Paris The Novel

Chapter Four




• 1885 •


Thomas Gascon found his true love on the first day of June, in the morning. It had rained the day before, and gray clouds were still passing across the open sky above the Arc de Triomphe. But the horse chestnut trees were in their full, white blossom, and the promise of summer was in the air, as the huge crowds gathered.

He had come for a funeral.

Writers were honored in France. And now that Victor Hugo—beloved author of Les Misérables, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and a score of other tales—had died at the age of eighty-three, France was giving him a state funeral.

The entire legislature, senators, deputies, judges and officers of state; the leaders of the universities, the academies and the arts, had arrived at the Arc de Triomphe, where the author had been lying in state. More than two million people lined the route the funeral cortege would take, down the Champs-Élysées to Concorde, over the bridge to the Left Bank and along the boulevard Saint-Germain until, at last, it would climb to the summit of the old Roman hill in the Latin Quarter where the mausoleum of the Panthéon now stood, ready to receive the greatest sons of France.

Paris had never seen such a crowd—not in the days of the Sun King, not during the Revolution, not even under the emperor Napoléon.

And all for a novelist.

Thomas had arrived at dawn to get a good view. Some people had camped out in the street the night before to get a good position, but Thomas had been more cunning. He had inspected the place previously and chosen a spot near the top of the Champs-Élysées, on its southern side, with his back resting against a building.

As the huge avenue rapidly filled, his view was soon blocked, but he didn’t mind. He waited patiently until everything was in place, the police and soldiers all busy lining the roadway and the crowd around him so thick that it was impossible to move.

First, he reached down to the rope tied around his waist and unwound the loose end, to which he’d attached a small hook. Just behind him, at shoulder height, a narrow ledge ran along the stone facade of the building, and above that was a window protected on the outside by a metal grille. Skillfully, he tossed the rope up so that the hook caught in the grille.

Then, suddenly grabbing the shoulders of the two people in front of him, he levered himself up quickly. They hardly had time to protest before he was scrambling up their backs, and a moment later, with a foot resting on the head of one of them, he got his other heel firmly on the ledge, reached up, pulled the hook through the grille and tied the rope off. The two men below were now cursing volubly, and one of them tried to punch him, but the crowd was so close that it was hard for the man to get a decent swing. And after Thomas made a motion as though to kick him in the head with his workman’s boot, he contented himself with a contemptuous “Cochon!” and turned away.

Thanks to this arrangement, tethered safely to the grille behind by the rope around his waist, Thomas could lean out to left or right as he pleased and watch everything over the heads of the people in front of him.

Across the avenue, the balconies were crammed with people; there were heads at every window. Some of these folk had paid large sums of money for these vantage points. But he had a view as good as theirs, for free.

To his left, the wide space around the Arc de Triomphe had been cleared for the dignitaries who were all in deepest mourning dress, or uniform. The great arch itself was an extraordinary sight. Three years ago, a huge sculpture of the goddess Victory in her chariot had been placed on top, making it even more dramatic than before. An enormous drape hung like a scooped curtain over one side of the monument; long banners hung from its corners. And taking up most of the great central arch was the ornate and massive catafalque, sixty feet high, in which Victor Hugo had been lying in state.

It was more than a funeral. It was an apotheosis.

The crowds were all in black. The better-off men wore top hats. Thomas himself had put on a short coat that was dark enough, but he wore a blue workingman’s cap. He supposed Victor Hugo wouldn’t mind.

He was staring toward the arch, where the funeral orations were beginning, when he saw the girl.

She was standing about fifteen yards away, in the front row. He could see only the back of her head, and there was nothing special about that. There was really no reason he should have felt drawn toward this particular head in the sea of people all around. But for some reason it seemed to him to be special.

He could see that she had frizzy brown hair. The skin on the back of her neck looked pale. He couldn’t tell what she was wearing, but he thought that she probably belonged to the poorer classes, like himself. He wondered if she would turn round.

The funeral orations were starting. He couldn’t hear them properly, but that didn’t matter. He was there. He was part of the great event.

And everyone knew what must be said. Victor Hugo wasn’t only a great romantic poet and novelist. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity were his watchwords, and he’d lived by them. When Napoléon III had made himself dictator, Hugo had shamed him before all the world, choosing exile in the island of Guernsey, and refusing to come back until democracy was restored. When the Germans invaded France, he’d returned at once, to share starvation with the people of Paris. He’d served as a deputy and a senator too, and taken up residence on one of the splendid avenues that radiated out from the Arc de Triomphe. He was France’s greatest patriot, the conscience of the nation, the finest spirit of the age.

