She’d never read anything like it before. Proust’s search through his extraordinary memory, his re-creation of every detail of the passing world, his ruthless portrayal of every aspect of human psychology, were fascinating to her.

“I’m delighted to see you taking such an interest in literature,” Marc said. “I’m only sorry you can’t share it with Aunt Éloïse anymore. She’d read everything. But don’t forget,” he added, “people like Eliot and Proust are writing radically new work, but they are still quite conservative politically. They’re looking for meaning at the end of the old world. Many of the avant-garde have a very different outlook.”

“They believe in revolution, don’t they?”

“Paris has always prided itself on being home to revolutionary thought. Ever since the French Revolution, we believe that all radical ideas belong to us. And people with radical ideas have always come to Paris to discuss them. A lot of radical Paris believes that only world revolution will solve all these new problems. Now we’ve had a Russian revolution, they think the rest will follow—or should. I’m sure Picasso’s a communist, for instance.”

But if Claire was excited by the cultural ferment of Paris, most of her time now was spent working on a grand commercial enterprise.

Joséphine. When her mother and Marc had reopened the family store, they had asked her to come and help just to give her something to do. But that was two years ago. She was an integral part of the operation now. “I don’t know,” her uncle was kind enough to say, “how we’d have done it without you.”

Of course, her mother was the central figure upon whom everything turned. She had a wonderful way with all the people working there. She was always calm, sympathetic, but very firm, like a mother in control of a large family. She inspired loyalty.

Marie controlled all the day-to-day running of the operation, and dealt with the biggest and most important suppliers—couturiers like Chanel, and others. But she soon delegated a smaller but very important task to Claire.

“I want you to find new designers and clothes makers. The ones who are going to attract girls of your generation. You find them, then you bring them to me, and we’ll see if we can make a deal.”

She had found them—in Paris, sometimes in the provinces, in Italy. And she would sit in on the meetings they had with her mother, and see how quickly and cleverly her mother discovered the strengths and weaknesses of their operations.

“How are you so good at business?” she asked her mother once. “You never did it before this.”

“I don’t know, to tell the truth. I suppose it must be in the blood.” Her mother smiled. “Do you think I’m good, then?”

“You know very well you are.”