“It’s all a mistake,” André assured her with a grimace. He had been measuring algebraic curves and barely knew what his wife was talking about. He had on a white shirt and black pants held up with suspenders. He wore his father’s gold watch, a family treasure, but in fact time meant little to him; in his opinion, it was an untrustworthy measure of the universe. All the same, the real world he had always avoided had slowly been creeping into his calm office for weeks. His sons had been dismissed from school, a senseless measure, for the family had supported their elite private school near the Place Voltaire for three generations. But perhaps in this new world it made sense. Jewish professors, himself included, had been asked to leave the university. Still, he remained convinced that life would eventually assume its natural course.

“Well, if it’s a mistake, go talk to them,” said his wife, still agitated.

He had no choice but to go. No matter what was happening in the country, between husband and wife, a truce must be achieved at all costs.

The visitors in the front hallway were amazed by their surroundings. Here, it was almost possible to forget the homeless men sleeping in tents along the river and in the Bois de Boulogne, refugees camped out beneath the bridges that crossed the Seine, soldiers collecting such people in mass arrests of undesirables. The entranceway floor of the Lévis’ house was patterned with black and white marble, and the walls were Italian plaster mixed with cinnabar-colored paint. There were pale pink peonies in a tall vase, the last from the garden, and stray petals had drifted over their shoes.

The Lévis’ younger son, Julien, came downstairs, surprised to see guests seated on the bench beneath the portrait of his grandfather, the war hero. He stopped dead in his tracks. If he wasn’t mistaken they were refugees, something his mother was particularly suspicious about, insisting that foreign Jews would only bring trouble upon them.