She stepped out of the funicular and began to walk into Montmartre. She had spent all morning trying to come to a decision, but without success. Perhaps, she thought, if I get a little drunk up here, I shall know what to do.

She loved France. She knew that. All the years she’d been living in America, she’d always followed what was going on there. Not all of it had been happy.

After de Gaulle had brought some stability to the nation as it emerged from the war, Claire had been grateful to see France return to democracy. Given the deep richness of France, its economy would bear fruit under almost any government. It had seemed the French could even afford a generous welfare state. And the new European Community, thank God, had put an end to wars between France and Germany forever. But the internal politics of the Fourth Republic had been embarrassing. The mechanics of the French parliamentary model had been poorly arranged, and in ten years, there had been twenty governments. De Gaulle had refused to have anything to do with them.

The remaining French empire had also crumbled. In northern Africa, Algeria had gone into revolt. With many French colonists wanting to keep the territory, there had been a virtual civil war. In Indochina, France had been pushed out of her colonies, and in one of those, Vietnam, the problems of communist insurgency had remained to become a nightmare for America too. Then, when Nasser of Egypt had nationalized the Suez Canal, and France and Britain had hatched a plot for military intervention behind America’s back, they had been forced into a withdrawal that had destroyed their reputations as world powers, perhaps forever.

It was not until 1958 that the Algerian crisis had brought the Fourth Republic to an end, and that strange, lonely statue of a man, Charles de Gaulle, had finally returned from his retirement to take the reins of power.

Claire had mixed feelings about de Gaulle. His Fifth Republic had been nearer the American, presidential model. His prestige alone had made it possible for France to accept a free Algeria. He’d glorified the French Resistance and promoted the myth that only a handful of Frenchmen had been collaborators. He’d behaved before the world as if France was still a great empire. And France had regained some dignity.

And some glory too. André Malraux, the Resistance fighter and writer whom de Gaulle had made his culture minister, was busy transforming the dirty old buildings of Paris into a gleaming splendor that delighted the whole world. Notre Dame was looking better than it had since it was built.