by Susie Kelly
We sat beside a rectangular lake from which rows of trees grew out of square boxes, watching the residents of the area as they went about their Saturday morning affairs. I was still mulling over the conundrum of the appeal of the Sainte Chapelle as against Versailles, and I thought I’d found the answer. While one had been built to the glory of God, the other was the glorification of self and power.
After this peaceful and pleasant interlude we started off again, vaguely in the direction of Versailles. Soon we found ourselves on a magical mystery tour where every corner yielded a new surprise. One minute we were cycling along an elegant suburban street, the next at a busy junction teeming with impatient traffic. Then, after a stretch of woodland, without warning we were on a multi-lane highway. High-speed traffic roared past, hooting, drivers glaring at us in their mirrors. In moments of extreme terror my reaction was to scream and scramble off the bike. That is what I did, but Terry, several hundred yards ahead of me, just kept blithely pedalling along. I dragged my bike to the very edge of the road, against a metal barrier, and waited. Passing motorists slowed and stared. I tried to look insouciante, as if I habitually hung around on busy motorways dressed like a clown, with a bicycle almost buried beneath bundles of paraphernalia. I wondered how long it would be before Terry recognised my absence and came looking for me.
It was about five minutes before he hove into sight, backtracking nonchalantly down the narrow strip between the barrier and the cars.
“What’s wrong? Why have you stopped?”
Momentarily dumbstruck, I waved my arms at the road, the vehicles, at our bikes.
“What is the matter with you?” he asked.
“Are you off your head? Can you not see where we are? Do you see anybody else mad enough to be riding a bicycle here?”
“I don’t see what you’re making such a fuss about. Just follow me, and you’ll be fine.” He began to swing his leg over his bike.
“I will not follow you. We will not be fine. If we are not killed, we’ll be arrested. I’m pretty sure we’re on the périphérique.”
“Rubbish.”
“Terry, I am not going on this road. You can continue, if you like. I will find my own way and meet you back in Versailles.”
I heaved my bike around so that it was facing the way we had come, delivering myself an almighty whack on the ankle and enraging drivers who had to swerve to avoid knocking my wheels off. I began pushing it back until I reached a junction with a slightly less frenetic road. Terry would either follow, or leave me. I didn’t look back. I climbed back on and pedalled a couple of hundred yards until I arrived at Porte de Versailles. Terry pulled up beside me.
“Shall we have something to eat? I’m starving.” The baby bird syndrome again.
With the perpetual problem of being unable to leave the bicycles unattended, we stood on the pavement while a jolly man cooked us a toasted cheese panini. He suggested that we should try a slice of ham as well. It was good, tasty, he said, picking up a slice on a fork and flapping it towards us. No, thank you, we were vegetarians. Pah – that was no good for us. In any case, ham isn’t meat. That seems to be a common misconception amongst French carnivores. They do not class charcuterie or poultry as meat. Our jovial host today was a good-natured man. He argued that not eating meat would weaken us. I countered by pointing out that the world’s most powerful mammals, elephants, rhinoceroses and gorillas are all vegetarian.
“Ah yes!” he roared, banging his fist on the counter, “but you don’t see them riding bicycles!”
He asked where we were going, and when I said Versailles his face lit up. He tilted his arm up at a steep angle, like someone swearing an oath.
“Hard work! You’re going to wish you’d eaten some meat!”
Busy Issy-les-Moulineaux was like any other densely populated suburb on a Saturday afternoon: pandemonium. Pedestrians festooned with shopping bags stepped off pavements without looking. Cars stopped and started without any indication that they were going to do so. We seemed to be invisible and inconsequential amongst this teeming mass of humanity.
As suddenly as a film scene changes, the human and vehicular traffic faded into a peaceful, almost deserted residential area. We had benefited from an entirely downhill run when we left Versailles. Now we faced the haul back there, climbing almost 400 feet over a few miles.
The pleasant little road on which we were cycling rapidly became steeper, until it was approaching perpendicular. Terry’s legs were still pedalling, but even in my lowest gear I could not move the pedals another inch. I climbed off and began pushing. It took all my remaining strength to move forward. I had to keep squeezing the brakes to prevent the bike making its own way back down the hill. Terry gave up and dismounted. He hooked one a handlebar around a fence post to stop his bike rolling back, and came back down to help me. Together we slogged onwards, panting. My legs wobbled and felt that their knees might bend backward under the effort being expected of them. Every few yards, we both stopped to catch our breath.
With one final push we reached the summit, and remounted.
We cycled back into Versailles on décade III, Nonidi of Prairial in the year CCXIV of the Revolutionary calendar, 500 miles and seventeen days since we started out.
If the Zinedine Zidane look-alike had been on duty at the car park, I know he would have been impressed by how skilfully we managed to open the barrier with our ticket.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Lottery of Life
Lottery: A situation whose success or outcome is governed by chance. Oxford Dictionary
ON an earlier journey in 2006 [Travels With Tinkerbelle – 6,000 Miles Around France In A Mechanical Wreck] we had been to Varennes, the town where Louis and Marie-Antoinette had been captured when they were so close to freedom. So we had visited every place of significance in their lives – apart from places that were no longer there – except their final burial place at St Denis. As well as being the royal necropolis, St Denis is the place where the coronation regalia was kept and French queens were crowned. Great names came there to settle for eternity.
