The morning of All Saints’ Day 1967 was chilly in Lyon. It was a Wednesday morning that first day of November, and Marie-France Mercier was not ready to get out of bed when the alarm clock rang at twenty minutes to seven. She wanted to snuggle for a few minutes more under the covers before she faced the cold air (for the heating and other supplies in even the relatively posh 6^th arrondissement were frequently going on the fritz, what with the government in Paris in such trouble…). Reluctantly Marie-France turned off the alarm clock — she wished that there was a function on the alarm clock that would allow her to sleep in an extra ten minutes and then the alarm on the clock would ring again, but as she was not scientifically or mathematically or mechanically inclined (unlike her youngest brother Antoine), she did not think of whether it was practical or not — and tried to get a few moments’ more of rest. When by seven o’clock Marie-France did not appear, her mother Yvonne climbed the stairs to Marie-France’s room and knocked loudly at her door. “Get up, you lazybones! It is seven o’clock! Isn’t your first class at nine thirty?”

            “Yes, Maman,” Marie-France replied, “you know that it is. Modern Italian History.” Marie-France sighed. “Then I have Modern British History and Nineteenth Century English Literature. That ends at half past four.”

            “And then you have to be at the evening Mass at St-Joseph at half past five — and you know that All Saints’ is a Holy Day of Obligation, and that your father will be preaching the homily. I don’t know how you can get through the time constraints —“

            “Maman, the Metro will be faster than the bus. You know how the Rue Clemenceau gets at rush hour.”

            “I just don’t trust the Metro.”

            “It is not as if Jacques Langlois were still around —“

            “There are still Russian spies around. After all, Aurie did have us moved from Paris to Lyon for our protection. Well, Aurie was the last decent president we’ve had, I’m afraid. Ever since Aurie left office in ’55, the country has been going downhill.”

            “Well, at least Monseigneur Boyer has been Pope Gregory for two years now. It is good to have a pope in the family —“

            “My first cousin once removed,” Yvonne Durand Mercier said reflectively. “Of course, Monseigneur Boyer has no brothers or sisters, so his cousins are dear to him. And I think he does think particularly well of me because he confirmed me when he was Bishop of Cahors. Of course, you must not pride yourself on being related to the Pope, or of being a deacon’s daughter. That simply will not do for a daughter of mine.”

            “Yes, Maman,” Marie-France said quietly. When her mother got in one of those moods, one had to agree with her. Marie-France didn’t go around bragging that she was related to Pope Gregory XIX, né Charles Boyer, former Bishop of Cahors and Cardinal Archbishop of Toulouse, the first legitimate French pope since Gregory XI, né Pierre Roger de Beaufort, who died all the way back in 1378. After all, not everybody at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon — not the students, and certainly not the faculty — were devout Catholics. There could be some professors who might give her a poorer grade just because she was related to the Pope. The fact that Marie-France and other students and faculty were practicing Catholics was certainly tolerated, but not allowed to be paramount. After all, before the Revolution of 1905, one had to be an officially certified practicing Catholic (attending Mass every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation, going to confession and receiving Communion at least once a year during the Easter season, contributing at least one percent of one’s net salary to the Church) to have any public role in France at all, from being an army officer to being Prime Minister — which led to hypocrisy and deceit, did it not, among gifted men (it was solely men in those days) who wanted to contribute their talents for the good of the country — and get some fame and fortune in doing so. Other men, just as talented, but more scrupulous, avoided entering public life at all. Of course, the spark for the Revolution of 1905 was the Dauphin Louis-Michel’s insistence on having his morganatic wife, the Québécoise divorcee Eglantine Gallant-Tessier, Duchesse de Matapédia, recognized as Queen before he would consent to take the throne after the death of his father, Louis XIX. Georges Clemenceau, then Minister of the Interior, and Nathalie, the Russian-born Duchesse d’Orléans, who wanted to gain the throne for her son and become Regent, took advantage of the situation — but Clemenceau took advantage of the Orléans faction and sent them into exile in New Zealand along with the Dauphin, the Duchesse de Matapédia and their partisans. Once Clemenceau took control of France after the Revolution, he stopped his façade of being a practicing Catholic and showed his true anticlerical colors. Only under the presidency of Charles-Philippe Aurie, who was elected in 1945, after the 28 year long Great War from 1914 to 1942, and who instituted the concordat with the Vatican in 1953, was Catholicism more tolerated and made more fashionable in certain circles (litterateurs and intellectuals made conversion to Catholicism a minor trend).

