Sketching

I set out for the Louvre Tuesday only to discover that the Louvre is closed on Tuesdays. So much for plans. I ended up at the Place de Bastille—where on July 14, 1789 the storming of a medieval fortress and prison set off the French Revolution.

I went there to sketch the monument that now marks the spot. The July Column was created after the Revolution of 1830 and has at its top a sculpture by Augustin-Alexandre Dumont—the brother of composer Louise Farrenc, the uncle of my main character, Tori. Tori names her doll, Augi Dumont—after her uncle.

Augustin Dumont won the Prix du Rome in 1823 and spent the next seven years in Italy studying sculpture. I know he returned to Paris in 1830, but I'm not sure if he was there during the July Revolution. At the moment his presence in the book is only through the doll. As I research his life for the paper I'm writing, I find myself wanting him in the book.

Interestingly, there's more about Louise Farrenc's family in the short biographies I've found on her brother, than in the longer discourses on her life. She was Augustin's little sister. He was a fifth generation sculptor. Their father, grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great grandfather had all been successful sculptors. In fact, their father, Jacques-Edme Dumont won the Prix de Rome in 1788 and lived in Italy until 1793. He came back hoping to secure commissions from the Republic, but was not able to. I think his politics might have been too tied to the aristocracy—although he did carve a sculptured portrait of Napoleon's second wife, Marie Louise of Austria. All of this must have shaped Louise and Augustin. The Dumont family lived in the Louvre until Napoleon kicked the artists out around 1808. Jacques-Edme Dumont lived into the years my novel; he died in 1844. I've started thinking he too belongs in the book. In other words, Tori's extended family needs to be involved and on the page. It's not surprising, I suppose, that so far, I've found nothing about Tori's grandmother, Jacques-Edme Dumont's wife, not even her name.

Augustin Dumont sculpted The Genius (or Spirit) of Liberty, that sits atop the July Column. I just learned that there's a version of it at the Louvre—a bronze cast, I think. So, today, I going to the Louvre—I'm about to leave. I'm going there to sketch Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People, but I'm going look for the sculpture too, and for ones by Augustin's father, grandfather and great-grandfather. They're all there.

My sense is that Augustin Dumont (and his father) walked in the same circle of artists that I've been drawing into book. Augustin went to the same school as Gericault and Delacroix. He won the same Prix de Rome that Berlioz won (it was offered across a number of disciplines). He was a male, moving more freely through society. I don't know how close he was to his sister or to his niece. Like his sister, he eventually became an instructor—at the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts. At the very least, it's a fascinating family and it seems foolish to write about Louise and Tori without including the context of Louise's family. I believe it was an aunt that first interested Louise in music.

"Genius in Roman mythology is the individual instance of a general divine nature that is present in every individual person, place or thing. It was extremely important to the Roman mind to propitiate the appropriate genii for the major undertakings and events of their lives.”

Les Chevaux à Versailles

Horses. Today I visited the Grande Ecurie de Versailles (the Royal stables) that once served Louis XIV. I toured the actual stables, saw the horses and, in the grand tradition, saw a horse show. (They say that since the days of the Sun King, the greatest equestrians of France have performed in these riding halls.) What an unusual experience. How unexpected and entertaining.



The current show, Le Spectacle Equestre, is the brainchild of a Frenchman named Bartabas, an international equestrian celebrity who was brought to Versailles about five years ago to revive the stables and open a school of equestrian theatrical art. Bartabas is famous, among other things, for teaching a horse to gallop backwards. I watched classic dressage and contemporary equestrian choreography. His performers not only ride, they fence on horseback and on foot, perform archery, dance and sing.

The most amazing performance of the show, however, was when the horses were simply turned loose to play. They rolled and reared and nipped at one another. It was not arbitrary though, it was performance. Like nothing I've ever seen. The dressage too was amazing. It brought tears to my eyes and sent me wheeling back to my adolescence when I had an Arabian colt who was the love of my life. Horses are smart, and these creatures were brilliant—and shy. Something in their expressions, honestly, especially when we applauded, seemed humble—not frightened, humble.

All this came about because of Gericault. He spent much of his career painting horses and the stables at Versailles are where he went to study them. I have to write a paper for my Art History class that discusses a painting and a corresponding architectural environment. So I decided to use the stables at Versailles along with one of Gericualt's paintings.

