thomas that he should fill his own glass as much as he pleased. As for Édith’s mother, she needed no bidding, and it was clear that on this occasion at least, Aunt Adeline and Monsieur Ney were content to let her drink as much as she liked, on the premise that she would soon enough fall asleep.

Once, it seemed that Édith’s mother wanted to rise to propose a toast, but Aunt Adeline gave her such a look that, flushed though she was, she kept quiet.

“An excellent meal, madame,” Thomas offered quickly.

“That’s for sure,” she said.

Then came the highlight of the feast, the Christmas cake. Not the heavy fruitcake that the English favored, but the light sponge covered in thick, chocolate butter cream, and rolled into a cylinder. Here Monsieur Ney had outdone himself. He had gone to one of the best patisseries in Paris, and bought a cake that stretched halfway down the long table. The Genoise sponge was golden, the thick spiral of filling in each slice was of chocolate flavored with chestnut. The outside was dusted with powdered sugar.

“The patissier has invented a charming name for the cake,” Monsieur Ney told them. “He calls it a Yule log—bûche de Noël.”

By the end of the meal, everyone was satisfied. Ney, like a monarch who knows that his people will be obedient if they are entertained from time to time, was surveying the room with a look of calm benevolence on his narrow face. The old folk, sleepy and contented, were taken back to their rooms, with Thomas helping, while the table was cleared.

Édith and Margot the nurse appeared, having completed the feeding of the other residents in their rooms. Two places had been set for them at the empty table, and their food, kept warm in the kitchen, was set out under covers. Monsieur Ney thanked them both for their efforts, and left them with a bottle of wine before departing to his own house. Aunt Adeline retired to her quarters with Édith’s mother, who was already half asleep. And Thomas joined Édith and old Margot at the table.

Margot ate stolidly and in silence. Édith poured wine for herself, and for Thomas.

“I’ve drunk too much already,” he said.

“Keep me company.” She smiled.

He watched her. She had grown her hair out in the last few weeks. Instead of being frizzed, it was fuller now, with soft curls just above her shoulders and a part near the middle. Her face was perhaps a little fuller too.

More than ever, he found her desirable. It hadn’t been appropriate to bring his capotes anglaises to Monsieur Ney’s Christmas feast, but he hoped that before too long he might get the chance to use them.

Did she have the same feelings for him? He thought she did. After all, she went out with him, and let him kiss her, and asked him to the Christmas feast. But she was still cautious about letting her feelings show. She held back.

When Margot had finished eating, she waddled off to the kitchen, leaving them to sit and talk. They finished the bottle of wine. Édith added a little water to her wine, so he was actually drinking more, and on top of what he’d already had, he felt pleasantly flushed. She put her hand on his arm.

“You’ll have to go soon,” she said. “I’ll have work to do at the end of the afternoon, and I need a little rest.”

“That’s all right.”

“Thank you for coming. I’m glad you came.” She got up to take the remaining things to the kitchen. He stood to help her. “Stay here,” she said.

A couple of minutes later she returned.

“My mother’s asleep, of course, but even Aunt Adeline’s nodded off.” She sat down beside him and he kissed her, but it wasn’t very satisfactory in the upright chairs.

“I’d better rest,” she said.

“All right.” He stood. “By the way,” he said, “have they found a replacement for Madame Govrit yet?”

“No.” Édith shook her head. “That may take time. Monsieur Ney will want a very special person for that room. You know, Mademoiselle Hortense has already redecorated it.” She smiled. “Do you want to see it before you go?”

“Certainly.”

She led him out into the hall and up the main stairs. One of the steps gave a noble creak as they passed.

“Here we are,” she said, as she opened the door.

He recognized the bed, the armoire and the pictures, which were the same as before. But the paneling had all been repaired and painted. The bed had a new cover, very handsome, in heavy damask, and in front of the fire a small Second Empire sofa with a curved back, upholstered in the same material, had appeared. On the mantel over the fire there was now an ormolu boudoir clock whose dial was held by two gold cherubs; and to the left and right of it, a pair of pretty porcelain figures from the court of Louis XVI. There was a new rug on the floor. Together with the little rococo desk by the window, it all made a charming if slightly predictable ensemble.

It had all been accomplished so quickly, Thomas wondered if some of these items might have come from the lawyer’s house, perhaps from the room of Mademoiselle Hortense herself.

“As you see,” Édith remarked cheerfully, “it’s all ready to be shown off. We have a vase for flowers, when somebody comes to see it.”

He nodded. The room was clearly ready for another Mademoiselle Govrit de la Tour. Feminine. Perhaps even sensuous.

As Édith closed the door, she gave him a funny look.

“You could kiss me if you like,” she said. And he was just moving to do so when she went to the bed, pulled back the damask cover and lay on top of the blankets. “Only a kiss,” she reminded him.

But half an hour later they were still there, with fewer clothes on. Thomas was wishing he had brought those capotes anglaises, only he’d never thought things would turn out like this. Then Édith got up, because she didn’t dare use the sheets, and fetched a towel from the armoire and spread it on the bed and said, “You must be careful.”

And Thomas kissed her and held her and said, “I’ll be gentle. Just tell me if it hurts.”

But Édith smiled and said that he didn’t have to worry about that, and when he looked surprised, she said it was nothing important and a long time ago. And Thomas realized it was too late for him to think much about that now.

A little time passed. And then she cried, “Oh, you mustn’t,” but it was too late.



During the first two months of 1889, the Eiffel Tower raced toward completion. The progress was astounding. By March, it soared to over nine hundred feet, where the third and final platform was being constructed. Enclosed by glass, this observation platform would offer the astonished visitors a panoramic view with a radius, on a clear day, of thirty-five miles—northward to the lovely park of Chantilly, southward to the great Forest of Fontainebleau, and on its western side, far over Versailles and almost to the twin spires of Chartres Cathedral. The whole tower was being painted a bronze color, gradually getting paler as the tower grew higher to increase its appearance of soaring elegance.

