Paradise postponed, Bliss regained

As a final post on my vacation trip, though I've already been home a week, I wanted to recap a few other elements of my trip that aren't so easily shoehorned into Commune/Empire type discussions.

First observation is that I've never seen such eager photogues as Stuart and Dan. Reference the pictures on all sides. On balance, Dan preferred taking pictures of the exteriors of Paris and statuesque nudity(left), while Stuart preferred interiors and painted flesh (right).

It must be said, however, in defense of cameras, that Paris is also an example of the power of urban planning. I think you could say that the spaces of the city (and by the city I mean the old city in the center, not the expanded city with its massive suburban infrastructure-described slums) are designed and maintained with a fastidiousness bordering on pathology. This is obviously in large part for the benefit tourists like us (and especially our revenue stream), but I think it is just as much an obsession with the conservation of a (chosen) historical past and its symbols and a general aesthetic or way of living that considers beauty as an augmenting force for quality of life.
For example, one has the distinct impression after spending some time exploring Paris that whenever there is a moment of hesitation on zoning or construction the solution that presents itself to city planners is: build a park. And not just a park, a park with impeccable attention to detail down to the composition of each flower bed and immaculately maintained by early morning crews of gardeners and trimmers. Notice the details highlighted by night lighting and the painstaking preservation of any valued symbol
or monument. During my first week in Montmartre I found it amazing the quantity of couples amorously smooching around every perfect little corner, but when you have created such beautiful spaces there are emotional consequences for your inhabitants!

After Dad and Dan left, I spent the rest of the week in archives and staying with Mindy (above left, after Manet, right at the Gare St. Lazare) and Arnaud (above cresting a summit), our friends who live just outside Paris. Along with their 6 month-old son Noah, they took me on a drive out to the Fontainebleu forest, in the past the special hunting preserve of French kings. The forest ground is largely sand, and everywhere you are turn there are large boulders marked with color-coded levels of difficulty for the international visitors who flock to the forest to practice climbing. This is Arnaud's favorite hobby, but unfortunately I seem not to
have the requisite forearm and finger musculature to dangle from low-hanging cliffs. On our return we drove through Barbizon (left and below), a little hamlet that draws some fame from the art movement it produced - a prerequisite to realism starring the likes of Corot and Millet.

But the thing that legitimized the trip in terms of its real purpose was the cache of documents on Archbishop Darboy and everything about him at the Archbishopric of Paris. I wasn't expecting this to be the most important stage of my research, and so I left it until the last three days. But while the previous week I had spent far too much time reproducing documents sometimes only tangentially related to the topic I wanted to pursue, the archivist at the Archbishopric began by bringing me eight massive stringed boxes filled and overflowing with the precious nectar of valued information. Pictures, articles, journals, newspaper clippings, all of it extremely relevant and usable. I think I shall have to return finish grabbing all of the loot!

I had been prepared for the highly proprietary and suspicious nature of Catholic archives. My advisor had experience great suspicion and constant observation when she penetrated such a sanctum, many expecting that her research would yield yet another broadside against Catholic power or perversity. But instead I found total graciousness and open hands. The best part was when the sweet little Abbe took me on the last day to the lobby and pointed out a cell door. It was a door that had been removed from the cell of a fellow prisoner of Darboy, also a priest. Both men were taken, during the death throes of the Commune, to another prison (La Roquette), and soon after they were executed on a smoky night - the clouds red with reflected fire from the burning city. A desperate act of vengeance by the order of one man in the absence of a government that was at that moment being summarily executed. When I asked the Abbe why the death of Darboy was not more heavily commemorated in other monuments (outside of Notre Dame). He replied "France went left, we [Catholics] went right." When France, on its way to abolishing the death penalty in 1981, finally destroyed La Roquette prison in the 1970s they had to decide what to put in its place. Guess what they decided? That's right, a park. A more fitting use of space is difficult to imagine.

Altogether an unforgettable trip that I hope to repeat before another seven years elapse. And despite the whiplash of returning to teaching and job search, there is much wonder to be pursued here as well. Thanks all for reading.

