Paris: The Novel

by Edward Rutherfurd

  A month later, Jules and his wife had been astonished when Marc had come in one evening and laid his designs out on the dining room table. The work was unlike anything they had seen before. Over the rich, full-bodied shapes of the chairs were carved elegant, sinuous, tendril-like lines that suggested delicate plants.

  “It reminds me of Gothic decoration, yet strangely modern,” remarked his father.

  “It makes me think of orchids,” said his mother. “Where does it come from?”

  “I have a friend at the School of Decorative Arts,” Marc told them. “He’s been showing me all the latest designs from Germany and England. It’s the coming thing.”

  “Does this style have a name?” asked Jules.

  “My friend calls it Art Nouveau. You’ll be setting the fashion. If you don’t mind being a little courageous.”

  “Well”—Jules looked at his wife—“I asked for something striking. Do you like them?”

  Madame Blanchard thought of the effect they would have on her dinner guests. She imagined herself saying, “My son Marc designed these, after he finished at the École des Beaux-Arts.”

  “One would need a table to go with them, or they won’t look right,” she said.

  “Ah. I thought you might say that.” Marc unfurled more plans: for the table, a sideboard, new window treatments, and new wallpaper. “The wallpaper you’ll have to get from England,” he explained. “I checked out the designs already before I designed the chairs.” And he handed them a catalog. “I’m afraid it’s expensive having an artist in the family,” he said with a grin to his father.

  His father considered. The entrepreneur in him understood what his son had done at once.

  “It’s bold,” he said. “Completely bold.” He nodded. “We’ll do it.”

  The next day he showed the designs to his sister.

  “But it’s magnificent!” cried Éloïse. “He really has talent, Jules. I’m delighted.” She thought for a moment. “You know,” she said quietly, “Gérard is a good organizer, but he’d never have thought of this in a thousand years.”

  Jules said nothing. But she knew that he knew it.

  Soon after this, Jules had taken Marc to the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Antoine to see Monsieur Petit, the cabinetmaker.

  Petit was a small round man who moved with a certain gravity. He lived over his workshop in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, as his family had done since before the French Revolution. He took several minutes inspecting the drawings, while his daughter, a pretty young thing of about sixteen, entered the workshop to offer them refreshments. When Petit had completed his inspection, he addressed Marc with the respect of a craftsman for a proven artist.

  “This is the first time I have ever been asked to make furniture to designs like these, monsieur,” he explained, and for the next twenty minutes, he and Marc went over them in detail together, the craftsman asking numerous questions as to measurements, and requesting a few minor design alterations to aid in the making. It gave Jules pleasure to see his son and the craftsman so deep in their discussion that when the pretty girl came in again with their tea, neither Petit nor Marc noticed her at all.

  It had taken many months to make the furniture. Petit asked Marc to come to his workshop several times to ensure that everything was done as he wished. But when the project was completed, Madame Blanchard’s Art Nouveau dining room created a small sensation.

  Meanwhile, Jules was able to get Marc two or three portrait commissions, which Marc completed to everyone’s satisfaction.

  It was the success of the first project that had encouraged Jules to suggest the second.

  For some time, he had been considering a remodeling of his department store. But he hadn’t been sure exactly what he wanted to do. The moment he’d seen Marc’s designs, a plan had begun to take shape in his mind.

  “I want something like what you have done for the dining room, but lighter, more airy. I want to use glass and steel, something absolutely modern, but at the same time sensuous. A big part of our business is selling clothes to women, after all. The Art Nouveau style is perfect for that. I want to design one big room. Then, if we like it, I shall convert the entire store.”

  “That’s a huge project,” Marc pointed out. “I’ll make designs, but I can’t oversee their development and execution. We’ll have to work with architects.”

  This was clearly sensible. Marc had found a firm of architects, and they in turn had found contractors who specialized in the finest steelwork.

  Although Marc had said that he couldn’t supervise the work, his father was aware how often he looked in at the workshop where the decorative steel was being made. And when the actual building was being done, he was on-site in the store almost every day.

  Jules also noticed something else. Marc seemed to have a natural talent for getting on with the workers, who clearly liked him.

  “Did you know,” Marc asked him one day, “that the steelworkers’ foreman worked for Eiffel, both on the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower?”

  “I must confess I didn’t.”

  “He’s very proud of the fact. He was a riveter by trade, but he understands what we’re doing. You should talk to him sometime.”

  “What’s his name?” Jules inquired.

  “Thomas Gascon.”

  And if Jules hadn’t had time to do so, he’d been pleased that Marc discovered these things.

  So why, as the third of the five years he had promised Marc began, should Jules Blanchard be worried about his son?

  It was instinct, perhaps. Instinct, combined with some observation. It seemed to him that Marc was drinking too much. Not that he was getting drunk, but once or twice when he’d dropped by in the evening, his speech had been a little slurred. Jules had told him to take more exercise, but he doubted that Marc had done so. Occasionally he’d go by the studio, a big attic space at the top of a house next door to a small emporium selling charcuterie near the Place de Clichy. There was no doubt that Marc was working. The place was full of canvases. But it seemed to Jules that too many of them were studies of naked women. Of course, that was to be expected in an artist’s studio, but he couldn’t help asking once: “Do you ever paint women with any clothes on?”