            “You had better get in the shower before the water gets too cold,” Yvonne told her eldest daughter.

            “Yes, Maman.”

            “I am fixing tartines and orange juice for breakfast for the twins and Paul before they leave for school. Did you want me to save some for you after you get dressed?”

            Marie-France nodded. “Yes, thank you, Maman.”

            After Marie-France showered and dressed in a cornflower blue dress with a full skirt that hit just above her knees, she took herself downstairs to the kitchen, said grace quickly and began to eat. Her younger sister Denise, at 19 two years Marie-France’s junior, was picking at some scrambled eggs that she had apparently made for herself.

            “Good morning, France,” Denise said.

            “Good morning, Denise,” Marie-France replied. “Lucky you. Your first class isn’t till eleven o’clock on Wednesdays.”

            “But I do have to be at the University at eight o’clock on Tuesdays and Thursdays.” Denise looked at her older sister dully. “And I have a night class on Tuesdays as well. I notice that you never schedule a class before half past nine, or after half past four. But history is a relative snap compared to architecture.”

            “The Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon is one of the best schools in all of Europe, and the history department is considered one of the most prestigious programs there. So it is not nothing, it is not a snap — at least not at the Ecole Normale Supérieure.” Marie-France was aware that she was getting a bit upset for nothing, or relatively nothing, but she and Denise had often their little spats.

            Denise began to wheeze. She took out an inhaler and breathed in, then waited a minute and used the inhaler again. Marie-France felt helpless to see Denise under the grip of her asthma. Their mother had a slight case of asthma that evidenced itself mainly when Yvonne tried to walk up too many flights of stairs too quickly, but Denise’s was far more severe. Almost anything — and nothing — could set it off.

            Marie-France waited a moment as Denise began to breathe freely again. “Are you all right?”

            “I am, now.”

            “I’m sorry to get you upset, Denise.”

            “It is not your fault,” Denise replied. “Blame my miserable lungs.”

            “Still, I feel guilty when we argue,” Marie-France said.

            “Ha! That was no argument, France. The Great War was an argument. The Revolution was an argument. That was just a sisters’ quarrel.”

            Yvonne came in to check in on her two eldest daughters. “No dawdling about, Marie-France. By the way, are you going to put on some makeup before you leave? At least some blush and lipstick — you look too pale without at least a bit of maquillage. And Denise, do you need anything? Some water, perhaps?”

            “No, Maman. I am all right.” Denise’s voice was calm.

            “No, you are not. I just heard you wheeze like crazy,” Yvonne said.

            “I am all right now, Maman,” Denise replied.

            “And for how long? I don’t like the sound of that.”

            “Maman, please stop your worrying!” Denise said.

            “I can’t — I’m your mother.” Yvonne smiled, and then continued to speak. “Even if I wanted to — which I don’t, by the way — I wouldn’t stop worrying over any one of you. Not you, Marie-France, or you, Denise, or Paul, or Antoine, or Anastasie. Not that any of you have ever willingly given me a moment’s grief — anxiety perhaps, but not grief. All of you are good children, though of course none of you are small children any more. Eh bien!” Yvonne looked waspishly at her oldest daughter. “Marie-France, please don’t dawdle. If you’re finished eating, rinse your dishes in the sink so that you can wash all the dishes tonight. Put on some blush and lipstick when you brush your teeth and get your notebooks and books and satchel. It’s past eight.”

            Within a half hour, Marie-France, suitably dressed in a burgundy light wool knee length coat (there was only a satin lining inside, which made the coat suitable for spring and autumn but not for the depths of winter) was walking out of the front door of 9 Passage Cazenove, where the Mercier family lived in a duplex on the first and second floors above the ground floor. (Another family, the Rosiers, lived on the two top floors.) She took a few steps out of the Passage Cazenove, and she was on the Rue Clemenceau, formerly Rue Ste-Elisabeth (but that was in the days before the Revolution: for a while, it was the Rue 7 Septembre, after the date of the Revolution, but after the assassination of Georges Clemenceau in 1919 it was named after the fallen President). Less than a block south, she reached the Cours Vitton and turned east. A block away was the Vitton Metro station. After paying for a ticket, she took the next train going east to Charpennes (which was the next station) and transferred to a train going south to Debourg station, which was a block or two from the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon. It was crowded, but no more crowded than usual towards the end of the morning rush hour. Marie-France felt satisfied that there had been no rain on the way, no electrical outages to delay the trip, no strikes, no nothing to disturb her trip. Adhémar Desbarres, the ambitious Mayor of Lyon (more ambitious for Lyon than for himself, actually, or so it seemed), was a relatively good mayor despite all the rumors about his crookedness, his all but flagrant corruption — but even he could not keep the unions in line, since they took their marching orders from the national offices in Paris.