The Imperial Urge - Rated R post

Congratulations Erin Miller! You've just won a special postcard prize, with original artwork by myself, in recognition of your guess of Ellen White. While Napoleon's nephew was in power in France,  Ellen White wrote this classic paragraph about masturbation:

Children who practice self-indulgence [masturbation] previous to puberty, or the period of merging into manhood or womanhood, must pay the penalty of nature's violated laws at that critical period. Many sink into an early grave, while others have sufficient force of constitution to pass this ordeal. If the practice is continued from the age of fifteen and upward, nature will protest against the abuse she has suffered, and continues to suffer, and will make them pay the penalty for the transgression of her laws, especially from the ages of thirty to forty-five, by numerous pains in the system, and various diseases, such as affection of the liver and lungs, neuralgia, rheumatism, affection of the spine, diseased kidneys, and cancerous humors. Some of nature's fine machinery gives way, leaving a heavier task for the remaining to perform, which disorders nature's fine arrangement, and there is often a sudden breaking down of the constitution; and death is the result. (Solemn Appeal, 1870, p. 63)

It wasn't just White who made this connection, and her views were commonplace among doctors and states in the west. France's governments of this period attempted to explain their military failures and falling birthrates by arguing that masculinity was in decline and masturbation was sapping French heredity. White, in the prize-creating quote from the last post, identifies Napoleon's defining traits (thanks to evil advisors) as his love for conquest and a career of strife and bloodshed (instead of his puny height - which is a myth), which seems pretty accurate to me. Feeling the Imperial urge, Napoleon decided to try and make Europe his empire, much like Hitler would do in the 20th century. A few years after Napoleon had been Emperor (handy mini 

political timeline of French 19th century above), he decided to commemorate one of his

 biggest victories against combined European opponents (Austerlitz) by building a giant Penis in the Place Vendome to show how Imperical he was (right, with some dude). Melting down all of the cannon of the defeated armies he modeled it on the Romen Emperor Trajan's column, with Napoleon on top wearing a toga. The space where he put it used to hold a statue of Louis XIV, and the buildings are still today foundationally as they were in the time of the Sun King. 

Symbols in France, as everywhere, have been incredibly important tools in political struggles and propaganda. Every political party at every moment has its favorite stories from history which prove their legitimacy, their pet colors, flags and songs. For example, during the 1830 

revolution, school boys at Lycee Henry IV decided to prove that they were part of the new movement by demanding that the recess be a drum roll to show they were modern and patriotic, and not a bell, which represented the church and tradition. These are the same kind of debates that got people into screaming matches over how many breasts the French embodiment of liberty should be showing (left - "Crazy Commie Whore!"; right - "That's a good girl"). 

The Vendome erection ebbed and flowed in the changes of power in between Napoleon's fall and the Commune. When his time in the sun was finished the new kings of the restoration melted down his statue and built a statue of another king with it. But Napoleon III desperately wanted to live up to the demand of Viagra-powered monuments, and so he put the toga-Napoleon back on top. It was the Imperial Urge that drove him to try to put a puppet  on the throne of a Mexican colony, run an impressive police state and try to avoid revolution. When the pressures were too great, he tried to distract attention from his slipping grasp on power by starting another war with Germany, and the massive defeat ended his government.

I spent last weekend with Dad and Dan seeing tons of art - six museums in three and a half days, and, considering that two of them were the Louvre and the Musee D'Orsay, this is a lot. Our hotel was also about 2 blocks from the Vendome Column. On Friday, we hit the Musee Picasso. My favorite picture this time was Picasso’s Massacre in Korea (1951, above). I hadn’t noticed before and it united several things I had been thinking about. First it is a critique of Cold War American intervention. And second, it is after Goya's Third of May 1808 (below),

 a damning indictment of Napoleon's invasion of Spain. And at the same time that America was entering it’s civil war, and Ellen White was writing A Solemn Appeal, Napoleon III was feeling the need to live up to his uncle's Imperial urges. But after things went south, he bailed on his Mexican puppet ruler of Mexico after the American’s had enforced the Monroe Doctine and told him to get out. Napoleon III pulled his supportive military rug out from under Maximilian’s feet and then the Mexican Revolution killed him (Cinco de Mayo). And, after Goya's painting, Manet decided to take the subject up in a similar manner. Since the death of Maximilian was clearly the fault of Napoleon III and his excessive military zeal, Manet puts the 

likeness of the Emperor on the face of the casual officer behind the firing squad (above). No wonder also that since Manet was the only major Impressionist painter to visit Paris during the Commune, and during

