Paris: The Novel (116 page)

The gallery was in the rue Taitbout, only a short walk from her apartment. She’d gone to several of the best galleries—Vollard, Kahnweiler and Durand-Ruel. She quite enjoyed her quest. It was educational. They all knew Marc Blanchard, but it was the assistant at Durand-Ruel who knew where his work was to be found.

“It’s a small gallery, quite new. The Galerie Jacob,” she was told.

The gallery was certainly small, and Monsieur Jacob turned out to be a young man, only a little taller than herself, with delicate features.

“My grandfather has an antiques business, and my father helps him, so I wanted to do something different,” he explained. “I’m delighted if you are interested in the work of Marc Blanchard. He was very helpful to me in getting started, and I represent him. If you stay in the gallery, I’ll bring some of his work for you to see.”

They spent quite a while looking at canvases. Though she didn’t know much about art, it seemed to her that the work was good. Several were portraits, and she told him she’d like to see more of them. He had almost a dozen.

“Do we know who any of these young women are?” she asked him.

“Most are studio models, or people he happened to meet. They tend not to have names. The commissioned works are nearly all in private collections, though there are sketches for many of them. He has more work that he keeps himself. I could always ask him. Would you like to meet him?”

“No,” she said. “That won’t be necessary.”

One picture in particular intrigued her. It was a nude. A young girl with a very pretty body and long hair. It seemed to Louise that she looked a little like herself.

Was she looking at her mother?

“Again,” said Jacob, “no name.”

“I should like to come and look at some of these again,” said Louise. “If you can find out the names of some of the sitters, that would also interest me.” She smiled. “It would be a present for my husband. He likes to put names to people.”

“And your own name, if I may ask, madame?” said Jacob.

She reached into the little bag she was carrying, as if to take out a visiting card, and frowned. “I have left my cards at home. I am Madame Louise. I shall call in again in two or three weeks.”

She wondered whether it would turn out that any of the models was named Corinne.

The note from Roland de Cygne early in October was profuse in its apologies, and rather touching. During August, down at the château, his son had become ill—so much so that at one point the doctor had feared for his life.

All was well now, however. Father and son were safely back in Paris, where the boy was to convalesce for a month.

Sure enough, a few days later, he telephoned to ask if she would like to go to the opera. As it happened, she could not go on the evening he suggested. But wanting to be friendly, especially after his troubles with his son, she made a countersuggestion.

“I met the manager of the Gobelins factory the other day, and he offered to give me a private tour of the place. On the last Monday of October, in the morning. I wonder if you and your son would like to join me. Perhaps it might amuse him.”

The offer was accepted at once.

Why was it, Marie would sometimes ask herself in later years, that of all the many discussions she had, during two turbulent decades, about the destiny, even the survival, of the world she knew, the one she most remembered was a short and unplanned conversation with a boy?

The Gobelins factory was in the Thirteenth Arrondissement, about half a mile south of the Jardin des Plantes. The manager gave them a delightful tour of the collection of buildings.

“As you see, we have returned to making tapestries, just as we did in the time of Louis XIV,” he explained, and showed young Charlie de Cygne the working of the looms. “Some of these are the original seventeenth-century buildings. They were set up beside the little River Bièvre, which runs into the Seine near the Île de la Cité, so that the river could provide water power when it was needed. But do you know what else was made here?”

“You made furniture for quite a while,” said Roland.

“Indeed, monsieur, that is correct. But we also made statues.” He pointed to a couple of buildings. “They were foundries. We supplied most of the bronze statues in the gardens of Versailles.”

“Has the works been going continuously since Louis XIV?” young Charlie de Cygne asked.

“Almost. As you may know, the wars of the Roi Soleil were so expensive that he ran out of money once or twice. We briefly had to close in the 1690s, then for about a decade after the Revolution. And then, unfortunately, during the Commune of 1871, the Communards burned part of the factory down, which interrupted our work for some time.”

It was clear that the manager was no lover of the Communards, and he glanced at de Cygne, clearly hoping that the aristocrat would express his distaste for them, but Roland said nothing.

The visit was a success. After they came out, it being almost the lunch hour, Roland asked if Marie would like to eat something.

“Why don’t we just go into a bistro?” she suggested.

It seemed to Marie that Charlie de Cygne was a nice fourteen-year-old, rather shy, who resembled his father and had manners of respectful politeness that only someone like Roland de Cygne could have taught him. It also seemed to her that he was perfectly well and ready to go back to school again. His father, however, was still showing lines of worry. He’d lost weight. She felt a strong maternal urge to feed him.

“You’ll have a steak with me, won’t you?” she asked, although she would much rather have had a salad. And when he had finished that, she persuaded him to eat a strawberry flan with Chantilly cream. Getting young Charlie to eat, of course, was not a problem.

