Max Le Sourd also marched, for old Thomas Gascon, and the Dalou boys, and his other comrades in the march would have been disappointed if he had not.

But his father remained at the side of the Champs-Élysées and grimly watched. And as the tall and lonely statesman strode past, Le Sourd could only shake his head.

“Salaud,” he muttered sadly. “You son of a bitch.”

It was the next morning that Thomas Gascon decided to gather all his family together for a celebration at the restaurant. “At least,” he pointed out, “we have some extra food stored here.”

During the morning, Édith sent him down on an errand into the Second Arrondissement, and at noon he was already returning up the rue de Clichy.

He was less than a mile from home when he saw the small crowd coming toward him. There were about fifty of them, and they were goading a young woman. Her shirt had been ripped, and they were chanting and taunting her for sleeping with Germans.

Thomas frowned. He’d heard that these attacks were starting to happen. They were absurd, of course. If every Frenchwoman who’d slept with a German in the last four years was going to be hounded like this, there would be no end to it. God knew how many thousands of children had been fathered by lonely German troops in Paris alone.

But the ritual rage of a crowd that feels guilty has a special viciousness.

The wretched girl was the same age as one of his own granddaughters.

They had just drawn level when one of the girls in the crowd ran up to the young woman, pointed at her and screamed: “German whore. Shave her head!” And she spat in her face.

“Fuck off!” the woman cried back. But the crowd was encircling them.

“Scissors!” someone cried. “Razors!”

Thomas wasn’t afraid to fight, even at his age, but half of them were women, and he wasn’t used to fighting women. There were too many people anyway. So he did the only thing he could.

“Mes camerades,” he cried, “I am Thomas Gascon from the Maquis of Montmartre, member of the FTP, Resistance fighter. It was I who cut the cables in the Eiffel Tower. Come with me to Montmartre, if you don’t believe me, and I will show you witnesses. Whatever her faults, I ask you to let me take this young woman home, on this day of celebration.”

They looked at him. Could this old man be telling the truth? They decided he was.

“Vivent les FTP!” somebody cried. “Bravo, old man!” And they started to laugh and clap him on the back.

For such is the strange and sudden sense of chivalry of the French mob.

“She’s free. She’s free,” they cried.

So Thomas Gascon took the girl home, before he went to his family celebration.

For Max Le Sourd, however, there was one duty still to be performed. When he explained to his father what it was, his father agreed to help.