Bloody Week at that, he decided to use the some of the same figures in his sketch on Versailles troops executing Communards (right). Even though the government had changed the urge was the same. With its overlapping references, Picasso’s painting displays the continuity of Empire. 

One of the Commune’s most wonderful symbolic actions, then, was its determination to destroy

 the Vendome Column. Led by the realist painter Courbet (whose awkward coversation inducing Origin of the World is at Orsay, and below), the Communards demolished the Column and then took photos celebrating the occasion.

Courbet had first tried to get the new Republic to permit this act, arguing that “inasmuch as the Vendôme column is a monument devoid of all artistic value, tending to perpetuate by its expression the ideas of war and conquest of the past imperial dynasty, which are reproved by a republican nation's sentiment, citizen Courbet expresses the wish that the National Defense government will authorise him to disassemble this column." 

His plan was rejected by the new Third Republic, but embraced by the exuberant if disorganized Commune leadership.  April 12, 1871, they pulled the column down with great celebration. 

And imagine the political meaning of the new Third Republic’s desire to rebuild it. The new democracy being founded in France found time within its early years to express shock and outrage at the leveling of a symbol of Napoleonic empire and imperial aggression. This is the personality of a government who so desperately wanted to begin their existence with a military victory. Rebuilt, with extra iron, and still there today. When they decided to reerect it they forced Courbet to pay the expense out of his own pockets, which, unfortunately were empty and so he absconded to Switzerland. He ended up paying off the debt in yearly instalments for the next 30+ years (until he was 91). At the same time, France and other European empires were dividing up Africa on a map and putting resistance to quick death (thanks to quinine and the maxim gun). And their mutual resentment over miscommunication over who owned what piece of another continent was one of the main causes of World War I. 

With all due respect to Ellen White, at at the risk of incredible oversimplification, I think it would have been better if all those Emperors past and present had ignored her advice and looked at more of Courbet's paintings. 

SUPER SPECIAL PRIZE COMPETITION!!!

OK, so I've been a little distracted. My plans involved less posting at the beginning and more at the end. But life intervened.

I am planning a summary couple of posts lat this eve, but first a special prize competition. The first person to identify the writer of this line, and to reveal the auther and their address in the comment line, wins a special prize postcard from me - postage already paid!

"The character of Napoleon Bonaparte was greatly inflenced by his training in childhood. Unwise instructors inspired him with a love for conquest, forming mimic armies and placing him at their head as commander. Here was laid the foundation for his career of strife and bloodshed."

Gentlepeople, start your googles. A strange anachronistic form of communication hangs in the balance!

Longwinded statements of purpose and mission

So here I am, reveling in the luxury of a private space and the ability to brew unlimited coffee and take showers at leisure. And this is all due to a Chicago native named Adam who, dissatisfied with his career in real estate law decided to spend a few months in Europe to regroup before attempting to reconfigure his career towards a more socially beneficial end. He is renting this room to me for cheaper than the rate I was paying at the hostel.

I wanted to say once again that this blog experiment is for me more than for any of you who are kind enough to read me rambling about things that are likely far from your existence. It is really my attempt to get over my reflexive insecurity in presenting my thoughts to my peers for fear that I would offend, alienate or bore people by presuming that my ideas are important or interesting. It must also be said that I also have had an ever-present fear that my pretension of some limited historical expertise will be revealed as fraudulent once anyone enters into my (usually) internal monologue. So the very fact that I am putting this out there to an imagined audience means that I am getting over some of these things finally. Call it my coming out party. You obviously don’t need to be interested in anything presented here to love me, although reading it helps you know me better, and where my mind is at these days.

