On the morning of the third Sunday in January in the year 1898, while his wife and Marie were still at Mass, Jules Blanchard rose from the breakfast room, and made his way to his small library, where he meant to read the newspaper in peace for a couple of hours. God knows there was a lot to read about that week. After that, he’d prepare for the family gathering at lunchtime.

He was feeling quite pleased with himself.

In the last few weeks, he had taken his sister’s words to heart. Though Jules had always had a large circle of friends, in recent years he’d been so involved with the department store, which truly fascinated him, that he had often been content to stay at home in the evenings with his wife when they might have gone out. They entertained a little, especially now that they had the new dining room to show off. Both Jules and his wife liked small dinner parties for just six or ten, and sometimes these included guests who might be of interest to Marie. But too often they had been middle-aged people that were of interest to Jules—businessmen, professional people, sometimes a politician.

Not that Marie had been without friends. Far from it. She and her mother went out to galleries and to visit family friends. Her aunt Éloïse went out with her to something interesting at least once a week, and had introduced Marie to quite a few people in the circles that she herself enjoyed. But these tended to be intellectual people—charming to add to the right sort of dinner party, but not quite as financially solid as he’d want for his daughter’s husband.

Marie’s brothers might have done more for her, but there was a problem. Gérard and his new wife had friends. But though Marie was on perfectly friendly terms with Gérard, she wasn’t close to him. Never had been since she was a child. They met whenever the family gathered, but that was all.

Marc, on the other hand, she loved. But though Jules Blanchard admired his younger son’s talent and imagination, he wasn’t too sure who his friends might be, and what sort of lives they led. And if one thing was certain in his mind, it was that his daughter should have a blameless reputation. It was one thing for an unmarried man of his class to have a mistress. But the rules for women were entirely different. Marie was intelligent, charming, everything that a man of her class might want in a wife—which included the facts that she was respectable, of unblemished reputation and sexually innocent. Mostly, even at the age of twenty-two, Marie went hardly anywhere without a chaperone. And Marc knew the rules. Marie might meet his respectable friends, but could never be left alone with any man. This by no means prevented Marc from entertaining his sister, but it also meant that there was a good deal of his daily life that she could not see.