Trapped in Versailles? Monsieur Montespan by Jean Teule

Trapped in Versailles? Monsieur Montespan by Jean Teule.

Jean Teule’s factional novel Monsieur Montespan (2008) is set in Paris from 1663 to 1707. In January 1663 eight aristocratic men, in four pairs, are involved in simultaneous duels with swords ‘at the slightest provocation.’ One is killed, six are executed for his death, and one (the Marquis de Noirmoutier) flees to Portugal. Eight days after the six are executed, the Marquis de Noirmoutier’s fiance, Francoise, marries Louis-Henri de Pardaillan de Gondrin, known as the Marquis de Montespan.

Montespan announces to Francoise that he is poor, and will borrow a lot of money to finance a battle near the city of Lorraine to fight King Louis XIV, and become a captain, which will ‘rescue him from obscurity.’ Francoise thinks this is a silly idea since three of his brothers have already died in battle. Montespan, nevertheless, goes off to battle, but the opposition surrender immediately. He is horrified because he wanted a long war. With no medal, no title, and more in debt, he returns to Paris. His wife is pregnant, and she has a girl, little Marie-Christine.

Montespan looks for another battle and finds one further afield – at Gigeri on the Algerian coast. This time he returns in shame and deeper in debt. Francoise is pregnant again, and has a boy, Louis-Antoine. 

Montespan hears that France and Spain are fighting in Flanders. Meanwhile, King Louis XIV – the Sun King (le Roi Soleil) – has fallen in love with Francoise, and keeps her in the Versailles Palace as the Queen’s Lady-in-Waiting. Montespan is mortified. He is madly in love with Francoise. In reality – for Francoise did exist – Madame Montespan (1640-1707) becomes the most famous of the Sun King’s mistresses, and bears him seven children.

Bust of the Sun King Louis XIV by Jean Varin

And so, for the rest of the novel, Monsieur Montespan devises devious and silly ways to win his wife back, while he is looking after their two children. On one occasion he draped his coach in black, with a pair of stag’s antlers wobbling on the roof, and drove to the Versailles palace.

But Montespan is mocked by society. People sing songs about his losses in battle and his folly. He is ridiculed and ridiculous. Twenty-four years later he is still trying to capture his wife’s heart again. And the King has his own strategies for keeping her in the Versailles Palace. 

But what is Francoise thinking? She is being ‘kept’ in a room below the main bedroom – the bedroom that the Sun King Louis XIV shared with his first wife Marie Theresa of Spain and his second wife Francoise d’Aubigne, the Marquise de Maintenon. D’Aubigne should not be confused with the main character Monsieur Montespan’s wife Francoise, the Madame de Montespan who cared for the king’s children and became his mistress.

In witty and comical twists of fate and bad fortune, the story is told in the bawdy, frolicking style of 17th century France. The insults are clever, the antics are ridiculous and frivolous, and the schemes of the broken-hearted Montespan are absurd and desperate. What a delightful novel! I loved it!

The Beauties and Furies by Christina Stead: Paris ‘the city of night’

The Beauties and Furies by Christina Stead: Paris ‘the city of night.’

The Beauties and Furies (1936) is set in Paris over the period of one year: 1934. But this is no lightweight romantic story. It is a challenging, complex novel in the vein of Virginia Woolf, reminding me of the magnificence of Stead’s writing. This is Australian author Christina Stead’s (1902-1983) second novel, although she is best known for her 1940 masterpiece The Man Who Loved Children.

Christina Stead did, of course, visit Paris. And she acknowledged an affinity with Irish author James Joyce and his novel Ulysses (1922). In her letters in 1928, when she is in London, writing to her family in Sydney, Australia, she describes James Joyce as:

‘… the modern Shakespeare, superior to Shakespeare in command of language, equal in music’ but ‘hard work’ to read because it ‘has to be read with a rhyming dictionary, an encyclopaedia, the grammars of ten languages, and an annotated ‘’crib’’ ‘(cheat sheet). – Christina Stead, 1928

Bored housewife Elvira Western leaves England and her doctor husband Paul to follow a young, charming, but penniless, British student to Paris. Oliver Fenton is writing his thesis on The French Workers’ Movement from the Commune to the Amsterdam Congress of 1904.