I got to Versailles around 11am. There was an opportunity to watch the horses being trained, but I missed it because I got lost. It was an interesting time, my time being lost. There are two huge stables, one on either side of what must have been the grand avenue leading directly to the palace. I was on the wrong side, and intrepid explorer that I am, I found my way into the courtyard even though everything was closed up.

I walked all over the area, which was about the size of a football field, figuring I must have misunderstood the French on the website, and the stables were closed. Finally, I asked in the Tourist Office and found my way to the right place. While I waited for the afternoon performance, I perched on a big stone near the gate and sketched, yes sketched, the stables. That's part of the assignment for my class.

Jules Hardouin-Mansart was the architect who designed the buildings. He did all the original work at Versailles. The twin stables originally sheltered 600 horses plus all of Louis' stablemen and equestrians, along with pageboys and even musicians. You can see by looking at the buildings that people lived in them. The top floor was for servants. They're just huge, impossible to get the whole of even one of them in a single picture.

About thirty horses live in the stables these days, and they live in considerable luxury. They're mostly Lusitanian, a Portuguese breed with a creamy white coat and blue eyes, the preferred horses of Louis XIV.  They were bred for military purposes originally and were valued for their bravery.

They were trained for bullfighting and dressage because of their flashy gait and powerful presence. Extraordinary animals. I'm still undecided about the painting I'm going to select for my assignment.

I'd like to use Gericault's Mazeppa, which comes from Byron's poem, but it's in a private collection and I can't see the original. Curiously, or coincidentally, Bartabas (the man responsible for the present day equestrian shows) made a film called Mazeppa which is about Gericault.  He apparently likes Gericault too.

I may use this portrait, which hangs in the Louvre.

One more Gericault tidbit: the painting I wrote about, the portrait of Byron? I finally found some additional information. It appears that there's a big question about whether the painting is Gericault's. A Cambridge published book that uses the image says it was "formerly" attributed to Gericault but is now by "anonymous"... I imagine it's because no one has found record of these two artists meeting, although it's possible they met in Rome. It's hard to believe Gericault would have painted a "portrait" of Byron by copying another painting.

I did find a portrait of Byron I'd never seen—by a French painter, a woman who is actually connected to Versailles. Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun. She painted a famous portrait of Marie Antoinette that hangs in Versailles. I saw it when we toured there last month. It turns out she traveled to England in the early 1800s and Byron sat for a portrait with her. He's very young, in college; it's probably from about the time of the hanging scene that opens Requiem. Fascinating to see it. He doesn't look nearly as jaded as in later portraits. I've been thinking about letting Byron make an appearance in The Appassionata, especially when I thought I could tie him to Gericault. Now I don't know. They died the same year, only months apart.

Notre-Dame de Chartres

We traveled to Chartres today. We rode the train from Paris and arrived in the fog. The steeples of the cathédrale were barely visible. Cold and beautiful. Chartres is an old village with many medieval streets and buildings.  Everything closes for a couple hours at lunch time. Old fashioned. It reminded me a little of Avignon. Chartres is a place of pilgrimage, and has been for hundreds of years. Since 876, pilgrims have come to see the cathedral's relic, the tunic of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Our guide, the renowned Malcolm Miller, admonished us as we left that we had not seen Chartres Cathedral. One cannot see the Cathedral in two hours, he said. That would be like thinking you'd read all the books in a library because you looked around for two hours. He'd given us only a small "taste" of what Chartres has to offer. Indeed, a small, but wonderful taste: Malcolm has been guiding groups through Chartres for fifty years. He's delightful, knowledgeable and very British—a consummate storyteller.

We sat for a long time before the rose window that is over the west entrance. I found it mesmerizing. It literally seemed to lift out into a three-dimensional illusion as I watched in the half-light. Quite extraordinary. Mind-altering. There were workers in the cathedral tearing down the scaffolding. They were noisy. We listened to Malcolm on headsets. A group of pilgrims came into the sanctuary singing. I found the cacophony exuberant. The acoustics were intoxicating.

Chartres was different than I expected. I've been searching for words that explain it. Intimate comes to mind. Gentle. Kind. Sweet. Sincere. I think it's the effect of all the blue glass and the reverberations, the palpable sensation of hundred of years of pilgrimage.  It feels holy, sacred. It was an emotional experience that inspired an open heart. I have read that beauty is a way to God. Chartres reinforces that supposition.

