WEARING a tight new corset that creaked with every step, Eugénie Patinot walked down Avenue des Peupliers. She felt weary at the prospect of what already promised to be an exhausting day. Endlessly pestered by the children, she had reluctantly left the cool of the veranda. If outwardly she gave an impression of dignified composure, inside she was in turmoil: tightness in her chest, stomach cramps, a dull pain in her hip and, on top of everything, palpitations.

‘Don’t run, Marie-Amélie. Hector, stop whistling, it’s vulgar.’

‘We’re going to miss the bus, Aunt! Hector and I are going to sit upstairs. Have you definitely got the tickets?’

Eugénie stopped and opened her reticule to make sure that she did have the tickets, which her brother-in-law had bought several days earlier.

‘Hurry up, Aunt,’ urged Marie-Amélie.

Eugénie glared. The child really knew how to annoy her. A capricious little boy, Hector was hardly any better. Only Gontran, the eldest, was tolerable, as long as he kept quiet.

There were about ten passengers waiting at the omnibus station on Rue d’Auteuil. Eugénie recognised Louise Vergne, the housemaid from the Le Massons. She was carrying a large basket of linen to the laundry, probably the one on Rue Mirabeau, and was quite unselfconsciously wiping her pale face with a handkerchief as big as a sheet. There was no way of avoiding her. Eugénie stifled her irritation. The woman was only a servant but always spoke to her as an equal, with overfamiliarity, and yet Eugénie had never dared point out this impropriety.

‘Ah, Madame Patinot, how hot it is for June! I feel I might melt away.’

‘That would be no bad thing,’ muttered Eugénie.

‘Are you going far, Madame Patinot?’

‘To the Expo. These three little devils begged my sister to go.’

‘Poor dear, the things you have to do. Aren’t you frightened? All those foreigners …’

‘I want to see Buffalo Bill’s circus at Neuilly. There are real Redskins who shoot real arrows!’

‘That’s enough, Hector! Oh that’s good, he’s wearing odd socks – a white one, and a grey one.’

‘It’s coming, Aunt, it’s coming!’

Omnibus A, drawn by three stolid horses, stopped by the pavement. Marie-Amélie ran upstairs.

‘I can see your drawers,’ shrieked Hector, following her up.

‘I don’t care! From up here everything’s beautiful,’ retorted the little girl.

Sitting next to Gontran, who was glued to her side, Eugénie reflected on the fact that the worst moments of one’s life were those spent on public transport. She hated travelling; it made her feel lost and alone, like a dead leaf floating at the mercy of the tiniest breeze.

‘Is that a new outfit you’ve bought yourself?’ asked Louise Vergne.

The treachery of the question was not lost on Eugénie. ‘It’s a present from my sister,’ she replied curtly, smoothing the silk of the flame-coloured dress into which she was tightly packed.

She omitted to mention that her sister had already worn the dress for two seasons, but added softly: ‘Mind you don’t miss your stop, my dear.’

Having silenced the tiresome woman, Eugénie opened her purse and counted her money, pleased that they had taken the omnibus rather than a carriage. The saving would give her a little more to put by. It was worth the sacrifice.

Louise Vergne rose haughtily like an offended duchess. ‘If I were you, I would hide your bag. They say that all of London’s pickpockets have emigrated to the Champ-de-Mars,’ was her parting remark as she got off.

Immediately Gontran piped up, ‘Did you know that they had to manufacture eighteen thousand pieces in the workshops of Levallois-Perret, and that it took two hundred workmen to assemble them on the site? People predicted that it would collapse after two hundred and eighty metres but it didn’t.’

Here we go, thought Eugénie. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Why, the Tower, of course!’

‘Sit up straight and wipe your nose.’

‘If you wanted to transport it somewhere else on wheels you would need ten thousand horses,’ Gontran continued, rubbing his nose.

Hector and Marie-Amélie came bounding down from the top deck. ‘We’re here, look!’

