Once before, he’d thought it had begun. There had been that moment during the war, when the army had mutinied. He’d thought it was starting then. But he’d been premature. France had not been ready.

Russia had been ready, though. The Russian Revolution had succeeded. And with that massive example before all Europe, it had seemed inevitable to Jacques Le Sourd that now it would spread. The question had been: Where next?

By the mid-twenties, all eyes had fallen on Britain. France might be the cradle of revolution, but Britain was also a logical choice. Wasn’t Britain the first home of capitalism, colonial empire and exploitation? Wasn’t London where Karl Marx had written Das Kapital?

The Zinoviev letter of 1924, forgery or not, might have frightened the British middle classes into electing a Conservative government, but the Labour Party and the unions were soon ready to show their power. And in 1926, a huge general strike had brought Britain to a standstill.

Was it the beginning of a revolution? All Europe had waited. If the British Empire fell to the workers, then the rest of the capitalist world could crumble.

But once again, the phlegmatic British had displayed their lack of interest in ideas, their endless capacity to muddle through and compromise. The British bourgeoisie had come out, manned the buses, taken over the essential union jobs. Professional people, students, retired army officers were found driving trains. And they’d been allowed to get away with it. Jacques had even heard stories of an opposing line of strikers and British policemen organizing a football game between each other. He sighed whenever he thought of it. What could you do with people like that?

For another decade, France had drifted. With a weak franc—good for the British and American visitors, but bringing inflation to the French themselves—the weak liberal governments of the Third Republic had tottered on, still opposed by the old guard of monarchists, conservative Catholics and military men. When America’s Great Depression hit Europe, French jobs were lost and wages fell.

Jacques Le Sourd had known how to use the time, however. Endless quiet campaigning with the Socialist Party, writing and distributing pamphlets, talking with union men, visiting small works and large factories: this had been his life.

“When the new revolution comes,” he would tell his son, “Paris will be the key. Not only because it’s the political and spiritual center of France, but because of the industrial workers here. When I was a young man,” he’d explain, “most manufacturing around the city was done in workshops and small plants. But now we have huge factories, producing things like cars, that didn’t even exist before.” More than once he had taken Max down to the suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt, which lay in a great loop of the river south of the Bois de Boulogne, and taken him through the gates into the Renault works. “The men here,” he told him, “will one day have the destiny of France in their hands.”