We walked the village of Chartres too. Behind the cathedral there's a green parklike area that makes it's way down the hill with a staircase, moss covered walls, and a grassy maze. The cathedral sits atop a hill, the highest point in the area. The spires of Chartres can be seen for miles, guiding pilgrims to their goal.

The village is medieval in character with narrow alleyways and streets that climb the hillside. It has many wattle and daub buildings. Everything looks very old and charming. There's even a little river running through the center of town. All these things, the staircase, the river, the medieval buildings are part of a setting in my novel. Tori and Liszt walk down the staircase from Chartres Cathedral and stop on a bridge that crosses the River Eure where they watch some young boys playing. Quite by accident, we took that walk. I even found the old hotel where everyone is staying.

One thing that makes it likely that I'll keep Chartres as a setting in my book, is the fact that it seems a place that Alexandrine might have visited. Alexandrine is the woman who had the affair with Gericault. She was confined by her husband to their estate near Versailles, but Chartres is very near Versailles, and in the opposite direction of Paris. If she was allowed to travel anywhere, a pilgrimage to Chartres is one of the most likely.

I have been toying with the idea that her path might cross Georges Sand and Tori's in Chartres, that it's a place where a coincidental meeting, unplanned by either side might take place, where we might learn her story.

These are ideas that are in mind. I won't know if I'm really going in that direction until I start trying to write the prose that carry them. The big question I'm grappling with has to do with how the story is moving in time, whether it follows a chronological unfolding or uses something more like flashbacks. These are big questions that have to do with the telling. If, for example, my narrator is speaking from the dead... well, there's a lot of room in that. If Madame Lanormande, the fortune teller, is the storyteller, then she's likely to be doing just that, speaking from the dead.

Un livre d'historique

I asked for a book on the history of the Louvre today, and I did it all in French. I was at the Louvre, so, you know, it made sense. But I got directed first to a different store and then to an information counter and then to a different person and finally to a book. Each time I was understood and each time the clerks answered me in French. I know they speak English, but they really went out of their way to respond to my French and I was able to understand the directions they gave me. It was satisfying and left me impressed with myself. It's the best I've done with French so far. I felt respected for my efforts.

I bought the book. It's interesting. I bought it because I've been thinking a lot in the last few days about the fact that Louise Farrenc lived in the Louvre as a child. There were artists living in the Louvre in the latter part of the 18th century, up to and during the Revolution. Napoleon seems to have evicted them around 1808. Louise Farrenc, née Dumont, came from a long tradition of artists, primarily sculptors. She would have been four years old in 1808. Her brother, Auguste Dumont, who would become an important 19th century sculptor, would have been eight years old. The family moved from the Louvre to the Sorbonne.

The Louvre was a museum, but it was also kind of like an art school and kind of like a commune of artists. It must have been rather amazing. All of this is just beginning to register. I had a lengthy conversation last night with a friend about the fact that Louise's family lived in the Louvre and that Gericault spent about six years going to the Louvre regularly to copy the work of the masters.

I want to make sense of the building's history, the story of the space. I think I'm going to stage a scene in the Louvre for my book. I felt it today. I don't know exactly how to explain it, but I had a very strong feeling of what it might have been like to walk up and down the stairs without it being an organized, public space, but rather wild, almost like an art wilderness, or something.

The Academy held its first Salon at the Louvre in 1699. The French Academy was established in the Louvre even before Louis XIV moved the Court to Versailles in 1674. The Salons were all held at the Louvre. I hadn't realized that until just recently. And Molière performed theatre in one of the salles at the Louvre. What a fascinating place it must have been.

At first, the Louvre was decorated for the Royalty. Ceilings were painted in Baroque design. All that. Then in 1692 a collection of antiques were moved into the Louvre for display. It wasn't until 1767 that the idea of turning The Louvre into a museum was pursued. That was in the reign of Louis XV who had taken up residence in the Palace of Tuileries, which no longer exists. It was burned down in the uprising of 1871. The Palace of Tuileries was standing in 1830, however.  It belongs in my book. Right now I have a scene from the July Revolution that takes place in the courtyard of the Louvre. I need to go back to my research and figure out exactly where, but it's very near the Palais Royal, which is just across the street from the Louvre.

