Travelers' Tales Paris (25 page)

As shocking as they are, these mutations do nothing to prepare the visitor for the contents of the museum's third room. Beyond a central chamber packed with the skeletons of ostriches, camels, and lions caught in midroar, the work of Fragonard, the oldest part of the collection, appears.

The silhouette of a horse in full gallop, mounted by a stiff-backed rider, attracts the visitor to the display case of this final room. As one draws closer, however, it becomes clear that something is wrong. This horse has no skin. Although it's caught in midstride, it looks as if it's been flayed alive. Every cord of its flexed
muscles is visible; bulging blue veins stretch over its jaws, tendons and ligaments strain to raise the out-thrust neck. The upright rider, arms bent as if to grip reins and a whip, is not exactly a skeleton, but neither is it human, rather an accumulation of brown ligaments, red arteries, yellow tendons. The shining orbs of his eyes stare fixedly into the distance, over rows of gritted teeth. It's Dürer's
Horsemen of the Apocalypse
by way of Madame Tussaud (she was a contemporary of Fragonard's), except that this is no wax-works—these are real bodies that have been carefully stripped of their skin and elaborately posed.

There are over a dozen other flayed figures, or
écorchés
, on display in the room. The bust of a man, skin peeled away from the skull, is mounted on a pedestal. An antelope whose flesh seems to have exploded away from its bones looks at the spectator in dumb shock; a llama, its tongue lolling, rears back in surprise. Of the 3,000 preparations of cadavers and body parts Honoré Fragonard created in his lifetime, about 50 were
écorchés
like the ones in this museum. Dissecting cadavers at the rate of two a week, Fragonard started to develop the techniques that would allow him to preserve and pose his
écorchés
. Although he never revealed his special recipe, he probably followed a technique used by other anatomists, preserving body parts by soaking them in
eau-de-vie
or another alcohol, mixed with pepper and herbs. While they were still supple, Fragonard injected the veins, bronchial tubes, and arteries with colored wax or tallow mixed with turpentine. They were then stretched on a frame in the desired position and left to dry.

While Fragonard was still perfecting his technique, the head of the school, an ambitious aristocrat, was quietly spreading the word that he had a madman on his staff. In the salons of Paris, rumor had it that the figure on the horse was Fragonard's fiancée—who had succumbed to grief after her parents forbade their marriage. (A close inspection of the
Horseman
reveals the rumor was unfounded.) In 1771, at the age of 39, Fragonard was dismissed from the school. If he was insane—and all indications are that he remained perfectly lucid until his death at the age of 66—his brand of folly was particularly in vogue with the European upper classes.
Aristocrats kept him employed creating preparations for their private cabinets of
curiosités
right up to the beginning of the French Revolution. (He died in 1799.)

As the initial horror of Fragonard's creations wears off, questions arise. If this is supposed to be an anatomy lesson, why the elaborate theatricality of the poses? If, on the other hand, this is meant to be art, what kind of sculptor, using what standard of beauty, would devote his life to creating such prodigious monstrosities? Unfortunately, the only possible response to these questions lies in the silence of this neglected museum, in the works themselves. Taciturn in his lifetime, Fragonard spent his days and nights curved over cadavers, and never published a single volume to explain his techniques and motivations. When asked what he was up to in his secluded study, the anatomist's only response was an enigmatic smile and an entreaty, one that is just as valid today:
Venez et voyez
. Come and see.

Everything in this city has a quality that defies analysis but enables you to say without any hesitation: “That is Paris”—even if it is only a milk can dangling from a door knob, or one of those coarse brooms sweeping up the leaves at the pavement's edge in October with a sound like the sea, or an array of tired-looking volumes in a bookseller's box on the embankment between the pont Neuf and the pont Royal. Why this should be so I do not know, but Paris sets its seal on everything that belongs to it. The tourists are too distracted or in too much of a hurry to notice it, but the heart of the true Parisian will beat faster, if he is away from Paris, at the
memory of a few pots of flowers on a windowsill, or a popular refrain whistled by a butcher's boy as he cycles by. Show him a photograph of a baker's shop with a child eating a croissant, or a photograph of a table or a chair on a pavement with a waiter standing beside them in his white apron, a towel under his arm, and he will think: “That is neither Toulouse nor Lyon nor Marseille, though the casual observer might be deceived. That is Paris. Good or bad, what Paris produces is Paris, be it a letter, a bit of bread, a pair of socks, or a poem. What we give the world, we have borrowed from no one; it is ours. It may be taken from us, stolen from us, but imitated?—never.”

—Julian Green,
Paris
, translated by J. A. Underwood

INA CARO

T
HERE MAY BE MORE BEAUTIFUL PLACES THAN
V
AUX-LE-
V
ICOMTE
, but I haven't seen them. It is today, as the king's mistress exclaimed when she saw it for the first time over three hundred years ago, a “veritable fairy palace.” It is a palace that was built with an extravagance that astounded a very extravagant king.

While both Vaux-le-Vicomte and Versailles were built to impress—and they do—and both palaces were designed by the same team of artists, Vaux is to Versailles as an artist's sketch is to a ponderous finished oil painting. Vaux is human in scale, “of superb and elegant proportions,” while Versailles is intentionally overwhelming. In addition to possessing that sense of grandeur and splendor associated with the Age of Louis XIV, Vaux is filled with life and with a sensuous vitality I have found nowhere else.

