Authors: Julien Ayotte
At 4:00 p.m. each day, Louis would get ready to leave for his waiter’s job at the Café Royal, a job he liked because of the tips he received. Between 5:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m., Louis could make as much in tips as what he made for a whole night in wages at the hotel. If the café had more business during the day, he would have left the desk clerk’s job long ago. As it was, dining in Paris between 5:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. was very common and the Café Royal’s location between the Hotel-de-Ville and the Hotel-de-Cluny was ideal.
Every Saturday and Sunday, Louis would spend with Françoise, displaying his daughter, like he was wearing a new suit, to his friends and neighbors, as he proudly paraded with her in his arms. The other boys were too busy playing with boys of their own ages in the neighborhood to notice the attention their father gave to Françoise, not that it would have mattered to Louis. This was his pride and joy, his first daughter, and perhaps, his only daughter.
As Françoise grew, Louis would take her to different sections of Paris each weekend, carefully explaining the history of each landmark he pointed out to her. By the time Françoise was six years old, she could identify sites in Paris that her mother did not even know existed. It was quite clear to Louis that this child had a flair for the geography and history of the city and was the first to rise on Saturday so she was ready for the trips throughout the city with her father.
By 1939, the Germans’ stronghold on Europe became so obvious that the Parisian government became unsettled. Hitler had invaded and conquered Denmark and Norway and was moving toward France. People in Paris panicked, and the Parisians began to evacuate the city as quickly as they could in a rush to move south to avoid the Germans. The occupation of Paris by the Germans happened so fast that Parisians were left stunned. By June 1940, Paris was an occupied city. The Germans requisitioned the big luxury hotels, splattered swastika flags across famous sights such as the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triumphe and major government buildings.
Louis Dupont was still at the Hotel Colbert when the occupation began, but not for long. General Gunther Hausmann, on direct orders from Germany, had taken over the hotel exclusively for the use of German officers and their guests.
“You will not be needed any longer, Dupont,” Hausmann said abruptly and without the least bit of concern for this man with a family of seven to feed.
“Louis, what’s wrong, what are you doing here?” Jacqueline asked when Louis came home that evening at a few minutes after midnight. Jacqueline had been busy mending and ironing clothes when Louis quietly entered the kitchen.
“The Germans have taken over the hotel and they don’t need me anymore. Security reasons. They said that one of their own soldiers would be handling the desk duties from now on. I knew this would happen. We should have left the city when we had a chance to. Now, I don’t know what to do,” Louis nervously said as he hugged Jacqueline, not wanting her to see the tears building in his eyes.
He composed himself quickly and, as if gaining new strength from within, simply said, “I’ll go see Monsieur Cardin at the café tomorrow morning, maybe he can give me more hours at the restaurant.”
Unaccustomed to being home in the evening during the week, Louis lay awake most of the night rehearsing his approach with Cardin and his options if there were no more hours for him to work at the café.
The Café Royal was not extending anyone’s hours, Cardin had told Louis; in fact, business had dropped so much that he was considering going with less waiters and serving on tables himself. With many Parisians having left the city and few travelers visiting the city, the restaurant business wasn’t flourishing. Cardin, a compassionate man with a wife and child himself, knew of Louis’ large family and offered to keep Louis on his regular shift. He even was willing to give Louis first coverage when another waiter either left or could not work because of illness. Surely, that would give him some additional hours from time to time. This would mean that Louis had to be available to work at a moment’s notice, including Saturdays and Sundays. For Louis, all he could think of was the need to keep his family alive and nourished with a roof over their heads.
The next four years for Françoise were very sad years. She missed her weekend journeys throughout Paris with her father and, because of the resistance movement, stayed close to home at the insistence of her parents. With no sightseeing and no new buildings with a story to be told by her father, Françoise ached at the dull thought of doing housework or helping with her mother’s laundry.
In June 1944, Françoise turned twelve years old. Paris had recently avoided being bombed. A Swedish neutral had convinced General von Choltitz of the German army that bombing Paris would serve no purpose. The Allied army was fast approaching and the Germans would soon be forced to surrender the city to the French.