We were at the Louvre for about four hours today for my Art History class. We spent the time looking at Renaissance art, first from the Italian Renaissance, both its origins with pieces like Botticelli's Three Graces all the way to the height of the Renaissance with works like the Mona Lisa. We also looked at a lot of Northern Renaissance art, mostly from Flanders. I didn't find that as interesting, but I did like being at the Louvre. It was my fourth or fifth trip back and I'm getting pretty good at finding my way around. (The picture is looking up from inside into the pyramid and the outdoors.)

Earlier in the day, we visited the Rodin Museum. Actually, that was for a different class. I'm taking two art history classes. We saw the original "Thinker." It's a small museum, but one room is dedicated to the work of Camille Claudel. I've been told by a number of artists whom I respect that Claudel not only inspired Rodin, but contributed, literally to much of Rodin's work. She was his model, his confidante and his lover, though he never left his wife.

After an unwanted abortion, Claudel ended her relationship with Rodin and pretty much flipped out. She destroyed many of her statues. Amy, our intrepid instructor didn't seem to have much good to say about Claudel, which I found frustrating. We don't exactly see eye-to-eye on all things art. Her explanations are a bit too academically conservative for my taste, and her history is often over-simplified to accomplish a tilt in a certain direction. She dismissed Claudel as an imitator of Rodin and said her images of embrace were "obsessive."

From the garden you can see the golden dome of Les Invalides in the background. We walked from there all the way to the Eiffel Tower, about a mile along windy Paris streets. Eventually it rained. It's definitely beginning to feel like winter. But, as I said in an earlier entry, I like the weather. Something about the rain and dark clouds makes it feel more like the 19th century to me. It's as if I find the bad weather familiar somehow.

Chantilly Lace

I've been trying to put together the paper on Gericault. I have to choose a piece of his work that I can see here in Paris and find a way to relate it to some piece of architecture that's also here. There are a lot of options, and when I set out to put together my proposal this morning, I thought I knew what I wanted to do. I thought I wanted to go to the stables at Chantilly (just north of Paris) and use them as the architecture—either that or the stables at Versailles, where Gericualt used to go.

Chantilly has a chateau that looks like a fairytale castle. I heard about it by chance from the taxi driver who took Toni and I to the train station the day we headed south to Avignon.

Gericault painted horses more than anything else and one of them is at Chantilly. There's an art museum there in the château, the Musée Condé, the biggest art museum outside of Louvre, which seems very much worth seeing.

I'm actually more likely to use Versailles however, because the stables at Chantilly are closed for renovation at the moment and because Versailles is where Gericault actually went to paint horses. But there's an equestrian show at Chantilly through November that sounds rather incredible. It's called the Les Princes de Chantilly and it's historically-costumed performance and dressage. I'd really like to try to get there, even though it's a bit of a hike.  Apparently there are equestrian demonstrations at the Versailles as well, though not as elaborate. 

So, it seems pretty straight forward except for the fact that I learned today that Gericault painted a portrait of Lord Byron. At first, I refused to believe it. I thought it must be one of those Internet "truths" that are all mixed up, but after hours of poking around, I've started to believe that it's actually true. The painting is housed at Musée Fabre in Montpellier, which is about as far south as Avignon, but further to the West.

What I don't know is what Gericault used as the source for the portrait. Gericault was in Italy. He left Paris late in 1816 and spent a year in Italy, returning in the fall of 1817. Lord Byron arrived in Italy in October of 1816. By November he was established in Venice, where he lived for the next three years. He did, however, travel to Rome in the spring of 1817. Gericault was in Florence and then in Rome. I don't know the dates. I haven't found any evidence as of yet that their path's crossed and that Byron sat for the portrait. I think if that were so, I would have discovered it already. But who knows? One could also argue that Gericault would not paint a portrait of Byron from a secondary source. In any event it's curious. Gericault would likely have heard talk of Byron's presence in Italy and might have known when he was in Rome. I'm thinking of my recent discovery that Stendhal met Byron. So anyway, that's one thing that I want to know more about.

The other connection to Byron is that Gericault painted an image from Byron's Mazeppa, a poem that also attracted Franz Liszt. Mazeppa tells the story of an illicit love affair discovered and punished. Mazeppa slept with the very young wife of a much older Count who was his host. (Does this sound familiar? It's pretty much Gericault's story, and the story Stendhal is telling in The Red and The Black.) When the young lover is found out, the Count has him tied naked to a wild stallion, which is then turned loose. According to Mazeppa, who is telling the tale in Byron's poem, he almost died several times before finally being rescued.