A few years ago, as a birthday present, the city had even renamed the avenue where he lived: avenue Victor Hugo.

From time to time, an oration would end, and the echo of applause could be heard before another speech began. Each time, Thomas would watch the young woman carefully, in case she turned her head. But although she shifted her position a little, he never saw her face. Meanwhile, the clouds were departing from the sky, and the Arc de Triomphe was bathed in sunlight.

At last the ceremonies were drawing to a close. He heard a church bell start to sound the hour of noon. And at that moment, the entire sky above Paris seemed to shake as a huge roar of cannon split the air. Gun after gun saluted, each bang and rumble reverberating off the buildings, so that it was hard to guess where the guns were placed.

He saw the girl step forward into the roadway, trying to discover where the sounds were coming from. She turned right around, saw him and stared—which was hardly surprising since, thanks to his rope, he was leaning so far forward that he appeared to be hovering in the air above the heads of the people in front of him. As for Thomas, he was gazing at her as if he’d seen a vision.

She was wearing the plain dress of a simple working girl. Her face was lightly freckled, her nose small, her mouth was not too wide, but generous. Her eyes were hazel, as far as he could see. She looked at him quizzically. And then she smiled.

To his surprise, at that moment, he didn’t feel a rush of excitement. In fact, he felt strangely calm, as if everything in the world had suddenly fallen into place.

This was the one. He didn’t know how, or why he knew it, but he did. This was the girl he was going to marry. This was his destiny and nothing could change it. He was filled with a sense of lightness, of warmth and peace. He smiled back at her. Had she felt it as well? He thought perhaps she had.

But already the huge cortege was starting to move. A soldier was making her move back. Her head turned, there was a jostling in the crowd and he lost sight of her.

He must get to her side. He reached up and started to undo the knot in the rope. But he had been leaning out for so long that the knot was too tight for even his strong fingers. He felt for the knot where the rope went around his waist. The same thing. He struggled for a minute or two, without success.

“Has anyone got a knife?”

The black coach bearing the casket was passing. All the men were taking their hats off. Nobody even looked at him. He remembered, just too late, to remove his workman’s cap. The coach passed. A phalanx of the great men of France walked behind it.

“For the love of God, has anyone got a knife?” he called again. Slowly, the man whose head he’d stepped on turned up to look. Thomas gave him an apologetic smile. “Pardon, monsieur,” he said politely, “but as you see, I’ve been left hanging here.” The man considered him for a long moment. Then he reached into his coat pocket, drew out a pen knife and showed it to him.

“I have a knife,” he said.

“If you could do me the kindness …,” Thomas continued, using his best manners.

“It is a pity,” the man remarked pleasantly, “that the rope is not around your neck.” Then he put the knife back in his pocket, and turned to look at the cortege again.

Thomas thought for half a minute.

“Hey,” he called down. “Monsieur with the knife.” The man paid no attention. “I’ve got to pee. You want it on your head?”

The man looked up furiously. Thomas shrugged, put his hands to his front and started to unbutton his fly. The man tried to move away, but the crowd was pressed so thick he couldn’t budge. With a curse, he reached into his pocket again.

“Cut your cock off, then,” he replied. But he handed up the knife.

The knife was quite sharp. It took only a few seconds for Thomas to saw through the rope and release himself. He folded the knife.

“Merci, monsieur,” he cried. “You are very kind.” Then he tossed the knife down so that it fell just behind the man’s back, leaving him trying helplessly to pick it up from the ground.

Using the narrow ledge and where necessary the heads of the spectators, he managed to move along the building to the corner, where he found enough space to get down. Worming and discreetly kicking his way forward, he began to work his way toward the street. “Pardon, madame, pardon, monsieur, I have to pee,” he cried. Some let him push through. Others resisted. “Pee in your pants, you little shit,” said one man. But eventually Thomas reached the roadway.

Ducking and weaving behind the soldiers lining the route, he managed to get back to the place where he had seen the girl.

But she wasn’t there. He looked right and left. No sign of her. It was impossible, he thought. No one could move far in that crowd—unless they used tactics like he had.

