Paris: The Novel Read Free Page B

paused. She was gaunt. Beside her stood a dark-haired boy of nine, his hair cut short, his eyes set wide apart. He looked intelligent.
    The widow Le Sourd was forty, but whether it was the drab clothes that hung loosely from her angular body, or that her long hair was gray and unkempt, or that she had a stony face, she seemed much older. And if she looked grim, it was for a reason.
    The night before, not for the first time, her son had asked her a question. And today she had decided that it was time to tell him the truth.
    “Let us go in,” she said.
    The great cemetery of Père Lachaise occupied the slopes of a hill about three miles to the east of the Tuileries Gardens, from which Father Xavier and the little Roland had departed an hour before. It was an ancient burial ground, but in recent times it had become famous. All kinds of great men—statesmen, soldiers, artists and composers—were buried there, and visitors often came to admire their tombs. But it was not a grave that the widow Le Sourd had brought her son to see.
    They entered by the gateway on the city side, below the hill. In front of them stretched tree-lined alleys and cobbled walks, like little Roman roads, between the sepulchers. It was quiet. Apart from the guardian at the gate, they had the place almost to themselves. The widow knew exactly where she was going. The boy did not.
    First, just to the right of the entrance, they paused to view the monument that had made the place famous, the tall shrine of the medieval lovers Abelard and Héloïse. But they did not stay there long. Nor did the widow bother with any of Napoléon’s famous marshals, nor Corot the painter’s recent grave, nor even the graceful tomb of Chopin the composer. For they would have been distractions. Before she told her son the truth, she had to prepare him.
    “Jean Le Sourd was a brave man.”
    “I know, Maman.” His father had been a hero. Every night, before he went to sleep, he would go over in his mind everything he could remember about the tall, kindly figure who told him stories and played ball with him. The man who would always bring bread to the table, even when Paris was starving. And if sometimes the memories became a little hazy, there was always the photograph of a handsome man, dark-haired and with eyes set wide apart, like himself. Sometimes he dreamed of him. They would go on adventures together. Once they were even fighting in a street battle, side by side.
    For several minutes his mother led him up the slope in silence until, below the crown of the hill, she turned right onto a long alley. Then she spoke again.
    “Your father had a noble soul.” She looked down at her son. “What do you think it means, Jacques, to be noble?”
    “I suppose …”—the boy considered—“to be brave, like the knights who fought for honor.”
    “No,” she said harshly. “Those knights in armor were not noble at all. They were thieves, tyrants, who took all the wealth and power they could. They called themselves noble to puff themselves up with pride, and pretend that their blood was better than ours, so they could do what they liked. Aristocrats!” She grimaced. “A false nobility. And the worst of them all was the king. A filthy conspiracy that went on for centuries.”
    Young Jacques knew that his mother revered the French Revolution. But after the death of his father she had always avoided speaking about such things, as though they belonged in some place of darkness that she did not want to enter.
    “Why did it last so long, Maman?”
    “Because there was a criminal power even worse than the king. Do you know what that was?”
    “No, Maman.”
    “It was the Church, Jacques. The king and his aristocrats supported the Church, and the priests told the people to obey them. That was the bargain of the ancien régime. An enormous lie.”
    “Didn’t the Revolution change that?”
    “The year 1789 was more than a revolution. It was the birth of Freedom itself.