Gericualt painted the rider and the horse and it seems like a good choice for my paper, but I haven't been able to locate the original. I don't know if it's in Paris, or even in France. I've identified everything by Gericault at the Louvre, which is a lot, but it's not there. I'd also like to identify the date it was painted. I suspect it was after Gericault's affair with Alexandrine was found out. It seems like a kind of self-portrait, or at least it would be interesting to speculate about the degree to which it is. So. Now I'm feeling frustrated with my inability to read French well and with the scarcity of biographical detail I've thus far found in English.

Ultimately, all of this is only important in so far as it gets applied to my novel. But it feels like it is important to the novel. As I've already noted, Lord Byron was a huge influence on almost all the artists I've been researching. It's remarkable, really, the impact of his influence, especially after his death. I hadn't fully grasped it. It's another one of the organizing themes in the book, really. So. Tomorrow I'm going to find out from Amy how to locate Gericault's original Mazeppa. There is a way. I know that much.

Mon Ami Departé

My friend Toni left about a half hour ago—on her way back to California. My little apartment seems suddenly empty. It was perfect timing to have a friend here for the middle of my stay. It was fun. I gave me an opportunity to go out into Paris to dinner and to the theatre and to travel south all with companionship. That's very nice and quite different than doing all those kinds of things alone.

It was especially wonderful to have gone to the South of France for a few days. I noticed it yesterday, again, that we had been there, that I had been away from Paris and now was back. It made me see Paris just a little differently. As is the case at home, things move differently in the country than they do in the city and traveling south gave me a tiny window into seeing that difference.

Paris is, well.... Paris. What can one say? It's rather wild and woolly here, a little aggressive, a little rushed, a little impressed with itself. How could it be otherwise? It's one of the most important urban centers on the planet and has been for centuries. Style. Paris has style.

We spent yesterday afternoon in the Latin Quarter near Place Saint-Michel. We walked all the little alleyways that make up the area and ate dinner in a delightful little restaurant that we stumbled upon. We chose it because it had an interesting menu and looked good with its traditional red and white checked table cloths and intimate ambiance. The food was excellent, some of the best I've had since arriving. I had salmon. But it was earlier in the afternoon when we'd stopped for a coffee that I felt Paris sort of settling around me.

We were sitting outside under outdoor heaters. That's how they do it here now that it's getting colder—they have roll-out canvas and plastic roofs and sometimes even siding, and they have  heaters that look sort of like street lamps, so people can still sit outside. We had one of those tables where you are side-by-side, looking out toward the street.

We weren't far from Shakespeare and Company, which is near the Seine. Lots of young people and lots of smoking. You can't smoke indoors so the smokers do tend to congregate. And the maitre d was just a little rude and pushy to people and it was very busy. And I liked it all. I know that sounds overly romantic, but—you know—that's my schtick, I am overly romantic about these things. To me, it's all pretty much a big adventure.

I just want to take it in. I want to see the color of the water in the mud puddle not just worry about the fact I stepped in it. I'm trying to look without judging what is "right" and what is "wrong." I don't mean to sound naive or simplistic, and I don't think that's what I'm promoting, either. I'm talking about something else.

I believe to succeed as a writer, I have to succeed first as an observer. I have to see the world around me as it is and seek to understand what's actually going on. I don't think anyone can do that when they're busy with a lot of judgment about how it ought to be.

Bottom line: I really want to understand Paris, both in the present and in the past. It's impossible, of course, especially in the time I have, but I can get somewhere. Indeed, I've learned a great deal in the six weeks I've been here. And my affection for Paris seems more grounded these days, based in first-hand experience.

What disturbs me is the realization that my stay is more than half over. I don't feel at all ready for it to end. I'm just now getting my sea legs, I think. I take the Metro mostly with ease these days. I don't look at the map nearly as often. I'm going back now, to places I've been and even when its new, I have a better sense of where I am. What can I say? I like it here—more each day, actually.

Toni's departure signals another change in focus. I went back to school yesterday and in the next few weeks I have three papers to write. One on Delacroix, one on Gericault and one on Romanticism in Paris. I'm looking forward to the task. Each paper is small, only about five pages. I see it as an opportunity to kind of organize my thinking and kind of summarize for myself what I've learned.

