THE ODÉON MÉTRO STAIRS LEAD TO THE STATUE OF GEORGES DANTON, AN ORATOR WHO WAS CORRUPT AND INDOMITABLE
RATP
- When the Revolution faced defeat his cry,"Audacity, audacity and more audacity, and France will be saved!" inspired the unprecedented action that brought victory.
Wikipedia
- "Show my head to the people. It's worth it!" he told the executioner as he stepped up to the guillotine:
A story that enters legend
Danton died simply, royally. He looked with pity to the people on the left and right, and saying to the executioner with authority : « Show my head to the people. It's worth it."
The execution did show it, turning on the scaffold, showing it on the four sides.
There was a moment of silence [...] no one breathed [...]
Then came a confused cry from the relieved and satisfied royalists, simulating applause : "So lives the Republic!"
And a cry sincere and desperate from the patriots, stuck at their heart: "They have decapitated France!"
-- History of the French Revolution by Jules Michelet, 1847 (ed.1971) pp. 570-571
# # #
Crossing the boulevard from the métro to this portal passes through the site of his 11-room residence...
Pamela Spurdon
- Find yourself in the ditch in front of the rampart:
Pamela Spurdon
Cours de Commerce Saint-André
- Pass the workshop where the first guillotine was made...
- Next is the home of the ferocious journalist Jean-Paul Marat, precursor of demagoguery now:
"He abstained from abstract theories, unintelligible to the people [...]. One is surprised that the uniform violence, the same, always the same, that makes reading Marat so tiring [...]. Always the same refrain: death. No change beyond the heads to chop, 600 heads, 10 000 heads, 20, 000 heads ; he went, if I remember correctly, as far as 270,000 heads."
-- Michelet, pp. 147-148
 |
The Death of Marat by David, 1793 / zoom |
The painting made his assassination one of history's most famous.
-- Michelet, p. 500
...the girl seemed of old Norman stock, not flaunting her beauty, a green ribbon holding back her superb hair, under a bonnet...
"Charlotte... pulled out the knife and plunged it up the the hilt in Marat's heart."
# # #
Back to the present: establishments to skip or appreciate
- A restaurant touts being on the site of a café where the philosophers of the Enlightenment met, but the decor is fake, the service indifferent and the cuisine bland:
Zoom (first photo of the series)
Le Procope
To the left of the entrance
Commercializing the past
- is now a place for gourmet specialties from southern France. I overheard enthusiastic comments after a tasting.The site where Marat is said to have published his paper
Maison Brémond 1830
On the other side of the passage
- Many restaurants reheat and decorate dishes that are industrially-made, but here one can one watch classic, affordable French cuisine being prepared in the owner's presence:
Cèpes et figues
59-61 rue du Commerce Saint-André
No comments:
Post a Comment