Lazare, clutching Paul Verault’s address in her gloved hand. Her heart was pounding in excitement. Not just at the prospect of seeing her art teacher again, but because, at last, she was in France. All around her was chaos of an infinitely interesting kind, taking her mind off her worries. Frenchmen and women and children from all stations of life were scurrying to and from the largest train depot in Paris. Beside her, a Negro porter was signaling a gleaming black hansom forward from a line of such waiting carriages. When she had given him Verault’s address, he had tried to tell her that she did not have far to go, that she could take the Metro, but Sofie, dazed from the journey from Le Havre, much less from crossing the Atlantic, had politely declined. Sofie’s wide gaze as she stood on the Rue D’Amsterdam took in the heavy vehicular traffic of the tree-lined avenue, traffic that was hardly any different from any great city: the hansoms, the coaches and carriages, the lorries and drays and the cable cars.