The greatest difficulty in these later stages was the installation of the elevators. For though there were stairs that went all the way up to the top, few people would care to mount 1,665 steps—and descend them again.

This work had to be subcontracted, and several companies were tried. But the task was almost beyond them, and they could hardly be blamed. Never before had they been asked to take such huge numbers of passengers up to such unheard-of heights. The elevators taking passengers the 550 feet from the second platform to the top posed less of a problem. But how to raise an elevator that was to travel from the ground, nearly 400 feet to the second platform, on tracks with a variable curve?

In the end, two systems were used for the four feet of the tower. French engineers supplied two inventively designed chain elevators that at least got people from the ground to the first platform. But the American Otis Elevator Company had invented a brilliantly contrived system, part hydraulic elevator, part railroad, that took passengers up the other two legs of the tower, and continued all the way up to the second platform.

Thomas would tell her enthusiastically about all that was happening.

“Monsieur Eiffel says the Otis elevator designs will be years ahead of the French. But we mustn’t say so,” he confided. “When the gallery is completed up at the top, they’re building a private office for Monsieur Eiffel above it. He says that’s going to be his office for the rest of his life. Imagine it: working each day up in the clouds like that, like a god.”

If Thomas loved his work, Édith thought, so much the better. And if he worshipped Monsieur Eiffel, there was no harm in that. “Just think,” he’d often remind her, “very soon, my name will be painted up there on the tower, because I helped to build it.”

Sometimes, during these weeks, Édith would walk over to the Trocadéro before she went to work in the lycée and gaze into the sky where Thomas was working. If the day was misty, she might not be able to see the upper part of the tower at all. More often, under a blanket of cloud, and through the smoke from a thousand chimneys, she would see a faint hint of firelight in the sky as the rivets were heated on their little braziers high in the girders. But sometimes, if the sky was clear, she would see those same braziers twinkle like stars, and smile, wondering if Thomas was standing with his hammer beside one of them.

They had not made love again after Christmas Day. He had wanted to. “I have protection,” he had told her. But she had been reluctant. “Not just yet,” she had told him, several times. He’d been rather hurt and frustrated, and she knew that her refusal made no sense. But for reasons she could not explain, she did not want to give herself to him again. Not yet. Not until she had decided what to do.

It was in mid-January that she had started to get alarmed. But she hoped she might be wrong, and she told nobody. By mid-February, there could be no doubt. It was useless to talk to her mother, but she went to see Aunt Adeline.

“Idiot!” her aunt cried. “When?” And when Édith told her the when and where, “You’re insane. And he took no precautions?”

“We weren’t planning to. It just happened.”

“Have you told him?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because he’d want to have the child and get married. I know him.”

“Ah.” Aunt Adeline considered. “Faced with the reality, he might not be so keen.”

“No. It’s his character.”

“Do you love him?”

“He looked for me all over Paris, for a year. I couldn’t believe it, but it’s true. And since he found me, he’s never given up.”

“I didn’t ask if he loved you. I asked if you loved him.”

“He’s nice with me. He’s considerate. He tries to please me. And he’s honest. I like that. And I find him seductive. I want him when he’s there.”

“He has no money.”

“I can’t complain. Nor have I.”

“We’ll try to get you a little. You know that I think you can do better.”

“People with a little money like to find other people with a little money too. Maybe rich people marry who they like.”

“No, they don’t. Their families see to that.”

“He’s loyal. At least I don’t think he’d walk out on me like my father.”

Aunt Adeline was silent for a moment. Then she said:

“I don’t want to tell Monsieur Ney. He wouldn’t be pleased at all.” She considered. “Perhaps I could arrange for you to go away for a while. You could have the child. But we’d have to give the child up for adoption. Nobody need be any the wiser. That’s one alternative.” She looked sadly at Édith. “Or, I know a doctor who could take care of it …”

“I’m afraid of that.” Édith shook her head. “It can be dangerous.”

“You know, my child, that if you have the child and keep it, you have no chance of making a respectable marriage, don’t you? Unless you marry this boy. But I foresee a life of poverty.”

“I know. I need to think.”

“Well, don’t think for too long. It’ll show in a while.”

“I feel as if it does already.”

“That’s just your imagination. But during the spring …”

And now March had begun, and still Édith hadn’t decided what to do. Nor had she told Thomas.



Édith didn’t often think about her father. The truth was, she hardly remembered him. But she knew what he looked like. Her mother had no picture of him, but Aunt Adeline did. The picture showed quite a handsome-looking man. His hair appeared to be the same dark color as Aunt Adeline’s, but where hers was neatly pulled back, his was shaggy. There was something boyish about him. He was wearing a jacket, but his shirt was open at the collar. He looked like what he was, an intelligent workingman, a builder, Aunt Adeline said.

Had he left because his wife was a foolish drinker, or had she got that way because he left? Édith suspected it was the latter, but she wasn’t sure, and Aunt Adeline would never discuss it. Where had he gone? “Who knows?” her aunt would say with a shrug.

Sometimes Édith would imagine that Aunt Adeline did know where her father was and that she was keeping it a secret. Perhaps he did not want to live with her mother. Perhaps there was some other trouble that he had to hide. Perhaps he was in prison. But she liked to think that, wherever he was, he cared about her. She pictured him asking Aunt Adeline for reports of her, and listening to them eagerly. He might know all about her. He could even be secretly watching her sometimes as she walked down the street—watching her with love and pride. It was possible. You never knew. She realized that these were childish fantasies, but she could not help it if, when she was in her bed all alone at night, she sometimes allowed herself to dream of such things before she went to sleep.

Lately, she had been thinking of her father more often. And she compared in her mind the feelings of warmth that these foolish dreams brought her with the feeling of warmth and comfort she experienced when she was with Thomas, and he put his strong arms around her, and held her. And sometimes when she thought of him like that, she thought she would tell him about the baby growing within her, and sometimes she wasn’t so sure. But she was beginning to think that perhaps she would.