It's not the same as writing fiction. And, believe me, that's always on my mind. I'm still working with all the thoughts I've mentioned of late... about the narrator and whether I'm going to give that over to the fortune teller and if so, who she's talking to and how it's all going to work in and out of time. These are huge questions for me, but I've learned the best way to solve those kind of things is to "sit" with them, let them percolate until something surfaces. Things surface in the most unexpected moments, triggered by unexpected things. I'm confident that it will fall into place. I even think the academic writing will help it along. So, to make a long story short, I'm happy this morning and ready for whatever is next.

Oh, and I haven't forgotten Stendhal. I'm about 100 pages into The Red and The Black and it's so good—so much information about the times and the thinking and relationships and humor. It's absolutely excellent and will inform my paper on Romanticism and ultimately, my novel. Haven't forgotten Hugo either. If I wrote about everything that's on my mind, we'd be here until next year.

Comédie-Française

We went to the Comédie-Française to see Molière. L'Avare—The Miser. In French. I barely understood a word, but I enjoyed it anyway because it was big and bawdy and in period costume. It was obviously quite funny—the audience laughed a lot. I got one joke, a very simple one. There was a point where the main character crawled out over the seats into the audience and talked directly to us. That was the part I understood the best.

I read about the play before going, so I knew the gist of the story and what to expect. I caught bits of dialogue here and there. The Miser is about a greedy old man who loves his money more than life and he wants to marry a beautiful young woman who is in love with his son. He also wants his daughter to marry a very old man who doesn't require a dowry. It's kind of a dark comedy that pokes fun at the insidiousness of greed and the social structure that allowed men to do as they pleased with their children and wives. Mostly, it's a farce—very physical comedy.

Molière is for the French, what Shakespeare is for the English and part of what was fun about seeing it, was that it was classical French theatre. Molière is considered one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature. He lived during the reign of Louis XIV who did so much for the arts. Louis established Molière's troupe as The King's Troupe (Troupe du Roi).

La Salle Richelieu, where we saw the production, has been a theatre since the French Revolution. It's beautiful inside even though many of the original boxes have been taken out and replaced with rows of seats.

The ceilings are especially wonderful, painted with a reverse perspective that makes it appear as if people are looking down from outside a window above you. It's called Di sotto in sù which means, "seen from below" or "from below, upward." We had to identify one such piece on our midterm, so when I looked up, I went, "I know what that is." In Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo art, a technique called trompe l'oeil, (trick the eye) was used to create the illusion of three-dimensional space. Di sotto in sù was a version of that.

It impressed me that I knew something about what I was seeing, and the painting is quite amazing. There's also a fancy chandelier that hangs over the audience, and that ceiling too, is very ornate and interesting. French Baroque, I think.

The Comédie-Française is across the street from the Louvre. It's next to (or part of) the Palais-Royal which is another of the elegant buildings that once housed the court. Molière used to perform in the Palais-Royal and in the Louvre.

The original Comédie-Française was on the Left Bank across from Café Procope, which is the first café in Paris, and the place that introduced coffee to the French. The Comédie-Française was established in 1680 seven years after Molière's death (from pulmonary tuberculosis). I saw the old theatre building several weeks ago when I went on a tour of sites related to the Revolution. It's not far from where Madame Lanormande lived, and yes, she was a theatre-goer.

I wanted to see a play at the Palais Royal because it's where Victor Hugo's Hernani opened in 1830—in Salle Richelieu, the exact same theatre we were just in, and, except for the redesign of the boxes, just as it was. It's actually a very small theatre, much smaller than Palais Garnier where we saw the ballet. It's not as grand, either, and it's much older.

All this helps me think about the staging of my chapter on Hernani. It was nice to arrive at night and think about how it would have looked when Louise and Aristide Farrenc pulled up to the theatre in a carriage on that cold February evening, (we, of course, rode the Metro). There's not much of a lobby in the traditional sense of the word. The "social area" is upstairs on the second floor.  We had very nice seats, actually, in an area that was once all boxes.

We arrived in the rain, which in its own way was kind of cool. There's a fountain on one side of the square, the Louvre on the other. The fountain is actually behind, (or perhaps beside is a better description) the theatre. I'm wondering if that's where the carriage should stop.

Inside, I have a scene where Louise is sitting in her seat, eavesdropping on Delacroix. I got some very specific ideas about how to refine that. And the whole scene at the theatre has taken on greater consequence as I'm thinking that almost every minor character in the book, everyone who plays a role in supporting the story, will probably be at the theatre that night.