But somehow she had gone.

He managed to get a little farther along the line of spectators, before a soldier stopped him and made him stand still. Detachments of cavalry passed, and important men in top hats, and bands. The cortege seemed endless. Though he continued to crane his head this way and that, he never caught sight of the girl again.



It was mid-afternoon when Thomas arrived back at Montmartre. Monsieur Gascon had declared that he could honor Victor Hugo best by taking a drop of wine at the Moulin de la Galette, and his wife, who’d been suffering lately from a painful vein in her leg, had been glad to go there with him. As for young Luc, he had declared that it was his duty to keep his parents company, though Thomas knew very well that his little brother was just being lazy.

So Thomas joined them at the Moulin, and gave them a general account of the proceedings. It was only later, when they were alone, that he confided to Luc about the girl.

Although Luc was still only twelve years old, it sometimes seemed to Thomas that his little brother was already more worldly than he was. Perhaps it was his constant hanging around places like the Moulin, or perhaps it was just something innate in Luc’s character, but Thomas was more likely to confide such information to him than to most adults.

“You had a touche,” Luc said. A mutual attraction.

“No,” said Thomas, “more than that. A coup de foudre.” A thunderbolt. Love at first sight.

“How will you find her again?”

“I don’t know. It’ll happen.”

“You think it’s fate?”

“Yes.”

“That’s impressive.”



But he didn’t find her. He had no information he could use. The city and suburbs of Paris now contained more than three million people, and she could be anywhere. She might even have come from another town.

At first, on days when he wasn’t working, he’d go to the spot where he had seen her. He’d go at noon, the exact moment when their eyes had met. Might it be that she was also looking for him? And if so, mightn’t she have the same idea and find him there? It was a long shot, but it was the only hope he had.

As the weeks and months went by, in his spare time, he’d go for a walk in a different part of the city, just in case he might catch sight of her. He came to know Paris far better, but he never saw the girl. Only Luc knew about these wanderings.

“You’re like a knight in search of the Holy Grail,” he told his older brother, and each time Thomas returned, Luc would quietly ask, “Did you find the Grail?”



Though he did not find the Holy Grail, these wanderings had another effect upon Thomas that was profoundly to influence his destiny. That spring, he’d been busy at Gaget, Gauthier et Cie. Although the Statue of Liberty had been completed in time for the Fourth of July the previous year, the huge pedestal on which it was to rest in New York had not been ready. It wasn’t until the start of 1885 that Thomas had helped dismantle the huge statue, which was finally packed into 214 large crates and shipped across the Atlantic. It had been on its way to New York on the day of Victor Hugo’s funeral.

The question then became, what was he to do next?

To his mother’s delight, Gaget, Gauthier et Cie were happy to employ him. Evidently his hard work and his good eye had impressed them. “They tell me that in a few years, I could become one of the skilled men who make the carvings and the ornaments,” he reported. Skilled work. Safe work. It was everything his mother had always hoped for.

The trouble was, he didn’t want it.

Was it the long walks in his quest for the girl? Was it the feeling of being cooped up when he was working in the sheds at the foundry? Or the prospect of one day sitting at one of the long work tables with all the craftsmen and being unable to move? Whatever the cause, his strong young body revolted against the idea. He wanted to be out of doors. He wanted to feel the strength of his arm. He scarcely cared about the weather, even when it was cold, or raining, as long as he was physically working.

He was young. He was strong. He rejoiced in the sense of his physical power.

He loved to watch the men on the bridges, the riveters on the building sites. One day, without telling his parents what he had done, he politely explained to the foreman at the rue de Chazelles that he was quitting. A week later, he had joined a gang of ironworkers as the most junior member of a riveting gang, and he was working on the railways.

When his mother discovered, she was distraught.

“You don’t understand,” she cried. “Laboring men get sick. They get injured. You won’t always be young and strong. But if you have a skill, you work indoors and you can always find employment.”

But Thomas wasn’t listening.

The Gare Saint-Lazare lay only a short walk southwest from the foot of the hill of Montmartre. Its ever-expanding railway lines serviced the many towns of Normandy, and there were always repairs and alterations to be done.