So when he suggested that they meet Pepe and Anna on Sunday, because Pepe had discovered an Irish bar where you could eat cheaply—he was always inventive like that—she’d agreed, thinking that maybe at the end of the day, when she and Thomas were walking back together, she might tell him her secret.



They met at the Irish bar in the middle of the day. It was on the edge of the Saint-Germain quarter near the old Irish College. The two young men were especially pleased with themselves because their crew had been among the last twenty men working at the top of the tower. This was a special badge of honor.

Pepe insisted they all drink the dark Irish Guinness with their meal, which they were not used to. Then they drank some red wine. Thomas amused them all by confessing how he’d sworn to Monsieur Eiffel that he had an excellent head for heights, and then frozen with panic before the building even got to the first platform. Anna told them stories about her huge family in Italy. By the time they were finally ready to leave, they were all very happy, but a little tipsy.

They strolled back together, along the left bank of the Seine. The tower, virtually completed, rose into the blue sky ahead of them. They reached the great site, where numerous halls were already being prepared for the huge exhibition. Some way off, there were people on the bridge staring up, but the fenced-off site was empty.

And they were just about to go their separate ways when Pepe said: “And now, Thomas and I will give you a demonstration of the fearless flyers of the Eiffel Tower.”

He led them to a small gap in the fence and in another minute they were in the quiet space under the huge southern archway of the tower.

“Want to come up?” he asked the girls.

“No,” said Édith. “Anyway it’s all locked.”

But Pepe only laughed.

“Come on, Thomas,” he cried. “Let’s go.”

Édith stared in horror. It suddenly occurred to her: If anything were to happen to Thomas, now of all times …

“Stay here. Thomas,” she begged him. “Don’t go up. You’ve been drinking.”

“We’re not drunk,” Pepe cried. “They give us wine up the tower every day.”

“Please, Thomas,” she implored.

But the two men were already swarming up the huge framework. After a while they got into the stairs. She and Anna could see them running happily up them, laughing as they went. Then, for a short while, they couldn’t be seen.

“Where do you think they are?” she asked Anna.

“Perhaps they’re going to the top,” Anna suggested.

“Oh my God, don’t let them do that,” Édith prayed. She looked up the huge iron network reaching into the sky. The safety barriers were all gone now. There was nothing to protect anyone out there on the girders. She still couldn’t see them. She and Anna moved in closer, almost under the arch.

Then, somewhere up there, she heard Thomas’s voice calling down.

“Édith! Can you see me?” And then, just behind the huge arch under the first landing, she saw him balanced on a girder.

“Yes. But take care,” she cried.

“It was here exactly. This is where I panicked.”

“Are you all right?”

“But of course.” He waved.

“Where’s Pepe?” called Anna.

There was a brief silence. Then Pepe’s voice floated down to them.

“Anna. Look to the left of Thomas.”

He was on a beam, a little higher, standing very comfortably with his hands on his hips, and staring down at them as if he owned the place.

Édith called out to them both that they should come down now or someone would see, and they’d all get into trouble. Reluctantly, Thomas moved to one side, and she could see him getting near the stairs. But Pepe hadn’t come in yet. And then, suddenly, he began to sing.

O dolce Napoli

O suol beato

The strains of the Neapolitan song wafted down. He had a pleasing tenor voice. Édith could hear every word. Anna clapped her hands with pleasure. Could the people out on the bridge hear this concert performance emanating from the depths of the huge iron structure? It was possible. His voice was very clear. He came to the chorus.

Santa Lucia, Santa Lucia

Anxious that he shouldn’t sing another verse, Édith applauded vigorously. And then, hoping to get him off the tower quickly, she shouted out:

“Take a bow, Pepe, and come down.”

Pepe obliged. He made a magnificent, theatrical bow. Then another to the left, and also to the right, and a final, still deeper bow to the center again. And lost his balance.

It happened so quickly that, apart from a tiny motion with his hand as he reached out for something to hold on to, it was almost as if he had purposely dived. His body fell. How tiny it seemed under the massive iron arch. They heard his voice, a single, fearful “Oh …” And strangely, neither she nor Anna screamed out, but watched, stunned, as the little body plummeted, one, two, three seconds and then, not sixty feet from her, hit the hard ground with a thud so terrible, so final, that she knew instantly that there could not be anything left of the person that, a moment ago, had been Pepe.



Thomas Gascon never knew he could think so fast. A year ago, on these same girders, he had stood paralyzed in panic. Today, as he clattered down the metal stairs, more than three hundred of them, flight after flight, after flight, taking them almost at a run, he found that he saw everything with a cold clarity that amazed him. By the time he clambered out onto the girders, slid down over the concrete base, and raced across to Édith and Anna, he knew exactly what must be done.

Anna was crouched on the ground beside Pepe’s body. She was shaking with shock. At least thank God she wasn’t screaming. Édith had her arms around her.

Thomas quickly inspected poor Pepe. His small body was a crumpled mess. His neck was twisted at a strange angle, a pool of blood already forming in front of his open mouth. He reminded Thomas of a baby bird that has fallen out of a high nest. Wherever the spirit of his cheerful friend had gone, it was already somewhere far, far away.

“Édith,” he asked, “does Monsieur Ney have a telephone?” He knew there were only a few thousand people in all Paris who had one, but he thought the lawyer might be one of them.

“I think so.”

“Go to him as fast as you can. Tell him what happened, and that Monsieur Eiffel must be informed at once. Also the police. He will know what to do. Then you stay with your aunt. I shall wait here with Anna.” He reached into his pocket and gave her money. “If you walk fast you can reach him in less than half an hour. But if you see a cab, take it. And don’t say anything to anyone, even the police, until you get to Ney.”

“If he’s out?”

“Your aunt will help you. Try to find him. We have to tell the police, but it’s essential Monsieur Eiffel knows at once.”

Édith didn’t like to leave Anna, but she agreed to go. As she left, Thomas kissed her and repeated quietly, “Don’t come back.”

