Squidge!

Where was I? Oh yes, the Marais. Which means the swamp: it's urbanized squidge, the Back Bay of Paris, crossed with the Lower East side and Park Slope. There still survive a few tall tall half-timbered 15th century buildings, leggy as fireweeds, shouldering toward light and air. Aside from the boulangeries, there are dozens on dozens of distracting shops: hand-dyed silks at celestial prices, antique musical instruments, hurdy-gurdies and violas da gamba inlaid with ivory or rare woods, damascened French horns ...

The blue sign for rue Grenier sur l‘Eau was X'd out with tape, and a newer placard says Allée des Justes-de-Frances, with a wall of names of the righteous leading to the Shoah Museum. I felt bad about not going in--I had other research--though I stood for a long minute of silence. I was relieved to note a discreet police presence--guys in dark suits talking to their breast pockets, a cruiser--just along both sides of the museum. Tensions are high. Violence has flared.

I went round and round St. Gervais-et-St. Protais, looking for a way in, to no avail. It looked nailed shut. Damn. A Sphinx-like church, with Gothic hindquarters and a classical facade.

As time was getting on, I abandoned the book walk and cut across rue Rosiers: a used-to-be funky, still quirky street full of outrageous delis and fading bookshops, signed in Yiddish. There was (of course) an ecstatic Chabad guy out crying "Shabbat shalom!" Last words I ever expected to hear in France.

The Musée Carnavalet is a very fine hôtel, with charming formal gardens in the courtyards: knots of boxwood, convents of flowers. The entrance hall was just I remembered (only better painted and lit), with all the street signs of Paris, mostly in wrought ironwork, but with one larger-than-life wooden Turk: not selling tobacco, as I guessed, but cashmeres. Just as I recalled, there were the wonderful prints of the street cries of Paris (just a trifle later in the 17th century than I needed): ballad sellers, fruit and toys and faggot peddlers, a woman bagpiper. But I went round and round up and down the slippery stairs in increasing bewilderment: no doorway to the Renaissance. Nothing earlier than Voltaire. Nothing against later centuries, mind you: I loved the bad fantasy cover portrait of Napoleon, and Proust's bedroom, and Élisabeth de Gramont, the red duchess. But pas de 17ème siècle. I asked a guard: fermé, Madame. Bugger. But by great good fortune, I had circled back right by the chain-and-stanchions when a guide drew them back, and led a special group in. No arrière pensée: I slipped in after them, trying to look like one of Les Petites Amis de la Soeur de Gabrielle d'Estrée, or whatever the hell they were. And there, just round the corner, were the two paintings that I needed to study, of le grand carrousel at the Place des Vosges in April 1612. Vaut le voyage! The more fantastical--and therefore useful--scene turned out to be about the size of a wedding quilt. Also oil-glazed to a fare-thee-well, and facing bright windows, but I spent a very happy forty minutes or so, studying and photographing all the strange details that are eight blurred pixels in the images I've found online. Stuff I can use!

More anon.

Nine