Through the second half of 1885, therefore, and the spring of 1886, Thomas Gascon went about his work quietly. Early each morning he would walk the mile from his home in Montmartre to the Gare Saint-Lazare. On his days off, he continued to trudge around the different quarters of Paris, in the hope of seeing the girl again. By the spring, he admitted the quest was absurd, but he still went out a couple of times a month, out of habit as much as anything.

“Time to look for another woman,” Luc remarked to him one day. “You’re too faithful.”

“One should be faithful,” Thomas answered with a smile.

Young Luc shrugged and said nothing.



It was in May 1886 that the competition was announced. It was not before time. There were only three years to go before the centenary of the French Revolution, which was, as all Frenchmen knew, the most significant event—with the possible exception of the birth of Christ—in the history of humanity. It was imperative therefore that Paris have another great exhibition. And at the gateway, the Republic wanted something dramatic. Nobody knew what, but it had to be a structure that would make the whole world gasp. On the first of May, the city asked for submissions. And they wanted them fast.

The plans soon started coming. Many were banal. Some absurd. Some structurally impossible. One, at least, was dramatic. It proposed a towering replica of the guillotine. This however was deemed a little grim. Would the world’s visitors really want to walk under a vast, hanging blade? Perhaps not.

And then there was the proposal from Monsieur Eiffel.

He had originally suggested the project some time before, but the city authorities had been uncertain. The huge iron tower he proposed was certainly daring. It was modern. It might be a bit ugly. But as they viewed all the entries now, one thing above all impressed the committee. After the complex construction of the Statue of Liberty, it was clear that Gustave Eiffel the bridge-builder knew what he was doing. If he said the thing could be built, then he’d do it.

All Paris had been following the competition. When the winner was announced, there were many protests. But when Thomas Gascon saw it in the newspaper, he knew at once what he wanted to do.

“I’m going to work with Monsieur Eiffel on his tower,” he told his family.

“But what about your job with the railway?” his mother demanded.

“I don’t care.”

They’d need a lot of ironworkers. He intended to be first in line.



Sometimes Thomas worried about Luc’s character. Had he been too protective of his little brother?

Luc had taken his advice. At school, he’d become the boy who made the other children laugh. Recently, his face had started to fill out, and together with his dark hair he looked more Italian than ever. He was clever, and worldly-wise. But it seemed to Thomas that Luc was also in danger of getting lazy, and soft. And he privately resolved to do something about this. It was part of his secret program that, one Sunday that October, he took Luc for a strenuous walk.

The mid-morning sun was on the autumn leaves when they set off. Luc had looked up at the clouds scudding in from the west, and told Thomas that he thought it was going to rain, but Thomas had told him not to be silly, and that he didn’t care if it rained anyway.

In fact, when he’d woken up that morning, Thomas had thought he might be starting a cold, but he wasn’t going to let a small thing like that distract him from the more important business of toughening up his brother.

“I’ll take you somewhere you’ve never been before,” he promised him.

Descending the hill of Montmartre and walking eastward, they crossed a big, handsome canal that brought water to the city from the edge of the Champagne region, and soon afterward were walking up the long slope to their destination. The walk made him feel good, and by the time they reached the entrance, he felt he had shaken off his cold.

Though Baron Haussmann had built many handsome boulevards, his most delightful project was not a street at all, but a romantic park on the city’s eastern edge. The Buttes-Chaumont was a high, rocky outcrop, about a mile north of the Père Lachaise Cemetery. Formerly it had been a quarry like Montmartre, but Haussmann and his team had transformed it into a rural retreat in keeping with the spirit of the times.

If the formal gardens of Louis XIV’s reign had given way to the more natural landscaping of the Age of Reason, the nineteenth century was enjoying a rich duality. On the one hand, it was the age of steam, iron bridges and industry. Yet in the arts it was the high romantic period. And while Germany had given the world the cosmic themes of Wagner, romantic France was more intimate and picturesque.

They entered through one of the western gates. The winding paths led through glades planted with all manner of trees and bushes, many of them still richly colored. In the middle of the park a small artificial lake surrounded a high, rocky promontory on the top of which a little round temple had been built. It looked like a scene out of some lush, Italian landscape painting.

They had brought some bread and cheese to eat in the middle of the day, and a bottle of beer. But before beginning their picnic, they agreed to visit the park’s best-known attraction. Crossing to the island by a long, suspended footbridge, it took them little time to find it.