I had a mental image of the church: solemnly magnificent, a bright white temple standing on a small mound, surrounded by well-tended lawns.
It was a long drive, but until we had seen where Louis and Marie-Antoinette’s mortal trail had finally ended, I didn’t feel we had completed our journey. So a couple of weeks after our return we set off by car one Sunday morning at a distressingly early hour.
When we left home, it was a cool grey day punctuated by heavy showers; in Paris it was a grey wet day punctuated by occasional dry spells.
Here is a useful tip if you decide to visit St Denis: don’t try to find any signs to it. Instead look for ‘Le Stade de France’. The great stadium built to host the 1998 World Cup looks like a giant flying saucer that has alighted in the northern suburbs of the capital. Signs to Le Stade abound. Conversely, to find the church took canine determination and tireless tenacity.
Having arrived in the St Denis neighbourhood we admired the stadium from every possible angle as we drove around it several times in a fruitless search for our destination. We came upon a large unshaven man in a powder-blue shell suit and asked him for directions. He barked out an unintelligible response, and gobbed on the pavement next to the car. A female taxi-driver with a tiny apricot poodle draped over her shoulder like a stole was more helpful. She led the way into an area of narrow, mysterious streets where there were no people at all. There we found a parking place and a small, insignificant sign pointing to the direction of the church. As it came into sight we were stunned by the horror of the place.
The church of St Denis is named after the first bishop of Paris, beheaded by the Romans on Mount Martyr – Montmartre. Legend says he picked up his severed head, tucked it beneath his arm like a cabbage and walked to the site where the basilica now stands, where he was buried.
Externally, in contrast to the cosmopolitan and colourful world on its doorstep, I found it s
inister, and supremely ugly. It looks unfinished, because it is. I had expected something beautiful like immaculate, creamy-stoned Fontevraud, where the French branch of the Plantagenets is buried. But the stone of St Denis is a sullen grey. The three Romanesque doorways on the front are blackened with the grime of ages. Badly damaged during the Revolution, the restoration of the church was subsequently begun but never completed under Napoléon. The disastrous result of this project must be seen to be believed. One spire on the right-hand corner, and no spire on the left-hand corner gives it a most displeasing and lop-sided appearance.
In front of the entrance on a small, unkempt area of weedy grass lurked a few large grey concrete tubs. These accommodated some moribund plants vying for space with cigarette butts and empty beer cans. On the steps an Eastern European beggar clutched at us, pleading for support for her 15 little children.
Decapitating their erstwhile king and queen had failed to quench the wrath of the Revolutionaries. The sans culottes turned their attention to the royal residents of the necropolis who, they felt, although long dead, were not dead enough. They opened the tombs and tipped out the occupants into a pit, helping themselves to the odd finger or wisp of hair as talismans.
Consequently the mortal remains of almost every member of the French monarchy as far back as the 6th century AD all ended up in a jumble. The mass graves were opened up and the remains recovered and reburied at the time of the Restoration. However, with everybody mixed up with everybody else there was no possibility of knowing which parts belonged to whom. So they are all snuggled together now beneath the altar, and their magnificent marble tombs are empty memorials.
Inside the church the congregation was celebrating morning Mass. A fierce man held his finger to his lips and hissed “Shhh” as we walked in, so we walked back out and went to entertain ourselves for an hour.
Close to the basilica is the Mairie of St Denis, a clean, well-maintained building decorated with beautiful floral displays. There are one or two other attractive buildings in the vicinity – an immaculate little house painted all in pink, and a bank whose arched entrance doorway is topped by a splendidly carved stone peacock. But the area generally is, although colourful and interesting, run down and scruffy. In November 2005 it had been the scene of wild rioting by the predominantly immigrant and unemployed population.
This is the milieu in which the church of St Denis stands, beside a particularly hideous glass-fronted building that looks like a pile of giant aquaria stacked upon and beside each other.
The market square was crammed with stalls. As the rain fizzled out people began to appear, people of all different backgrounds who were noisy, and laughing and wearing a variety of costumes. It did not feel at all like being in France, but rather in an exotic souk in a distant land. Lengths of beautifully embroidered saris in dramatic colours floated from rails. One stall sold nothing but nail varnishes in every colour of the spectrum, many hundreds of little bottles meticulously arranged in intricate patterns. There were rows and pyramids of exotic, mysterious fruits and vegetables. An enterprising man was roasting corncobs over a tray of charcoal that he pushed around in a supermarket trolley. A young woman with shrivelled legs and horribly twisted feet sat on a sheet of cardboard crying, holding out her hand for money. People stepped over her outstretched legs as if they were discarded cabbage leaves. Many of the shops in the streets were open, selling clothing and bed linen, cheap jewellery, take-away foods, leather goods and travel tickets.
