Memory Lane

My mind keeps going back to the Manette family in A Tale of Two Cities. So I decided to look at the old pictures from our last trip to Paris. Paul and I traveled Europe for 3 weeks in 2003, the first week with my niece in Paris, and we even brought home a bean who later became our first son. Best souvenir ever. I promise not to bring another such souvenir back when we go next year.

The below picture is the large room at the entrance of La Conciergerie, where the Patriots held Aristocrats (and anyone else they saw fit), before giving them La Guillotine - think Scarlet Pimpernel. What a terrible time in French history, coming on the heels of another terrible time in French history. The Aristocrats used the Bastille for prisoners, the Patriots tore it down on July 14, 1789, and then used this building to hold the Aristocrats. Reminds me of the line in Count of Monte Cristo, "Treason is just a matter of dates."And this is a plaque near where Marie Antoinette was held. She was beheaded 9 months after her husband, King Louis the XVI. It's an excerpt from a letter she sent to her sister-in-law, "That my son will never forget the last words of his father, I repeat him exactly, 'that he will never avenge our death. I forgive all my enemies who have done me wrong.'" His enemies didn't feel the same way, but it's still a nice sentiment. The pendulum swung so far the other way for so many years, that I wonder if everyone had seen things for the starving children that they really were, so many wouldn't have had to die on either side. But I guess the same could be said for Pakistan, or North Korea, or the Congo right now.