Mes premiers jours ici!

I woke up quite late this morning, round 11 a.m.! I must have been rather tired or jet-lagged because I went to sleep last night around 9 p.m. The wind was blowing hard last night, and my tall, frail double windows, whose wood trim is eaten away down on their base, kept blowing open until I figured out how to firmly secure them shut. I woke up once before around 7 a.m. and could remember the thin, pale light that radiated outside the window. Now, the sun was shining brighter through the dusty muslin curtains and I laid there and mentally remembered and ordered my surroundings. After willing myself out of bed, I ate breakfast: fromage blanc and a cereal "aux fruits rouges" that I was overjoyed to find in the local Casino marché for I had gotten quite addicted to it during my stay in Montpellier and I hoped that I would be able to find it again. It's quite sweet and delicious with the fromage blanc. I also bought some lavande de miel de provence last night at the marché, another when-in-France staple.

After breakfasting, I resolved to go out walking and take in the sights as the sun was shining and the weather was frais.

I took the metro to rue du Faubourg Saint Jacques, and walked north. It was indeed dimanche in the city: the streets were deserted and everything was shut down in this residential swath. I walked for several blocks, and only encountered three women, two of them nuns, exchanging a greeting just outside la maison des ursilines.

After a few blocks, I encounted l'Ecole du Val de grace with its large cobblestone court and impressive, classical architecture, just the sort of thing that you expect in Paris.

As I walked onward, I was pleased to find vestiges of Noël strewn throughout the streets. Storefronts and cafés were still painted, merrily proclaiming “Joyeux fêtes!” Some Christmas trees, other than those sad ones which were bagged in plastic, awaiting removal on the street, were to be found: a line of wild-looking pines on the Rue Saint Jacques, decorated with blue ball ornaments, haphazardly; some garlands, red bowed and lighted, reaching across a later block of Saint Jacques; the tree outside Notre Dame de Paris, this one bedecked with red and gold ornaments.

I continued walking north until I could see the dome of the Panthéon poking out between two buildings. It happened to be my lucky day, as the admission was gratuit aujourd’hui! at the Panthéon. There were several tourists already here, but not an onslaught. From the steps of the Panthéon, I could see la tour Eiffel in the distance, poking its head up over the small group of Christmas pines huddled in front of the Panthéon. I enjoyed the Panthéon: the somewhat arbitrary grouping of dead men concealed in its depths, a few locked and empty rooms in the left wing of the crypt (perhaps waiting to receive more important dead Frenchmen), and the soaring, painted dome of its center beneath which Foucault’s pendulum swung.






I particularly enjoyed the murals depicting the life of Jeanne d’Arc. In the final segment, she is praying, tied to the stake, and in the foreground looms an ordinary man, who bends, nervously, to grab that fatal log on fire and set it coursing upward towards la Pucelle. On another wall, there is the lovely retelling of the life of Sainte Geneviève, the patron saint of Paris, who is said to have saved Paris from an invasion of the Huns and who later converted the Frankish king Clovis. These beautiful tributes to these mythic, sainted women seem bittersweet when one considers the number of women buried within this necropolis: only Marie Curie and Sophie Berthelot lie here, and Berthelot only because she happened to die one hour before her husband Marcellin, the famous chemist.