The grotto was a magical spot. Situated just inside a small cave in the rock face, its high chamber was festooned with stalactites. Still more striking, a high waterfall cascaded water from sixty feet above into a pool at the back, from which it flowed away over rocks. If a nymph from classical mythology had suddenly appeared from behind one of the grotto’s rocks and started dancing with her companions, it would hardly have seemed surprising.

And most wonderful of all, it was artificial. The cave was the entrance to the old quarry. The stalactites were sculptures. The waterfall was created by hydraulic engineering. It was romantic, certainly. But the romance was not that of forest and cave and majestic mountain. It was theater.

“Perhaps,” said Luc mischievously, “the maiden you’ve been seeking lives here in the grotto. Wait a minute and she’ll come out of the waterfall.”

“Let’s go and eat,” said Thomas.



They crossed the bridge again and followed another path until they came to a green lawn, where they sat down. High above the island, they could see the craggy peak where the little temple stood. All around them, the leaves on the trees were gleaming gold. They ate their bread and cheese, and drank their beer. Thomas stretched out and looked up at the sky.

There were more gray clouds than before. He watched idly as a large bank of clouds approached the sun, screened it in a haze and then obscured it. He waited for the cloud to break, but it didn’t. He felt a draft of colder, damper air and heard a light rustle in the leaves. The leaves weren’t golden anymore, but had taken on that strange, luminous yellow color that he’d often noticed when there was electricity in the air. He stood up.

“It’s going to rain. We’d better head home,” said Luc.

“Not yet. We’ll visit the temple first.”

Luc looked up at the high crag.

“That would take a while,” he said.

“Not long,” answered Thomas. “Let’s go,” he commanded.

They crossed over the bridge to the island again. And then they took the steep path that led them up the hill. It was quite picturesque, like climbing a mountain ravine, and Thomas was happy even if Luc was not.

They were halfway up when, from the west, they heard a distant rumble of thunder.

“Let’s go back down,” said Luc.

“Why?” said Thomas.

“Do you want to get caught in a thunderstorm?”

“Why not?” said Thomas. “Come on.”

So they continued up the steep and winding path until they emerged at the little round temple. And just as they did, they heard the thunder again, and this time it echoed and reverberated all around the huge, broad valley in which Paris lay, so that if he hadn’t felt the wind from the west, Thomas would hardly have known where the weather was coming from.

The temple was a small folly, modeled on the famous Temple of Vesta in Rome. From this high vantage point, Thomas could see the broad summit of Montmartre, and looking to his left, between high trees, he glimpsed the towers of Notre Dame in the distance. He knew there were many strange figures on the top of those towers: Gothic gargoyles and all manner of stone monsters, looking out over Paris, and it pleased him to think that, perched up here on this crag, he might be as high in the sky as they were.

The gray clouds were overhead now, but a few miles to the west was a great line of darker clouds. Beneath it, a curtain of falling rain stretched across the city. Above it rose layers of black cloud banks. As Thomas gazed at these, he saw a flash within, followed by a crack of thunder.

The curtain of rain was advancing up the far side of Montmartre. On the hilltop, the tall scaffolding on the site of the rising Sacré Coeur stood out like a group of gallows. And while Thomas watched, the big site seemed to dissolve, and the hill with it, as the rain swallowed them up.

Then came another flash; and this time, with a tearing crack, a great stanchion of forked lightning snaked down the sky and struck close by the towers of Notre Dame. And as Thomas imagined the stone figures up there, staring out at the storm while the lightning crashed around them, their faces quite unmoved, he smiled to himself.

The storm was coming swiftly toward them now, over the rooftops, over the canals. Luc called out that they’d better seek shelter, but Thomas didn’t want to. Ever since he was a little boy, he had loved the electric excitement of thunderstorms. He didn’t know why. The rain began to pour down on them and Luc stood under the temple arches in a futile attempt to keep dry, but Thomas stayed where he was, standing on a slab of rock, letting the rain pound on his head. The rain was coming so hard that he couldn’t see the park below. The storm was directly above the park now. A huge bang shook the air as lightning struck a tree not a hundred paces away, but while Luc cringed, Thomas kept his feet planted, testing himself, proving that a poor young man in workman’s boots could dare the gods of the storm to strike him down, like a romantic hero.

Ten full minutes passed before the rain slackened a little and Thomas and Luc descended the hill and began their walk home. It was raining all the way, and Luc complained, but Thomas trudged firmly on, knowing that he must make a man of his brother.