As she left, he wondered if anyone on the bridge had seen Pepe fall. They might have. But they might not. If they had, the police would probably arrive quite soon. That couldn’t be helped. But at least he’d done his best to protect the two people who mattered: Édith and Monsieur Eiffel.

Then he sat down, put his arm around Anna, and waited.



He waited an hour and a half. It seemed an eternity. Then a group of people all arrived together. Monsieur Eiffel and Ney and a small man with a neatly trimmed mustache were closely followed by a uniformed policeman, a young man with a camera apparatus and two men with a stretcher.

While Eiffel moved slightly apart, Ney spoke.

“As you see, Inspector,” he addressed the man with the mustache, “my client awaits you exactly as I said he would. And this young lady I am sure is the friend of the unfortunate young man.”

The inspector glanced at Thomas briefly, moved to Pepe’s body, gave it the briefest inspection, glanced up at the tower and nodded to the young man with the camera, who was already setting up a tripod to take photographs.

Meanwhile Ney had gone to Thomas’s side.

“You have shown intelligence by your actions, young man,” he said in a low voice. “Now listen carefully. Answer the questions that the inspector puts to you, and answer them very briefly. That is the only information he wishes to know. Add nothing. You understand? Nothing.”

Thomas saw the inspector look at Ney inquiringly. The lawyer gave him a slight nod.

“My client is ready to help you, Inspector.”

The inspector came across. Apart from his mustache, his face was clean shaven. His hair was thin over a broad brow. His eyes reminded Thomas of oysters. They were watchful and somewhat sad. He took out a notebook.

The preliminaries were brief: his name, the address where he lived—Thomas gave his lodgings in the rue de la Pompe. The time of the incident. The name and occupation of the deceased. He had been with the deceased before the incident? Where? The Irish bar.

“Had the deceased drunk anything at the Irish bar?”

“Yes, monsieur. Both Guinness and wine.”

“Was he inebriated?”

“Not drunk. He had control of himself …”

“But he had consumed both beer and wine.”

“Certainly.”

“Then he climbed up the tower.”

“Yes, Inspector.”

“How?”

“Up the girders at first, since the staircase is closed. Then into the staircase and up to the first platform, then out onto the girders.”

“You saw him do this?”

“Yes.” He was about to explain that he had gone up with him, but remembering what Ney had said, and since the inspector had not yet asked where he was himself, he did not offer this information.

“What did he do up there?”

“He sang an Italian song.”

“Then what?”

“He fell.”

“How?”

“He took a bow, quite a big one. Three times. Center, then left, then right. Then he took a final bow, deeper than the others, and lost his balance. Then … it was very sudden.”

“This girl is his friend?”

“Yes. She is very shocked.”

“Naturally.” The inspector turned to Anna. “I understand you are distressed, mademoiselle, but I must ask you a few questions.”

Her name and address. Pepe’s name and address. Was he of Italian family? Was she? How long had she known him? Had she drunk Guinness and wine with him at the Irish bar? Did he climb the tower and sing an Italian song? Was she standing below? Did he take a bow three times, then a final bow and lose his balance? Did she see this, and was this what happened?”

“Yes. Yes it was.” She burst into tears.

The inspector closed his notebook, and turned to Ney and Eiffel.

“It is very clear. I am satisfied. There will be some formalities later, of course, but unless Monsieur Eiffel wishes it, I personally see no need to take matters further.”

Eiffel indicated that he also was satisfied. At a nod from the inspector, the two assistants put Pepe on the stretcher and started to carry him away.

“I think I should take Anna to her home,” said Thomas.

Ney glanced at Eiffel, who said he was going to remain at the site for a while. Then Ney told Thomas that he and Anna should come with him, and he would convey them home. Thomas wondered if he should say something to Monsieur Eiffel, but the engineer had already turned his back.

By the bridge, the lawyer had a small fiacre waiting. The two men put Anna between them, the cab driver whipped up his single horse and they set off.

Anna lived with her parents in a small tenement near the southern Porte d’Italie. It took them nearly half an hour to reach it. When they got there, Ney went in with Anna to speak to the girl’s parents. When he emerged he told Thomas that he would return him to his lodgings.

“You must not try to see Édith today,” he told him. “She is resting.”

They had gone a short distance when Thomas ventured to speak something that had been on his mind.

“You were good enough to say to the police that I was your client, monsieur, but you know I haven’t much money.”

“You need not concern yourself with that,” the lawyer replied. “Monsieur Eiffel wishes it.”

“I am amazed he would do such a thing for me. Does he know that this is partly my fault?”

“Do not deceive yourself, young man. Monsieur Eiffel is not pleased with you at all. But there is more at stake here. The tower is the center of the Universal Exposition, the World’s Fair that is about to open. The honor of France as well as that of Monsieur Eiffel are at stake. Having heard the details from Édith, I was able to point out to him, and also to the inspector, that tragic though the business is, it is somewhat fortunate, to put it bluntly, that the deceased young man was Italian. No one wants a Frenchman to be involved with such an embarrassment. It is in nobody’s interest that your part in this should receive publicity. I was therefore able to protect both Édith and yourself.”

“That is why the inspector never asked me where I was when Pepe fell.”

“Precisely. He had no wish to know. If there were any doubt that this was a stupid and terrible accident, it would be another matter. But that is not the case.”

“His fall was exactly as I described it, I assure you.”

“If the authorities require you to testify again, they will come to me, and I shall tell you what to do. But in the meantime, I must stress to you that nobody must know of your part in this. I have made the parents of Anna quite terrified. She will not speak of it at all. Édith you may be sure has no reason to do so. But you must keep silent, or Monsieur Eiffel will be very angry. Technically, you know, he could prosecute you for entering the tower the way you did.”

“I shall not speak a word.”

“Good. I was able to tell Monsieur Eiffel that, as a lawyer, I thought you had acted very wisely after the accident.”

Clearly Ney had lost no time in making himself useful to Eiffel, thought Thomas. One could only admire him for it.