So with that final caveat, I wanted to write a little about why I ended up choosing the topic of a murdered Archbishop and the Paris Commune for a dissertation topic. The first thing to say is that for me French history was sort of an arbitrary and random beginning. When I started grad school (already almost seven years ago!), I knew virtually nothing about history, although I had figured out that it was interesting to me in undergrad (thanks to Dad, Jeff Dupee, John Webster, Rennie Schoepflin and Linn). But since I had some limited exposure to France and French, and since my new partner liked French culture, I thought it was as good a starting point as any. And, I am thanking myself right now for this, because I realized then that choosing such a focus would allow (nay, force) me to take trips like this to a place I liked.

I think my interest in the Commune can be explained in a couple of ways. First, I am increasingly politically radical and the Commune is a hallmark of radical thought due to its importance in the writings of Marx and Lenin. This Chinese blogger writes about how her father, growing up in Maoist China begged her to pay tribute to the Communards wall I wrote about the other day, since his textbooks taught him that it was the place where Communism began. My growing radicalism I think comes from a combination of the typical temperament of a pastor’s son with the increasing knowledge of how my position of privilege involves the pain of others. And this makes me really guilty. I am a white, straight, non-disabled, male, emotionally connected, urban American, with parents who have the means to regularly bail me out when I can’t quite pay for diapers on an adjunct salary, a large network of amazing and supportive friends (and siblings) and a wonderful spouse and son. Oh, and I’m also the youngest and thus spoiled (just ask Matt and Erin). This means I am certainly among the most fortunate persons in the world, no matter how often I deny it on a bad day. And yet of course this also means that in every one of these categories of privilege there is an opposite who bears the brunt of the racism, homophobia, sexism, poverty, loneliness and the American plundering foreign policy from which I benefit. Liberal guilt writ large? Yes. And yet the thing that really bothers me is how infrequently I am able to create within myself any empathy for the other, any motivation for social action, or even simply to just enjoy my embarrassment of riches.

So I think certainly I have attempted to search academically for a topic that would help make me what I most of the time want to be (an informed activist). The urgency of making myself into such a person seems to have increased since Gabriel was born. Drawn to these types of stories then, I began to see something else: the crazy reactions of states to what Noam Chomsky calls “the threat of the positive role model” (or something to that effect). We are always told that “utopian” political alternatives are for silly dreamers who don’t understand that what is is what must be. Oppression of whatever kind is inevitable and unavoidable, say modern states and their proponents. But history is littered with examples of political and social alternatives to the dominant model of the time, and the reactions of states are telling – nearly always quick, brutal repression in defense of order and/or profit - if these things are inevitable why are states so afraid of attempts to do something different?

Take the Haitian Revolution from 1791-1800. A Caribbean colony whose population was 10 to 1 African slaves (most 1st generation – born in Africa) to free colonists who toiled under hideous conditions and who produced about half of the world’s sugar at a time when Europe and America had just become addicted to it. Despite the cross-Atlantic currents of Enlightenment liberalism and the recent American Revolution (“all men are created equal”), the western reaction to Haiti’s attempt to free itself and create the first black republic was terror, repression and horror. President Thomas Jefferson called them a “republic of cannibals” and ordered a total embargo, and worked to make sure that the United States protected the flow of people and information from Haiti to the American south – we didn’t want anyone to hear about the positive role model of slave liberation just off the coast. The revolutionaries of Haiti named the island Haiti as a tribute to the original inhabitants of the island, the Arawak people who were slaughtered by Columbus’ germs and steel three centuries before. They found themselves free after a long bloody struggle, but with an overpopulated island and an economy designed for cash crops and international trade - and no one in the world would trade with them! The US didn’t recognize their existence until after the civil war, and the French were certainly too pissed off to help Haiti recover. Three decades later Haiti was finally forced to pay reparations to the French for lost slaves in order to get France to reopen trade with them. And because these payments were so huge, they had to take loans from French banks to pay them. They were paying interest fees on these payments for the rest of the century (and maybe longer as far as I know) using the majority of their GDP to do so. Haiti today is the poorest country in the western hemisphere, and this is directly related to this (and this is not very different from the situation of most African countries today who owe interest to the World Bank).