  “Certainly, Father. When you got me that commission to paint Madame Du Bois, I not only painted her fully dressed, but wearing a hat as well.”

  That a sketch also existed of the lady wearing the hat, and nothing else, was something there was no need for his father—or the lady’s husband—to know.

  When he expressed his reservations to his sister, however, Éloïse was dismissive.

  “My dear Jules,” she told him, “you are worrying about the wrong member of the family entirely.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The person in the family who needs your care and attention isn’t Marc at all. It’s Marie.”

  “She seems happy enough.”

  “That’s because you like having her at home. But she’s almost twenty-three. She needs to find a husband. I’m sorry to say it, but for once you are neglecting your family duty. It’s high time that you did something about it.”

  There were twenty of them, gallant young officers, sitting all together. They were in high spirits. As well they should be. For they were at the Moulin Rouge.

  Not only that. Tomorrow evening, one of them was going to sleep with the most beautiful woman in Paris. But who?

  The Moulin Rouge was a work of genius. It had been going for only a few years, but it was already a legend.

  It was to be found at the foot of the hill of Montmartre, on the broad and leafy boulevard de Clichy that effectively marked the frontier where the serried order of Baron Haussmann’s Paris met the steep chaos of Montmartre. It occupied a former garden plot sandwiched between two respectable, six-story blocks, its large street-level front forming one edge of a platform. And upon this platform rose an almost full-scale model windmill, painted bright red.

  Even by the exuberant sta
ndards of the Belle Époque, as this age would come to be known, the Moulin Rouge was preposterous. The louche old windmills on the hill above had always been there, but this bright red dummy down below was a loud affront to the baron’s bourgeois boulevard, and meant to be so.

  As such, it was wonderfully French.

  For if, since the time of Louis XIV, governments had tried to impose a stern classical order on the ancient, often tribal lands of France—each with their own dialects, each with probably a score of local cheeses—they hadn’t found it easy. And even here in the nation’s capital, the spirits of old medieval Paris, of markets and alleys, and jostling crowds, kept bursting up, like brightly colored plants and irreverent weeds, breaking through the tightly cemented surfaces and angry order of monarchs, bureaucrats and policemen.

  The Moulin was just such a plant. It was colored bright red. It had the finest cabaret in Paris.

  And everybody went there. Workingmen went there. Ladies of the night, of course. Middle-class Paris went there, and the aristocracy. Even Britain’s Prince of Wales had gone there.

  The young officers were aristocratic. They were all brother officers in the same regiment. Most of the time, they might expect to be stationed in other places, usually on France’s eastern borders; but for the present they were stationed in Paris, and they were determined to make the most of it.

  Like most of the aristocratic regiments of the day, they patronized a particular brothel. If the brothels of Paris were legally regulated, with twice weekly medical inspections, the grandest of them were like private mansions, whose rooms might have exotic themes—Moorish, Babylonian, Oriental. Whenever the Prince of Wales visited Paris, he frequented a very chic brothel where he installed his own bathtub, which he liked to fill with champagne. The house where the officers of the regiment went lay in the quarter between the Opéra and the Louvre. It was discreet, delightful, and was patronized by several great nobles.

  But above all these lay the world of the private courtesan, the grandes horizontales. Though many were kept by a single rich man, others took lovers, sometimes for just a night at a time. The luckiest courtesans might marry a rich and elderly client, even one with a title; and if widowed young enough could live in a mansion of their own, and hold a salon—and take fresh lovers too, of course, as long as they understood that she expected to receive gifts, in cash or kind, for the interest she took in them.

  The courtesan known as La Belle Hélène was as renowned for her charm as for her many other accomplishments. To spend a night in her company was considered a great privilege. It was also very expensive indeed. Even the richest of the aristocratic young officers balked at the price. So they had come up with an agreeable solution.

  Each of the twenty men had contributed the same amount—more than they would have had to pay for a visit to the discreet mansion near the Opéra—into a fund. And tonight they were going to draw lots to discover which of them was to take the money and visit La Belle Hélène.

  But before the lottery took place, they would drink champagne and enjoy the show at the Moulin Rouge.

  Roland de Cygne had never been to the Moulin Rouge before. He’d often meant to go. But as a regular patron of the rival Folies-Bergère, which was nearer the center of town and whose first-rate comedy and modern dance had always satisfied him, he’d somehow never got around to the Moulin Rouge with its saucier fare. Needless to say, as soon as his companions had discovered this fact, he’d had to endure some teasing, which he did with good humor.

  His brother officers liked Roland. He’d shown a fine aptitude for a military career right from the start. When he’d attended the military academy of Saint-Cyr, he’d come out nearly top of his class. Perhaps even more important to his aristocratic companions, he’d shown such prowess at the Cavalry Academy at Saumur that he’d almost made the elite Cadre Noir equestrian team. He was a good regimental soldier, respected by his men, a loyal friend with a kindly sense of humor. He could also be trusted to tell the truth. And he certainly looked the part of the cavalryman. He was a good height, a little taller than his father. His fair hair was parted in the middle, from which it marched out in close-trimmed waves. He wore a short mustache, brushed outward but not curled. The effect was handsome and manly.

