We smiled at the trimmed hedges,

at the curved Chinese roofs,

at the porcelain ringlets,

at the silk tails–

yet in moments of empty tiredness,

lifting a hand to our head

we felt something missing,

a powdered wig.

(For a long time, it wasn’t clear what belonged to the templum and what didn’t. An incessant mumbling came from the past centuries, from that last and now immense fin de siècle that begins with libertine dryness and the almost criminal recklessness of the Regency or—if we want an earlier cosmic setting—with the “untuned” heavens of Donne and with the disordered “degrees” lamented by Ulysses in Troilus and Cressida, and perhaps it is now verging on its final end. A breath of modernity that was preparing itself to be scattered. It was hard to contain that mumbling, to find a frame sufficiently well cultivated and conceived, yet not too conspicuous, as a frame must be, but made of substance which would then turn out, when studied closely, to be a pigment of the painting itself. At that point, Talleyrand emerged. Hadn’t Brichot said, in the halls of salon Verdurin, that it was he who had been the first of the fin de siècle? Talleyrand then offered another advantage: of having no ideas, and still fewer opinions, but of having an obscure, murky remnant of that kind of wisdom that merely “hints.”)

A Visit to Picpus

Close to the Hôpital Rothschild, where the suburbs of Paris woo desolation, was the rest home for single ladies, run by sisters dedicated to the perpetual adoration of the Sacred Heart. In the courtyard, Brother and Sister were sitting on a wooden bench. The Sister, a resident at the home, was being visited by her devoted Brother. Over the melancholy protuberance of her eyes, her hair was still bobbed in twenties style, while a few surviving pieces of family jewelry around her wrists and neck defended the dignity of a dame en retraite. The Brother was waiting for the moment to talk about expenses and receipts. He pulled an empty ring case from his pocket and offered it to his Sister—perhaps she might find it useful. The Sister ran a finger slowly across the silk lining: “It’s in good condition,” she said. But they had also to pretend to talk about other matters. They were waiting on the bench for the gatekeeper, who took occasional groups into the cemetery of the “Victims of the Revolution” just behind the gate of the rest home.

“To whom does the cemetery belong?” asked the Brother.

“La Société Immobilière et Civile de l’Oratoire du Cimetière de Picpus,” replied the Sister. “They’re the heirs of the victims. Only they can be buried in the cemetery. They’re the families of aristocrats.”

“But there weren’t just aristocrats. As I was waiting I looked in the chapel at the list of victims in the mass graves. There are all kinds. Tradesmen, lawyers, ordinary people …”