But Édith smiled and said that he didn’t have to worry about that, and when he looked surprised, she said it was nothing important and a long time ago. And Thomas realized it was too late for him to think much about that now.

A little time passed. And then she cried, “Oh, you mustn’t,” but it was too late.

During the first two months of 1889, the Eiffel Tower raced toward completion. The progress was astounding. By March, it soared to over nine hundred feet, where the third and final platform was being constructed. Enclosed by glass, this observation platform would offer the astonished visitors a panoramic view with a radius, on a clear day, of thirty-five miles—northward to the lovely park of Chantilly, southward to the great Forest of Fontainebleau, and on its western side, far over Versailles and almost to the twin spires of Chartres Cathedral. The whole tower was being painted a bronze color, gradually getting paler as the tower grew higher to increase its appearance of soaring elegance.

The greatest difficulty in these later stages was the installation of the elevators. For though there were stairs that went all the way up to the top, few people would care to mount 1,665 steps—and descend them again.

This work had to be subcontracted, and several companies were tried. But the task was almost beyond them, and they could hardly be blamed. Never before had they been asked to take such huge numbers of passengers up to such unheard-of heights. The elevators taking passengers the 550 feet from the second platform to the top posed less of a problem. But how to raise an elevator that was to travel from the ground, nearly 400 feet to the second platform, on tracks with a variable curve?

In the end, two systems were used for the four feet of the tower. French engineers supplied two inventively designed chain elevators that at least got people from the ground to the first platform. But the American Otis Elevator Company had invented a brilliantly contrived system, part hydraulic elevator, part railroad, that took passengers up the other two legs of the tower, and continued all the way up to the second platform.

Thomas would tell her enthusiastically about all that was happening.

“Monsieur Eiffel says the Otis elevator designs will be years ahead of the French. But we mustn’t say so,” he confided. “When the gallery is completed up at the top, they’re building a private office for Monsieur Eiffel above it. He says that’s going to be his office for the rest of his life. Imagine it: working each day up in the clouds like that, like a god.”

If Thomas loved his work, Édith thought, so much the better. And if he worshipped Monsieur Eiffel, there was no harm in that. “Just think,” he’d often remind her, “very soon, my name will be painted up there on the tower, because I helped to build it.”