            Marie-France was some twenty minutes early for her first class, so she took out a rosary from her purse and said quietly (essentially whispered to herself) the Glorious Mysteries while she sat on a seat in the lecture hall waiting for the other students to arrive. She felt a little guilty that she hadn’t had time to say her morning prayers before then, but it usually happened like that on school days — either she whispered a rosary in as low a voice as possible on the bus or Metro, or else in the lecture hall waiting for the first class. As she was finishing the Hail Holy Queen, Marie-France heard a familiar voice say, “Good morning, Marie-France!” from amidst all the hubbub that was beginning to accumulate in the lecture hall.

            Marie-France recognized the throaty alto voice without turning around. “Good morning, Dagny,” she replied. “How are you doing this morning?”

            “I am well. Just a little worried about what Amoretti will include of today’s lecture on the final exam.”

            “Dagny Rose Desaulniers!” Marie-France said in a mock scolding tone, as if she were Dagny’s Swedish mother (who came from Uppsala and whose maiden name was Alma Almqvist and who was related to the Hammarskjöld family: Dagny’s godfather was Dag Hammarskjöld, Sweden’s former Minister of Finance and Dagny’s first cousin once removed, whose birthday Dagny shared and whose namesake she was). “Heaven knows that anybody who got a 12 on the entrance exam should not have to worry about a piffling exam in Italian history once you get in the ENS.” Marie-France dropped the Swedish accent, but continued the mock scolding tone, added with a tone of regret. “After all, I only got a 10.”

            “That’s because you can hardly figure out anything harder than two plus two!” Dagny exclaimed as she took a seat next to Marie-France. “Well, I exaggerate… You did brilliantly on the rest of the exam, though.”

            “Well, it is true that I have terrible trouble figuring out long division even on paper, and some simple two and three figure sums in my head.” Marie-Rose shrugged. “I’m not Antoine.”

            “Nobody is like Antoine,” Dagny said, laughing. “They broke the mold when they made him.”

            “And not me?” Marie-France said, pretending to pout.

            “Look,” Dagny said seriously but affectionately. “There are pretty blondes everywhere in France. There are smart blondes everywhere in France. Even smart pretty blondes who can get into a Grande Ecole. True, there is only one smart pretty blonde that I know of who got into a Grande Ecole in Lyon, but there is probably a doppelganger of yours in Paris walking about. If you had stayed in Paris, you probably would have met her by now. Oops — and here comes Amoretti!”

            Dr. Gabriella Amoretti, the professor of modern Italian history who was just now coming into the lecture hall, was a Provençale of Italian parentage. Her age was indeterminate, but Marie-France decided that Amoretti was likely in her forties. Tall, elegant, slender, brunette, Amoretti was not exactly beautiful, but she was very chic — and her bouclé Chanel suit fitted her perfectly. How Amoretti managed to afford couture suits on the salary of a history professor of the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon was a mystery beyond Marie-France’s ken, even though some students (not Dagny, nor Marie-France) did like to gossip that Amoretti was a Kept Woman. Marie-France thought that was ridiculous. A feminist like Amoretti being some rich or powerful man’s mistress? It would be a betrayal of what Amoretti believed in.

            “Good morning, class,” Amoretti said in an accent that just barely hinted of her Provençal birth. “Today we are going to find out why Italy did not unite in the nineteenth century. I presume that you have read your textbooks and know the basic story of how the Italian states were at the start of the nineteenth century? Nevertheless, I will go over briefly the situation of the Italian states in 1800 or so.” Marie-France thought that Amoretti’s smile had a bite in it. “After the War of the Spanish Succession, which was fought at the beginning of the eighteenth century, Austria had replaced Spain as the dominant foreign power throughout northern Italy, though Spain still had influence in Naples and Sicily. In northern Italy, the Dukes of Savoy had become the Kings of Sardinia by adding to their Italian possessions, which now included Sardinia and Piedmont. The Sardinians — by which I mean the inhabitants of the kingdom, not the island proper, which was poor and isolated — were becoming the most vital element of the Italian peninsula. The Republic of Venice was in decay, though hanging in there. The city of Venice was withdrawing into itself and falling into stagnation, and the Venetian hinterlands were practically running themselves.”