Pointing straight up into the sky on the other side of the Seine, Gustave Eiffel’s bronze-coloured tower was reminiscent of a giant streetlamp topped with gold. Panic-stricken, Eugénie searched for a pretext to get out of climbing it. When she couldn’t think of one, she laid a hand on her pounding heart. If I survive this I shall say fifty Paternosters at Notre-Dame d’Auteuil.

The bus drew up in front of the enormous Trocadero Palace, flanked by minarets. Down below, beyond the grey ribbon of the river filled with boats, the fifty hectares of the Universal Exposition were spread before them.

Tightly clutching her bag, her eyes fixed on the children, Eugénie began her descent into hell. She charged down Colline de Chaillot, passing the fruits of the world display, the tortured bonsai of the Japanese garden, and the dark entrance of ‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth’ without a second glance. Though the whalebones of her corset chafed her ribs and her feet begged for mercy, she did not slacken her pace. She just wanted to get this over and done with as soon as possible and get back on terra firma …

Finally, she held out her tickets and pushed the children under the canopy of the Pont d’Iéna. ‘Listen to me carefully,’ she said slowly and deliberately. ‘If you stray from me by so much as a centimetre – do you hear me? a centimetre – we’re going home.’

Then she plunged headlong into the fray. A huge crowd was jostling around the multicoloured kiosks, forming a human tide of French people and foreigners of all races. The minstrels of Leicester Square, with their soot-blackened faces, led the way along the left bank, to the rhythm of banjos.

With pounding heart, and overwhelmed by the noise, Eugénie clung to Gontran, who was unmoved by the hubbub. The Exposition seemed to come at them from all sides. Jostled between the street vendors, the Annamese rickshaw-pullers and Egyptian donkey-drivers, they finally succeeded in joining the queue in front of the southern pillar of the Tower.

Moving reluctantly along in the queue, Eugénie looked enviously at the elegant young people comfortably installed in special rolling chairs, pushed by employees in peaked caps. That’s what I need …

‘Aunt, look!’

She looked up and saw a forest of crossbars and small beams, in the midst of which a lift slid up and down. At once she was seized with a desire to flee as fast and far as her exhausted legs would carry her.

She dimly heard Gontran’s monotonous voice: ‘Three hundred and one metres … leading straight up to the second floor … four lifts. Otis, Combaluzier …’

Otis, Combaluzier. Something about those strange names suddenly reminded her of the projectile vehicle, in that book by Jules Verne whose title escaped her.

‘Those preferring to walk up the one thousand seven hundred and ten steps will take an hour to do so …’

She remembered now: it was From the Earth to the Moon! What if the cables snapped …?

‘Aunt, I want a balloon! A helium balloon! A blue one! Give me a sou, Aunt, a sou!’

A clout on the ear more like!

She regained her self-control. A poor relation, given a roof over her head out of pure charity, could not afford to give free rein to her feelings. Regretfully she held out a sou to Hector.

Gontran was still reciting impassively from the Exhibition Guide. ‘… on average, eleven thousand visitors a day, and the Tower can accommodate ten thousand people at any one time …’

He stopped abruptly, sensing the icy glare of the man just ahead of them, an immaculately dressed middle-aged man of Japanese origin. He stared at Gontran unblinkingly until he lowered his eyes, then slowly turned away, satisfied.

Turning towards the ticket window, Eugénie was so overcome by panic that she was unable to string two words together.

Marie-Amélie pushed her aside and, standing on tiptoes, bellowed: ‘Four tickets for the second platform, please.’

‘Why the second? The first platform is high enough,’ stammered Eugénie.

‘We must sign the Golden Book in the Figaro Pavilion, have you forgotten? Papa insisted – he wants to read our names in the newspaper. Pay the lady, Aunt.’

Propelled to the back of the lift, close behind a Japanese man whose face bore an expression of childish delight, Eugénie collapsed onto a wooden bench and commended her soul to God. She could not stop thinking about an advertisement glimpsed in the...