They took their time, chatting of nothing in particular, but being careful to ask Charlie what he thought of the Gobelins factory, and making him part of the conversation.

As she and Roland had coffee, he asked her if he might smoke a cigar, and she was fascinated when, instead of an elegant lighter, he pulled a strange little object made of a shell casing out of his pocket. “I always carry this with me,” he explained with a smile, as he laid the lighter on the table. “It brings me luck.”

And it was then that Charlie asked a question.

“The man at the Gobelins factory said that the Communards burned the place down. That’s not so long ago. Do you think something like that could happen again?”

Marie and Roland looked at each other.

“Yes,” said Roland.

“I don’t know if you heard about it, Charlie,” said Marie, “but just this weekend, Zinoviev, who’s an important man in Communist Russia, wrote a letter to one of the British Labour leaders outlining how they should work together for world revolution. That’s what they want.” She nodded firmly. “The whole of England’s in an uproar. There’s a general election in two days, and this will probably put the Conservatives back in power.”

“Today’s paper says that Zinoviev claims it’s a forgery,” Roland remarked.

“But he would say that, wouldn’t he?” Marie answered.

“This is true.”

“But are there many Frenchmen who really want a communist revolution,” asked Charlie, “like in Russia?”

“Certainly,” said his father. “You and I would both be killed, my son. And Madame Fox too, I’m afraid.”

“You know such men, Father?”

Roland picked up the little lighter and looked at it thoughtfully.

“Oh yes. I have known such men. And there are many of them.”

“People at school say that the Jews are behind the revolutionary movements,” said Charlie. “Do you think it’s true?”

“No less a person than the great Lord Curzon, who’s the British foreign secretary, has just made a speech about the Zinoviev letter,” said Marie, “where he reminds us that most of the inner ruling circle of the Bolsheviks are Jews. So he seems to think there’s a connection.” She shrugged. “He would know more than we do. I have a few Jewish friends who I’m quite certain are not revolutionaries.”

Slightly to her surprise, the aristocrat wasn’t content to let it go at that.

“Lenin himself, of course, was not Jewish in the least. In fact, he was technically a Russian noble, you know. To the surprise of his audiences, his revolutionary speeches were made in a highly aristocratic accent.” He smiled at the irony of this truth. “But you must be very careful, my son,” he continued. “Your school friends are partly thinking of the famous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a document which outlined a Jewish plan to take over the world. It was a complete forgery. We know this for certain now.”

“Lots of people still believe in it, however. Especially in America,” Marie pointed out.

“
Oui, madame
. But that is partly because Henry Ford, the motor manufacturer, is obsessed with it and tells all the world it’s true. But it’s still a forgery.” He paused a moment. “I am sensitive to this because, as you will remember, I myself was entirely persuaded of the guilt of Dreyfus when I was a young man. I thought he was a traitor because he was Jewish.”

“So did half of France.”

“That in no way excuses me. It is now absolutely established that he was innocent.”

“So you do not think the Jews are behind the revolution, Father?” His son wanted clarity.

“There are many Jews who are in the revolutionary movement, especially in Germany and Eastern Europe. It may also be true that, because Jewish families have historically been more mobile, that there is a Jewish network that will operate, along with other networks, in spreading international revolution. Many people think it, but I do not know if it is so or not. For there are plenty of revolutionaries who are not Jewish. There are also many Jews who are not revolutionaries. You must be guided by the evidence, my son, not by rumor or prejudice.”

“But you do think that there is a danger of international revolution spreading from Russia around the world.”

“I am quite certain that is true.”

“So what should we do, Father?”

“It remains to be seen. The revolutionaries are ruthless. Perhaps the democracies of the free world are strong enough to defend themselves against them. I hope so. But it may be that the free world will have to adopt some of the tactics of the revolutionaries to counteract them. Beat them at their own game.”

“What sort of organization are you thinking of?” Marie asked.

“I’m not sure. Perhaps some kind of order, like the crusading orders of long ago. Perhaps military governments. We shall need strong leaders, certainly, and we don’t have them now.”

“It sounds a little frightening.”

He smiled.

“Not as long as we have good people like you, madame, and I hope myself too, to keep us all sane.”

“And what do you think, Charlie?” she asked the boy.

“I’m ready to fight,” he said. “Father tells me I may have to.”

“And who will you fight?”

“The communists, I suppose, madame.”

So the conversation ended. The two de Cygnes returned home. She went across the river to Joséphine. But she never forgot it. They had said nothing out of the ordinary. Any conservative, and even some liberals, in both France and Britain would have expressed the same sort of views. She, too, had thought them natural, at the time.