            Amoretti went on to briefly describe the Republic of Genoa, the Duchies of Parma and Modena (the latter duchy was famous in both British and Catholic history, Marie-France knew, because Mary Beatrice, the wife of James II and VII and the mother of James III and VIII — the latter who was restored to the throne in 1745 by his son, the future Charles III, after a life in exile — was being considered for canonization: Mary Beatrice of Modena’s current title was Venerable), the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Bishopric of Trent, the small Republic of Lucca and the tiny Republic of San Marino, the Papal States and the Kingdom of Sicily. Marie-France knew that the Kingdom of Sicily freed itself from Spanish dominance and tightened its hold on Southern Italy, while the Kingdom of Sardinia freed itself from Austrian and French influences and swallowed up Venice, Tuscany, Trent, Lucca, San Marino and the Papal States, leaving just the city of Rome for the Pope to rule. But the nineteenth century was not Marie-France’s main interest in Italian history: it was the twentieth century.

            After the class of Modern Italian History ended at eleven o’clock and before Marie-France’s next class in Modern British History began at one o’clock, Amoretti had an office hour. Marie-France went to see her.

            “So do you think the topic of my final paper will be all right?”

            “Montini of Milan and the Turi automobile factory bombing back in ‘58?” Amoretti said quizzically. “’The Worker’s Archbishop’? Now why would you have chosen such a topic? I mean, I know that your father is a deacon, and that you are somehow kin to Pope Gregory, but why Michele Montini, of all people?”

            Marie-France took in a deep breath. “If Montini had lived, I think he would have become Pope after Pope Benedict XV died instead of Monseigneur Boyer — that’s what we call Pope Gregory in the family, still. He was my mother’s long lost cousin from the South — we were in Paris — and he offered to have her confirmed before she married my father — my mother came from an anticlerical family, you know —“

            Amoretti shook her head, but Marie-France continued regardless. “Anyway, old Pope Urban X did Montini a disservice by sending him to Milan without a cardinal’s hat. Pope Benedict would have amended the error and made Montini more papabile than Monseigneur Boyer.”

            “Do you plan to go into the possible reasons why Pope Urban decided to send his pro-Secretary of State to Milan on relatively short notice without a cardinal’s hat? And why Montini was kept waiting for a cardinal’s hat that never came, even though it was almost five years on when the bombing occurred?

            “Do you think that I should?” Marie-France asked the professor.

            “Hmm, the bombing itself seems to be fairly simple. The owner of the automobile factory, Giacomo Turi himself, was apparently behind it, as well as some conservative politicians — though that was never put in any court of law. They did not like Montini’s rabblerousing and inspiring the workers to fight nonviolently for their rights. If you are interested in Michele Montini, I have some books you might be interested in.” Then Amoretti cleared her throat, and then continued. “How is your Italian?” she said in a cultivated Tuscan with the barest hint of a French accent.

            “I can get by reading it, but speaking it is very poor,” Marie-France replied, also in Italian.

            “You underestimate yourself, Signorina Mercier,” Amoretti said in Italian with a smile. Then, switching back to French, she said, “I think that it would help if you discussed Montini’s entire career, not just its final act. It will explain why it ended as it did. The trouble for you is doing so intelligibly in fifteen pages.” Amoretti gave Marie-France one book entitled Michele Montini: religione e lavoro nella Milano degli anni ’50 and another called Montini: il falso mito del vescovo progressista? “Read these two books — it should not be too hard for you to understand — and come back to me during my office hours as soon as possible after you have read them.”

            “I hope I can do so before the end of the term,” Marie-France said apprehensively, looking at the masses of Italian print in the two books.

            “Oh, you will,” Amoretti said, smiling. “You will.”

            Dagny looked at the two Italian books as she and Marie-France sat together for lunch in the cafeteria. “Ouf! You have bitten off a heavy assignment.”

            “But I don’t know Swedish, and you can speak that much better than I can speak Italian,” Marie-France said. “So if the books were in Swedish, they would be a snap for you.”