The indoor market housed bloodied stalls covered in gory chunks of meat, fragrant piles of spices, breads in more shapes than you could count, polished fruit and vegetables. There were a variety of smelly cheeses whose prices ranged from the outrageous to the ridiculous. There were cheeses for €30 a kilo (2.5lbs.) and two-kilo boxes of mixed cheeses for €1. Strange fish gazed sadly from slabs, and crabs and lobsters tried to haul themselves up the glass walls and out of their tanks.
We succumbed to the €1 box of cheese and a crispy, still-warm baguette and went in search of coffee. Just as we were about to step into one café a man slammed down a metal grille in our faces. Inside we could see two men chopping up the bar with a chainsaw. At the next establishment we were knocked back by the aroma of lavatories billowing from the door. There were no Michelin-stars in this part of town, so we settled for the least grubby café where the coffee was good and the other customers all called out a welcome and raised their hands in greeting. From the way they watched us covertly I suspected that English customers were a novelty.
Walking back towards the church we were again appalled by its unkempt and dismal appearance. One stained glass rose window was rich in colour, but many were just plain glass, and dirty. As soon as we stepped inside I was reminded of everything I dislike about churches. The gloom, the chill, the glowering 80 ft. high ceiling, the mustiness, centuries of penance, despair and suffering. I found it unspeakably depressing.
For lovers of funerary statuary, which we are not, the royal necropolis must be a Mecca. It is filled with tombs and effigies that are wondrous examples of sculpture at its most skilled. We, though, were only here on account of Louis and Marie-Antoinette who were down in the crypt.
Initially I could not decide whether or not this was a worse place than the floor above. Being underground went against it. I was fighting panic not to rush back up the stairs. But there was a less mournful atmosphere, less statuary, and very lovely vaulted ceilings. A small city of dead royalty in cosy stone caves, beautifully restored stonework, all bathed in a warm glow by subtle illumination.
In a well-lit cave of creamy stone we found Louis and Marie-Antoinette. Their remains lie beneath heavy black marble slabs engraved with their names: Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, King and Queen of France and Navarre. They are not alone. Their neighbours include Louise of Lorraine, widow of Henri III; Louis VII, one-time husband of Eleanor of Aquitaine; and Louis XVIII, rather confusingly the brother of Louis XVI.
It was customary to embalm French monarchs. Behind a heavily barred iron grille is a small, dark room. Within, a row of boxes sits on a shelf. This macabre treasure trove contains the ‘entrailles’ – internal organs – of defunct French royals. Whether the contents of those boxes survived the Revolution I don’t know. I don’t really like to think about them.
In a glass urn lies the desiccated heart of the little Dauphin. When the child died in the Temple prison, a doctor removed his heart. Preserved in alcohol, it had been hidden away for over 200 years until 2004, when DNA testing confirmed that it belonged to a child of Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI. It’s a grisly and pathetic little thing.
Upstairs is a very beautiful white marble statue of Louis and Marie-Antoinette kneeling beside each other. He wears full monarchical robes, the crown set on his head, his hands clasped piously and his eyes raised to heaven. The statue is kinder to him than any of his portraits.
His queen, exquisitely beautiful, with pearl drop earrings and a pearl necklace, wears a gown so décolleté that her bosom is almost falling out of it. I was surprised that it was allowed into a church. Her left hand appears to be about to pull down her dress and liberate what little of her shapely right breast is not already exposed. In contrast to the glowing whiteness of the rest of the statue both breasts are brown and grubby. This is due to the thousands of hands that have caressed them in the belief that doing so brings luck.
Marie-Antoinette loved flowers. I thought she would have hated St Denis, the most flowerless and macabre church I have ever seen. Then I remembered the notice in La Chapelle Expiatoire that said: ‘The King and Queen’s bodies (or at least the presumed bodies, at least for the King’s) were excavated’. A few handfuls of dust and a fragment of garter are hardly irrefutable evidence of pedigree. For all we know, some of it could be Robespierre or his satanic cronies.
I prefer to believe that whatever remains were removed from La Chapelle Expiatoire, they belonged to somebody else. And I hope that whatever is left of Marie-Antoinette still lies i
n that small leafy square beside the Rue d’Anjou in central Paris, where the sunlight reaches and clouds of white roses bloom.
When we first planned our journey our interest in France’s most unfortunate royals had been superficial. I knew nothing of them except that they had both lost their heads and Marie-Antoinette had apparently made a remark about bread and cakes. It would be amusing to track our progress alongside theirs. So that we understood what had happened to them and why, I began reading about their lives. And then I was hooked. Following them through their marriage, their triumphs and trials to their deaths they became real people instead of the comic opera characters they had once seemed to me. The thing is, I am not a royalist. The politics of their story did not interest me, but I could not help but be fascinated by their lives and horrified by the way they had died.
Who was better placed to write about the intimate and daily life of the Queen than her first lady of the bedchamber, Madame de Campan? Nobody but the only surviving member of the family, the Princess Royal Marie-Thérèse could give a first-hand account of the family’s ordeals during their escape attempt and imprisonment.
I particularly enjoyed Stefan Zweig’s Marie-Antoinette – The Portrait of an Average Woman in which he concluded that she was neither a particularly bad woman nor a particularly good one, but an average person forced by circumstances to transcend her own mediocrity and become rather remarkable.
