Eiffel thanked them all, and announced that the names of France’s greatest scientists would be painted in gold on the frieze of the first platform. The prime minister thanked Eiffel, and invested him as an officer of the Légion d’honneur. They all toasted the builder, and each other, and France.

Then, as the wind got up and the rain threatened, they all dispersed to their homes. But not before one tiny incident occurred.

Thomas was just heading toward the Pont d’Iéna, with the first drops of rain patting his face, when he felt a hand on his arm. It was Jean Compagnon.

The burly man shook his hand and gave him a small card. On it was written the name of a bar.

“They always know where to find me there,” he said. “Let me know if you need a reference.” Then, before Thomas could thank him, he was gone.

The Universal Exposition of 1889 officially opened on the sixth day of May. Visitors looked in awe at the vast iron tower under which they passed. They had to wait until the fair’s second week before they could go up it, but even if they didn’t ascend, they found plenty in the huge fair to interest them. There were the exhibits from all corners of the world. There was a replica of a Cairo street and Egyptian market, with cafés serving Turkish coffee and entertaining the customers with belly dancers. The site was so huge that a delightful miniature train took passengers from the Champ de Mars to the esplanade by Les Invalides, where they found Oriental rickshaws.

The fair might be celebrating the centenary of the French Revolution and its ideals of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, but the honor of France demanded that visitors should also be reminded of her far-flung colonies; and so there were large and exotic exhibits from the colonies of Algeria, Tunisia, Senegal, Polynesia, Cambodia and others. If the British had an empire, so did France.

But while the Eiffel Tower was the staggering glory of the fair, it had to be admitted that the pavilion which astounded everyone was the one supplied, at his own expense, by Thomas Edison, who was sailing from America to Paris himself in August. The range of inventions on view was staggering, and in keeping with the shared republican values of America and France, it showed how, very soon, the advances of modern science would bring electricity, telephones and other wonderful new conveniences not only to the wealthy, but to the masses. Most fascinating of all was the new phonograph with its cylinders, which no one had ever seen before.

The huge numbers of Americans who were filling Paris to see the exhibition might feel delight and gratification that the man who’d built the Statue of Liberty and their own Thomas Edison were the stars.

And then of course, just twelve days after the opening of the fair, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show was due to open on a Saturday afternoon.