            “Now, why would books about Michele Montini be in Swedish?” Dagny asked. Marie-France thought that her friend, brilliant as she was, could sometimes be bewilderingly literal minded.

            “They wouldn’t, but imagine if you were doing a similar topic in modern Swedish history. Say you want to talk — I mean, write — about why Hjalmar Hammarskjöld was forced to resign as Prime Minister in 1917.”

            “Oh, that,” Dagny said with a sigh. “People thought he was too pro Prussian, too pro Austrian, but he actually wasn’t. He was a rather bossy person, though. Intractable, but smart as a whip. I mean, this is what people in the family say. I never knew him, not really. He died when I was eight years old, but he was ninety one and very frail. When I went to summer in Uppsala as a little girl, the only thing I remember of him is that he was very thin and had a very piercing gaze.”

            “You have the same gaze, I imagine,” Marie-France said. “Bright, intense blue eyes that can look into a person’s soul and see whether there is any crap in it.”

            “Now why would I have Hjalmar Hammarskjöld’s gaze?” Dagny said, laughing. “I’m related to the family on the Almqvist side, the mother’s side. I never knew Fru Agnes Hammarskjöld, née Almqvist, my mother’s aunt. She died before I was born. She was a very good Christian lady, they say. A little effusive at times, but I suspect that she underestimated herself all her life. Now does that sound like someone I know?”

            “Except that I am not a Lutheran,” Marie-France said, giggling. “And I am hardly a ‘good Christian lady’, even though I try to be.”

            “Well, you are très française and Fru Agnes was just as Swedish. Of course there are differences. But you are a deacon’s daughter — even though your father still has his day job as an optician — and she was a minister’s daughter. Kind of similar there, n’est-ce pas?”

            Marie-France had to nod at that observation.

            After lunch was Modern British History. The professor who taught that class was Dr. Dwight McLaren, an American from the Northwestern Province long resident in Lyon: his wife Andrée was a professor of French literature at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, specializing in women writers of the Renaissance.

            “After the death of Henry IX in 1807, his son Stephen II and I ascended to the throne,” Dr. McLaren said in his pleasant American accented baritone. “Like his father, he worked hand in hand with the prime minister, William Pitt the Younger. The Industrial Revolution was making Britain the wealthiest country in the world, although wide disparities between rich and poor were becoming more and more apparent. Since Charles III had successfully averted a possible revolt in the American colonies by his visit there in 1773, the British Empire was becoming the greatest empire — at least in terms of extent and population — that the world had ever seen. Intellectually, Britain was flourishing — the Romantic Movement was beginning to crest with authors like Coleridge, Moore and Mary Austen, whose conversion to Catholicism was in 1807 and whose ultimate profession as a Carmelite nun would come in the 1820s — while in the mill towns and rural areas, illiteracy was rife once you got below the middle classes…”

            Marie-France knew the history of the period fairly well. Of course, like many literary and intellectually inclined young women, she would have liked to have been a heroine of one of Mary Austen’s novels — Charlotte Bennet from Pride and Prejudice was everybody’s favorite, but Marie-France was just as pleased by the pious and rather prim Eleanor Price of Willingdon Park: it was hinted in the novel that the Prices were recusant Catholics who had lost most of their land and fortune. But that was more appropriate to the next class, Nineteenth Century English Literature: the professor there, Dr. Laura Mackenzie, a Scotswoman from the University of Edinburgh who was on an exchange year with Dr. Madeleine Lamaison of the Ecole Normale Supérieure’s French Department, had already discussed Austen and was well into the period of James IV and IX, who ruled the British Empire from the 1840s to the 1880s. The middle and late novels of Charlotte Brontë, who died in 1892, were among Marie-France’s favorites: Rose Atwell, published in 1881, was perhaps Marie-France’s very favorite, even though Charlotte Brontë’s first published novel, Jane Eyre, published in 1848, was still the classic example of what people thought was a Charlotte Brontë novel. In the later novels, Marie-France thought that Charlotte Brontë expanded her horizons, not just geographically — in Rose Atwell, the eponymous protagonist (the daughter of a Yorkshire gentleman who had fallen down in the world and his wife, a merchant’s daughter from the Austrian Netherlands) works as a schoolmistress in America and a governess in Brazil before she consents to marry the American millionaire who had been attracted to her ever since he was the older brother of one of her students — but also politically, as Charlotte Brontë showed and displayed a strange mixture of proto feminism, including universal women’s suffrage, and rank conservatism, which manifested itself in anti-unionism, a suspicion of even the most moderate social movements and a curious sense of noblesse oblige (curious because Charlotte Brontë was far from being noble: she was the daughter of the perpetual vicar of Haworth, Yorkshire and the granddaughter of an Irish farmer). Marie-France deplored the extreme goldenness of the politics of Charlotte Brontë: she, Marie-France Mercier, was much more silver, far more liberal, like her parents and like most of her family, though not a radical, not a copper. But that disappointment with Charlotte Brontë’s politics did not make Marie-France reject her novels — au contraire! Marie-France liked to be challenged, even while being entertained.

