Last report from Paris

Looking southwest across the park to the Boulevard des Invalides. Photo: JH.

Paris Diary. On Saturday last, we had a few hours off from the busy American Friends schedule. A late breakfast/early brunch at Laduree, the Parisian tea room which first started business in 1862. Located on the Champs Elysee, Laduree started out as a bakery. A daughter of the founder had the bright idea of combining it with a little restaurant. Today it sports a leitmotif of its original Belle Epoque décor and serves up three meals, after which you can go over to the bakery and get a sugar high just looking at assortment waiting to be consumed.

That’s what JH and I did after breakfast. There was a line waiting to pick out their little pastry to take home. It turned into a twenty-minute wait until getting service. At first it was annoying for this New Yorker until the line grew much much longer along with the wait. Then I became immersed in the perusing, in the style and manner of the waitstaff, in the whole process of tantalizing the customer. I realized we were in the right place.

So when it came our turn to order, we were ready and anxious to get our hands on the stuff. JH ordered an assortment of macaroons, a dozen, six different colors/flavors. I order two kugloffs, a kind of pound-cake-ish fruitcake. Alsatian in origin, the girl told me. And one chocolate éclair dusted in chocolate. Kugloffs: 2 euros each. Éclair: 4 euros, and a dozen macaroons: 13 euros. Or, about 30 bucks.

Our very own variety pack of macaroons at Laduree

It was a beautiful day, sunny and bright although there were indigo-grey stormclouds advancing in the distance. After Laduree we dropped everything off at the hotel, and found a taxi to take us over to Les Invalides which neither of us had ever visited.

Three quarters of the way there, I mentioned something about going to see Napoleon’s tomb and our taxi driver laughed. He said that if we wanted to see Napoleon’s tomb we’d have to go over to the Sorbonne. I’d always thought Napoleon’s tomb was at Les Invalides. I suddenly had that astonishing recognition that we have from time to time, learning that we’d been harboring incorrect information all our lives.

I asked the taxi driver how long it would take to get to the Sorbonne (we were just about arriving at Les Invalides). He said another fifteen minutes across Paris. So we decided to forego Napoleon’s tomb at the Sorbonne and see Les Invalides anyway.

I tell that story because New Yorkers often feel they are the only ones who have cab drivers who don’t know where they’re going.

Scenes outside Les Invalides

If you’ve been to Paris, you’ve seen it even if you’ve never visited. It’s the sprawling 17th century edifice with the huge golden dome. In fact I never rode by it at night when someone didn’t say: “Les Invalides, Napoleon is buried there.”

Once out of the taxi, I could see we’d come to the right place. Actually, it was close enough that we could have walked, right across the Seine. We got out of the taxi on the southern side where the golden dome is located.

On my way to the ticket office, I stopped to before a weathered bronze statue of a 17th century man. The name on the plinth was Mansart. Aha. I took a picture of it. A moment later, two young American boys (probably 18 or so) came up to take a picture of it. “Do you know who this is?” I asked. No. They looked on the base. The name meant nothing. I pointed to many of the nearby rooftops. “They are named for him,” I told them. They found this very interesting. One more fact for the wonder.

Les Invalides

The statue of Mansart; The tomb of Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon's eldest brother.

Even more interesting, once inside the building (with my ticket), what I didn’t know, that I learned, was that the 21-year-old Mansart had been hired by Louis XIV’s architect Bruant to create the dome for the chapel. It occurred to me that the place is so over the top to these 20th century American eyes, the designer’s youth assisted him in creating this monumental building that was at once absurd and humanely fantastic. Some will smart at the use of the word “absurd,” because it is the most alluring grandeur and worthy of praise of wonder.

To the American eye, the French astonish. Maybe the British and Italians too. Les Invalides is SO monumental. It is impressive but it is also something else: glorification of one sort or another. In this case, I was soon to learn, it was glorification of war. Not warfare, because there was nothing to refer to that except a few guns (Napoleon’s). But there are tombs, or more specifically, crypts, and most specifically the tomb of Napoleon which is set in the center of a rotunda, massive two story rotunda.