Cuba replaced Haiti as the world’s sugar producer (continued slavery meant it could be profitable) and its inhabitants were still fighting for its freedom at the end of the 19th century, when the US kicked Spain out and continued to repress its attempt at independence (and also built a nice little military base at the center of resistance in Guantanamo Bay where we immediately began waterboarding - at left). A young Winston Churchill supported this: “we cannot allow another black republic” he said. The positive role model is intolerable. Or take the CIA, who spent the cold war eliminating burgeoning democratic experiments all over the world and continuing to allow American businesses to steal their resources. For a (very) partial list see Iran (1953, 1980), Guatemala (1959), Cuba (1959 through nearly the present), Congo (1960), Iraq (1963), Brazil (1964), Ghana (1966), Greece (1967), Iraq (1968), Chile (1973), Afghanistan (1973-4; 78-80s), Argentina (1976), Turkey (1980), Nicaragua (1981-90). Certainly can’t allow anyone to imagine that they can control the natural resources of their own country! Silly! No positive role models permitted.

And take the Paris Commune. Long before western governments were finally forced to create welfare states and allow women to vote, the Commune limited working days (and nights) for the poor, gave pensions to war widows (married or not), paid government officials an average wage, benefited from the prominent role played by women at every stage (who also voted), elected people regardless of nationality and experienced a festival-like exuberance and the euphoria of possibility through its entire existence. This seems to be the feeling of having a government in which you participate and that is clearly on your side. Courbet the artist described it like this on April 30, 1871: “Paris is a true paradise! No police, no nonsense, no exaction of any kind, no arguments! Everything in Paris rolls along like clockwork. If only it could stay like this forever. In short, it is a beautiful dream. All the government bodies are organized federally and run themselves.” It was also full of foolish missteps and disparate purposes, and was certainly not perfect. But that doesn’t really matter. As Marx said: “the greatest social measure of the Commune was its own working existence.” It existed, it worked, as well as (if not better) than any other imperfect government. It presented no aggressive threat to anyone. But of course it was a positive role model. So it had to be destroyed. The incoming Versailles government of Thiers not only killed some 30,000 Parisians in Bloody Week but also began the French (and international) project of the next decade: erasing the idea that anything positive had happened there. This included, but was not limited to, the largest judicial repression of the 19th century (50,000 sentences, 4,000 deportations), and a massive propaganda campaign including intellectuals and artists, the decade-long eliminations of freedoms of the press and association, and keeping the capital in Versailles until 1879, the traditional seat of French absolutism. All of this while arguing that the new Third Republic was authentic democracy, while the Commune meant violence. An extreme overreaction: unless you realize that the positive role model is a threat – a massive threat. It allows us to imagine that other things are possible; other less-oppressive arrangements can be made.

Are any of these state reactions inevitable? No, they are the result of decisions by people at the top of society for the benefit of the privileged. Aren’t I among those benefiting? Yes. America’s wealth has certainly benefited me. But it benefits others higher up much more, and, regardless, it’s not worth it when you review the body count. But even if you aren’t the idealistic type, and want to argue policy purely for self-interest, is it to your and (especially) your childrens' benefit that America is seen by most of the world as an empire? How does this change how you are treated when you travel? How does this shape the way American companies fare abroad? How does this motivate terrorism? One of the few true “inevitables” of history (so far) is that empires pass and are succeeded. And woe to us if the successor to American Empire believes that revenge is justice. None of this is really to our benefit, and certainly not to those who come after us.