On the train to Paris Elvira meets Annibale Marpurgo, an Italian lace-buyer, who inveigles his way into the lives of Elvira and Oliver, influencing their decisions through deceit and subterfuge. He is a master manipulator, a slippery snake, a schemer.

The beauties (and furies) are Elvira, Blanche D’Anizy the French actress, and Frenchwoman Coromandel Paindebled. Elvira, the ‘broad-bottomed’ married woman, five years older than Oliver, with ‘pretty eyes’ and ‘brows that meet’ has competition for Oliver’s attention. Oliver too has competition for Elvira’s attention. 

France is in political turmoil and economic downturn, and Paris is the underbelly of society. Amid this setting Elvira and Oliver have a co-dependent relationship, and one fraught with uncertainty and distractions – political, sensual, and sexual. 

Elvira is complicated and intelligent, indecisive and frustrating, sick and self-sabotaging – ‘she changes everyone’ – but it is Mapurgo, the traditional villian, that sucks up the limelight in this novel, slowly and insidiously. 

A revolutionary and controversial novel for its time with love triangles that intersect and entangle, it is dense and intense. The characters are unlikeable for their self-indulgence, pretentious intellectualism, pessimism, and self-absorption. Far from ‘the city of light’, Stead depicts Paris as ‘the city of night.’

But that – and the themes of political, sexual, and emotional emancipation – and all the virtues and vices of Paris in the 1930s – make The Beauties and Furies an outstanding novel.

The Musée d’Orsay – the Orsay Museum, Paris

The Musée d’Orsay – the Orsay Museum, Paris.

On the river Seine in Paris stands the Musée d’Orsay – the Orsay Museum. When James Joyce lived in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s, the building was not a museum.

Instead, the building was the Gare d’Orsay – the Orsay railway station. The trains from Gare d’Orsay took passengers to south-western France. The railway station closed in 1939 at the onset of the Second World War, and it was transformed into a post office before it was the Renaud-Barrault Theatre Company. In 1981, construction for the Musée d’Orsay commenced.

In Joyce’s time, the Gare d’Orsay was an impressively large Beaux-Arts building, built between 1898 and 1900, in time for the 1900 Paris World Expo, the Exposition Universelle. Hence, it was relatively new in 1920 when James Joyce arrived in Paris, and especially so when Joyce first arrived in Paris as a young man to study medicine in 1902. That didn’t work out and he returned to Dublin in 1903.

Australian author Christine Stead (1902-1983) wrote about Paris in her novel, The Beauties and the Furies (1936). In the novel, she wrote of the Gare d’Orsay:

“Two bland, translucent clockfaces” greeted passengers.

With Gothic, Renaissance, and French Neo-Classical architecture of the times (many churches in Paris had a mixture of architectural styles), the Gare d’Orsay was made of iron and glass. It was designed for “social and urban contexts” wrote Arthur Drexler in The Architecture of the École des Beaux-Arts (1977).

However, James Joyce rarely, if ever, went to Gare d’Orsay, because he took trains to and from the Gare de Lyon, the Gare du Nord, or the Gare Montparnasse. Whenever Joyce travelled to the French countryside, he predominantly took trains to central, western, or northern France, and not the Gare d’Orsay to the south-west.

Before construction of the Musée d’Orsay, permission was granted in 1970 to demolish the railway station. The Minister for Cultural Affairs, Jacques Duhamel, didn’t want another new hotel on the site. The Directorate of the Museum of France suggested that the site could hold a museum to bridge the gap between the classical art of The Louvre and the modern art of the National Museum of Modern Art at the Georges Pompidou Centre. The plan was accepted and a feasibility study was commissioned in 1974. 

In 1978, ACT Architecture won the competition for the design of the museum with a team of three architects: Pierre Colboc, Renaud Bardon, and Jean-Paul Philippon. Construction commenced in 1981, and the museum was officially opened in July 1986. It is one of the largest art museums in Europe at 20,000 square metres (220,000 square feet) on four floors. 

A large anonymous donation from an American patron will pay for the planned radical renovations from 2020-2021. 

The People in the Photo by Helene Gestern: book review

The People in the Photo by Helene Gestern: book review.