So he was quite annoyed when, the next morning, he woke with a sore throat. By noon, he was shivering.



The illness of Thomas Gascon lasted many weeks. At first they thought it was the flu. Then they feared tuberculosis.

When pneumonia finally set in, and a fever racked his body, and he became delirious, the doctor told his parents that he might survive, because he was young and strong.

By November, he was past the worst; by December he was resting. But in January the doctor warned his parents that his lungs were compromised.

It was his father who found an answer: a charcuterie at the bottom of the hill of Montmartre, and run by a widow he knew, named Madame Michel, who had a daughter. It wasn’t a bad place. Unwillingly, Thomas worked there through the early months of 1887.

But he still dreamed of working on Monsieur Eiffel’s tower, and one February day, when the weather was mild and he had the afternoon off, he decided to go down to look at the site.



The huge rectangle of the Champ de Mars lay about a mile south of the Arc de Triomphe, just across the river on the Left Bank. Until the eighteenth century, it had been a pleasant quarter of market gardens and allotments. But then a big military school was built along its southern edge, and the gardens running from the school to the Seine became a parade ground, and a site for great gatherings after the Revolution. The place had been made even more splendid a few years later when, to celebrate one of his many victories, the emperor Napoléon had ordered a fine bridge, the Pont d’Iéna, to be built across the Seine directly opposite the place. So the Champ de Mars had been an excellent choice for mounting the World’s Fair of 1889. People would be able to walk across the Pont d’Iéna to the Left Bank and then directly under Monsieur Eiffel’s astounding tower whose four, splayed iron feet would form the colossal entrance arch.

Everything had been set. Except for one thing.

Thomas remembered the day his father had come in with the news.

“Your friend Monsieur Eiffel has a problem,” he’d announced. “The city has told him to build his tower, but they’re giving him only a quarter of the money.”

“So who’s paying for it?”

“Eiffel. He’s got to pay for the tower himself.”

It was an extraordinary situation. To celebrate the centenary of the French Revolution, the city of Paris had ordered a tower and refused to pay for it.

But if Eiffel was a great and inventive engineer, he now showed that he was an entrepreneur of huge courage and vision. “Give me the right to the first twenty years of the tower’s earnings,” he said, “and I’ll find the money.”

So as Thomas approached the empty building site, he knew that before him lay not only the pride of France, but the financial triumph or ruin of Monsieur Eiffel himself.

In front of Thomas now was a huge field of mud. The great 136-yard square that would be the footprint of the tower was marked by huge trenches at the four corners—north, south, east and west—where crews of laborers were busily digging.

He started to walk onto the site to take a look. A man in an overcoat and bowler hat rushed over and told him sternly that he must leave. But after Thomas explained that he had worked for Monsieur Eiffel on the Statue of Liberty, and that he’d been sick, the man became friendly and offered to conduct him around.

They looked first at the two big excavations at the southern and eastern corners, where one could already see, at the bottom of the pit, a good, dry base where the concrete foundations could be poured. Then they walked over to one of the riverside diggings. And Thomas gasped.

The huge pit in front of him was like a mineshaft. Down at the bottom was a great, open metal box of the kind used to keep out river water when the piers of a bridge are being built. Inside it, the men were using pickaxes and shovels to tear away the ground.

“They’re already below the level of the Seine,” his guide explained. “The committee chose the site, but when Monsieur Eiffel tested it, he found that the ground on the riverside was so wet it wouldn’t take the ordinary foundations.” He grinned. “Paris would have had its own Leaning Tower of Pisa, but five times higher.”

“Can the tower still be built?”

“Oh yes. It’ll have two dry foundations, and two deep ones like this.” He smiled. “But it’s lucky Eiffel knows how to build in rivers.”



For nearly three more months, Thomas continued to work in the store. Madame Michel was kind to him. He also noticed something else.

Her daughter was a sallow, yellow-haired girl named Berthe of about his own age. She seldom spoke at all, and moved about behind the counter at a languid pace that, secretly, almost drove Thomas mad.

So he was greatly astonished when, in May, his father announced: “The widow likes you.”

“I’m glad.”

“So does Berthe.” His father smiled. “She likes you a lot.”

“Are you sure?” And when his father nodded and grinned, he was forced to say: “The feeling’s not mutual.”

