Bryce & Damon in Europe
by Pertinax Carrus
Chapter 8, Paris, Part II
Day Three
Arising on Friday morning, just as the previous day, Bryce insisted on working out while Damon slept on. Then they breakfasted and left their hotel, setting out on further adventures in Paris, the French capital, the city of light. Their goal today was the Louvre, one of the most famous museums in the world. Located on the right bank of the Seine River, the Louvre was originally a royal residence. In the later seventeenth century, King Louis XIV moved his residence more or less permanently to Versailles, outside the city, after being badly frightened in Paris during the Frondes uprisings when he was a child. After that, the Louvre was used primarily to display the royal collections. During the French Revolution, both the palace and the collections were confiscated, and the structure turned into the museum which it remains to this day.
Bryce and Damon retraced their steps on Wednesday, walking down the Champs de Mars and the Esplanade des Invalides to the bank of the Seine. They then crossed the river on the Pont de la Concorde, admiring the obelisk in the center of the Place de la Concorde (which replaced the guillotine of Revolutionary days). To their right the Gardens of the Tuileries began, leading directly to the Louvre. Thus, they enjoyed pleasant green spaces almost the entire way. As they passed through the Tuileries, Bryce explained that there had once been a royal palace there, facing the Louvre, but it was burned during the Commune in 1871, the same uprising which was commemorated with the Basilica of Sacré Coeur. While Napoleon Bonaparte was calling himself Emperor of the French, he lived at the Tuileries, as did his nephew and namesake, Napoleon III. Damon commented that the French seemed as destructive and violent as the Moslems when they riot. For a people who pride themselves on their classicism and restraint, as evidenced in the beautiful eighteenth century architecture seen everywhere in Paris, they become utterly savage when they let their guard down. Bryce responded that there had been a group calling for the rebuilding of the Tuileries in existence for the past several years.
“Great,” Damon responded, “but that doesn’t excuse the insane violence which destroyed it in the first place.”
Bryce was not inclined to argue.
As they approached the Louvre, Damon exclaimed, “What’s that?” pointing to the huge glass pyramid squatting in the center of the courtyard.
“That,” Bryce pronounced, “is another example of the decline in French taste. Back in the ‘80s President Mitterand authorized a new entrance structure for the Louvre. Why a new entrance was required has never been clear to me. Anyway, this was the result. It’s the work of the American architect I. M. Pei. I think it’s a distraction, if nothing worse.”
“It sure doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of the building,” Damon agreed.
Giving way to convention, they decided to take in the “Mona Lisa” first, and then go over other items in a more leisurely manner. It was impossible to view the “Mona Lisa” in a leisurely manner, as it was in a room by itself, with a line of people filing past even in the morning shortly after the museum opened. There were guards to move one along, preventing anyone from lingering. It was almost like the line filing past a casket at a funeral. Leonardo da Vinci painted this work early in the sixteenth century, but never quite finished it. He took it with him when he accompanied King Francis I back to France in 1516. After Leonardo’s death, the painting was acquired by the King, hence it was part of the royal collection confiscated during the French Revolution, and is now considered the property of the French nation. The woman depicted is probably Lisa (Elisabetta), wife of Francesco del Giocondo of Florence, and in Italian the work is called “La Gioconda.” The “Mona” part is short for Madonna, or My Lady. The expression of the sitter has best been termed enigmatic. Studying it as best they could in the brief time allotted them, Bryce and Damon agreed. There was something alluring but mysterious about the woman. There is a calmness and satisfaction about the attitude of the sitter which affects most viewers. One commentator said a woman smiles like that when she finds that she’s pregnant, or that she’s not, depending on circumstances. The colors have reportedly faded over the centuries and as a result of earlier cleaning and restoration attempts, and are certainly not the brilliant colors mentioned by Leonardo’s younger contemporary, Giorgio Vasari. The idea that the painting in some way involves a secret code, as described in the pot-boiler The Da Vinci Code, is nothing more than anti-Christian prejudice, with no historical support.
After viewing this work, Damon asked, “Is it true that Leonardo was gay?”
Bryce hesitated. “There’s no definitive evidence, but he was definitely accused of being gay when he was a young man in Florence. He never married, and is not known to have had any kind of sexual relationship with a woman. Chances are, he was gay,” the cautious historian concluded.