The People in the Photo (Eux sur la photo 2011, English edition 2014) is an epistolary fictional novel set in England, France, and Switzerland, from March 2007 to April 2008. The entire narrative is seen through the correspondence (letters and email) between two people.

The original photograph is two men and a woman ‘bathed in sunlight’ in their tennis gear in Interlaken, Switzerland, in the summer of 1971. The woman is the narrator Helene Hivert’s mother Nathalie. Helene is head of the pre-1930 visual artefacts collection works at the Museum of the History of the Postcard in Paris. She is 39 years old and this is the first time she has seen the face of her mother. Her mother died when she was four years old, and her father remarried Sylvia who adopted and raised her. They never mentioned her mother, and now Sylvia has Alzheimer’s and her father has been dead for three years. So she can’t ask them about the photograph she has found.

One of the men in the photo is P. Crusten. The other man is unnamed. Who is he? Where is her father Michel? 

Pierre Crusten’s son, Stephane, a biologist working in England, responds to Helene’s advertisement to find the unnamed man. Pierre says it is Jean Pamiat, now frail, in a retirement home in Lausanne.

Stephane is curious too about his father. What was he doing in the summer of 1971? Together, in a series of correspondences, Helene and Pierre seek to know more about their family – Helene about her mother, and Stephane about his father. She sifts through her father’s photos and books, and he returns to Geneva where his brother Philippe lives, to look through his father’s boxes of photos. Their correspondence to each other brings them closer and closer together.

When two almost identical photographs surface at almost the same time ‘when they had been lying forgotten for forty years in two different places, so far from each other’ they are closer to the truth. Helene discovers ‘the intensity of my father’s hatred or indifference towards my mother.’ She also learns how her mother died.

But it is not until two critical letters emerge that they know the full truth: photographs and a letter of explanation from Sylvia before her death, and a letter from Jean Pamiat. ‘Thirty years of censorship overturned by 110 photos in an album.’

Several of these early black and white family photos mentioned in the story are described in detail – the position of the people, their clothes, their expression, the landscape – but the photographs are not provided. Readers see only what the narrator, Helene, sees.

For people who like epistolary novels, this is a gradual evolution of friendship and truth about family secrets, moving from deception to painful reality. For me, some of the threads were too neatly tied together and the ending too informative and revealing – and too sentimental. But overall, it is a slow-burn detective-type unearthing of clues that clash, then blend in a mixture of revelations and surprises. 

Parts of the Kevin Kline, Kristin Scott Thomas and Maggie Smith movie My Old Lady (2014) set in Paris came to mind as I was reading this novel. The People in the Photo is similar in tone, pace, themes, and narrative, but without the humour.

Metropolitain to Metro to M – signs at Paris Metro stations

Metropolitain to Metro to M – signs at Paris Metro stations. 

I don’t know when it happened, but somewhere along the time continuum, the Paris Métro station signs gradually evolved and changed. And not for the better, in my opinion. 

The Paris Métro railway began operations in 1900 to take people to the Paris World Expo, situated where the Eiffel Tower now stands. Originally called La Compagnie du chemin de fer métropolitain de Paris – the Paris Metropolitan Railway Company – it is generally referred to as the Paris Métro. It now has 303 stations. 

The metro stations of old – from 1900 – are marked by ornate Art Nouveau “METROPOLITAIN” signs in green on a pale-yellow background. The signs are supported by cast iron frames that are gently arched, some with fan-style coverings and others featuring the typical florals of Art Nouveau.

French architect Hector Guimard (1867-1942), the first to use Art Nouveau techniques in a building, designed the original 167 metro station entrances from 1900 to 1913. The railway company organised a competition to design the edicules, canopies, balustrades, or railings. Twenty-one people entered the bid, but Guimard was not one of them. The president of the railway company didn’t like the winning design by Henry Duray, instead favouring the municipal architect Jean-Camille Formigé’s entry. Guimard got the job based upon the success of his Art Nouveau building, the Castel Béranger, at 14 rue Jean de la Fontaine.

At the time, Guimard was criticized for his design, as people said that the lettering, which Guimard invented himself, was difficult to read. There are still about 86 Guimard-style metro entrances around the city, with their iconic METROPOLITAIN signs.

