Poor Adele, and a Major Mistake


Did you know they actually close the Metro?


12 July 1999: Pauvre Adele H.

The museum devoted to Victor Hugo is at 6 Place des Vosges, one of the most spectacular squares in all Paris. It's homogenous, and features a park in the middle, with a big old statue of Louis XIII in the center.

Victor Hugo is what we would call a Major Big Deal in France. Here in America, he's the inspiration for many a sequinned sweatshirt featuring Cosette of Les Miserables.

Victor Hugo suggested a coup d'etat when Napoleon III declared himself emperor, but it didn't happen and instead he wound up in exile in Guernsey, a Channel Island that is the spot in England closest to France without being in France itself.

Victor had four children. Leopoldine was his favorite, and when she drowned, he told Adele, "It should have been you." Adele went nuts after sleeping with a British soldier, and she stalked him from Guersey to Halifax to Barbados. Mind you, this was a transoceanic stalking in the mid-19th Century. This is the sort of thing you don't even see on One Life to Live, like when Cassie terrorized Barbara for shooting her.

Adele went mad and was brought home and her father had to send her to a nuthouse, where she pretty much lay bedridden until her death in 1943. There is a lot of Leopoldinalia in the museum, but very little of Adele. In the one photo of her, she's looking down. All you can see is the top of her head, but you can tell how wretched her life was. Why is it that great men of literature and profound humanists are such crappy fathers sometimes?

Poor Adele.

After leaving Maison Victor Hugo, I heard some lovely music from the colonnades where a crowd gathered. It was a ten-person string orchestra playing Brahms's Hungarian Dances. it was enchanting. They were great. You don't see that in New York. Mayor Giuliani would have them hauled off to jail for disturbing the peace. In London, hordes of beer drinkers swelled on the sidewalks to enjoy the warm weather. You know our Mayor would have gone berserk and called in the National Guard.

A lot of people looked at me funny all day. I started to realize that in shorts and a green Hawaiian shirt, I must have looked like Big Daddy Varner Goes to Gay Paree. Oh well. It was hot as hell and humid and I just wanted to die. Instead, I took Edward and Richard up on their suggestion and walked around Ile de la Cite (home of Notre Dame) and Ile Saint Louis at sunset. It was really lovely. I had sorbet. I had flavors you don't have in New York, like Pear and Raspberry. I also paid prices you don't pay here either.

Fatal Error

I never got to go to the third story of the Eiffel Tower (back in 1981 on an exchange trip), and I got to spend 60 francs and two hours of my life waiting on lines full of loud, obnoxious Americans for the honour, and it was hardly worth it. All Parisians hate the Eiffel Tower, and with its countdown to the Year 2000 sign facing the Trocadero, I don't blame them. But it's a magnificent structure that overlooks the City of Light until 1 am. The lights really are nice, and even more so from the second level.

I immediately spotted a gay couple, the taller of the two basically fondling the shoulder of the second one nonstop. Paris is full of love and lovers and even a hardened heart cannot help but find some vicarious joy in displays of affection that would annoy us anyplace but Paris. One woman was, however, very clearly Hiding the Children.

Excusez moi. If you don't want your kids to see people in love, don't go to Paris. Go to the monster truck rally in Monmouth Country, NJ.

The Eiffel Tower was built without a single fatality, but it nearly did me in. I was there from 22h15 to 0h15, and all the while, I was convinced that I would miss the last metro and have to take a cab and get even more ripped off. Some helpful lesbians who refused to out themselves to me directed me to a quicker route to the metro, and I got home safe and sound, to a TV with no sound. As I packed, bad American TV movies and German phone sex ads played silently on the screen; the TV sound was inoperative.

Posted: Mon - July 12, 1999 at 02:43 AM        

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