In August of that year, skirmishes broke out between resistance fighters and German troops throughout the city. Choltitz, under orders by Hitler, was to detonate explosives carefully placed under all the monuments of Paris. Realizing the centuries of culture present in these monuments, Choltitz sent a message to the Allied army urging them to move quickly on Paris before other German officers took action he could not be responsible for. General Charles DeGaulle proceeded toward Paris along with General Jacques-Philippe LeClerc, commander of the Second French Armored Division. French troops, not Americans, were to enter the capital first.
On August 25, as the French troops began entering Paris, more fighting broke out with the Germans resulting in serious damage to the Hotel Continental, a short distance away from the Hotel-de-Ville on Rue de Rivoli. Shortly thereafter, the Germans instructed a cease-fire. A surrender had been signed and General DeGaulle was presented to the French people in a victory celebration that evening at the Hotel-de-Ville.
There were tears streaming down Louis Dupont’s face as he stood in the crowd below the window of the hotel as the general appeared. Louis beamed. He had once worked at this place. Few people knew the room General DeGaulle appeared in more than Louis. He could describe the furniture, the paintings on the wall, even the design of the curtains in that particular suite. He envisioned himself standing at DeGaulle’s side at the window, sharing in the glory that surely was in bloom in the streets below.
The Café Royal was booming with customers now with the return of French and Allied troops to the city and Monsieur Cardin begged Louis to stay at the restaurant. Cardin tried to convince Louis that he would be better off with more hours at the restaurant than at the hotel because it would allow him to be home with his family each night and on weekends as well. Louis was loyal; he had been loyal for all the years he had been at the hotel, and he had no intention of leaving Cardin when he needed him. After all, wasn’t this the man who kept Louis’ family with food during the war years by offering him work, even when business was poor? How could he turn his back on him now? Indeed, Louis would stay at the Café Royal and, in appreciation, Cardin made Louis his maître d’ and headwaiter.
Françoise, most of all, was elated at the news that her father was now going to be home on weekends, those glorious weekends of exploring the attractions of Paris with her giant of a father. “This Saturday, Papa, can we just walk through the city again,” pleaded Françoise, “it’s been so long since I’ve seen any buildings outside this street that I don’t know if I’ll remember them.”
Louis smiled and warmly responded, “Little one, as soon as your eyes come upon a sight you have seen but once before, you will remember not only its name but the whole history behind it as I once told you.”
Paris was alive again and the streets were bustling with soldiers and traffic, as Françoise had never seen before. As they walked on the Rue de Vanves toward Avenue du Maine, Françoise began, “There’s the Institut Pasteur de Montrouge and over there is the Cimetiere du Montparnasse and…” she continued like the rapid fire of a machine gun, spitting out information in succession as if she had seen these landmarks the day before, not four years ago.
If he had any doubts about her remembering the lessons he had taught her about the city and its sights, Françoise convinced her father in the first hour that, not only did she remember, she craved for more. It was just Françoise and her father, no brothers to tease her, no mother to subject her to the routine of housework, and the freedom to roam on and on in a city that seemed to offer more each time she thought she had seen it all.
By noon they had meandered through the streets, stopping briefly to talk about the buildings and even going inside a few to see if the bombings had badly damaged any of them. They approached the Café Royal where Louis had planned for them to stop for a quick lunch as the restaurant prepared to open for the day. Monsieur Cardin and the other employees who knew that Louis held a special place of importance at the restaurant greeted him with warmth. Waiters and chefs were immediately attracted to Françoise’s smile and eagerness to learn about everything around her and spoiled Françoise at lunch.
As time went on, the Saturday lunches at the café were times when each waiter could sit briefly with Françoise to tell her about other parts of Paris she had not seen, or so they thought. Each week became a testing period for her as she anxiously awaited the quizzing from the waiters on the sites of Paris. And every time, the waiters would come away shaking their heads in amazement at Françoise’s phenomenal memory for detail, even when the questions concerned small out-of-the-way monuments she had not even visited yet.