After their obligatory visit to the “Mona Lisa,” they went to the Egyptian Collection. Egypt, as an African land, holds a special place in black studies, even though the Egyptians are not themselves black as that term is usually understood. Bryce and Damon discussed the respective meanings of “black” and “African.” They are often used synonymously in America, but, if “black” refers to a racial type, they are clearly not synonyms in reality. The northern parts of the African continent are inhabited by Hamitic peoples with a thin overlay of Semites in the guise of the Arabs who conquered the area in the seventh century. It is true that these people are dark skinned, but they lack the other stereotypical characteristics of the Negroid peoples of sub-Saharan Africa. The native languages, largely replaced by the imported Arabic, are represented by the Berber of the Atlas Mountains, the Coptic of Egypt, and the Ge’ez of Ethiopia. None of that mattered to Damon, who was anxious to experience the culture of the first African civilization.
The Egyptian Collection of the Louvre is one of the largest in the world. It began as part of the royal collection, confiscated during the French Revolution, and expanded during Bonaparte’s expedition to Egypt in 1798-99. The critical time came under the restored monarchy, when Jean-François Champollion (1790-1832) deciphered the Rosetta Stone in 1822 and 1823. Then King Charles X ordered the creation of a separate Egyptian Antiquities Department at the museum. It has been considerably expanded since then, of course, and this was the second goal of Bryce and Damon’s visit to the Louvre. The collection covers articles from the pre-dynastic period, i.e., before the unification of the country around 3200 B.C., down to the Romano-Byzantine period prior to the Moslem conquest in the seventh century A.D. The first thing to meet the visitor is the large sphinx which guards the entrance, dating to about 2000 B.C. Certainly one of the most well-known artifacts is “The Seated Scribe,” the figure of a man seated cross-legged with a partially open scroll on his lap. This work dates to the fourth dynasty (2620-2500 B.C.), and was discovered at Saqqara in 1850 by the French archaeologist Auguste Mariette and presented by him to the Louvre. Saqqara is also the location of the famous step pyramid of Zoser (also spelled Djoser), a kind of forerunner of the great pyramids of Giza. Studying the face of the scribe, Damon had to admit that he did not look like a typical sub-Saharan African. That, however, did not dim his enthusiasm for Egyptian civilization. “Nor should it,” added Bryce.
“I think it’s great that one of the original centers of civilization was in Africa, even if it did not involve my biological ancestors,” Damon stated.
“I agree. The original centers were in Africa and Asia. If you want to count by geographical location, Europe lags far behind. The progress of humanity from early forms of society to full blown civilizations has been very uneven across the globe. Most of what I’ve read attributes this to geographical factors, like weather, fertility of the soil, availability of fresh water, and the like. And who’s to say that some ancient Egyptian didn’t wander down into West Africa and leave you a few bits of DNA? If you want to claim this, I sure won’t object,” Bryce offered.
“Thanks, Boyfriend, this is the nicest present anyone ever gave me. I’m not sure it would all fit into the dorm at school, though,” Damon joked.
If there had not been guards present, that might have led to a scuffle.
From the later period, prior to the absorption of Egypt into the Persian Empire, comes the statue of the goddess Nephthys, one of the nine great deities of the Egyptians, sister of Isis and Osirus. She had something to do with death, as all the Egyptian gods seemed to, and was likewise a kind of nurse to the divine pharaohs, protecting them with her fiery breath, which could incinerate enemies. When he learned of this attribute, Damon remarked, “My sister Wanita has breath like that.”
Later he asked, “Where’s the Rosetta Stone? I believe it was uncovered during Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt.”
“Let’s see,” Bryce said, using an interactive computer to look it up. “Oh, oh! Looks like the Rosette Stone is in the British Museum in London, not here.”
“How did that happen?” Damon enquired.
“I don’t know. Napoleon had to slip out of Egypt past a British naval blockade, abandoning his army, which then surrendered to the British. I guess he didn’t get the Rosetta Stone sent back to France before the blockade was in place. Anyway, it’s not here,” Bryce confirmed.
By this time, the guys had spent the entire morning in the Louvre, and were feeling hungry. After consulting their guide book, Bryce eliminated the Café Marly. It was described as offering a view of the courtyard with the great pyramid. “I kind of feel about that pyramid the way Guy de Maupassant felt about the Eiffel Tower,” he remarked. So they went to the Café Richelieu on the second floor, which offered sandwiches, salads, and the like for a casual lunch. There, they discussed the difference between the European and the American understanding of what constituted a floor in the building. Whereas Americans begin on the first floor, for Europeans that’s the ground floor, and the first floor is the one above it. Neither guy could imagine how that difference came about.