“You could do well there,” his father continued, as though Thomas hadn’t spoken. “She’ll inherit the store, you know … It’s a nice little business. Marry her and you’ll be set up for life.”

“I’d rather die,” said Thomas.

“A man’s got to eat,” said his father. “Your mother thinks it’s a good idea, too.”



It was the last Sunday in May and he’d gone for a stroll around Montmartre in the afternoon. The sun was out, and as he entered an intimate little square called the Place du Tertre, he saw that several painters had set up their easels there.

Attracted by the cheap rents and picturesque surroundings, artists had taken to living up on Montmartre since about the time he was born. He’d heard tales of Monsieur Renoir up at the Moulin, and it was quite normal to find a few painters out in the open with their easels on a sunny afternoon. Thomas walked through the square glancing at the canvases as he went, but without much interest. Most of the artists were painting the view from the square along the street to the building site of Sacré Coeur, where the scaffolding made a striking outline against the sky. But as he passed one of them, he noticed something different.

The man was a good-looking fellow in his early thirties, with a light brown beard and a pipe. He had two easels, side by side. One held a sketchbook, the other a primed canvas on which he was just starting to work. Thomas stared at the sketch, and stopped.

“Pardon, monsieur,” he said politely, “but isn’t that the Gare Saint-Lazare?”

“It is.” The artist looked up with a pleasant smile. “It’s a sketch I made last winter. A snow scene, but I felt like working it up today.” He shrugged. “It’s nice to sit out in the sun.”

“I worked there last year,” said Thomas, inspecting the sketch. “I can see the railway lines, the steam from the trains. That’s exactly how it looks.”

“Thank you.”

“But why would you paint a railway?”

“Why not? Monet has painted several pictures of the Gare Saintazare.”

“So are you what they call an Impressionist?”

“You can call me that if you like.” The artist smiled. “The term began as an insult, you know. But nobody really knows what it means. Half the people they call Impressionists don’t in fact use the word.”

“You live here, monsieur?”

“Mostly. I was in Holland, in Rotterdam, this spring. I may go back there.”

“What is your name, monsieur?”

“Norbert Goeneutte.”

“You know Monsieur Renoir?”

“Very well. I have modeled for him, in fact.”

“My name is Thomas Gascon. I live here. I am an ironworker. I built the Statue of Liberty.” They shook hands. Thomas continued to inspect the sketch. “I still can’t believe you painted a railway line.”

“You expect artists to paint gods and goddesses in pretty Italian landscapes?”

“I don’t know.”

“Plenty of people expect that. But what I try to do, and Monet, and many others, is paint the world around us. Paint what we really see.”

“But a railway station isn’t beautiful …”

“Are you familiar with any writers?”

“I was at the funeral of Victor Hugo.”

“So was I. Can’t think how I missed you.” The artist paused a moment. “Hugo was a great man. No question. But for myself, I prefer another writer of that generation—and that’s Balzac. He tried to depict the exact reality of the world he saw all around him. From the richest aristocrat to the poorest fellow in the street, and all the men and women in between—lawyers, shopkeepers, whores, beggars. We call it realism. That’s what some of the people you call Impressionists are doing, too. Renoir painted the people at the Moulin de la Galette. I paint all kinds of things, including railway trains. As for beauty, what does that mean? A railway is beautiful to me. Because we don’t live in a world of nymphs and fawns and classical gods. We live in a world of railways, and steam and iron bridges. It’s new and exciting. It’s the great adventure. It’s the spirit of the age.” He grinned at Thomas. “You build the bridges, my friend, and I’ll paint them.”

Thomas stared at him. No one had ever spoken to him like this before. But he understood well enough. And the painter was right. The railways and their bridges were the spirit of the age. He, a humble ironworker, should be part of it. And the greatest iron construction in the history of the world was about to begin, here in Paris.

“I am going to be building Monsieur Eiffel’s tower,” he suddenly declared.

Norbert Goeneutte stared at his canvas thoughtfully for a moment, then he looked up and delivered his verdict.

“I congratulate you. That’s a big adventure, my friend.”



That Wednesday was the first of June. Luc was surprised when Thomas insisted he accompany him to Madame Michel’s emporium in the morning, but he set off with him all the same. It wasn’t until they were halfway down the hill of Montmartre that Thomas told him his plan.

