“It seems that you knew about this,” his father said quietly.

“I work for L’Humanité. That’s how I heard.”

“You may find,” his father said coldly, “that some of the workers refuse to obey orders.”

Max looked down at the floor, and said nothing. His father stared at him for a little while.

“So what else haven’t you told me?” Jacques said at last.

The unkindest cut of all. But it couldn’t be avoided. Max took a deep breath.

“Blum has troops gathering outside the city.” Max paused. “I’m sure they won’t be needed. But just in case …”

He saw his father’s head fall. The tall man’s body seemed to shrink.

“Troops. Against our own people …”

“It’s only a precaution.”

Jacques Le Sourd did not speak for a little while. He stared up toward the domes of Sacré Coeur high on the hill above them, but whether he even saw the basilica’s pale form it was impossible to say.

So it had come to this. Full circle. It seemed to Le Sourd that his entire life had suddenly become an illusion, an irony, an evaporation into the blue sky.

At last he spoke.

“Sixty-five years ago,” he said quietly, “in the Commune of Paris, we began the rule of the people. And it was actually working. But the government sent the army into the city, and they were too well armed for the ordinary Parisians, and the Communards were smashed.” He nodded to himself. “My father was a Communard. In the last, terrible weeks, a great many Communards were shot. Many were shot up there on the hill of Montmartre. My father—your grandfather—was shot in Père Lachaise. I vowed to revenge myself on the family of the man who did it, and when I had the chance, I failed.” He shrugged. “So much for me. But I have dedicated my life to completing my father’s work.” He paused. “The men who smashed the Commune, our enemies, had at least this in their favor. However mistakenly, they believed they were right. The man who shot my father probably thought he was fighting for God and the honor of France. His son, whom I failed to kill, was an aristocrat and a bourgeois lackey, and history should have swept him aside and thrown him into the fire. But he was brave, and proud, and honest, and he had a son he loved. That’s why I didn’t shoot him.”

He stood up, and looked down sadly at his son.

“But now, when we have the chance again, a better chance by far than we have ever had before, I find that it is not the monarchists and the bourgeois who are bringing in the troops, but the socialists, and the communists—our own side. And having spent my life trying to honor the memory of my father, I find that my own son is with the traitors. So perhaps if I can find some brave men to stand with me, I can defy your troops, and your treachery, and you and your Russian friends can watch them gun me down.”