Dead Frenchmen

With the Olympics starting this week, the Dallas PBS station is broadcasting a whole series of programs focusing on England.  A “Globe Trekker” program “toured” London in 45 minutes, spending 30 seconds each at the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, and St. Paul’s Cathedral.  David and I spent days in Paris and saw the city’s famous “sights” – the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame Cathedral – plus some that were “off the usual tourist route.”   

A few blocks from our hotel, near the underground garage where I left our rental car, was an imposing domed building with tall columns in front. Napoleon ordered this mausoleum for heroes of his Empire, replicating the Pantheon in Rome, except the Roman one has a hole in the top of the dome, letting in light (and rain), while this building had a closed dome, making the interior dark and gloomy, appropriate for burial place of French heroes.  Some were entombed there during my lifetime.   . 

David and I took a guided tour.  A thin little man in a gray uniform with a gray face and gray mustache (he looked like a half-starved refugee from World War II), lead a small group around the circle of tombs, pointing out names inscribed on sarcophagi.  I was unfamiliar with most of them.

I recognized Emile Zola; defender of the Jewish Army officer falsely convicted and sent to prison on Devil’s Island.  A handsome boxed edition of Zola’s novel “Germinal” sits on the bookshelf in my living room. The hardships of workers in 19th Century Europe, described in  “Germinal” and Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital”, helped me understand why Europeans became Communists.  David never heard of Emile Zola.

Our guide stopped at the tomb of Jean – or was it Jacques? – Moulin, and gave a long talk in French.  I understood enough to make out that Moulin was the hero of the Resistance to the Nazis during the German Occupation of France in World War II.  Moulin was tortured and murdered by the Gestapo.  David did not understand a word the guide said.

We escaped from that dark, gloomy place and had one of our best Paris adventures.  On the street in front of the Pantheon we found a sidewalk café where we lunched on “gratinee”.   Onion soup with cheese.  If you’ve had French onion soup at Applebee’s, it is like a plastic rose compared to the real thing.  In Paris the waiter brought us deep bowls with a layer of cheese on top so thick that it dripped down the sides. 

From then on, every day at lunchtime David said, “Let’s go back to that place where we had the gratinee.”

As often happens, we went to see one thing and ended up with an unexpected, different, and delightful experience.