But after the lawyer dropped him off in the rue de la Pompe, he suddenly found he was very tired.



By the time he went to work the next day, Thomas was ready with his story. In the first place, he’d say nothing. If by chance anyone knew he’d met Pepe for a meal on Sunday, he’d simply say that he’d parted from him immediately afterward, and known nothing about the accident.

If there had been any doubt in his mind about the consequences of saying anything else, they ended as he walked down the rue de la Pompe.

He was just passing the place where Édith’s family had once had their little farm when Jean Compagnon fell into step beside him.

“Nice day,” said the foreman.

“It is,” said Thomas.

“Keep your mouth shut,” said Compagnon.

“Don’t know what you mean,” said Thomas. “But I always do.”

“If anyone finds out, Eiffel will fire you. He’ll have to.”

Thomas didn’t answer.

“But that,” continued Jean Compagnon pleasantly, “will be the least of your troubles. Because I’ll be waiting for you, and you’ll join your friend Pepe, wherever he may be.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Thomas, “but I’m sorry if you don’t trust me.”

“I trust you,” said Jean Compagnon. Then a moment later he turned abruptly into another street, leaving Thomas to go on alone.

Thomas was strong, and he knew how to fight. But he wasn’t under any illusions. If the burly foreman wanted to kill him, he could do it.

At the tower, Pepe was replaced without any explanation. They were doing the finishing touches now. Not all the men were needed anymore. No doubt the news of the accident would be out soon, but obviously it had not been released to the newspapers yet. The day passed quietly.



It did not pass so quietly for Édith. She had slept through the night in her aunt’s quarters, because Aunt Adeline had given her a sleeping draft. She awoke and took a little tea and a croissant.

But even while she was eating this petit déjeuner, the terrible feeling that had been gnawing at her the day before came back, with just the same awful, insistent coldness, so that she cried out to Aunt Adeline in agony: “It was me that killed him! It was my fault.”

Her aunt sighed.

“You’re quite wrong.”

“I told him to take a bow. If he hadn’t done that …”

“He would have done it anyway.”

“Maybe not.”

“He had the choice. People have to take responsibility for their actions. It was he who decided to go up the tower, anyway, in the first place.”

There was truth in this. But not enough, Édith felt, to absolve her. She sat with her head bowed over her cup of tea, shaking her head slowly.

And then something happened.

At first, when she felt the little gush, she didn’t understand. She went into the bedroom where she slept and used the bed pan. A few minutes later, she called her aunt.

Aunt Adeline was very calm. She told Édith to stay where she was and that she’d be back in a few minutes. Then she went out to fetch the doctor.

Later in the morning, the doctor gave her the news. She had lost the child.

“Thank God,” said Aunt Adeline.



It was a week later that Thomas was told Monsieur Eiffel wanted to see him in his office.

The great man had wasted no time installing himself in his office at the top of the tower. Since the elevators were not operating yet, it meant a huge climb; but Eiffel didn’t seem to mind. From the third platform, a small spiral staircase led directly up to his quarters.

As he knocked on the door and went in, Thomas was struck by how comfortable the office was. The wall had already been papered in a dark, striped wallpaper. There was a patterned carpet on the floor. Eiffel had a table, a desk and a couple of chairs, and a few small ornaments. And one could look out on a breathtaking panorama. Monarchs and presidents might have palaces, but Monsieur Eiffel, without any doubt, now had the finest office in the world.

There was quite a strong wind blowing that day. As he stood close to the pinnacle of the great tower, Thomas could just feel the faintest motion.

Eiffel was sitting at his desk. He was looking at some papers. Without looking up, he read Thomas’s thoughts.

“The maximum sway caused by the wind is about twelve centimeters,” he remarked drily. He finished checking a list, then looked up. “You know why I sent for you?”

“I think so, monsieur. I apologize.”

“When the Russian tsar built his city of St. Petersburg, he drove his workers relentlessly. Do you know how many men died working on that great enterprise?”

“Non, monsieur.”

“A hundred thousand. St. Petersburg rests on their bones. When we began work on this tower,” Eiffel continued, “it was assumed there would be accidents. There always are on big projects, alas. But I took exemplary care. I put in movable barriers and screens—safety precautions more sophisticated than anything used on a building site before. And we built the tower without the loss of a single life.” He paused. “Until the other day.”

“It was not your fault, Monsieur Eiffel. It was mine. It was an accident.”

“Do you think that anyone will remember that? All that will be remembered will be that one of the workers on my tower fell to his death.”

“I am truly sorry, monsieur.”

“I made space for you, when you asked me if you could work on the tower. This is how you repay my kindness. You have dishonored me.”

Thomas bowed his head. The children of the Maquis, like the knights of old, understood honor. Every Frenchman understood it. And he had dishonored his hero.

“I have in front of me the list of names of the workers on the tower,” continued Eiffel. “As I promised, they will be painted on a plaque where they may be seen. But I cannot bring myself to add your name to the list. Do you understand? You will receive your bonus of a hundred francs, but no public recognition.”

Thomas nodded. He did not look up. He could not speak.

“That is all,” said the builder of the tower.



Thomas had seen Édith only once since the accident. He had met her as usual outside the lycée. She had been off work for a couple of days, she told him, and she wouldn’t be free that Sunday. He wanted to talk a little about what had happened, but she seemed preoccupied, and he left feeling uncertain about where he stood with her.

So it was not surprising if, up on Montmartre that Sunday, his family found him rather subdued. Was everything all right at work, his father asked?

“Not bad,” he replied. “Monsieur Eiffel himself told me I’d be getting my bonus at the end.”

“And your name written up,” his father said proudly.

Thomas changed the subject.

“I’ll be looking for work again, as soon as I’m finished on the tower,” he reminded them.

In the afternoon, he went for a walk with his brother.

“How’s Édith?” asked Luc.

“All right.”

“That’s good.” It seemed to Thomas that his brother had something he’d been waiting to tell him. But they walked on in silence for a little way before Luc asked him casually: “Have you seen the posters for the Wild West show?”

