Before the car at last left the market area, Milo knew that he had shaken at least two hundred hands, and many of the shakers, the women in particular, had also kissed his hand. And when leave they did, the spacious interior of the Rolls was solidly packed with foodstuffs and wine, cognac and cordials. Nor had Milo been allowed to pay a single franc for any of it.
When he had begun to try to stuff bills into the pockets of those who were loading the best of their wares into the car, the hulking Rene Febvre had gently taken his arm and led him back toward the car, rumbling softly, “M’sieu Moray, please do not embarrass these men and women. You did so very much for a man and a girl who are heroes to us of the Resistance, your generous gift can never ever be repaid, but please let us try in our own small ways.”
They were only a short distance from their destination when Milo suddenly remembered his promise to Per, his adopted son. “Marcel, if there is anyplace left in this car to stow it, I promised to bring my children somebonbons, chocolats and pates d’amandes, perhaps. Could we stop at a shop that sells them?”
The chauffeur did not speak a word, just made a U-turn that sent piles of foodstuffs toppling through-out the car’s interior, came within bare centimeters of clipping a war-worn GI jeep with the unit markings painted over and a crate of guinea fowl in the back. The jeep driver took a hand off the wheel long enough to shake a clenched fist and shout spluttering curses. At the next turn, the Rolls came within millimeters of taking out a gendarme, but the chauffeur drove serenely on, seeming to not even hear the whistle shrilling angrily behind him.
Completely blocking a short, narrow street, Marcel double-parked before a tiny shop with the legend CONFISERIE painted on its front. Ignoring the bills in Milo’s outstretched hand—there being no way that Milo could have easily gotten out of the overstuffed car himself—the black-suited man got out of the vehicle and entered the shop, shortly emerging with a box that looked to hold at least two kilos and followed by an elderly woman and a younger man who both peered in at Milo for the length of time that it took Marcel to get going again.
Close to Etienne Duron’s house, Marcel stopped once more to engage two men in conversation, then proceeded the remainder of the distance much more slowly, with the two men standing on the running boards and clinging to the roof pillars while staring at Milo with looks of dumb adoration.
As the chauffeur and his two assistants began the job of unloading the well-loaded car into the kitchen and pantry of the house, Martine took Milo’s arm and protested,“Mon Dieu, husband, you bought far too much. My father has no refrigeration here, as we have in America, so most of this all will rot before it can be used. And what must have been the cost of all this, this . . . ?”
“Much less than one would think, my dear,” said Milo dryly, adding, “In point of pure fact, nothing, not a single franc.”
The woman just stared at him. “Milo, have you been drinking, perhaps?”
Marcel, who had overheard the exchange, chose that moment to say, “Madame does not know, then, M’sieu Moray?Of course not, she does not sound to have lived in France for some years, and m’sieu is clearly a man of surpassing modesty, as regards his charity.”
Turning to Martine, he said solemnly, “Madame Moray, it is your great honor to be the wife of a very good and most saintly man. For long years we all thought him killed byles Boches, mourned his death, made the repose of his compassionate soul the object of thousands of masses, tens of thousands of candles and millions of heartfelt prayers.
“It was I, Marcel Eudes Noyes, who first discovered today that the saintly Capitaine Milo Moray still lives. Soon all of Paris will know and rejoice, then all of France.”
Colonel Duron had been seated, looking rather stunned as the three grunting, groaning men bore the vast quantities of comestibles and beverages into his house. Overhearing, his head swiveled on his bony, loose-skinned neck. “But of course,” he pronounced slowly, “my poor memory is failing me;that is why your name sounded so very familiar when first Martine wrote to me of you. To think, I greeted you this day, ate across the same table from you . . . yet, in my fast-encroaching senility, I failed to connect facts.”
Martine just looked helplessly from Marcel to Milo to her father. “What in the world are you two babbling about? Tell me, please!”
Duron took his daughter’s hand and drew her down on the bench at his side. “Martine, do you have memory of a man named Henri Gallion? No, you probably would not, you were very young when last you might have heard that name. Henri was badly wounded at the Marne in the Great War; nonetheless, he recovered sufficiently to become a most successful businessman, despite all of the economic problems. But because of his wounds, he was not called to fightles Boches in 1940, though his son was and that young man died trying to hold a line in Flanders. His wife suffered a seizure when the news reached them and she, too, died shortly thereafter.
“His young daughter, Nicole, left the convent school then, to care for her bereaved father. She stood at his side, then led him home weeping after they had watched the arrogant German army march into Paris. But unlike far too many French men and French women, those two would not let matters so rest, would not lower themselves to passive collaboration with the occupying enemy. They carried on the war in their own quiet ways.”
“Henri Gailion sat high in the council of the Resistance, Madame Moray,” put in Marcel Noyes, “and his brave daughter became a courier, her carefully cultivated appearance of youth, modesty and utter innocence saving her in many times and places as she did her most dangerous work for France.”
Duron nodded and continued his recital. “For almost five years, Henri Gailion and Nicole were able to hoodwinkles Boches, leading an overt life and a covert life simultaneously. Then, only a month or less before the liberation of Paris, both father and daughter were taken away by S$ men and Gestapo agents. Poor Gailion himself was savagely tortured, maimed, deliberately crippled.”
Martine paled perceptibly as Marcel interjected,“Les Boches did not ever know just how big a fish they had netted in Henri Gailion. Had either he or little Nicole broken under the questionings and the mistreatments, I shudder to think what might then have chanced, madame, for me and thousands of other loyal French men and women.
“But neither of them broke. Even when the pigs tore out both of Henri’s eyes, drilled through into the quivering nerves of most of his teeth, rammed steel spikes into his fingertips after they already had torn out his nails with pincers. They placed wirings in the most sensitive portions of his body and ran electrical currents through them, burning him severely in many places, they crushed his . . . his masculinities in a small vise . . . and almost all of this, they forced Nicole to watch being done.
“But despite the very worst, Henri never divulged even a hint of his association withla Resistance, nor did Nicole. She was put in prison and there raped repeatedly; he was placed in a prison hospital to recover sufficiently to be sent to a concentration camp in Germany, but before he could be entrained, Paris was liberated.
“Henri Gallion and Nicole were free, yes, as was our Paris, but free as well to slowly starve, for what can a blind jeweler with maimed hands do? Many were the offers of money and of food and fuel, but Henri Gallion had his pride intact still, and he well knew that most or all of those extending help to him were in only barely better condition themselves, and he would take nothing, rather having Nicole sell his available stock, then family pieces to eke out a precarious existence.
“Madame Moray, when there was nothing left to sell, Nicole was become frantic, for she never had learned any sort of trade. Then a woman she had met in the prison, one Angelique Laroux, a most accomplished courtesan, offered to take Nicole on as an apprentice and journeyed north with her, into Germany, to answer the gold-edged summons of a high-ranking American officer.