Paris: The Novel (128 page)

She shook her head.

“There is something else. You remember I said that nothing seemed right with me at first, and you told me these things would gradually pass. And it is true that I am better. But something is still not right.” She paused. “My time of the month has not come. This is the second time.”

He stared at her.

“I will examine you,” he said.

Some doctors and midwives swore that they could tell from a woman’s urine. He would make the inspection if the patients seemed to want it,
to keep them happy. But Blanchard was never entirely convinced by this test. If a woman had missed two periods, however, he considered it highly likely that she was pregnant. False pregnancies could occur, occasionally. But he had developed an instinct, which he could not explain himself, which he had come to trust. A few minutes later, therefore, he told her:

“It seems, Madame de Cygne, that after all, you are going to have a child.”

The months that followed were strange times. The moderate Girondins were in the ascendant now, the Jacobins reviled. Even when gangs of gilded youths, some claiming to be royalists, attacked Jacobins in the streets, no one seemed to care.

True, the Committee of Public Safety and the Tribunal were still in existence, but their power was much muted now. Some of the unfortunates that the Jacobins had thrown in jail remained under lock and key, but others were released. Even some aristocrats who had fled abroad were allowed to return.

And as 1795 began, some of the churches—so long as they rang no bells and displayed no crosses—were being allowed to operate discreetly again.

They were times of confusion, and contradiction. But at least they were not the Terror anymore.

And so it was, in March 1795, when to add to all this chaos there was a shortage of bread on the Paris streets, that Dr. Blanchard was able to obtain permission to remove Sophie de Cygne from the Temple tower into his safekeeping, in order that she might safely have her child. After all, as he pointed out, it was one less prisoner to find bread for. And when the boy was born, no one bothered to object when he removed the baby and his mother quietly to the family château in the valley of the Loire.

Sophie called the baby Dieudonné—the gift of God. And truly, it seemed to Blanchard, that was what the baby was.

For a time, in the years that followed, Émile Blanchard and Sophie kept in touch. He was rather proud of the fact that it was he, Blanchard, to whom the noble family of de Cygne owed their continued existence. For her part, she was determined to bring up her son away from Paris,
which she had come to fear. And this the doctor could well understand. Dieudonné de Cygne was brought up in the quiet of the country, therefore, and there could not possibly, Blanchard thought, be any harm in that.

Not that life in Paris was so bad. The Revolution had learned a lesson from the Terror. Gradually, a legislature with two chambers emerged, themselves subject to election and law. There were problems. Members of the Convention dominated the legislature. There were riots, effectively put down. But for four years, the new system, with a small Directory acting as a cabinet government, brought some order to the land.

Émile kept meaning to go down and visit Dieudonné and his mother, but somehow other business always intervened.

For his own life in Paris kept him very busy indeed. His practice thrived. He treated a number of politicians and their families. But perhaps the most important patient he ever acquired was a charming lady, a widow with two children, who was the mistress of Barras, one of the members of the Directory.

In itself, this was a most useful contact, but it was to lead further than Blanchard could have imagined.

For when Barras decided that it would be a good idea if Joséphine transferred her attentions to a rising young general, who was proving most useful to him, and who was clearly fascinated by her, Blanchard found himself the friend of young Napoléon Bonaparte.

“And from then on,” he would tell the younger members of his family in years to come, “I never looked back.”

For whatever the faults of the future consul and emperor of France, Napoléon was a loyal friend. Having decided that the doctor attending Joséphine was an honest and capable man, he sent patients to him throughout his reign. Often they were powerful and rich. Blanchard was well rewarded.

By the time that the emperor Napoléon’s extraordinary reign of conquest, imperial grandeur and tragedy was finally brought to an end in 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo, Dr. Émile Blanchard was a wealthy man and ready to retire to the pleasant house he had purchased in Fontainebleau.

Not that the fall of the emperor affected him professionally. He was secure, he was fashionable. The restoration of the monarchy brought him more aristocratic patients than he could possibly accept.

It also caused him, quite inadvertently, to do a final good turn to the family of de Cygne.

In the year 1818, one of his noble patients asked the good doctor if he’d like to be presented to the king. Naturally, Blanchard was happy, and somewhat intrigued, to accept.

He found the king much as he’d expected: very corpulent, but with a certain nobility and dignity in his face. When the nobleman told the king that Blanchard had treated such people as Danton, Robespierre and others in the days of the Revolution, Blanchard was a little taken by surprise.

He was afraid that this information would not make him a very welcome visitor with the king, and he would hardly have blamed him. But not at all. The king was rather curious, and asked him to tell him about them. Then he asked what had been Blanchard’s most memorable experience from that time. And Émile was just wondering what to say when he remembered poor Étienne de Cygne and his son—whom he hadn’t thought about for several years.

He told the king the whole story, start to finish.

“And so this lie you told, that the lady was pregnant, not only saved her life, but turned out to be true?”

“Exactly, sire. Conception must have been a day or two before, I think.”

“It was a miracle.”