His crypt is human-size by ten; over the top. Especially considering the scourge that the little man Napoleon was with his armies. Considering Versailles and what happened to its occupants, and considering that Napoleon was the end result, it is difficult to comprehend how the French could have been so distracted by the same theatre. It calls into question the intelligence of Man. Or at least the torpor.

Napoleon's tomb. Its size is unimaginable and incomprehensible except to accede that it's very big.

In fact, in this great monument – and it is a great, great monument – there is copious testimony to the absurdities of war. The place on this day was filled with tourists, visitors, all apparently agog at the glorification of warriors. Or war-mongers, depending on how you look at it.

Napoleon’s brothers, the eldest and the youngest are entombed here also (although not nearly as gloriously; still, not bad). As well as his son, Napoleon II who died at 21. Napoleon is an intense character in the folklore of men and women, and an unabashed hero to a lot of men, especially men of a certain stature, mentally or physically.

I was thinking, while taking it all in, how Napoleon had such aprofound impact in what turned out to be a very short run. Less than fifteen years, when you tally up the hours.

I stood in the rotunda watching the visitors and tourists take it all in. In awe. And awesome it is, thanks to Monsieur Mansart and Bruant. And their star, Napoleon. I was thinking of those American boys out by the statue of Mansart, probably about the same age as Mansart was when he went to work on this most stupendous monument. I was also thinking of all of those, that blob of humanity, undistinguished by vaults and tombs, who died at the direction, or under the supervision, or as a result of, the decisions of ... these men buried in Les Invalides. And the tourists taking it all in as if contains a secret to universal power. And how War is only war if we are in the middle of it physically, or overtly threatened by it. Threatened by men like Napoleon, scourges later deified, for that is the way of the human condition and, apparently, the way of all flesh.

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Inside Les Invalides.

Nevertheless. Les Invalides is an extraordinary monument to behold, to visit. It invites questions and also provides the thrill of the awe. Most of us lose that after childhood. Monuments such as Louis XIV’s vague conception, later glorification, represent many things, and never lose the awe.


Inner courtyard of Les Invalides.

Les Invalides was built by Louis XIV to be a hospital for the veterans of his wars. Its grandeur was mainly institutional in scope. Until Bruant and Mansart set to work on the chapel and the dome. And the places for tombs.

Napoleon died in 1821 on St. Helena’s in the South Atlantic. They sent him as far away as they could to be rid of him, and to punish him with a fate worse than death. They stripped him of his “gloire” and let him languish in his reveries. It was almost 20 years after his death that in 1840, it was suggested that they bring Napoleon’s body back from St. Helena’s and bury him at Les Invalides. The idea is attributed to Louis-Philippe, the last king of France. Since all such official decisions are made for specific political reasons, Louis-Philippe undoubtedly had his motivations. Whatever they were, unknown to this writer at this moment, the preparation for the entombing of Napoleon at Les Invalides took almost 20 years from idea to actuality. In 1860 Napoleon’s body was ensconced.

We took the northern route to departing Les Invalides through the courtyards around which the soldiers were housed. Outside the views were as glorious in their intended and successful scope. The neighborhood around Invalides is very upscale. There are parks of trees with people playing bocci or young men playing soccer. Everyone involved was focused on their game. The resting place of other game players had nothing to do with them. It wouldn’t surprise me if most, if not all of them, never even really looked at Les Invalides, or considered the story. Such is life.

The body of French General Louis Hubert Gonzalve Lyautey; Antique cannons line the courtyard wall.

Above, l. to r.: In the inner courtyard of Les Invalides; The Grand Palais off in the distance, looking south from the portals of Les Invalides.

A leisurely Saturday in the park and on the streets of Paris.

walking back to our hotel, over the bridge.

Far from the exhibitions, the rain began again.

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