When new metro stations were constructed from 1910 (starting with the Saint-Placide station), many signs were changed to “METRO” in gold lettering against a bright red background. In blockish letters, the letter R looks rather like an A, because it is fragmented, split in the middle. The letter O too is split in the middle, although it still looks like an O. 

The METRO signs are mounted on a lamp post, topped with a white ball of light. Some are rather more ornate than others. 

The most recent modernization of the metro station sign occurred from the 1970s until the latest station constructed in 2007 (the Olympiades metro station). The sign has been reduced to a bright yellow plastic “M” – minimalist, simple, plain, unadorned, and rather ugly. They are mounted on stainless-steel poles with a circle top, into which the yellow M appears. 

All three versions of the metro signs appear in Paris – from METROPOLITAIN to METRO to M. 

What does this say about society? Surely, it says more than the changing times – as in the passing of years. I think it says something about what designers perceive to be people’s preferred aesthetic. Or the general global trend to reduce names to initials and acronyms. Like Kentucky Fried Chicken to KFC, and America Online to AOL, and British Petroleum to BP, and Le Crédit Lyonnais to LCL. Hence, METROPOLITAIN to M.

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Gladiators and lions in the Arene de Lutece—the Lutece Arena, Paris

Gladiators and lions in the Arene de Lutece—the Lutece Arena, Paris.

Today I am looking for the gladiator. I know I will not find the Roman gladiator, but I will find the place where he fought so long ago in the city of Paris. The ruins of the Arene de Lutece—the Lutece Arena—are still there for all to see. Which was once not the case.

I am looking for a gladiator because I was wondering why Irish author James Joyce likened an Irish fighter with a gladiator of ancient times. The English soldier, Percy Bennett (1869-1936), known as Pucking Percy or Battling Bennett, was in the boxing ring fighting middle-weight Irishman Myler Keogh in the Portobello barracks. The Irishman won. 

Keogh, from Dublin, was a professional boxer, born 1866, with a boxing career spanning 1889 to 1904, although some reports say he continued to 1911. With 17 bouts and three professional contests, he became a boxing champion. The Englishman became an international rugby union player for the Welsh team of Cardiff Harlequins. 

“It was a historic and a hefty battle when Myler and Percy were scheduled to don the gloves for the purse of fifty sovereigns … The soldier got to business, leading off with a powerful left jab to which the Irish gladiator retaliated by shooting out a stiff one flush to the point of Bennett’s jaw. – James Joyce, Ulysses.

What is a gladiator? A gladiator is a swordsman, fighting other gladiators, and wild animals, in the time of the Roman Empire. Gladiators often fought in an arena, as a spectacle for citizens to see. They were celebrated as strong, mighty, intellectual, committed, honourable, and brave. 

And so, I walked to the 5th arrondissement of Paris to find the ancient Lutece Arena where gladiators once fought. 

In the Latin Quarter in Paris is a Roman arena called the Lutece Arena. It was still visible during the reign of Philippe-Auguste in the 12th century, then disappeared under rubble. The site was rediscovered in 1869 and now incorporates a garden, as well as a skateboard park, an oval, and a boules area.

Constructed in the 1st century AD as an amphitheatre, the arena has terraced seating that could seat 15,000 people. There are nine niches that once held statues. Five small rooms are located beneath the lower terraces, probably to hold animals. After 577 AD, it became a cemetery. 

Between 1860-1869 it was planned to be a tramway depot, but author Victor Hugo (1802-1885) undertook to save the site as an archaeological treasure. The tram lines were dismantled in 1916, and now a Metro line runs underneath, leaving the site above intact.  

Here, in this large protected area of Paris, people can enter for free, sit on the benches and take in the sights of the ancient arena surrounded by modern buildings. For those with ancient imaginations, they will see the famed and honourable Roman gladiators in the very heart of Paris. 

The Notre-Dame Cathedral and the Madeleine Church in Paris

The Notre-Dame Cathedral and the Madeleine Church in Paris.

Today I am comparing the architectural features of the Notre-Dame Cathedral with the Church of the Saint Mary Magdalene, generally known as the Madeline Church, in Paris. 