            Finally the school day of lectures was over and Marie-France took the Metro back to Vitton station. She walked three blocks north on Rue Tête d’Or and then turned east on Rue Sully. The parish of St-Joseph des Brotteaux was on the corner of Rue Sully and Rue Champs d’Argent, a mere two blocks up. Marie-France put on over her long wavy golden blonde hair a black lace princess style mantilla that she kept in her purse as she entered the narthex of the church. Marie-France preferred black lace, even though as an unmarried young woman she was entitled to a white or ivory mantilla, because she kept the mantilla in her purse and she did not want any inadvertent ink spills to show — for Marie-France also kept a ball tip pen or two in her purse, even though ball tip pens were still prone to spillage. Marie-France looked at her wrist watch: it was a quarter past five, and the church was beginning to fill up for the evening All Saints’ Day Mass. The pastor of St-Joseph des Brotteaux, Abbé Jacques Dujardin, would preside at the Mass, but Marie-France’s father, Deacon Charles Mercier, would read the Gospel and give the homily. Marie-France found a seat five rows from the front next to her mother and her younger siblings, Denise, Paul (who was 17 years old and attended Marie-France’s alma mater, the Lycée du Parc), and Antoine and Anastasie (who were both 14 years old: Antoine attended the parochial Collège de St-Joseph des Brotteaux, while Anastasie attended the Collège des Ursulines, which Marie-France and Denise had also attended: Denise had finished her secondary education at the Lycée des Ursulines before going on to study architecture at the University of Lyon).

            Marie-France genuflected before the altar and knelt in the pew to say quietly a brief prayer (“Oh Lord, have mercy on me. Heal my soul, for I have sinned against Thee. Forgive me my sins, and bring me and each of us to everlasting life. Oh Lord, keep Thou the door of my lips that I say nothing to hurt or harm anybody. Oh Lord, guard Thou my actions that I do nothing to hurt or harm anybody. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”), before she sat down next to her family.

            “You made it,” Yvonne said, whispering to Marie-France. “Thank Heaven! Otherwise you would have had to wait till seven o’clock — and your father is not at that Mass.”

            Marie-France just nodded at her mother. Marie-France did not like to talk in church if she could help it. She felt a bit sorry for her mother, who had not been raised by church going parents and who only went to Mass as a child on the rare occasions when her pious grandmother was allowed to take her. Yvonne had not entirely internalized church etiquette in a few respects, even though she was a good, devout, even exemplary Catholic. She still was a bit too bohemian, a bit too fashionable, for some parishioners’ tastes — and having a deacon’s wife work for a living, even from her home as an artist, was a little unusual. Still, Marie-France would not change her mother, or exchange her mother, for anybody else in the world.

            The Mass was a fairly literal French translation of the old Tridentine Mass: vernacular translations of the Tridentine Mass had come about in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, in the wake of the papacy of Venerable Gregory XVII, né John Henry Newman, who had also brought together most of the Orthodox Churches and the High Church Anglicans into the Catholic Church. Evening Masses had come about during the Great War, when the fast from all food and drink from midnight on till receiving Communion was officially modified by the Vatican to three hours before Mass began: shift workers could not regularly attend Sunday Masses during the morning or at noon without possibly endangering national welfare. One might regularly hear a bit of Latin in the Agnus Dei and a bit of Greek in the Kyrie Eleison during Sunday and feast day Masses, but outside the international city of Rome, where the Pope was the nominal ruler under a League of Nations mandate, there were very few Latin Masses. However, the idea of having a completely new version of the Mass would have seemed strange: was not the current version perfectly all right, once the Epiclesis was added to the Canon and the Filioque omitted from the Nicene Creed to please the (former) Orthodox? The Filioque was still part of the catechism, after all, and the original version of the Nicene Creed did not have the Filioque in it: the (former) Orthodox were correct. It was proper to acknowledge where acknowledgement was due. And a new version of the Mass would have been probably too Protestantized, too bare, too barren. And who would want to have the Catholic Church be more like Protestant churches? Not Marie-France, although as a good Catholic she had never been inside one. This meant that Marie-France had never accompanied Dagny to her Lutheran services (Dagny’s silk merchant father, Pierre Desaulniers, was anticlerical, but had allowed Alma, Dagny’s mother, to raise their children as Lutherans, provided that the church services and catechism lessons were in French), even though Dagny had gone to several Masses — including a Christmas Midnight Mass the year before — with Marie-France and the Merciers at St-Joseph des Brotteaux.