Following lunch, they visited the Etruscan, Greek, and Roman Antiquities Collection. This exhibited one of the most famous works in the Louvre, almost as famous as the “Mona Lisa,” viz., the “Nike (or Winged Victory) of Samothrace.” This work was discovered on the island of Samothrace in the Aegean Sea in 1863, and was acquired by a French representative in the area, who eventually presented it to the Louvre. Like almost all the other famous works of Greek sculpture, it is a product of the Hellenistic period, usually dated to about 190 B.C. This period infused more movement and naturalism into its art, but retained the Classic Greek sense of proportion and balance.
“Where are her shoes?” Damon asked, playing dumb.
“Shoes? What are you talking about?” Bryce fell into the trap.
“Well, if she’s endorsing Nike ....” Damon began, only to be attacked by his boyfriend. It really is a good thing there are guards stationed in the Louvre to keep disrespectful Americans from destroying the place with their antics.
Perhaps the next best known work in this section of the Louvre is the “Venus de Milo,” another Hellenistic work dating to about 125 B.C. This work was discovered by a Greek peasant in 1820, who informed a French naval officer, who acquired the work for the Louvre. As with the Egyptian Collection, it was King Charles X who gave special attention to this work as well. It supposedly depicts Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love (Venus to the Romans) and was discovered on the island of Melos (or Milo), also in the Aegean.
“What stand-up comedian was it who had a skit about the Venus de Milo? Something about how embarrassing it must be to have your clothing sliding down and no arms to hold them up,” Damon asked.
Bryce laughed. “I don’t know, but if you ever run across it, let me know. I’d like to see that one.”
Another work is the misnamed “Borghese Gladiator,” dating to about 100 B.C., discovered at the site of ancient Antium, modern Anzio, on the Italian coast in 1611, and acquired by the noble Roman house of Borghese. In the early nineteenth century, Napoleon Bonaparte pressured his brother-in-law, Camillo Borghese, into selling it to him, and so the piece ended up in the Louvre. It is misnamed because later research shows that the figure is not a gladiator, but a warrior.
From the Romans came the portrait bust of Agrippa, dating to around 25 B.C. Agrippa was the chief minister and advisor to the first Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus. Of equal fascination was the collection of amphorae from very early periods, often with figures depicting a classical scene from literature or domestic life. Some of them were more than a little salacious.
Viewing one scene, Damon remarked, “Those old guys were as fixated on cock size as any queen today.”
“I believe it was the French diplomat Talleyrand who said, Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose – the more things change, they more they are the same thing,” Bryce agreed.
Later that afternoon, in a different section of the museum, they came across more recent statuary, including Michelangelo’s “Dying Slave.” which gave a hint of the genius of the greatest sculptor of the Renaissance. They would see more of his work in Italy. Also noted was Antonio Canova’s “Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss” of 1787, showing the Romantic feeling for emotion expressed in neo-classical form.
The collection of paintings was overwhelming. Although they began their day with the “Mona Lisa,” they did not get to other paintings until the later part of the afternoon. The collections, especially of early French works, was outstanding. Works of the Italians and Flemings were by no means neglected as well. It was hard to decide on a favorite, as there was so much talent on display. The “Mona Lisa” was not the only work of Leonardo in the collection. For historical purposes works like Hyacinthe Rigaud’s portrait of King Louis XIV or Jacques-Louis David’s “The Coronation of Napoleon,” demanded attention. Bryce eventually focused on the works of Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), selecting “The Arcadian Shepherds” and “The Inspiration of the Poet” as his favorites in the Louvre collection. Damon preferred something with more action, less restrained. He honed in on “The Fortune Teller” by Caravaggio (1571-1610). A little research revealed that Damon might have the more interesting selection. While Michelangelo Merisi from the town of Caravaggio was far from a model character, he did have an extremely interesting life. It was also rumored that he was gay, and his model for the young man in “The Fortune Teller” was Mario Minniti, then sixteen years old, who was rumored to be a good deal more than just a model for the artist. He later became an artist himself.
By the time Bryce and Damon had completed their tour of the Louvre, it was getting to be dinner time in their estimation. They left the great museum, making their way from the courtyard around the northern wing to the Rue de Rivoli. On the way, Bryce recounted an experience he had on his last visit to Paris. He was in the Louvre, but was supposed to meet his parents at a shop on the Rue de Rivoli not far from the Place de la Concorde. Near the northwest corner of the Louvre is a maze of tall hedges. Thinking to save a few steps, Bryce decided to cut through the maze on his way to the Rue de Rivoli. Of course, he got turned around, and found himself uncertain how to get out. Seeing someone ahead, he though to ask, but as he approached closer, he was astonished at what he saw. There, more or less in public, a younger man was sucking the cock of an older man, while a third person stood and watched. Bryce admitted that he was completely shook up by this encounter. He was by no means comfortable with his own sexual inclinations at that point in his life (he was fifteen at the time), and was both attracted and repulsed by what he saw. Most of all, he was frightened, quickly turning and running until he eventually found an exit from the maze. His mother was upset that he was late and out of breath when he arrived at the rendezvous, but she had no idea what caused him to be so tense.