“You’re mad,” said Luc. “What will our mother say? And father too.”

“I’m going to do it anyway,” said Thomas.

While Thomas waited, therefore, Luc went through the Place de Clichy to the widow’s store and told her: “My brother is sick today. He sent me to tell you and apologize.” Madame was most concerned, and only when Luc had assured her that Thomas had nothing more than an upset stomach, and that he would certainly be back at work the next day, did she let him go.

It took them over an hour to walk to the Eiffel company workshops in the northwestern suburb of Levallois-Perret. When they got there, they found a hive of activity. The framework of the huge tower was being assembled in fifteen-foot sections that were placed in huge stacks prior to shipment from the factory to the building site. Over a hundred ironworkers were busily engaged in this assembly and riveting work. But when Thomas politely asked if Monsieur Eiffel was there, he was told that the engineer was to be found at the Champ de Mars that day.

Once again therefore the brothers set off, to the south this time, passed by the Arc de Triomphe and finally, toward eleven in the morning, crossed the Pont d’Iéna and entered the huge building site.

The foundations were all but finished now. They looked like four gigantic gun emplacements, ready to fire across each other to the four horizons. In the middle of this great platform a group of engineers and other gentlemen clustered around a single figure, like a general with his staff.

“That’s him,” said Thomas. “That’s Monsieur Eiffel.” He took a deep breath. “Come on.”

Since Monsieur Eiffel was deep in conversation, they stood a little way apart. They had to wait half an hour before the group finally broke up, and Eiffel began to walk off the site with just a couple of companions, toward the river.

“Monsieur Eiffel,” Thomas called out, just loud enough for the engineer to hear, as he moved to intercept him. Eiffel turned and looked at the two young people inquiringly. “Monsieur Eiffel, I am Thomas Gascon. I worked for you on the Statue of Liberty,” Thomas said, as he came up with him.

“Ah.” Eiffel paused, clearly trying to remember him. Then he smiled. “Young Monsieur Gascon from Aquitaine, who went to search for his brother, n’est-ce pas?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

Eiffel indicated to his companions that they should move on and that he would join them shortly.

“And I forget—did you find your brother?”

“This is him.” Thomas indicated Luc.

“And what can I do for you, Monsieur Gascon?”

“I should like to work for you on the tower, Monsieur Eiffel. Just like I did on the Statue.”

“But my friend, we have a full complement. It would have given me pleasure to employ you on two such notable projects. Why did you not apply at the start, when we were hiring?”

Thomas hesitated only a second.

“My brother here was sick, monsieur, and my family needed me at home.” He glanced at Luc, who managed to cover his astonishment, and continued: “He is well now, as you see.” And Luc solemnly nodded.

Eiffel looked at him thoughtfully.

“I know you are a good worker,” said Eiffel. “And as it happens, we are short one man at present. But this is not in the factory. We are short a ‘flyer,’ the fellows who go up the tower.”

“That is what I should like best of all, monsieur,” cried Thomas. “Perhaps this is fate,” he added hopefully.

“Hmm. Have you ever worked on a high bridge? Do you have a head for heights? It would be very dangerous for you if you hadn’t.”

“I have a wonderful head for heights, monsieur, I promise you.”

“Very well. Report here on the last Monday of this month. Ask for Monsieur Compagnon. I shall tell him to expect you. The wages aren’t huge, but they’re fair.” He nodded, to indicate that the interview was over, and set off toward the river.

“Thank you, monsieur,” Thomas called after him.



As Thomas and his brother crossed over the Pont d’Iéna a short time later, Luc turned to him.

“Why did you lie? Why did you tell him I was sick?”

“It was necessary,” Thomas confessed. “If he’d thought I was sick, he wouldn’t have hired me.”

“But you are sick. At least, a bit. Are you strong enough to do this?”

“I’ll be fine by the end of the month.”

“Everyone’s going to be furious,” Luc reminded him. “The doctor, our mother, Madame Michel … and especially Berthe.”

“I know. We needn’t tell them yet.”

“Well, if you don’t marry Berthe, maybe you’d better find that mystery girl of yours.”

Thomas laughed.

“To tell you the truth, I can’t even remember what she looks like. Do you know, it’s two years, to the day, since I saw her at Victor Hugo’s funeral.”

They continued a little farther in silence. Then Luc spoke.

“Are you sure you have a head for heights?”