This is what James Joyce was doing when he was in Paris. His Irish friend Arthur Power visited Joyce in Paris and as they were walking along the river Seine, they were discussing the city’s architecture. Joyce tells Power: 

“Compare a Gothic building with a Greek or Roman one: Notre-Dame, for instance, with the Madeleine. I remember once standing in the gardens beside Notre-Dame and looking up at its roofs, at their amazing complication—plane overlapping plane, angle countering angle, the numerous traversing gutters and runnels, flying buttresses and erupting gargoyles. In comparison, classical buildings always seem to be over-simple and lacking in mystery.” – Arthur Power, Conversations with James Joyce, 1978.

James Joyce clearly prefers the Gothic style of religious buildings—the magnificent Notre-Dame Cathedral—over the classical lines of the Madeleine Church.

Bishop Maurice de Sully wanted to give the newly forming city of Paris a grand cathedral. He commenced oversight of the construction of the Notre-Dame Cathedral from its planning in 1160 to 1196. 

After the Bishop’s death, Eudes de Sully continued supervising the work until 1208, resulting in the construction of the gates and the cathedral’s facade. 

Jean de Chelles was in charge from 1250 to 1258 and provided oversight of the building of the transept until his death. Jacques-Germain Soufflot was the most well-known architect of the Notre-Dame. His period of supervision was from 1713 to 1780. 

Eugène Viollet-le-Duc carried out renovations from 1844 to 1854 to improve the upper parts of the western façade. 

The Notre-Dame Cathedral in the 4th arrondissement is centrally located on the island of the City, and looms large next to the river Seine. Because of its long history of construction from 1163 to 1345, followed by ongoing renovations, with many supervising architects, the architectural style varies from primitive Gothic to radiant Gothic. Gothic nonetheless. The latest renovations are ongoing now, due to a fire on 15 April 2019, which damaged the roof and toppled the spire. Water from the fire fighters’ hoses damaged the interior, in addition to the fire and smoke damage, but the blackened facades are still standing. 

The butt arches of the nave are visible, as are the gargoyles and the round windows with their stained glass. The fragile stained glass windows were not damaged during the fire, but they are boarded up to mitigate any incidental damage. The cathedral is closed indefinitely for repair.

James Joyce compared the impressive facades of the Notre-Dame Cathedral with the Madeleine Church designed in 1806, centuries after the cathedral’s construction.

In the 8th arrondissement of Paris, the construction of the Madeleine building began in the 1760s, but was interruped by the French Revolution. 

Napoleon Bonaparte changed the blueprints in 1806 during his Empire tor reflect the current phase of the Neo-Classical architectural movement. 

He instructed architect Pierre-Alexandre Vignon to design the building as a commemorative temple to the Grand Army in the form of a Roman temple with 52 Corinthian columns, each twenty metres high. However, it wasn’t used as a temple to the army. The nearby Arc de Triomphe now takes the role of the memorial to soldiers. 

From 1816, the Bourbon regime continued construction of the building, and King Louis XVIII completed it in 1842 as the English church that it is today, which was consecrated in 1845. The same architectural style can also be seen in the Palais Bourbon across the river in the 6th arrondissement.

Architect Jean-Jacques Huvé supervised the renovation of the interior from 1828 to 1842, modelled on the Roman baths. The bronze front doors of the Madeleine Church include representations of the Ten Commandments. 

Because it was never originally designed as a church, its Neo-Classical architecture makes it appear as if it were transported from ancient Greece. With its steps, entrance portico, and three domes, it is quite a sight. 

In comparison with the Gothic Notre-Dame Cathedral, does the Classical Madeleine Church, as James Joyce says, “seem to be over-simple and lacking in mystery?” I rather think so.

The Black Foliated Church with Flying Buttresses

The Black Foliated Church with Flying Buttresses.

Today I am looking for a black foliated church with flying buttresses. 

What is a black foliated church? It’s a church made of stone that has thin layers of metamorphic rocks. It also means that it could be decorated with leaf-shaped curves. Flying buttresses are external arches that extend outward and downward from the upper portion of a wall to a pier.

I am looking for such a church because James Joyce mentioned it when talking to his long-time friend from Dublin, Arthur Power, when they went for a stroll in Paris. 

