The Old Neighborhood

October 11

I’m starting to write this on Saturday, back in Cafe le Duc, where I’m having

wine and coffee. Euro coffee comes in short cups and is generally light on the caffeine, so I can drink it several times a day and still not stick to the ceiling. Unlike coffee at home, four or five cups of it doesn’t raise the pitch of my voice by half an octave. 

We got another late start and had breakfast between noon and one in Cafe Luxembourg on Blvd. St. Michel. I had a huge crepe wrapped around melted Emmenthaler; also a glass of Chablis. I was told long ago in Quebec that it’s not good form to drink red wine with breakfast. So remembering that advice, I ordered white.

This was better than American Chablis, and drier. It was a good breakfast wine. 

Joanna, being a great fan of baguettes, had a ham and cheese sandwich.

The cafe sits across the street from the Luxembourg Palace and its gardens, which make a large park with everything from statuary and potted citrus trees to tennis courts and pony rides. There were lots of plane trees pruned square, a look the French seem to admire a lot. 

Les jardins de Luxembourg continue along the Rue de la Observatoire. We came to the Jardins de les Grands Explorateurs—specifically, Marco Polo, who went to Asia, and la Salle who went to North America. Joanna recognized the fountain (today’s’ photo),  which shows the four parts of the world holding up the globe. We had seen a study for this group at the Musee D’Orsay. I like the projectile vomiting turtles.

The four parts are personified as women. The Americas wears a feathered bonnet. Africa wears a leg iron and chain.

This route brought us to a familiar corner. I felt like such sophisticated Euro trash. Here I was on a familiar corner in Paris, of all places. It’s where Observatoire crosses Blvd. Montparnasse. The cab came this way the other day.

To the right is the way to Gare Montparnasse, the Dome, a short block with sex shops, a branch of Galeries Lafayette, lots of cool stuff. Wow, I know my way around Paris. Well, a little, anyway.

We turned left and took Montparnasse for a few blocks. This, too, was familiar because we had walked it last year on the way to the Dome. 

We went into a grocery store (forget the name) which sold only frozen food. Ice cream and cake, yes, but also stuff like veal patties and escargot. 

We came to Rue St. Jacques, and Joanna said she knew the way back to the hotel. And so we took it.

On the way we stopped at a church dedicated to St. James. The historical marker outside far exceeded my knowledge of French grammar and vocabulary. But it was great stuff, talking about the Order of Hospitallers, St. Jacques de Haut Pas (don’t ask; I don’t know), and pilgrims to the shrine of St. James of Compostella. For all I know, this was a stop on a pilgrim route, but understand, I’m making that up because it almost sounds right.

The building dates to the early 1600s, but there was a church on the spot for longer than that. It’s all white inside. Very interesting and in sharp contrast to the dark stone interiors that I’ve come to expect.

We stopped for a Bordeaux and salade de fruits at a corner bistro near the Pantheon. All right. I learned another French term. Now we’re set to order fruit salad anywhere in France.

Before we walked to the hotel, Joanna wanted to show me what she had discovered when she was out for a morning walk the other day. And it was a real treasure.

At the end of Rue Cujas and past the Place du Pantheon is Place de Ste. Geneviéve. I think the saint’s name is pronounced “Zhan-vee-ev.” As in the old song, “Geneviéve, douce Geneviéve.”

Anyhow, Joanna took me to a church dedicated to St. Stephen, the first martyr. The history was in English in there. Here goes:

Clovis, the Frankish king who died in 511, established a church on the hilltop here, where the Pantheon is now. He was to be buried there, and so was his wife, St. Clotilde, who died more than 30 years after Clovis. Ste. Geneviéve, the heroine (and later patron saint) of Paris, died in 512 and was buried there too.

Here's the origingal. Somebody who knows French, please let me know how close I came:

The original church was eventually dedicated to Ste. Geneviéve.

The peons were relegated to attending services in the cellar of the church, but there being lots more of them than gentry or anybody else, the congregation outgrew the space, and so St. Etienne du Mont was put up for them, next door. 

So I guess, comes the Revolution, and Ste. Geneviéve’s is no longer a church. Voila, le Pantheon.

So St. Etienne’s church has a shrine to Ste. Geneviéve —a glass coffin holding the stone from her original tomb. Two other people who are now saints stopped in to see it. 

According to a sign only in French, John XXIII in 1962 declared Geneviéve patron of the “Gendarmerie Française” (French police force?) and of the public order. Appropriate enough, I guess. I saw those murals the other day in the Pantheon that show her calming the people of Paris when they were under siege by the Huns.

There’s also a photo of John Paul II praying at the shrine when he visited the church in ’97. 

Thinking about this much tradition makes my head hurt: Three saints, about a millennium and a half apart, all in one place. You can believe all, some, or none of it, but that doesn’t make it less beautiful in some strange way.

A couple of other things. The pigeons here are very tame, or else they’re high. Maybe they drink the wine, too. I almost tripped over a couple of them this afternoon. 

And that reminded me of something I forgot to mention yesterday.

While Joanna and I were waiting to get into the Louvre on Friday, a young couple was standing at a fountain where they were having a photo taken. Each one was holding a live pigeon. Somebody, maybe the guy with the camera, had managed to scoop them up from the ground. Even in New York, the pigeons aren’t that stoned.

Children, do not try this at home, or anywhere. You don’t even leave this to professionals. These kids were amateurs.

From all I’ve heard, handling a city pigeon is about as good for your health as keeping a rat with fleas in your pocket. You may not die, but you could come close. 

Joanna’s nephew, Thomas, joined us for dinner. He has been working in Paris for more than a year on assignment for his U.S.-based company. We went to the Perigord on Rue St. Jacques. Everybody had the snails this time. Thomas and I had different versions of steak frites, along with the house wine, and Joanna had a wonderful piece of roast chicken.

After dinner, we walked with Thomas to his metro station near the Luxembourg Gardens.

Then it was time to call it quits. We have a 7:45 wake-up call because we hope to get to the Gregorian service at Notre Dame in the morning.

Have fun, everyone.