The next four years were very prosperous ones for the Dupont family. Louis had been promoted to restaurant manager as Monsieur Cardin worked less and less due to arthritis in his legs forcing him to stay off them more and more. Cardin would sit behind the counter and act as the cashier while Louis would oversee the entire operation of the restaurant.
At ages fifty-seven and fifty-three, Louis and his wife had finally realized the dream of owning their own home. A small cottage just outside of the city was all they needed now that all the other children were grown and on their own, except Françoise, at seventeen, who was completing her schooling and still living at home. Louis had purchased a car, but the drive to the restaurant was too much bother each day. In 1949, parking on public thoroughfares was tolerated by the police even though it was in violation of public laws prohibiting it. The congestion on the city streets made Louis nervous since he had only recently begun to drive an automobile. It was, for Louis, a status symbol more than a means of transport. Instead, he would take the Metro from just outside the city limits and would leave the car at home if Jacqueline needed it.
Jacqueline was no longer working, there was no need to, and she proudly spent her days in her new garden where she planted flowers and nurtured them as she had done with her children. Although only fifty-three years old, she looked well into her sixties. The early years of struggle to keep her family alive had taken their toll on her. Her eyesight was failing, her figure became noticeably plump and she had an increasingly difficult time in keeping her weight down due to her more relaxed lifestyle.
Weekends for Louis were now without Françoise who knew her way around Paris far better than her father. He had taught her well and she had not been content with only what her father had shown her. It wasn’t enough; Françoise was like an engine that required more and more fuel to keep it running. In her case, the fuel was a new site, an old building, and another piece of history about the city.
Françoise had applied to be a tour guide with Le Bourget, the Paris airport for international travelers. Throughout recent years, she had learned to speak English quite well and was studying to become an interpreter for the French government. Le Bourget was getting so much traffic from people abroad that it needed more guides to explain the sights of Paris on its bus tours that picked up tourists at various hotels in the city.
At first, the tour director was hesitant at hiring a seventeen-year-old girl for a position requiring an older, more seasoned person. After some preliminary testing by the director, he simply asked, “Do you know where the Place de L’Etoile is located?” Françoise smiled and said, “La Place de L’Etoile was constructed in 1854 in Neuilly and originally was the focal point where five avenues intersected. Hausmann, the engineer, made it a circle in later years where twelve avenues now meet. In 1860, Hottorf, the architect, constructed twelve identical town houses bordering the circle. You would reach the monument by way of Boulevard Hausmann, named after its engineer..” Françoise conducted her first tour that Saturday.
For the next two years, Françoise would conduct tours on weekends and every day during the summer months. She had completed her formal schooling and was now earning a good salary as Paris underwent major renovations and tourism continued to flourish. Traffic congestion forced improvements to the Metro and train system. Poor water and sewer systems forced the government to speed the development of better housing facilities with improved water treatment facilities. Ever changing, Paris was her life, Françoise reflected, as she proudly pointed out the new and how it blended in nicely with the old during her tours.
Françoise had matured into a very attractive woman of nineteen by the spring of 1951. Her long brown hair radiated from her face and brought out the beauty of her facial features. Blue eyes, a smooth and radiant complexion without a blemish, teeth that emanated a warm smile each time she spoke, and a statuesque body with perfect curves in all the right places. She had grown to feel not only the yearning of the city but also the desires of the heart. More so in recent months than before, it was as if a flower had suddenly blossomed and young males could now see the body beneath the smile. She had reached the time in her life when she began to think of love and romance and what it would be like to be with a man.
The tour bus was loaded on this August morning. The driver of the bus, Rejean Boiteau, was a quiet man in his early twenties who had recently joined the company. He had just moved to Paris from Dijon where life for a young man was not as exciting or as promising as in Paris. Françoise entered the bus and immediately introduced herself to the passengers, ignoring Rejean as she faced her eager students of the city.