“The boy was named Dieudonné, sire, since he was clearly a gift from God. Thanks to his birth, the family continues.”

“A family, my dear doctor, who have served my own for many centuries. I had not known of this wonderful circumstance.”

He seemed quite delighted.

“Well,” he suddenly declared, “if God shows such favor to the de Cygnes, then so should their king. I shall make the boy a vicomte.”

And it gave Dr. Blanchard great pleasure, soon afterward, to write to Dieudonné and his mother to congratulate them on this happy addition to the family’s ancient honor.

•  1936  •

When Roland de Cygne had first proposed to her, Marie had made a mistake. She’d refused.

“I’m very honored,” she told him, “and very touched. But you need a wife who can devote herself to you, and your estate, and your son. And with Joséphine to look after, I can’t do that. I wouldn’t be any use to you.” She had smiled. “If it weren’t for all that, I think I should say yes. But I know it wouldn’t be fair to you.”

“I did not make any conditions in making my offer.”

“I know. But that doesn’t change the circumstances.” She had put her hand affectionately on his arm. “I should like it very much if we could be friends.”

“Of course.”

“And I think you are right. May I say it? You should marry. God knows, there must be any number of charming women in Paris who would leap at the chance.”

“But it was you I was asking,” he pointed out.

“There are many better choices all the same.”

“Well then,” he said crossly, “if you are so certain about it, you’d better find me a wife.”

“You want
me
to find you a wife?”

“Why not? You tell me you are my friend, and that although you can’t marry me yourself, there are all these other women I should marry instead. Very well. Show them to me. I trust your judgment. You choose the wife, and I will marry her.”

She had laughed. But as she was growing fond of him, she did select one or two women, introduced them, and sent him out with them.

The first one he told her frankly was beautiful, “but there was no spark between us.”

The second he liked better. But she was “just a little too stupid.”

“Ah,” she cried, “you are
difficile
!”

“Perhaps, but I must ask you to try again.”

The third took her a month to find. The woman was aristocratic, amusing, elegant—perfect in every way. He took her to the opera and to dinner. To her surprise, he turned up without warning at her apartment the following evening.

“Well,” she asked, “how was this one?”

“No good.” He shook his head.

“What’s the matter with her?”

“She’s too intelligent.”

Marie burst out laughing. “You’re not
difficile
; you’re
impossible
.”

He made a face. “What can I do?”

She took his coat by the lapels, pretending to shake him. And whether she was taken by surprise when he held her and kissed her, or whether she was not, they had become lovers that evening.

“I shall be your mistress, but only until you find a wife,” she declared.

But then Claire had left for America. She hadn’t realized what an effect that would have. Life at the Joséphine store was not the same. They tried to replace her, but none of the replacements worked. Before long both she and Marc came to the same conclusion. They weren’t having any fun. The store was still doing well, yet they could both foresee that it would slide into mediocrity. They’d decided to close it.

So now she had nothing to do. And she was lonely.

She had no right to be lonely, she told herself. She had her brother and her aged parents, and even Gérard’s widow and children. She had many friends. She had a lover.

But her only child—and her grandchildren, when they came into the world—would probably remain three thousand miles away. The store which had filled her days was no more. She hadn’t enough to do.

Roland, reading her mood, had proposed again, and this time she had accepted. Cleverly, he had pretended that his affairs were in less good order than they actually were. And the château, he assured her, needed a
thorough renovation. She had a project now, to keep her busy. She felt a sense of purpose again.

And indeed, there were all kinds of decisions to be made. The first was what to do with the mansion in Paris. For ample though de Cygne’s resources were, the place had become drainingly expensive to maintain. “The sensible thing would be to live in the country, and to maintain an apartment in Paris,” she told him.

“I wouldn’t know how to live in an apartment,” he complained. But she guessed that he knew very well that this was what he ought to do, and that her role, as the new wife from the upper-middle class, was to organize the business while he told his aristocratic friends that she had made him do it. Since many of those friends had long ago done the same thing, Roland could still claim that he was one of the last holdouts from the old regime. For the truth was that, apart from a few industrialists, or the great Jewish families like the Rothschilds, who had a magnificent mansion above the Champs-Élysées, and a handful of Sephardic families near the Parc Monceau, few people could maintain such houses now.

But Marie had thought of a clever compromise. For two seasons, the de Cygnes had entertained brilliantly in the mansion. This had given Roland a chance to show off his wife to all his old friends and many new figures she was able to entice to the house. With her practice at organizing and her knowledge of the fashionable world, Marie made these parties memorable. They culminated in a magnificent party for Roland’s son.

In the summer of 1929 they sold the house for a huge sum. Three months later, the Wall Street crash came. The next year, for a fraction of the proceeds from the house, they acquired a splendid apartment on the nearby rue Bonaparte. Into this went the best of the furniture from the house. The effect was breathtaking.

Meanwhile, without disturbing the rustic charm of the château—which might have been considered an act of vulgarity—Marie was able to redecorate a salon in the eighteenth-century part of the house, create a magnificent dining room and improve several of the bedrooms with furniture left over from Paris.