ABSTRACT
A man who probably looked younger than his actual middle years, sat by an outdoor table in the hot afternoon sun at a café in a square on the Left Bank. The restaurant was tucked away—not like on the boulevards, and the main view was the church in the center of the square. It was close to the Elysée Palace; bureaucrats, ministers and the like favored it. He used to meet Clément there because they both liked the mushrooms—shipped in fresh from the country, dozens of different types—morels, chanterelles, cèpes. They served them just lightly grilled, and with a nice Chablis or a Muscadet they were the perfect lunch, or even dinner—on the light side. Dining in Paris, he discovered, was a serious business, however light the conversation became—and it could really leave the ground sometimes. With Clément it was usually a mixture of social science shop talk and high level gossip, and made for a good two hours of entertainment. Clément was remarkable. For a start he was not a Parisian but Viennese. Then—so many of his Parisian friends were not even French: Argentinean, Canadian, South African, American, Italian, Austrian. But Clément had established himself at the center of the Paris social-science network and ran a Foundation that was always mysteriously well funded and generous, and survived the rapid changes in political regime with an adroitness that would have astonished Talleyrand.