One could hardly miss them. They seemed to be sprouting on every billboard in Paris. A huge buffalo, racing across the prairie, took up most of the picture. Inset on his powerful body, however, was an oval portrait of the handsome and unmistakable features of Colonel W. F. Cody, Buffalo Bill himself, with beard, mustache and cowboy hat, and underneath him just two words in French.

Je Viens: I am coming.

Everyone had heard of Buffalo Bill’s circus. It had already had a triumphant tour in England. People might not be sure exactly what the spectacle entailed, but it was known to be exotic, and exciting. It would be one of the biggest side attractions of the Universal Exposition.

“I was given a couple of tickets,” said Luc. “Thought you might like them. You could take Édith.” He pulled a little packet out of his pocket, carefully extracted two tickets and handed them to Thomas to see. Thomas stared at them.

“But this is for the grand opening! How in the world did you get them?”

“A gentleman gave them to me.” Luc grinned. “I’d helped him with something.”

“But you should go,” protested Thomas.

“No. I want you to have them.”

“But they’re for the grand opening,” Thomas repeated.

“That’s right,” said Luc.



It was Wednesday before he saw Édith, but this time she agreed to accompany him to the bar they’d gone to the first time they met. She even agreed to eat a little.

All the same, Thomas sensed that she was uncertain about something, and he was anxious to find out exactly what it was.

“I’ve been worried about you,” he said.

“I’m all right.”

“I feel terrible about what happened. I never meant to put you through that.”

“You shouldn’t. After all, it was my fault.”

“Your fault?” He stared at her in astonishment.

“Yes. If I hadn’t told him to take a bow …”

“Édith.” He put his arm around her shoulder. “I never even thought of such a thing. Pepe was going to do that anyway, I promise you. That’s just the way he was.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment, but she was weighing his words.

“You really think so?” she said at last.

“Of course. I know it.” He reached over and kissed her head. “You can put that idea out of your mind. It isn’t so.”

She stared down at the table. After a pause, she picked up her glass of red wine, took a slow sip, and put it down on the table again, still holding the stem for a little while, before finally releasing it.

“There’s something else you should know,” she said, and looked up into his face.

Then she told him about the miscarriage.

When she had finished, he was left staring at her openmouthed.

“I had no idea you were pregnant,” he said.

“I know.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t want to.”

“I thought … after what happened at Christmas, and then you were suddenly cold …”

“I was anxious. And upset. Perhaps I felt angry with you. I suppose … it makes no sense, but I was afraid to be with you.”

“I thought maybe you didn’t like me.”

“I know.”

“Oh.” He considered. “Are you still angry with me now?”

“No.”

“How do you feel about everything.”

“When you lose a baby, even so early when, you know, there’s hardly anything, you feel a sort of grief.” She shrugged. “But now, I feel relief. I can’t deny that. I don’t want a baby, Thomas. I mean, not now.”

“Of course.” He pulled her to him and held her closer. “You could have told me. You can trust me.”

She nodded silently. She knew that.

They talked quietly for a little while. It seemed to Thomas that her mood was lightening. She felt warm beside him.

“Would you like to do something dangerous?” he suddenly asked. He felt her stiffen, and he laughed. “Would you like to go to the Wild West show?”



On the first day of April 1889, at the start of the afternoon, Monsieur Eiffel gave a party at the tower for the workers, almost two hundred of them, in the presence of a large company of the great men of the city. The prime minister was there, the entire municipal council, numerous dignitaries, all formally dressed in top hats, together with their wives and children. Among these, Thomas noted with amazement, were Monsieur Ney and his daughter, Hortense, elegant in a blue silk dress in the latest fashion. Somehow, deploying his two hounds, Loyalty and Gratitude, the huntsman from his small attorney’s office had managed to bring down this impressive quarry. Hortense, as usual, looked pale and strangely sensual as her father quietly insinuated himself in one group after another. Surely, Thomas thought, amid such a distinguished gathering, the small-time attorney should be able to find a worthy suitor for his daughter’s hand.

It was a windy day. The sun showed through the clouds as they chased across the sky.

Recently Thomas had gone to a tailor in Montmartre who made men’s clothes for a price that the artists and artisans could afford. From the tailor he had acquired a suit with a short coat in which he looked very smart, and he was wearing it today.

At one thirty precisely, Eiffel and a party of more than a hundred dignitaries prepared to ascend the tower. It was a pity that the elevators were still not working, but that did not deter them from ascending the stairs to the first platform. One of the deputies, afraid of heights, insisted that he would go up all the same, which he did with a silk scarf wrapped around his eyes.

Eiffel took his time. Every little while he would pause to explain this or that detail of the construction, and let the visitors catch their breath. On the first platform, the bar, brasserie and two restaurants, one French and one Russian, were still being fitted out for the public opening the following month.

The more determined members then accompanied Eiffel on the long climb up to the second platform. And a still smaller group ascended to the very top, where Eiffel ran the national Tricolor flag up the flagpole where it flapped in the wind, a thousand feet high in the sky. And at this patriotic signal, a burst of fireworks sent out the equivalent of a twenty-one-gun salute from the second platform.

It took a long time for them to come down. The wind was growing stronger, and Thomas wondered if it was going to rain. But they all sat down to their feast of ham, German sausage and cheese.

And if there was a hint of Eiffel’s Germanic origins in this choice of food, it was quickly dispelled both by the champagne which was served, and the patriotic speeches which followed.

Eiffel thanked them all, and announced that the names of France’s greatest scientists would be painted in gold on the frieze of the first platform. The prime minister thanked Eiffel, and invested him as an officer of the Légion d’honneur. They all toasted the builder, and each other, and France.

Then, as the wind got up and the rain threatened, they all dispersed to their homes. But not before one tiny incident occurred.

Thomas was just heading toward the Pont d’Iéna, with the first drops of rain patting his face, when he felt a hand on his arm. It was Jean Compagnon.

