“That all the lives we ever lived
And all the lives to be,
Are full of trees and waving leaves,
Luriana Lurilee.”

– Charles Isaac Elton, Luriana, Lurilee 

1939. 94 rue d’Alésia, Paris. An odd sort of crowd frequents the nondescript building. Furtive, vaporous individuals in dark shades, berets, fedoras pulled low over faces, chins and hands tucked deep into flowing, billowing, beige trench coats. Pavement. Heels.

They enter, leave, hurry away, zigzagging through the crowd, cutting through dimly lit side streets, boarding buses then jumping off. Ducking behind réverbères, a menu, a copy of Le Figaro, crisscrossing Paris tills they know they have not been followed.

Then, they turn a corner. Shades off, brows and chins revealed, they reapply the rouge on their lips in a vitrine. Un peu plus loin, they stop for the baguette at their boulangerie. Yes, Monsieur is well, merci. A demain! They leave.

They enter elegant, whitewashed Haussmann buildings, nod politely to the concierge, hercat,twirl up the stairs deftly, and enter bright apartments to:

“Maman! When do we eat?”

The coq au vin, pot au feu, cassoulet, issimmering à feu doux. Rarely is dinner late. Never is it croque-monsieur. Madame ties a blue apron around her fitted dress and asks the children how their day at school went, what they read.

Once upon a time, 94 rue d’Alésia published thousands of books coveted and read by all of Paris. “Ideal reading for the family and young ladies,” novels to “educate, elevate, and distract, without sullying the imagination.” A charming,

false description.

The books were, well, salacious.  Brimming with intrigue, passion, adventure, exotic destinations, intoxicating protagonists, champagne and chandeliers, lipstick stains on cigarettes and shirt collars, hot staircase scenes. For two French francs, less than five cents today, the “families and young ladies” of Paris could escape,

wars and occupations, hunger, cold, penury. These silly, dreamy, paperback books sustained a country. Decades later, long out of print, they sustained a young mother of two in a bombed Beirut basement.

Last month, one made it to Boston. La Chaine du Passé. Marc Aulès. 1939. The plot thickens: Marc Aulès… is an alias.

Once upon not a very long time, women still used noms de guerre – “war names,” appropriately – to write, think speak dream in the open. By day, they were discrete, devoted, domestic. By night, they flew. They made love and saved the world and danced all over Paris’s roofs.

They wrote literary classics, political manifestos, books that sparked social upheavals, green revolutions. They wrote on natural history, travel,  magic. They made me dream. Then they made breakfast for four. So will I, in a moment.

Nothing remains at 94 rue d’Alésia today of the publishing house, its books and mysterious authors. But La Chaine de Passé was marvelous. A silly, sepia, paperback escape, with diamonds, pistols, and sex, and

… all the lives we ever lived
And all the lives to be,

and Marc Aulès, I wish I knew your real name. Merci.