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Page 31.
 They crossed the Seine at the Pont de la Concorde, and arrived on the Right Bank at the Place de la Concorde. This had been a cobblestone place of horror from 1789 forward, when thousands of royalists, notables, and aristocrats including King Louis XVI and his wife, Queen Marie-Antoinette, were beheaded in a steady sequence before howling mobs as the cobblestones flowed with blood. The square was initially renamed Place de la Revolution and soon afterward, in 1795, received the title of reconciliation that would stick with it for centuries: Place de la Concorde, or Square of Harmony.
From that square, which retained almost nothing of its violent history, Hannah and Yves strolled into the broad tree-lined lanes of the Tuileries Gardens with their fountains and ponds and many famous statues. Passing the Arc du Carrousel (a smaller version of the Arc de Triomphe) they entered the main square of the Louvre with its modern, glassy pyramid. They stopped at the Café Richelieu for espresso and a little light pastry. From there—picking up a free tour brochure as a reference, because as Yves said, you could live here all your life and never see everything in the Louvre—they let the whims of the day, and fate, carry them wherever the winds might take them.
According to a brochure available at the entry, the Tuileries Gardens are all that is left in modern times of a 16th Century palace built by Catherine de Medici, widow of King Henri II (who died in 1559 in a tournament at an older palace to the east, as allegedly predicted by Nostradamus at the time). The name Tuileries was a reference to a row of tile-baking kilns (tuileries).
The Tuileries Palace was burned to the ground by during the Paris Commune anarchy after France lost the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, causing the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte’s vainglorious imperial nephew Emperor Napoleon III, and a bloody civil war before the Third Republic was formalized in the Constitution of 1875. Today, as Hannah and Yves walked through the beautiful grounds, only the Tuileries Gardens remained on their way into the Louvre. Like so much of Paris, it was a matter of beauty being built upon horror, spring after winter, life upon death. And life goes on, as the saying tells us.
As Hannah and Yves strolled thorough the grand galleries of the Louvre, on the first level in the Denon Wing, they made the obligatory pilgrimage past the world’s most famous painting. Some instinct told them this was a key target on their trajectory in the mystery set in motion years ago while their father was still young, and the last time he saw the love of his life, Claudette, was on the Bridge of Regret right in front of the Louvre.
It was not only a day off, but a touristy day, so they had to thread their way among thousands of milling people including tour groups from around the world. Tour leaders held up signs on selfie-sticks, and the signs typically had a tiny national flag and the country of the tour group. These included Japanese, Chinese, Egyptians, Canadians, U.S. groups, and more. Yves flaunted a presse or media pass because of his video work, and they got in ahead of the crowd.
“I’m always so thrilled to go in here,” Hannah said as she held Yves by the elbow and they strode in, holding each other close. “I love walking through the gardens first.”
“Me too,” Yves said. Nearby, tour boats glided past on the Seine, slipping under the Pont des Arts—one the world’s most famous passerelles, or pedestrian foot bridges.
“It’s the world’s largest and most visited art museum,” Yves said proudly while holding her close. “Tens of thousands of artifacts from the Old Stone Age to the present.
There she was, the Mona Lisa, smiling coyly behind protective plate glass and flanked by at least one armed guard and a museum curator at all times. Hannah and Yves sat on a bench nearby, letting the hordes of tourists wander past in groups. Oddly, somehow, as if a ghostly hand had placed it there, another brochure sort of brushed up against Hannah (as if wind-blown, although there was no breeze inside the museum). She picked it up, and there it was in brief: a quick recounting of the story of Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece.
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