sightseeing

Since we're leaving tomorrow, we made the obligatory pilgrimage to the Louvre. The grande gallerie was jammed with the usual Sunday morning crowds, so we tried to figure out the type of art the fewest people would be interested in and ended up looking at late medieval sculpture from Northern Europe. There were a few strikingly pale and elongated alabaster carvings from England and a smirking angel from the Netherlands, but one of the most impressive pieces was a German sculpture of Mary Magdelene. The statue was just a little larger than life-size and showed the saint clothed in only her golden and elaborately-carved hair, which fell loosely to the middle of her thighs. Looking at the modelling of the soft-seeming curves and the downcast eyes, it was hard to imagine that the sculpture did much to inspire religious contemplation. In fact, as we stared at it, an Italian girl posed in front of it as her boyfriend took her picture, her blonde hair falling over her shoulders, her hands steepled in front of her, in a self-conscious echo of the statue's pose.

Late in the afternoon, I walked over to Notre Dame and, ignoring the various thorny religious issues that it posed, lit a pair of candles for the twins. Since it's my understanding that the Pope has now done away with the idea that unbaptized babies are eternally consigned to limbo, if I were a Catholic, my babies could, at least theoretically, be in heaven. There was a service going on and the sweet scent of incense hung in the air. The priest began talking about peace and I pushed my way through the people holding cameras over their heads and ended up outside, in the square in front of the cathedral. I walked back to the apartment, keeping close to the river, trying to memorize the green-grey color of the water, occasionally glancing at the boats filled with tourists as they made their way upstream, heedless of the current.