“There is an old church I know of down near Les Halles, a black foliated building with flying buttresses spread out like the legs of a spider, and as you walk past it you see the huge cobwebs hanging in its crevices, and more than anything else I know of it reminds me of my own writings, so that I feel that if I had lived in the fourteenth or fifteenth century I should have been much more appreciated.” – Arthur Power, Conversations with James Joyce, 1978.

The old church near Les Halles is the Church of Saint Eustache in the 1st arrondissement of Paris. It dates back to the 13th century when it started as a chapel built in 1213, dedicated to Saint-Agnes. It measures 105 metres (344 feet) long and 33 metres (108 feet) high.

It became the parish church in the area in 1223 and changed its name to Saint Eustache in 1303. Eustache was a Roman general of the second century AD who was burned for converting to Christianity. 

Construction of the current church began in 1532 and was completed in 1632. The Archbishop of Paris, Jean-Francois de Gondi, consecrated the church in 1637. Its façade was rebuilt in 1754 under the direction of architect Jean Mansart de Jouy. Closed during the French Revolution in 1793, it re-opened two years later. Fire damaged it in 1844 and architect Victor Baltard restored the church from 1846-1854. It was set alight during the rule of the Paris Commune in 1871, which resulted in the restoration of the attic, buttresses, and south façade. The façade was renovated again from 1928-1929 when James Joyce lived in Paris. 

Hence, over the years, it has become a mixture of architectural styles. It has a Gothic exterior with Renaissance and Classical interiors. The left tower is Renaissance style.  

King Louis XIV had his first communion in the church in 1649, and both Cardinal Richelieu and Madame de Pompadour were baptized there. Molière was married there in 1662. Mozart’s mother’s funeral was held there.  

The flying buttresses, if your imagination extends to its far reaches, does look rather like the legs of a spider—the wide, inflexible legs of a spider. But I could not get close enough to see any cobwebs. The perimeter is now fenced and the northern façade is undergoing renovations. Renovations are an ongoing process it seems. Nevertheless, it is a grand example of religious architecture. 

The Church of Saint Eustache remains a functioning church to this day. And when the Notre-Dame Cathedral was consumed by fire on 15 April 2019, and closed to the public, the Easter Mass was relocated to the Church of Saint Eustache. 

 

Boulevard Saint-Michel and the Cluny Museum

Boulevard Saint-Michel and the Cluny Museum.

Today I am looking for the distinctive spirit of the Middle Ages right in Paris.

In Paris, James Joyce could conjure up medieval times, and their links to Dublin, as a conversation with his friend Arthur Power shows:

“To my mind the Boulevard St Michel is one of the most attractive in Paris. Indeed, in no other part of Paris were you aware of the distinctive spirit of the Middle Ages, and as we walked down towards the river our conversation turned on … western Europe …Joyce remarked …[that] the Renaissance was an intellectual return to boyhood.” – Arthur Power, Conversations with James Joyce, 1978.

James Joyce was referring to the medieval ruins on the Boulevard Saint-Michel at the Musée National du Moyen Âge, the National Museum of the Middle Ages, known in short as the Cluny Museum. in the 5th arrondissement.

Part of the museum and the Gallo-Roman baths are open to the public to view a range of sculptures. The most noted displays are the six wool and silk tapestries of the Lady of the Unicorn dating back to the 15th century. The remainder of the museum, a medieval mansion, is closed for renovations, which are due for completion in 2021.

The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries arrived at the Cluny Museum in 1882, after being located in 1814 in the Boussac Castle in the French department of Cruese.

Author Tracy Chevalier wrote about the tapestries in her 2005 book The Lady and the Unicorn. The six tapestries date back to Jean Le Viste, a nobleman of King Charles VII, and the time of the crossroads between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Jean Le Viste commissioned artist Nicolas des Innocents to design the concept pictures for the large tapestries to be hung in Le Viste’s Grande Salle(Great Hall) in his residence at the rue du Four in Saint-Germain-des-Pres in Paris.Little was known of these famous tapestries, but Chevalier writes that the master weaver, the lissier Georges de la Chapelle, with his son, Georges Le Jeune, his family, and hired weavers, worked tirelessly on the task.The unveiling of the tapestries occurred during party celebrations for The Feast of St. Valentine.

