I Burn Paris

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It started with a minor, seemingly insignificant incident that was decidedly private in nature.

One beautiful November evening, on the corner of Rue Vivienne and Boulevard Montmartre, Jeanette informed Pierre that she would most definitely be requiring a pair of evening slippers.

They walked slowly, arm in arm, intermingling with that random and unsynchronized throng of extras cast by Europe’s rickety film projector onto the screen of Paris’s boulevards every evening.

Pierre was gloomy and withdrawn.

He had good reason.

That very morning the foreman, measuring the hall of the factory with guttapercha steps, had stopped suddenly before his machine and, his eyes fixed somewhere just above Pierre’s shoulder, told him to pack his tools.

This quiet angling had been going on for two weeks. Pierre had heard from his friends that France’s lousy economic condition had made people stop buying automobiles. Factories were being threatened with closure. The workforce was being cut by half everywhere you looked. To avoid any commotion, people were being dismissed a handful at a time and from different divisions, staggered throughout the day.

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