Over the years, in the seasonal rounds of business and pleasure and special anniversaries, Meg and Roy Sloan have set foot on most of the continents of the world: Asia, Australia, South America-and of course Europe. They have, in fact, been to Paris on two previous occasions: for a single night in 1956, early April, their honeymoon, passing through on their way to Rome; and three days in 1967, an exhausting, hedonistic, aggressive survey that embraced the Moulin Rouge and the Jeu de Paume, Montmartre and Notre Dame, the Comédie Française and Malmaison, and that terminated with the rich, suppressed shame of a dinner in the Rue Royale where they suffered a contemptuous waiter, a wobbly table, scanty servings, and a yellow-eyed madam guarding the toilette and demanding payment of Meg—who pretended not to understand—and who muttered fiercely into her saucer of coins, ça commence,ça commence, meaning Meg Sloan of Milwaukee and the tidal wave of penny-pinching tourists who would follow, the affluent poor, the educationally driven, budget-bound North Americans whom Europeans so resemble but refuse to acknowledge.

And now, in the autumn of 1986, an uneasy, untrustful time in the world’s history, the Sloans have returned.

“But why?” quite a number of their friends said. “Why Paris of all places!”

Meg Sloan is a small, dark, intense woman who, though not Jewish, might easily be thought to be. In any case, it seemed that Americans were singled out by terrorists, regardless of their background: bearded soft-spoken journalists taken hostage, nuns beaten and raped, a harmless old man pushed about and then shot, innocent children propelled through the suddenly gaping side of an aircraft. Why take needless risks, the Sloans’ friends said. Why go out of your way to invite disaster? Furthermore the dollar had taken a rough punch, and you could get better nouvelle cuisine anyway right in Milwaukee, or at least Chicago, and not have to put up with people who were rude and unprincipled-remember that Greenpeace business last summer, still unresolved—besides which, three weeks devoted just to Paris seemed a lot when there was all of Europe to get a feel for.

“We’re fatalists,” Meg had countered, “and besides, we don’t want to live out of a suitcase. Roy and I want to unpack for a change. You know, put our underwear in those big deep dresser drawers they have over there and actually hang up our clothes in one of those gorgeous armoire affairs and come back after a day of sightseeing and get into a bed we can depend on.”

“What we’d really like,” Roy said, “is to see how the true Parisians live.”