In each of the six tapestries, the unicorn is situated closer and closer to a blond-haired woman until it rests in her lap. In the red background are images of animals and plants. The six tapestries are called: 

Sound (the unicorn is facing away from the lady);

Taste (the unicorn is near the lady but not looking at her);

Smell (the unicorn is next to the lady and looking at her);

Sight (the unicorn rests its front legs on the lady’s lap);

Touch (the lady touches the unicorn’s horn); and 

A Mon Seul Desir (My Sole Desire in which the lady has a necklace near a box, either putting it away or taking it out). 

The order of the series has never been conclusively determined though.

There are two other large tapestries in the Cluny Museum – The Bath and The Letter. 

The Bath (16th century) is a Renaissance wool and silk tapestry made in the south of the Netherlands. It is of the millefleur type (thousand flowers) decorated with plants and flowers in the background. It shows a young woman bathing among musicians and assistants. 

The Letter tapestry was made during the same period by the same artisans. A woman sits in an armchair. She is spinning wool while a young man presents or reads a letter to her. There is a small dog in the lady’s lap and a cat at her feet. The birds in the foreground include a partridge, a spoonbill, and a bird flying above her.

A large part of the sculptures in the Cluny Museum include the Heads of the Kings of Judah—the Gallery of Kings. The heads are from the portals of the western façade of the Notre-Dame Cathedral. There are now 21 of the original 28 Heads of the Kings of Judah. The real kings were beheaded during the French Revolution and the remains were found in a Paris garden in 1977.

Next to the Heads of the Kings of Judah in the Cluny Museum is the two-metre-high statue of Adam (circa 1260). It is the only surviving element of the monumental group of sculptures in the Notre-Dame Cathedral, and is considered to be one of the finest nudes of the Gothic era.

Indeed, in the Middle of Paris, on the Boulevard St Michel, and elsewhere in the Latin Quarter, are medieval ruins that remind visitors of a long-distant past—or, in the case of James Joyce, his own hometown. 

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The alibi: When I was in Paris, Boul’Mich

The alibi: When I was in Paris, Boul’Mich.

Do you need an alibi if you are arrested for murder somewhere? Well, you could always say you were in Paris. On Boulevard Saint-Michel, specifically, and in 1904 to be even more precise. It has to be said in the most natural tone, of course. Nothing pretentious. 

‘Just say in the most natural tone: when I was in Paris; boul’Mich, I used to. Yes, used to carry punched tickets to prove an alibi if they arrested you for murder somewhere.’– Ulysses (1922), Chapter 3, Proteus.

Stephen Dedalus, the main character in James Joyce’s Ulysses, is talking to Irish criminal Kevin Egan (in real life, Egan is Joseph Theobald Carey). They are having lunch in Paris, where Egan is exiled, and Dedalus is visiting. I don’t think this advice would work today.

Boul’Mich is the oft-used contraction for Le Boulevard Saint-Michel, a prominent street that separates the 6th arrondissement from the 5th arrondissement in Paris. Le Boulevard Saint-Michel starts at the Observatory, runs along the Luxembourg Garden, crosses the Boulevard Saint-Germain, and ends right at the river Seine. The closer to the river, the busier it becomes. That’s because the river end has a multitude of book stores, cafés, and souvenir stalls. It’s a wonderful place for postcards. 

A popular meeting place for tour groups is the impressively large, walled Fontaine Saint-Michel—the Saint-Michael fountain—on the corner of Boul’Mich and la Place Saint-André-des-Arts, facing the river Seine. The 1860 fountain depicts archangel Michael crushing the Devil—the fight of good against evil. This could explain the number of previous clashes in this area, including the fight for liberation against German occupation.

On the sides of the fountain are two winged dragons that spew water. There are also four statues representing Prudence, Power, Justice, and Temperance, all sculpted by different artists. 

Continuing off Boul’Mich is the Notre-Dame Cathedral and the English-language bookstore, Shakespeare and Company, modelled on Sylvia Beach’s original store—where Ulysses was published in 1922.

Being such a commonly popular and busy street, Boul’Mich would have made a perfect alibi at the turn of the 20th century, I guess. No-one would have noticed a criminal, ex-criminal, fugitive, or any other seedy character wandering up and down Boul’Mich!