Beds - Part 2: Beauty and Simplicity

This elegant cradle (above) in the Louvre does not have the ornamentation of a cradle of  le Roi de Rome, but I forgot to note the historic significance of this bed. The veneer presents sea images, and there is a dolphin at the base. The organic form extends the metaphor of a child as hope and future.

This elegant, royal promise of greatness is in direct contrast to the bed in Marie Antoinette's cell (below). The recreation of her cell, complete with mannequins presenting the doomed queen and her watchful guard are simple and shabby. The only comfort left is prayer.

The inner courtyard was designated as the women's walk, a place where the female prisoners could leave their cells and get air and exercise. They would be escaping, momentarily, the filthy straw bedding and fetid air that helped breed disease and despair. This corner (above) presents the teethed ledge of blades that circled the courtyard and is directly above the gated area reserved for Marie Antoinette. She would have looked out on the courtyard (below) at the women who shared her fate.

Beds - Part 2: Beauty and Simplicity 

           also The wonder of Sainte Chapelle

Beds of the rich and famous are always of interest. In the Louvre, the rooms of Napoleon III presented a grand richness that was overwhelming. As we progressed through the apartment, it seemed there was a challenge to build a bigger and grander chandelier with each room. It was the type of elaborate decoration that numbs the senses. The baby cradle, though elegant and draped in satin, presented a simplicity and elegance. It was presented as a work of art, and the woodwork and inlay present sophistication and artistry.  Of course, we were frequently reminded that many of the occupants of this former palace were despised.

The prison, La Conciergerie, and Marie Antoinette's cell

At La Conciergerie the stark plainness of the displays added to the somber, almost reverent, tone of the heritage site. This is a site of memories, and the sudden openness of the sub-street-level passageway presents the visitor with the uplifting arches of the ceiling, the sturdy pillars, like shafts of wheat, the glow from lights that implies a blessing. But this is the entrance to a prison, a site that has long held people who knew they were waiting for death to greet them, whether it was masked by the plague after a long wait in dank, fecal strewn straw or death in  the guise of a guard wearing a Phyrgian cap to escort the doomed to la guillotine. The lighting was gentle, but the mood of the chambers was not golden.

Through the hall and up a short stair, the guardroom is to the right. When we passed through a group of primary children were clustered about a table with a small rendition of La Conciergerie's floor plan. The children were pointing, and the teacher spoke quickly before covering the model and shooing the children to the next position. It was obviously the wooden model for a Montessori lesson, and I so wanted to lift the tarp to examine the plan which seemed to include the Palace de Justice and the chapel, Sainte Chapelle that were part of the complex. Instead, I turned to the pewter tinged light of the guardroom. It was armor and weapons and forbidding. True, it would have been a raucous hold of cards and irreverent jokes, camaraderie and long stories, but I was not interested in tarrying.

The stairs and the hallways are winding and surprisingly short. The path is confusing because the series of compartments and clusters of cells or rooms are meant to be separated. The paupers or those without resources to pay for their rooms would have been at a lower level. Displays of busts and educational cartoons were strategically placed. The building had seen violence and encountered upheaval and unrest of generations. As we had waited in line, I took a picture of the pock marked sandstone that seemed to be bullet marks from an unknown century. Take your pick. Guns have been fired down Boulevard do Stepha... since they were invented.

We came into a courtyard labeled the woman's walk. During the reign of terror, the women prisoners would be allowed to walk and take the air, away from the stuffy, claustrophobic cells. There was a little garden in the center that I doubt was part of the amenities the prisoners enjoyed. A basin with a spigot, like a watering trough, was on one wall. Looking up, pointed blades bristled from the walls just below the 2nd floor windows - old-fashioned barbed wire. I could imagine them coated by the blood of some desperate soul who tried to escape, but I could not imagine the desperation any more than I could image the herculean attempt to maintain a sense of one's personhood in such a place. Marie Antoinette's walk was a corner, triangular in shape, that was barred from the rest of the courtyard.