The burly man shook his hand and gave him a small card. On it was written the name of a bar.

“They always know where to find me there,” he said. “Let me know if you need a reference.” Then, before Thomas could thank him, he was gone.



The Universal Exposition of 1889 officially opened on the sixth day of May. Visitors looked in awe at the vast iron tower under which they passed. They had to wait until the fair’s second week before they could go up it, but even if they didn’t ascend, they found plenty in the huge fair to interest them. There were the exhibits from all corners of the world. There was a replica of a Cairo street and Egyptian market, with cafés serving Turkish coffee and entertaining the customers with belly dancers. The site was so huge that a delightful miniature train took passengers from the Champ de Mars to the esplanade by Les Invalides, where they found Oriental rickshaws.

The fair might be celebrating the centenary of the French Revolution and its ideals of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, but the honor of France demanded that visitors should also be reminded of her far-flung colonies; and so there were large and exotic exhibits from the colonies of Algeria, Tunisia, Senegal, Polynesia, Cambodia and others. If the British had an empire, so did France.

But while the Eiffel Tower was the staggering glory of the fair, it had to be admitted that the pavilion which astounded everyone was the one supplied, at his own expense, by Thomas Edison, who was sailing from America to Paris himself in August. The range of inventions on view was staggering, and in keeping with the shared republican values of America and France, it showed how, very soon, the advances of modern science would bring electricity, telephones and other wonderful new conveniences not only to the wealthy, but to the masses. Most fascinating of all was the new phonograph with its cylinders, which no one had ever seen before.

The huge numbers of Americans who were filling Paris to see the exhibition might feel delight and gratification that the man who’d built the Statue of Liberty and their own Thomas Edison were the stars.

And then of course, just twelve days after the opening of the fair, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show was due to open on a Saturday afternoon.



On the evening before, Thomas went up to Montmartre to see his family. He ate with his parents and sister. Luc was working, and Thomas decided to stay the night up at the house so that he could see his brother. It was after midnight when Luc arrived, and as it was warm, the two brothers sat out on the wall nearby under the stars to chat awhile.

“I went to the tower this afternoon,” Luc informed him. “It’s only been open two days, and you still can’t use the elevators, but I wanted to go and see.” He smiled. “Most people only walk up to the first platform, but I went on to the second. It’s still not open above that. And guess who I met there?”

“Tell me.”

“The man himself. Monsieur Eiffel. He was walking up to his office at the top. He’s certainly fit. He told me he does it every day.”

“You spoke to him?” After his disgrace, Thomas was a little nervous of what the great man might have had to say.

“Certainly. He recognized me. He said I could walk up to the top with him if I liked. So of course I did.”

“I see.”

“And I saw the plaque with all the workers’ names on it.”

“Ah.” Thomas sighed. “I didn’t tell you yet. But unfortunately …,” he began.

“I saw your name.”

Thomas started. His name? Could there have been another Gascon working on the tower he didn’t know about?

“My name? You are sure?”

“It was Monsieur Eiffel who pointed it out to me. ‘There’s your brother’s name,’ he said. ‘Don’t forget to tell him you saw it.’ ”

“Oh,” said Thomas.

“So I went up to the top and he went up into his office and I walked around the viewing platform. Quite a view. It must be like that when you’re up in a balloon.”

“What did you do then?”

“I came down, of course. What else?”

“Nothing.”

“Il est gentil, your Monsieur Eiffel. He’s nice.”

“Yes,” said Thomas. “He is.”



Édith wasn’t sure. Aunt Adeline was.

“This is the time to end it. You made a mistake, but now that is over. You’re not pregnant anymore. You’re free. He’s a nice boy, but he seems to have a talent for getting in trouble, and he hasn’t a sou.”

Even Édith’s mother did her best to give her good advice.

“You know that butcher up at the top of the rue de la Pompe? Well, his son has his eye on you. And that junior master at the lycée, the one with the little beard, I see him looking at you when he leaves the building. You should encourage him, you know.”

“A schoolmaster’s never going to marry me.”

“You never know. I could talk to him.”

“That may not help.”

She was determined to decide for herself, but she couldn’t deny that her aunt was right. Thomas might be as much as she could hope for, but he was no safe haven.

And then there was his family. Better than many in the Maquis, she supposed, but she hadn’t felt any particular kinship with them. She’d probably finish up working to support them.

As for his little brother Luc … There was something about young Luc that she didn’t like. She wasn’t sure what it was, but she didn’t trust him.

So what did that leave? Only the fact that when she felt Thomas’s strong arm around her, she was at peace. That he was attentive to her, and that she was happy in his company. That he loved her, and that she liked the way his body was made, and the scent of it. And that she knew he was a good man. And that therefore, taking all these things together, she supposed that in a modest way she loved him. And that sometimes she yearned for him. But that at other times she could almost forget him.

So she still didn’t know what to do, and she wished that she did, because she didn’t like to be dishonest with him. And perhaps that was why, recently, she had somehow avoided him.

During April, she’d seen him several times, but only in the evenings after her work. She hadn’t been out with him at a weekend. There had been things to do helping Aunt Adeline, of course, but she knew she could have made time for him if she’d really wanted to.

He’d asked her to the World’s Fair. But she had an easy excuse for putting that off. She wanted to go up the tower. “And I’m not walking,” she said. “I want to take the elevator.” The tower had finally opened to the public three days ago, but the elevators still weren’t fully operational, and probably wouldn’t be for another three weeks. And by that time …

For by the start of May it seemed to her that, if it hadn’t been for the tickets to the opening of the Wild West show, which she really wanted to see, she might have broken with Thomas already.

Thomas came to pick her up at noon. Soon, they were walking down the avenue de la Grande-Armée westward toward Neuilly. Thomas was wearing his new suit that he was proud of. She was wearing a summer dress with a silk shawl that Aunt Adeline had found for her. Thomas offered her his arm, and she put her hand through it. She liked walking with him like that.