It is in that last week of the Commune, Bloody Week, after the Commune government had collapsed and chaos reigned in Paris because the Versailles troops were inside the gate shooting everyone, that a handful of angry Communards executed the Archbishop. They had other reasons besides believing that revenge was justice for doing it, but I’ll leave those for another time. The addition of Darboy to my paper has other benefits for me. First, it fills a hole in the writing about the Commune, and thus justifies the dissertation. Second, it was incredibly fortunate for people like Thiers who wanted to paint the Communards as atheist monsters. I suspect this is the reason for the popularity of the accounts of the Archbishop’s death – but I’ll get back to you after a few more days in the archives. Finally, it allows me to engage in my other historical birthright: Christianity, which, at its best (and probably less than half the time), argues for people like the Communards, the Haitians, the Cubans, and all of the victims of the torturing, petty dictators who the CIA trained and put in power (like Saddam Hussein). It can also argue against the notion that any of this is inevitable, that it is just the evil actions of states and corporations pretending to be winged angels.

Here’s to the positive role models who blacken those wings. And to anyone who actually got to these last lines: I have a medal for you that I will give you when I get back: it’s big, gold, with a pretty ribbon to put around your neck. In the middle it says: YOU HAVE WAY TOO MUCH TIME.

Thanks to Jenny once again for doing all of that work at home – the absence of which is responsible for my verbal diarrhea.

Archives, day 1

Last night was mercifully my last at Woodstock Hostel (that's WOOOOD-stuck in French). The cavalcade of misfits with whom I shared a room kept me up the bulk of the night. Not one but two of the 5 Hanoverians in room 318 fell out of their beds in the middle of the night (one from the bunk above me). And the lone other American spent his night lost in snoring and flatulence. I could go on, but I'll spare you. Tonight I will occupy the room of some dude who is going to Dublin for the week and rented it out on craigslist paris. I will be alone at last.

When I blearily arose, the bountiful sun of the previous days had been replaced by a slow drizzle. And after committing the sacrilege of visiting a Starbucks to caffeinate and surf, I found that the right quarter of my laptop screen had lost its lunch, turning into a brilliant digital rainbow. Chances are this was either the consequence of normal wear and tear or impact from a falling German.

Fortunately, the bad weather and my temporary misanthropy put me in the perfect mood for my first day in the Archives Nationale. But first I paid a visit to Notre Dame (St. Denis on the left door above) to pay homage to the man whose death is the subject of my dissertation (expected completion date 2039). Between 1848 and 1871, three out of the four Archbishops of Paris were murdered. All three are interred in Notre Dame. Archbishop Affre died on the barricades in the 1848 revolution, his successor Sibour was shot during a mass by a defrocked priest who didn't like his position on the immaculate conception. The next guy died peacefully and was succeeded in 1863 by Georges Darboy. Darboy was takencaptive by the Communards in 1871 when Thiers had begun executing anyone he captured on sight. During the last days of the Commune ("Bloody week"), after the Commune government had already collapsed, a few remaining radicals decided to take their revenge on the destruction going on around them by taking Darboy and a few other priests to a courtyard and executing them. Darboy remained standing after the first volley, according to most accounts his hand upheld in a blessing, before the coup de grace felled him as well. His statue lies in an alcove chapel across from a statue of St. George slaying the dragon.

And so I went of to the archives (left), somewhat intimidated by the prospect of using my broken French to figure out procedure for procuring decaying documents and microfilm. Fortunately, the staff was amazingly kind and patient, and literally walked me through (up and down stairs) the process. And before I knew it I was taking pictures of Darboy's handwritten correspondence. All in all, a very successful day. Unfortunately, I am beginning to miss Jenny and Gabriel far too early and far too much. Thanks all for reading this - it is good to get my thoughts in order and it gives me something to do everyday while resting my legs and wallet. More later...

Tour of French Tombs Part Deux

If you'll permit me one more fugue on Parisian markers of the dead, I spent the afternoon in Pere Lachaise cemetery, the most visited such place in the world (if wikipedia can be trusted). If today's crowds are representative, the bulk of the visitors have travelled to see the modest marker of Jim Morrison's grave (with Oscar Wilde and Edith Piaf running a distant second). The cemetary was built by Napoleon Bonaparte, then far outside of city limits, and thus safe from the presumed health hazards of the decaying dead.