            Marie-France usually was attentive at her father’s homilies, but was not paying very much attention this time. She was too worried about how to write the essay on Michele Montini and trying to devise topics for term papers for her other classes (in addition to Modern Italian History, Modern British History and Nineteenth Century English Literature, Marie-France was taking a high intermediate / low advanced Italian language course, which did not require a term paper). For Nineteenth Century English Literature, why not a paper on the politics in Rose Atwell? For Modern British History, why not a paper about the contemporary press reactions to the kidnapping of James VI and XI by a renegade faction of the Irish Republican Army in 1914, which brought about the Great War? True, the kidnapping of James VI and XI would be discussed only towards the end of the term, but it was still part of the course. And then Marie-France realized that her lack of attention during Mass was a sin. She would have to confess it as soon as possible — next Saturday afternoon, most likely, since St-Joseph des Brotteaux did not have weekday confessions. What else would she have to confess? Not being sorry enough for being self-righteous and vain? For her disagreements with Denise? For feeling superior to her own mother?

            As Marie-France knelt at the communion rail, she tried not to focus on Abbé Dujardin coming with the Body of Christ in the ciborium and, behind the priest, her father coming with the Precious Blood in the chalice. Instead, she bent her head so far down that her mantilla came off — a terrible faux pas before the Blessed Sacrament, and certainly just before receiving Communion. Marie-France managed to retrieve the mantilla just before it fell to the ground and put it back lopsided on her head. A moment later, Abbé Dujardin came with the Body of Christ before her to give her the host. Marie-France took a breath after she took in the host, and then her father came with the chalice bearing the Precious Blood. Charles Mercier grinned mischievously as he said, “The Blood of Christ.” And Marie-France realized just how lopsided she had placed her mantilla on her head.

            After Mass had ended and the family had silently said some thanksgiving prayers while waiting for Charles to take off his vestments, the Merciers walked west on Rue Sully two blocks to Rue Clemenceau. Then they walked south two blocks till they reached Rue Tronchet. The next street — more like an alley — was Passage Cazenove. About a third of the way between Rue Tronchet and the next street to the west, Rue Boileau, was 9 Passage Cazenove. There was a garage on the ground floor: the Mercier residence was on the first and second floors. So they climbed the stairs (there was no elevator in the building, even though Denise, for one, would have greatly profited by it) and entered the residence.

            The front door opened to a foyer, which led to a living room furnished in the late nineteenth century style of Louis XIX. There was a modified open plan on the first floor, so the living room was open to the kitchen and dining room. There was a water closet for guests, as well as for Denise, whose bedroom was on this floor. The master bedroom was also on the first floor, but it had an en suite water closet and bathroom. On the second floor were bedrooms — one each for Marie-France, Paul, Anastasie and Antoine — Yvonne’s studio and Charles’ combined office and oratory. It had been difficult to find a residence with so many bedrooms, since families with five children were not common. To find one near the Lycée du Parc with a bedroom for each child, as well as a private space for each parent, was extremely fortunate, as well as the fact that Charles could afford it on an optician’s salary. Of course, the Merciers had saved some money from what President Aurie gave Yvonne after her thwarting the assassination plot against him in 1953: that had helped when Aurie decided to relocate the Merciers from Paris to Lyon in order to prevent the Russian government from having as easy access to them. But, still, it was sometimes touch and go, especially since in 1963, Charles had  been ordained a deacon and spent much of his spare time in the evenings training catechists and teaching Bible study, as well as reading the Gospel and preaching at Masses on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation. In other words, he could not spend as much time working at his job as some opticians: his ministry and his family took priority. Yvonne’s earnings from her art, her painting and drawing, often of characters from French literature, were more than pin money for her: they went to help the household. So they, Charles and Yvonne, were working together, not in the work place but in the household, to make sure that their children had the best possible education — preferably a Catholic education, but if the best education in Lyon for their children was secular, then secular it would be.