Damon laughed at this story, but then asked, “And what would you do today?”
“Well, I wouldn’t run away, but I would still be disgusted. You know what I thought of Jason’s impersonal sex in the library restroom. That’s what was obviously going on here. We may speak English and the people here speak French, but some things don’t change,” Bryce declared, again quoting Talleyrand.
The two young men made their way east along the Rue de Rivoli, passing along the north side of the Louvre. They came to the Place du Palais Royal, which today houses the Ministry of Culture and the Council of State. There, they passed through the square to the Rue St. Honoré. A short distance ahead they came to Les Halles, once the central market place of Paris. And not far from that mercantile emporium they arrived at their restaurant for the evening, Le Régalade at number 123. This delightful eating place offered a prix fixe for 32 Euros which promised to be a generous feast for two hungry visitors. The chef and owner, Bruno Doucet, had made his name farther out, but opened this second venue closer to the center of Paris in the Marais region only recently. The service was as outstanding as the food, and both guys enjoyed themselves immensely. They were not rushed, and lingered just a bit over coffee and dessert.
Having completed their evening repast, Bryce and Damon decided to investigate Les Halles. Bryce did not remember visiting here on any of his previous visits to Paris, and naively expected the bustling farmer’s market kind of place depicted in the novel Le Ventre de Paris by Émile Zola in the nineteenth century. He was disappointed to learn that the last vestige of such a place was moved to the outskirts in 1971, and the modern site was occupied by upscale stores surrounding a sunken courtyard, where sculptures, fountains, and mosaics provide distraction from business. There is also an entrance to the Paris subway, Le Metro. The shopping was all right, but it was not what Bryce was expecting.
After some discussion, Bryce and Damon retraced their steps back to the Louvre, and then strolled through the Tuileries Gardens (avoiding the hedge maze) to the Place de la Concorde. Crossing that busy intersection, they entered the Champs Élysée. Bryce said as long as they ended up in a shopping mode, they might as well visit the premier shopping street in Paris. On the right side is the American Embassy, just in case it were needed. Along the broad avenue were outlets for the most exclusive labels in the world, but mixed in with them were some more or less familiar names, such as Abercrombie and Fitch and the Disney Store. They could not resist, and went into the Disney Store at number 44, where they purchased a Spiderman costume for Damon’s nephew Nathan, and had it shipped directly to him in Chicago. Between them, they figured they had his size down pretty well.
After this indulgence, they continued down the Champs Élysée, stopping for a drink at a tavern, but not staying long. They arrived at the original terminus of the avenue at the Arc de Triomphe located in the center of the Place Charles de Gaulle, formerly known as the Place de l’Étoile, where twelve streets converge. Commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte after his smashing victory at Austerlitz in December of 1805, perhaps his most significant victory, the arch was designed in neo-classical style, modeled on the Arch of Titus in Rome. It was incomplete when Bonaparte was defeated in 1815, and stood idle during the Restoration, but was completed under Louis Philippe between 1833 and 1836. When Napoleon’s remains were brought back from St. Helena in 1840, they passed under the arch on their way to the Invalides. Following World War I an unknown soldier was buried under the arch, and since then parades do not go through the arch, but around it. Bryce thought it interesting that the arch seemed to claim Moscow as a French victory of Napoleon, when it fact it was the beginning of his downfall.
“Might as well claim Leipzig, or even Waterloo,” he groused.
After paying their respects to the French Unknown Soldier, Bryce and Damon departed by way of the Avenue Marceau, which took them to the Place de l’Alma. There is in the center of that square a gold flame supposedly the same as that of the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor, but it looks much different up close. Beneath this place, on 31 August 1997, Princess Diane met her death in a traffic accident occasioned by pursuing paparazzi. This was also the place where the Pont de l’Alma crosses the Seine, where the guys entered and left their baton mouche two nights before. Alma was a battle during the Crimean War in 1854.
Crossing the bridge, they retraced their steps of two nights earlier, passing the Eiffel Tower, and arrived back at their hotel, concluding their third day in Paris.