We went under and arch, through a doorway, up a stair to the room where Marie Antoinette had been held. Mannequins were dressed to represent the queen and a soldier. The queen was draped in black and seated before a table; a soldier stood behind a chest-high screen. Maybe the queen had some privacy if the soldier sat. Remnants of fleur-de-lis wall paper, dark blue and gold, hung from the wall against which the table, set like an altar, and the headboard of her bed were placed. The bed was roughly made, but it was a bed with a mattress and had a pillow and coverlet. This was luxurious in comparison to the other cells displayed. The warm yellow lighting that gave the limestone a friendly blush did not alleviate the feeling of doom. One room had a pallet, one room was only covered in straw. Even though Paris rain can feel as though the sky is dumping buckets,  being in the knife-fringed courtyard would be preferable to the small room that might be shared by numerous people, some were simply left in their cells to die. These rooms held uncomfortable beds.

Sainte Chapelle: breathtaking stories in the Palace of Justice complex

Somber and thoughtful on the overcast morning, I was anxious to reach Sainte Chapelle. A friend had described it, with that enthusiastic tone of someone who liked to recall a vision, as walking into a stained-glass window. To reach the chapel we exited La Conciergerie and passed the glossy black, gold tipped gate of the Palace de Justice. Business suits were moving with purpose through the gates and the courtyard. A special security check was required because of our proximity to the very active civil building. Exiting security we were more than a little lost in-the-middle. The courtyard, cobbled with the uneven pavement of this side of the ocean, rose five stories and presented nondescript surface. Signage was limited. When in doubt, follow someone who is walking with purposeful stride. We went through a passage and noted signs.

The small doorway, by Paris standards, for this chapel was two narrow arches. The carvings were not memorials to kings or saints but panels of story. Everything about Sainte Chapelle is about telling a story. Stepping into the church, my eyes needed to adjust to the darkness. I was standing in the lower chapel reserved for the common people. Everything (walls, ceiling, pillars) is painted with royal colors and coated with the ubiquitous gold fleur-de-lis. Sainte Chapelle was built by Louis IX, the only French king to be made a saint.

 We were standing in the lower chapel reserved for the common people. As lovely as it was, the stained glass windows were small and simple. Appropriate for common people who would still glory in the gold paint and the paintings, but this was not the glorious reliquary to house Christ's crown of thorns. This was not the celebration of kingship. What bed can any king lie in peaceably? All the concerns of ruling, of being the champion and servant of the people, of being in a position that needs to be affirmed even while claiming divine right will make the highest featherbed uncomfortable.

We walked up the curving stair to colors that rose on every side. The little pieces of glass, a mosaic of story, embraced the space. I was inside laughter, song, poetry, parable, and all wonder. There truly is no way to describe the way these windows presented light, broken into narrative. In spite of being encased in windows, the chapel was dark. The marvelous, dominant blue was warm, and the reds pure, but lights were needed for the altar. The services, warmed by the many people and the necessary candles, would have been quite warm. Incense would have tried to purify the air, and all that soot and smoke would have darkened the light. The king and the priests both needed the stories to be told. On my right, an opening panel presents Saint Helen discovering the true cross. I read the images that relate the stories of the relics. King Louis, later Saint Louis, clearly presents the connection, through story, of his link to the ancient Kings of Jerusalem. We saw the connection continued, validation of the divine right of kingship affirmed in the statues that coated Notre Dame. The story needed to be told in multiple ways to the people.

In the grand upper chapel, angels are in every corner, not Baroque cherubs, but gowned, draped youths with short curls presenting images of helpful, youthful squires instead of chubby-cheeked babies. They are strong, supportive like the apostles that stand as pillars around the chapel.

The upper chapel that Jon and I viewed was in its restored condition. Its history had been as rocky as the reign of France's kings. The whole complex of the Conciergerie, like the buildings of the Louvre, had undergone numerous stages of building, destruction, reorganization and reuse, and renewal. This was a pattern we recognized as we marveled at everything we experienced. 

We walked on very old roads but, everything was new to us.