            And so Marie-France went up to her bedroom to take off her coat before dinner. Anastasie knocked at the bedroom door and asked her oldest sister, “France, may I have your lavender blouse tomorrow?”

            “Wouldn’t that be too big on you, at least in the bust?” Marie-France asked.

            “I can stuff my bra,” Anastasie replied.

            “With handkerchiefs?” Marie-France said, trying not to laugh.

            “At least they are soft,” Anastasie said, protesting mildly.

            “Here,” Marie-France said, rummaging in her closet. “This ought to fit you.” She took out a dove grey blouse with a bateau neck and slightly puffed three quarter length sleeves.

            “But France,” Anastasie said, “that is five years out of fashion.”

            “I was your size five years ago.”

            “I want something that is in the mode, le dernier cri.” Anastasie’s deep brown eyes seemed to grow even larger.

            “And so do I,” Marie-France nodded in reply. “I hardly ever see anybody in person who is in the latest fashion, except for one of my professors. Although how she affords it on a professor’s salary is extremely odd.”

            “Maybe she is the mistress of somebody rich and famous.”

            “I don’t believe that,” Marie-France said. “And what is a good girl like you talking about mistresses? You aren’t even in the lycée yet.”

            “I do read books, after all.”

            “I didn’t think that Madame Bovary was on the curriculum of the Collège des Ursulines,” Marie-France said, a bit acidulously.

            “It is not,” Anastasie replied. “But I don’t read just what is on the curriculum.”

            After Anastasie had left Marie-France’s bedroom with the lavender blouse, Marie-France went downstairs for dinner. Yvonne had fixed a crock pot recipe of beef stew that would simmer all day while she was working and while she was at Mass. Charles said the blessing over the food, the grace before dinner, and then everybody ate with gusto — even Denise, who was watching her weight.

            “The President is weak,” Charles said to Yvonne and the older children.

            “Yes, Mitterrand would like to run for President,” Denise said.

            “Really?” Paul said. “He has more than enough power as Minister of the Interior — why would he want to be President, unless he wants the legitimacy of the title? Of course, the elections aren’t till ’70 —“

            “It is a shame that the Republic is in such shambolic straits,” Yvonne interjected. “Sometimes one wants to have the monarchy back — as long as it were à l’anglaise.”

            “A British style monarchy will never fit in France, much though it would be nice for it to occur,” Charles said. “The House of Stuart is much too sui generis.”

            Marie-France kept silent. She had her own political opinions about current events in France, but did not feel like expressing them openly, at least not very often. She believed in a Christian social democracy, possibly in a republic, possibly in a constitutional monarchy (if the latter were a viable option). Of course, the Republic was so corrupt and constantly threatened to veer into dictatorship: it might be safer not to express one’s political opinions, at least not about French politics. It was easier to express one’s political opinions by writing about the past.

            After dinner, the three girls washed the dinner dishes — the Merciers did not have a dishwashing machine, which was an expensive luxury — and Marie-France went back up to her bedroom to study. Italian class was the following morning at nine o’clock, but Marie-France would spend the entire day until half past four in the afternoon on campus either in the class room or in the language lab, with the exception of lunch in the cafeteria. It was like this every Tuesday and Thursday: Marie-France had her other classes on Mondays and Wednesdays, leaving her Fridays free to study or to shop for her mother or to run errands or to do pretty much whatever she pleased. So she spent her evening like that, until it got to be half past ten and she realized that she had not said her evening prayers. She knelt by her bed with a prayer book in hand and began to recite a few prayers from the Little Hours of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Then, that having finished, Marie-France decided that it was about time for her to get ready for bed. She put her pink and white Lanz style night gown on the bed and took off her Louis heel shoes, her dress, her white cotton bra, her garter belt, her sheer taupe artificial silk stockings, her pink silk under pants.

            Safely in her night gown, Marie-France settled in her bed and took up a novel to read: Françoise Sagan’s latest. Marie-France read for half an hour till she felt sleepy, then turned off the light on her night stand.

            And thus was her All Saints’ Day in the year of Our Lord 1967.