  Yet sometimes one might notice a quiet thoughtfulness in his blue eyes, even a hint of proud melancholy, and his brother officers thought it was their job to tease him about this too.

  “There is an air of mystery about you, de Cygne,” one of them now remarked. “Like Athos in The Three Musketeers, I think you have a hidden past. A secret sorrow. Is it a woman?”

  “Of course it is,” the youngest cried. “Tell us, de Cygne. Your secret is safe with us. For at least ten minutes!”

  “No,” the oldest of them, a captain, corrected. “Hidden in that handsome cavalryman’s head, I detect an idealist. One day, de Cygne, you will be a hero, as famous as the great knight Bayard, sans peur et sans reproche. Fearless and beyond reproach. Or you’ll surprise us all and enter a monastery.”

  “A monastery?” cried the youngest. “What are you talking about? We’re at the Moulin Rouge, for God’s sake!”

  “I agree,” Roland responded with a smile. “Anyone wishing to become a monk will be reported to the management.” It was time to end this probing into his character. He glanced around the table. “I think we need more champagne.”

  The captain signaled to the waiter, who was at his side in an instant.

  “More champagne, Luc.”

  “At once, mon capitaine.”

  A few minutes later, the floor show began.

  It had to be said, Roland thought, the Moulin Rouge did what it did supremely well. The cavernous space had room for dozens of tables, but the view of the stage was excellent. Part of the atmosphere of the place was created by its particular light. There were numerous gaslights, which provided a warm glow, but the owners had supplemented these with the latest electric lights, which provided a sparkling overlay, magnified in the huge mirrored glass by the stage that reflected the whole scene. The effect was both risqué and magical at the same time.

  The orchestra was excellent. And then there were the dancers.

  They danced a medley of arrangements that night. There were exotic dances, gymnastic dances with one dancer after another dropping down dramatically to do splits, and then, of course, the dance that had become the Moulin’s signature: the cancan.

  “I’m sorry you never got to see La Goulue perform this,” the captain said to Roland, who nodded. In the space of five years, La Goulue had made herself a legend. Now she’d gone off with a circus on her own. But her replacement, Jane Avril, already made famous thanks to a poster by Toulouse-Lautrec, was quite as good. And where La Goulue was loud and outrageous, Avril was a little more elegant.

  The troupe came on, in silk dresses, black stockings and extravagant, frilly petticoats. They began in a line, swishing their skirts, and performing half kicks. Then they broke up into a complex choreography. The kicks grew higher. One did a cartwheel. Two others dropped into the splits. They formed back into two lines. And then Jane Avril made her entrance.

  If the troupe was athletic, Avril was something more. If the girls had formed a line to support each other as they performed the high kicks, Avril could balance on one leg, like a ballerina, performing half kicks and high kicks one after the other as she made a pirouette. Minute after minute, while the troupe performed all the cancan moves and the tempo increased, Avril was out in front of them, dancing a sort of descant to their tune, before sinking at last, in a single, fluid fall, into a split that made it look like the most natural thing in the world.

  It was the cancan, yet beyond the cancan. It was a work of art.

  When it ended, no one rose to their feet faster than Roland.

  “Magnificent!” he cried as he applauded.

  When the audience had finished applauding, the master of ceremonies announced that there would now be a pause for the orchestra to take r
efreshments before the general dancing began.

  For the officers at the table, the moment had come. The captain took command.

  “On this sheet of paper,” he announced, drawing it from his pocket, “are written the twenty names of the officers in the draw. Against each name is a number. On each of these small cards”—he produced them with a flourish—“is written a single number from one to twenty. Please inspect them.” He laid them ceremoniously on the table. “Very well. To ensure absolute fairness, I have here a blindfold.” He produced a black silk bandana. “Luc!” he called to the waiter. “Come here and bring me a large soup bowl.”

  Luc obliged at once.

  Roland noticed that the waiter was quite a handsome young man, with a broad, intelligent face and dark hair, a lock of which fell down over his broad brow. He might be French or possibly Italian, Roland thought. But his age was hard to guess. He had a lithe way of moving that suggested he might be only twenty, but there was a smoothness and worldliness in his manner that belonged to an older man.

  “Luc,” announced the captain, “I am going to blindfold you.” And he began to tie the black bandana around the waiter’s head.

  As Jacques Le Sourd entered the Moulin Rouge, he did not see the officers at first. He certainly wasn’t looking for them. He’d come there to dance.

  Jacques was a busy man. After a brief spell as a teacher, he had turned to his father’s trade as a typesetter. The work was hard, but he still found time to write articles for the various socialist journals that had sprung up. Today had been a free day, and he’d spent it working on an article he was writing for Le Parti Ouvrier about the anarchist movement.

  It had been a long afternoon. He’d been up on Montmartre, in the Lapin Agile bar, a picturesque establishment on the back slope of the hill, where artists and people with anarchist views liked to congregate. He had interviewed three anarchists. By the time he was finished, it was well into the evening.