Danielle Steel - Legacy (2010)

Brigitte explored St. Germain des Prés further on Sunday, and went to church. She walked to the Louvre, and strolled along the Seine. And feeling like a tourist, she stood and watched the Eiffel Tower, hoping it would sparkle for ten minutes on the hour, as it did at night. There was no sign of that in the daytime. She had forgotten how much she loved the city—it was beautiful and part of her heritage. So was Ireland, through her father, but she had never had any particular interest in that, nor affinity for it. France was so much more romantic and more fun to read about. She had always been interested in French history, maybe because her mother talked about it so much, and after she was eleven, her father wasn’t around, so her link to her Irish ancestors had vanished.

Sunday went by faster than she had expected, and she had dinner at the bistro across the street from her hotel. The food wasn’t terrific, but it was good enough, and before she went to bed, she walked back to the Seine again, and watched the Bateaux Mouches drift by, all lit up. She could see Notre Dame in the distance. And the Eiffel Tower did its sparkler act for her at last. She was thrilled by it and felt like a delighted child as she watched. The cab driver had told her on the way in from the airport that it had been doing that since the year 2000—it sparkled for ten minutes every hour. And even Parisians loved it.

She was excited when she went to bed that night and she woke up early. The hotel served croissants and coffee in the lobby and she helped herself to some and then took a cab to the Bibliothèque Nationale. It was on the Quai François Mauriac, and it was open when she got there. She went to the information desk and explained what she was looking for and the approximate years. They sent her upstairs, where a librarian clearly had no desire to help her. She simply looked annoyed and didn’t speak a word of English. It was a far cry from the help she had gotten from the Mormons in Salt Lake.

Brigitte carefully wrote down on a piece of paper what she wanted, what kind of books, and the span of years and subject, and the woman handed it back to her with a stream of hostile French. Brigitte had no idea what to do, and had an overwhelming desire to burst into tears, but she controlled herself, took a breath, and tried again. Eventually, the woman just shrugged, tossed the paper back at her, and walked away. Brigitte stood looking after her, and wanted to hit her, and instead she started to walk away in defeat. She knew she would get nowhere. She wanted to regroup and figure out what she was going to do now. Maybe she had to forget Paris as a resource and go straight to Brittany instead. She turned around to leave the desk, and as she did, she bumped into a man behind her, and expected him to shout at her too. Instead, he smiled.

“Can I help you? They’re not very helpful to foreigners here. You have to know what you’re looking for very specifically,” he said in excellent English. He had been listening to the exchange. He reached for the paper, and Brigitte handed it to him without a word. He looked as though he was in his early forties. He was French, but spoke English with a British accent, as some educated French people did. But he was obviously fluent. He was wearing jeans and a parka and loafers, and had hair almost as dark as hers. He had warm brown eyes and a nice smile when he looked at her, and he took the piece of paper and approached the desk again. The same woman came up to it, and he explained smoothly in French what he believed Brigitte wanted. The woman nodded, disappeared, came back, and gave him the exact location of the whole section Brigitte was interested in. He hadn’t asked for anything different than she did. He had just said it in better French.

“I’m sorry. They’re not very nice here. I come here all the time. I can show you where the section is. I did a book on Louis XVI last year. I know where it is.”

“You’re a writer?” she asked as he led her to the right section. There were desks and chairs and benches, and endless stacks of books.

“I’m a historian turned novelist because no one buys history unless you lie about it and make it more interesting. The truth is that the real stories are even more intriguing, they’re just not as well written. You’re a writer too?” He handed her back the piece of paper, with a smile. He was of medium height with slightly tousled hair that gave him a boyish look. And he definitely looked French. He wasn’t sexy, he was friendly. She smiled to herself, thinking that Amy would have said he was “cute.”

“I’m an anthropologist. I’m researching some family history for my mother. Or I was. I fell in love with it, and I guess now I’m doing it for me. I’m hoping to find some diaries about the French court. You wouldn’t know of any, would you?” He seemed to be her only hope now of locating anything here.

“There are an enormous number of them. You just have to wade through them. Anything in particular?”

“I’m looking for accounts of the Sioux Indians that Louis XVI invited to the court as guests, and an ancestor of mine who was a marquis.”

“That sounds interesting. You ought to write a novel about it,” he teased.

“I only write academic nonfiction that makes no money and puts people to sleep.”

“So did I, until I started writing historical novels, which is actually a lot of fun. You get to play around with history and add fictional people to the real ones, and they do what you want. Most of the time anyway.” He seemed interested in what she was doing, and he had been very helpful to her.

He went in pursuit of his own research then. Brigitte took down a stack of diaries in the section he had pointed out to her, but she found no mention of Wachiwi or the Margeracs, so it turned out to be a lost day. She ran into him again when she was leaving the archives late that afternoon. She had been there all day, without even stopping for lunch. She had brought an apple in her purse and ate it while she continued reading.

“Did you find anything?” he asked with interest. She shook her head, looking disappointed.

“That’s a shame. You have to keep at it. It’s here somewhere. Everything is,” he said calmly. But he knew his way around. Brigitte didn’t.

“What are you working on?” she asked politely as they left the building together.

“A book about Napoleon and Josephine. It’s hardly an unusual subject, but it’s fun to write. I teach literature at the Sorbonne, so that pays my rent. But the books help a bit too.”

He was very friendly and open with her, and he introduced himself as they stood on the front steps on the way out. He said his name was Marc Henri. His name sounded familiar, but it was a fairly ordinary French name.

She saw him again the next day as she made her way through the stacks. She still hadn’t found anything of interest when he wandered over to her in the late afternoon. And she was exhausted from reading in French. She had to use a dictionary constantly, which made it tedious work.

“What is the name of the ancestor who was the marquis? Perhaps I can find him for you,” he said helpfully, and she wrote it down for him. “We can cross-reference him in their lists.” And five minutes later Marc had found him. She was embarrassed by how easy it was for him, and how difficult for her. But the archives were confusing, and it wasn’t her language.

They looked up Tristan de Margerac together, and it listed his Paris address in 1785. It was on the Left Bank, and she had a feeling it wasn’t far from where she was staying. She wondered what the building was now. But it said nothing about his wife.

“We might find him in some diaries tomorrow,” Marc said hopefully, “if he went to court often. Did he live in Paris all the time?”