Paris 1935: Destiny's Crossroads

Quai d’Orsay

  Tuesday, July 30. The slender Frenchman with the receding dark hair, handsome face, and movie-star elegant mustache, dressed in a well-tailored dark pinstripe suite, spoke softly with Madame Bardoux in the middle of one of the salon rooms on the first floor of the Quai d’Orsay. He explained, “The premier will have one of his political aides with him sitting on his left; I will sit to his right. You will be seated at the little desk and chair just behind me.”

  Madame Bardoux looked at the large round table centered underneath a brass chandelier in the middle of the room and at the small writing desk just behind one of the chairs.

  “Yes, Monsieur le Secretary-General,” she said to Alexis Léger, the permanent secretary of the French foreign ministry and her boss.

  The secretary-general continued, “The British minister, Anthony Eden, and his aides will sit over there,” and he pointed to the far side of the round table where the British minister for the League of Nations would sit.

  Madame Bardoux nodded. An aide appeared at the doorway and signaled to Léger, who turned and said, “The delegation has arrived,” and walked briskly across the room towards the reception hall.