At the bottom of the avenue where it reached the Bois de Boulogne they turned right, and soon came to the part of Neuilly that was still open ground. In the middle of this open space stood the remains of an old fort, and here Buffalo Bill had built his camp.

There were two hundred tents, and big corrals for the horses and the shaggy buffalo—which had caused a sensation when they were led down the road from the railway station to the camp. And in the center of it all were the splendid arena and a newly constructed grandstand that would hold fifteen thousand spectators.

“Look at the crowd,” said Thomas. They were early, but already a sea of people was flowing through the entrance. And it wasn’t just any crowd.

The president of France, Monsieur Carnot, and his wife were to be present. Royalty and ambassadors, generals and aristocrats, distinguished visitors from all over the world, including a large party of visiting Americans—the stands were packed. Everyone who was anyone was there. And so was Thomas Gascon.

It amused him that he and Édith were there and that Monsieur Ney and Hortense were not.

And all that packed crowd—except of course the Americans—were united by two things. They were all excited to be there. And they were not quite sure what the show was about.

The opening of the show was clear enough. It was a huge parade around the ring of all the colorful cast. Cowboys and cowgirls with whirling lassoes, magnificent Indians in feathers and warpaint, Mexicans, Canadian trappers—French Canadians, of course—with their huskies, all that was brave and dashing and exotic in the huge, wild North American spaces. The crowd was delighted. Then came a single young lady, Annie Oakley, with her guns. The crowd clapped politely, not knowing much about her. And finally, the hero of the West, the greatest showman of them all, Buffalo Bill himself in his buckskins and big cowboy hat, his hair flowing behind him, entered at a gallop, whirled around the ring and made a magnificent, sweeping salute to the president of France.

The crowd roared. So far so good.

Thomas offered Édith the bag of popcorn he had purchased at the entrance.

“What is it?” she asked uncertainly.

“God knows. It’s American. Try it.”

She did, and made a face. But a few moments later, she dipped her hand in again.

The first reenactment of Wild West history was the attack of the Redskins on the Pioneers. The show’s regular man, to whom God had given a magnificent, carrying voice, declaimed the narrative so all could hear, the trappers formed their wagons into a circle, the Indians whooped—the riding and the action were altogether splendid.

There was only one problem.

“What’s going on? What’s it about?” asked Édith.

“I don’t know,” said Thomas.

Nor, apart from the Americans in the stand, did anyone else. For although the announcer had a mighty voice, and although he’d been practicing his lines in French for weeks, his idea of French pronunciation was even stranger to his audience than the Wild West itself. As the trumpet sounded, and the U.S. Cavalry came riding in to the rescue, the French were not quite certain who the men in uniform were, or why they were there.

As the thrilling scene ended, they waited in silence.

“Is that it?” whispered Édith. “Should we applaud?”

“Let’s wait till someone else does,” said Thomas. Most of the audience was in the same dilemma. Fortunately the Americans started to applaud, and so everyone thankfully followed suit. But it was not the start that Buffalo Bill was used to.

So as the audience waited for the next tableau, and prepared to strain their ears to try to decipher the announcement—for they all wanted to be pleased—they were a little surprised to see instead the slim young lady walk into the ring, accompanied by some assistants and a table of guns.

Thomas frowned. This surely was an entr’acte, supposed to come later in the show. The first piece of action had at least been exotic. The young lady seemed pleasant enough, but not very exciting. He hoped Édith wasn’t going to be disappointed by the whole thing.

The young performer was looking around at her audience, sensing them. But she remained composed.

From somewhere, a glass ball rose high into the air. Easily, hardly glancing at it, she raised her rifle and shot it so that it burst into a thousand fragments. A cool shot certainly. Another ball, and a second. Two shots, so close together it seemed hardly possible. Both glass balls burst. Very good, it had to be said. She went to the table and picked up another gun. As she did so, three balls went up, in different directions. Three bangs, three hits.

And now it began. Glass balls, clay pigeons, a playing card, a cigar, objects on stands, things tossed in the air, in front of her, behind her, faster and faster, high and low. She was grabbing guns from the table and throwing them down with bewildering speed. Generals boggled, sporting aristocrats leaned forward in their seats, ladies dropped their fans. Annie Oakley did not miss. They had never seen anything like it. The cries of astonishment rose, people were standing in their seats. And when she had exhausted every gun and the haze of smoke was hanging over the center of the arena, and she took her bow, the audience roared, and threw handkerchiefs at her feet.

She ran off gaily, and the audience sank into their seats.

And then she was back again, but riding a horse. Around the arena she rode, and the balls started rising into the air, and she shot them as she went. And then silver French coins went up, sparkling in the sun, and she shot them too. But now the audience was beyond ecstasy. As well they might be. For what they were seeing was close to a miracle, and Annie Oakley was, quite likely, the finest shot the world has ever known.

After that, the audience was won. They cheered the Mexicans, and the buffalo, and the Indian battles and the taming of the West. They might not be sure exactly what it all signified, but they didn’t care.

Buffalo Bill was a big success.

And it was understandable. The Americans might speak abominable French, but weren’t the two countries historic soul mates? France, for whatever reasons, had helped the American colonies break free of England in the American Revolution, which in turn inspired the French to follow with an even greater revolution of their own. And if the French Revolution had been for Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, were these not, in a different manifestation, the watchwords of the American Wild West as well?

Indeed, many in that audience may have reflected, after France’s humiliation by Germany not twenty years ago, perhaps she needed heroes with the brave spirit of Buffalo Bill to restore her honor still.

He was the toast of the town all summer.

So it was a flushed and excited Thomas who conducted Édith away from the Wild West show late that afternoon. Then, when they got to the bottom of the avenue de la Grande-Armée, instead of walking up it, they turned into the leafy Bois de Boulogne, and walked along a pleasant alley a little way.

Then Thomas kissed Édith, and she kissed him back. And he hadn’t planned it at all, but there was no one else in the alley just then, and so he suddenly went down on one knee and said: “Will you marry me?”