Seen from the gardens, this domed Baroque palace, which seems to float upon the square reflecting pool, is a gem. And walking inside the château is, for me, like walking inside a many-faceted jewel. Its rooms are elaborately ornamented in a form of decoration first hinted at in Fontainebleau: a breathtaking combination of stucco, gilding, and painting. The subjects are mythological in an idealized, rational, classical landscape. In the Room of the
Muses, where Molière's plays were performed for Nicolas Fouquet, and Voltaire's performed a generation later, eight muses luxuriously recline in pairs at the corners of the ceiling. Clio, the Muse of History, with Prudence and Fidelity at her side, occupies the center, holding a key: meaning that the past is the key to the future. Thalia, the Muse of Comedy, draped in blue velvet, holds a smiling mask in her hand, and a garland of red flowers flows from her hair; above her, an eagle holds a banner with Fouquet's motto (“
Quo non ascendum
”—“How high shall I not climb?”) in his beak. Euterpe, the Muse of Music, is playing the flute. Terpsichore, the Muse of Dance, is holding a lute; Calliope, the Muse of Oratory, a book; Urania, the Muse of Astronomy, a compass and a globe. The goddess of night, dressed in a film of black, is drawn through the clouds by two black horses. The carvings, unable to contain their joy at being at Vaux, seem to burst out of the Baroque frames created to hold them.

Notably unfinished is the domed grand salon, far more Roman and Imperial than the rest of the château. On its ceiling, now an empty sky, Le Brun was to have painted symbolic pictures of Fouquet's accomplishments.

The gardens at Vaux and those at Versailles were both designed by Le Nôtre, and both were based on the principles of geometry, perspective, illusion, and control of nature by man. As is the case with all Le Nôtre's gardens, they were designed so as not to interfere with the view of the palace, but to enhance it and to harmonize with it. The major differences between the gardens at Vaux and at Versailles are the scale and the thematic treatments. The scale is much grander at Versailles. At Vaux, the park, with its statues of mythological Greek gods, succeeds in creating what the ancient Greeks once envisioned: the Elysian Fields, the pagan paradise that only those favored by the gods could enter. At Versailles, on the other hand, the central theme compares Louis XIV to Apollo, the Sun God, around whom the universe is in orbit.

Visiting Vaux the first time, after having just seen Le Nôtre's gardens at Dampierre and Sceaux, I understood the theme and variations of his designs. Nearest the château on either side of the
central
allée
are two long parterres with intricate swirling designs, which are laid out on the landscape like two elegantly woven oriental carpets. The central
allée
leads from the center of the château terrace into the distance, to a huge statue of the Farnese Hercules, the Greek hero who could not be defeated. Along the way are green parterres crossed by gravel paths and by canals—first two small canals and then the Grand Canal. Each difference in gradation creates illusion and surprise. Carefully pruned shrubs look more carved than real. Rather than colorful flowers, there are graceful plumes of water spouting from a multitude of elaborate fountains. The gardens must be seen when the fountains are in operation, and they are best seen when you look back at the château from the Hercules statue, which stands in the center of a long, sweeping vista bordered by forests on both sides. (It takes about a half hour to walk from the château to the statue.) When Louis XIV walked from the palace to the canal, he passed through crystal walls of water, spouting from a hundred jets, such as those seen today at Sceaux. A 17th-century visitor to Vaux commented, “The air was filled with the sounds of a thousand fountains falling into marvelously fashioned basins, as if it were the throne of Neptune.” From the Farnese Hercules you can see the cascades, invisible from the château, where Madame de Sévigné liked to bathe beneath the watchful eyes of the Greek river gods, who recline in hidden grottoes. As I stood here, with the pagan gods in careful attendance, it did appear, as my little book on gardens suggested, that I was in an earthly paradise, and I wished with all my heart to be swimming where Madame de Sévigné swam.

The story of Vaux-le-Vicomte is inseparable from the story of the great party its creator, Nicolas Fouquet, gave there—the party he gave for Louis XIV which so angered the king that he imprisoned the host for the rest of his life.

Fouquet was one of the most unscrupulous, and perhaps the most ambitious, of all Louis XIV's unscrupulous and ambitious
ministers. Born in 1615, the descendant of a long line of wealthy judges, he was sent to study with the Jesuits, but his father, soon realizing that his second son was ill-suited for the priesthood, purchased for him, when Nicolas was only sixteen, the position of
avocat
at the Parliament of Paris. From that time on, thanks to the nimbleness of his mind and his boundless energy, his rise was unmarred by setbacks of any kind. At eighteen he was
conseiller
to the Parliament of Metz; at twenty-one,
maître des requêtes
. At thirty-five he purchased the post of
procureur général
, the chief prosecuting officer of the Parliament of Paris. At thirty-six he married Marie-Madeleine Jeannin de Castille, whose immense dowry was added to his growing fortune. Serving as an official in the royal army, he became the cardinal's protégé; when Mazarin was sent into exile during the Fronde, Fouquet protected the cardinal's interests and property until he returned to power in 1653. Mazarin rewarded Fouquet with the post of superintendent of finances, recommending him to the young king by saying, “If they could get women and building out of his head, great things might be done with him.”