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Clara was confident she had nothing to fear. Dr Epting had merely sent students to the library two years before. The library, she said, remained open under the agreement Dr Fuchs himself had reached with Dorothy Reeder in 1940. The German ambassador, Otto Abetz, had given his approval to that arrangement and to the subsequent affiliation with the French Information Centre before Dr Epting had seen the library. Dr Fuchs drew a long breath and said, ‘Madame, I am very happy for you. It would have been for me a most disagreeable duty to make an unsatisfactory report. I will not conceal that I am also very happy for myself.’ Clara realized that his fate was somehow linked to hers. If the library violated occupation regulations, he would be responsible.

To avoid further German attention in the short-term, Clara closed the library for the summer holidays on Bastille Day, 14 July, rather than wait until August. That night, the Gestapo called at the home of the senior librarian, Boris Netchaeff. He and his wife, a Russian princess, were playing bridge with friends when the Germans broke into their flat and ordered them to raise their hands. As Netchaeff was about to comply, they shot him. One bullet pierced his lung. Eventually, he was taken to the German-commandeered Hôpital de la Pitié. General de Chambrun rushed to the Pitié to request Boris’s transfer to Neuilly for treatment by an American doctor, but the police were adamant that Boris would remain under arrest. Worse, the Gestapo planned to deport him to Germany. As a Russian under Gestapo suspicion, he would probably not return. Clara went to Dr Fuchs to hold him to his promise of responsibility for the library and its employees. If the evidence against the Russian proved false, Fuchs said, he would make sure that the Gestapo released him to the American Hospital. All he needed from Clara was a written report on Boris Netchaeff.

After three years under German rule, Clara had anticipated his request for a report. She had one ready, leaving him no excuse for delay. Dr Fuchs read it and pledged to effect Boris’s release within the week. The countess and the Bibliotheksschütz then had one of the more curious exchanges of the occupation. He reminded her that, at their previous meeting, he had asked her to tell the truth. Now, he was asking her not to respond if it would embarrass her. He asked, ‘Did you ever hear of a man called Aldebert de Chambrun?’ Clara, suppressing a laugh, confessed that she did not know everything about the Comte de Chambrun. After all, they had been married for only forty-two years. Dr Fuchs explained that the Bibliothèque Nationale had in its catalogue a two-volume life of Aldebert de Chambrun by Richard Wagner. Did the countess know why the great composer would have written a book about her husband? Again, she managed not to laugh. It seemed that Uncle Aldebert de Chambrun, for whom her husband had been named, had had a passion for Wagner’s music and had often visited Bayreuth. The senior Aldebert wrote a book about Wagner, not the other way round. Perhaps, she suggested, the cataloguers had accidentally reversed the names of subject and author. ‘I was beginning to think something of that kind must have occurred, but my searchers would not admit having been mistaken,’ Dr Fuchs said. Four days later, Boris Netchaeff was safe in a bed at the American Hospital.

Paris had nothing to celebrate on 14 July 1943, the 154th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille with its now-hollow promises of liberty, fraternity and equality. But, in New York, expatriate French men and women danced in the street on the evening before France’s national day. They roped off 44th Street between Second and Third Avenues and declared it ‘a little bit of Paris in Old New York’. Lampposts were festooned with American and French flags, and refreshments were served from a large tent in the middle of 44th Street. A sign labelled ‘French territory’ advised, ‘New Yorkers–Don’t believe all you hear –There was a