At the beginning of 1870, there were only months left in the Second Empire of Napoleon III (Napoleon I's nephew). Napoleon III (at left below) had spend the last 18 years as a dictator with the weapon of popular support (via universal suffrage). Some have called him a proto-fascist, and he used the reigns of undivided state power both to brutally suppress dissent and radically redesign Paris. The so-called "Hausmannization" of Paris (after his Prefect of the Seine Baron Haussman) made the city I visit today, with its wide, straight boulevards, gaslights, public parks and monuments (and of course the famous sewers, where the legend of the Phantom of the Opera was born). Even public urinals were created with statuesque elegance. The new city was reclaimed for the well-to-do: the movement of capital was secured, and the urban flaneur (bourgeois wanderer) could stroll and be entertained. But the new city was also seemingly safer from revolution (Paris had already experienced 4 or 5 since the big one in 1789). The wide boulevards could not be defended by barricades, and the homes of the poor in particular were mercilessly bulldozed - after all, the threat of revolution emerged most in the spaces of the disenfranchised. Many of these workers were relocated to areas like Montmartre, safely outside of current city limits, where spies of the police state followed any attempt to organize or criticize.

Napoleon's support was drying up by 1870, and his attempts to liberalize his Empire, as a last ditch effort at presenting himself as a man of the people, only allowed more voices of discontent to surface. Socialists and Republicans alike detested his heavy hand. This was the situation when his cousin Pierre picked a fight with a critical newspaper. A journalist named Victor Noir presented himself to Pierre, responding to his invitation to duel, and Pierre pulled a revolver and shot him on the spot. When he was acquitted by the judiciary (largely in the pocket of his cousin the Emperor), the public outrage resulted in a funeral procession 100,000 strong.

Victor Noir's grave at Pere Lachaise (left) portrays him holding his top hat, as if he had just fallen. You may see noticable...um...wear on his johnson. This is due to the fact that his grave quickly became a fertility symbol - leaving flowers in his hat or rubbing his crotch presumably guaranteed erections and babies. Something that Félix de Beaujour could have used (whoever he was) judging by his ridiculous memorial (at right).

Is the virtue of a person inversely proportional to the size of their tomb? The marker of Adolphe Thiers (at left), the man who would briefly lead the new government (the Third Republic) which succeeded Napoleon III's second empire, would support this conclusion. Marx once called Thiers a "monstrous gnome," and this gnome wanted a war to start his new government. If you really want a war, it isn't all that hard to get one - just ask Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. Thiers wanted a war to reestablish French dignity after a brutal defeat by the Germans (which ended Napoleon III's state), and to destroy the threat of radical Paris once and for all. He wanted one, he started one (predictably it began in Montmartre), he got one: the Paris Commune. It ended with his troops slaughtering anyone in their path: some 30,000 Parisians died in "Bloody week" in summary executions, with government losses at something like 1,000.

I spent quite some time looking for his tomb in Pere Lachaise. Apparently it has regularly been subject to vandalism, and so when I finally found it I realized that they had removed his name and left only his initials. Nevermind - it was exactly what I imagined it would be: massive, grandiose - with armed angels bedecking it. All the miserable gnome could have hoped - bigger than all of the other tombs that I looked at.

And what of the 30,000 Parisians? Many of whom, it must be said, had simply not been able to afford to leave the city on vacation, and were often standing in the doorways of their homes when shot - men, women and children. A simple memorial on the north wall, the "Mur des Federes," where the final hundred or so holdouts of the Communards were murdered. Better that way, I think.

The north path of Pere Lachaise, past the wall of the Communards, also contains some beautiful memorials to those who were deported from Vichy France during the Holocaust. Nuit et Bruillard, Night and Fog (monument at left) was a Nazi directive which directed some prisoners in occupied territories to be deported in the middle of the night, with no notice given to family or friends - thus to increase the intimidation factor.

Quoth the raven, "always more."