Her hair had changed. The golden curls of her childhood had given way to light brown hair, parted in the middle and fluffed into soft waves. But her eyes were still china blue. She had a perfect peaches-and-cream complexion, and her father adored her. No doubt she’d be married before long, but he could only pray that whomever she married wouldn’t take her far away.

The boys were different. They’d both gone to the Lycée Condorcet, near their home, and done well. But after that, their paths had diverged entirely.

Gérard had been everything his father could reasonably have asked. He’d been eager to go into the family business and he’d worked hard at it. Jules could already rely on him to keep everything running smoothly. Only months ago, he’d married an entirely suitable girl from a good family with plenty of money. He gave his father no worries.

But his younger son was another matter. He worried about Marc.

He hadn’t minded when Marc had been accepted by the École des Beaux-Arts. He liked the art school’s classical facade, which stared so handsomely across at the Louvre from the Seine’s Left Bank. The place had prestige. It sounded quite well to say that his younger son had been there. But somehow he’d supposed that after this, Marc would want to engage himself in the business or administration of art, rather than put paint on canvas himself. True, Marc had done a fine portrait of his mother, which now had pride of place in the salon of the family’s big apartment. But Jules would rather see his son as a gifted amateur than a professional painter.

His wife was of the same opinion. Only his sister Éloïse had stood up for the boy.

“If he wants a career in the art business,” he’d remarked to her, “I know the Durand-Ruel family. They’ve three galleries in Paris now, and another in New York. They’re starting to make money selling the Impressionists. Or I can easily get an introduction to the Duveens. They handle the Old Masters. They could give him advice.”

“But Le Bon Dieu may have given Marc a special gift,” Éloïse had pointed out. “If so, it’s his duty to use it. He’s creative, a free spirit.”

“That,” confessed his father, “is what worries me.”

“You created the Joséphine store.”

“Not the same.”

“Besides,” his sister pointed out, “a painter can become a great man. Think of Delacroix. He was magnificent. You’d be proud to have a son like that.”

“Hmm.” Jules pulled a face. “Delacroix had Talleyrand to ensure him a great career.”

It was true that France’s epic romantic painter had obtained important state commissions from the powerful minister Talleyrand—and many believed that Talleyrand, a close friend of the Delacroix family, was actually the artist’s father.