If you go to bed late you inevitably start the following day late and with considerable sluggishness. So we did start slow, closed the house to keep the heat out, and eventually had to go shopping for food. I love going shopping while I am abroad, and happily wander through the aisles looking at the wonderful choices one has for constructing a meal. Géraldine tells me that food inflation has not been as alarming at what we have had back home, and that even fuel costs have not increased as crazily as we have seen (probably because fuel cost is high in Europe to begin with).
The plan today is to take it easy during the heat of the day, and in the afternoon to go visit the Chateaux of Vaux-Le-Vicomte, 60 km away from us to the southeast. By now I have been in Paris several times, so this was my chance to see something new and to learn some more about French history during the long reign of Louis XIV, the Sun King. He was king of France from 1643 to 1715 (72 years!) and defines an age of absolutism, war, and expansion of the French colonial empire. I am sure one or two of the current world leaders have his biography by their bedside tables, because many of the geopolitical moves we have seen during the last two years seem designed after what Louis XIV did through his many executive orders, broken treaties, vindictiveness toward his political adversaries, tax protection for the nobility, and undertaking of many costly wars.
Vaux-Le-Vicomte plays a small but important role in this story, because it was the blueprint for the Palace of Versailles that Louis XIV built as the seat of his court. It was built by the Superintendent of Finances of the kingdom, Nicholas Fouquet, who made the great mistake of creating a residence fit for a king, and a magnificent garden second only to that of Versailles. Building such a place did not come cheap, so Fouquet probably took advantage of his position to divert public funds to his home project. Louis XIV came with his court, was lavishly entertained, and Fouquet even offered to gift the whole place to Louis, who refused arguing that it would be bad optics for him to accept such gift. A few weeks later Fouquet was detained, rapidly judged by a court assembled with considerable haste, and condemned to exile (which Louis promptly modified to life imprisonment). Quite a nice guy, the Sun King.
For our visit we met with two of Géraldine's friends, Jean-Michel and his wife Fabién. Jean-Michel went to university with Géraldine, so they have known each other for a long time. Both of them speak good English, so we were able to chat in Frenglish all along during the visit.
We started with a tour of the
chateaux, which was both opulent and oppressive because all the windows were
shuttered to keep out the heat. The furniture was heavy and of rococo style,
and the beds were very short (we joked that both Lucas and Theo would have had
their feet dangling at the end). One of Fouquet's friends was the fabulist and
poet Jean del la Fontaine, who should have written for him a fable whose final
lesson was not to trust the hungry wolf he had welcomed as his king in his
home.
The gardens are a slightly smaller version of those in Versailles, which is no surprise because they were designed by the same landscape architect. We took a walk from one end to the other, which apparently represents a distance of 2 km each way, and I couldn't help but thinking that Cooper would have been a happy dog making this promenade. I wonder if Fouquet or any other of the nobles of France ever walked their dogs this way (my guess is no, but instead rode a horse or drove a carriage to a suitable place to have a pique-nique (French spelling). We took advantage of one of the restaurants now located inside the park to have our own pique-nique, surrounded by a dense cloud of non-stinging wasps.
We waited until 11 pm for the drone light display, which was to replace the traditional fireworks to open the festivities of July 14, the Day of the Bastille and national holiday of France. I believe the fireworks got nixed because of the high risk of forest fires (in fact, there is a forest fire in the Forest of Fontainebleau, 20 km from us). The drone light spectacle was interesting, in that nearly 200 drones were in the air (computer controlled I presume), and wove in an out making geometric shapes of different colors, clustering to form a big ring or the flag of France, and then "exploding" into what could be expected from regular fireworks. It was an impressive display of technology!
But of course we had to start
for home at midnight, and it was not until 2 am that we got there, navigating
through a maze of highways (Paris has the most complicated road network of any
other city in the world). Bless Géraldine for being such a good driver, and for
not falling asleep at the wheel! She may just be the perfect woman (smart,
attractive, good driver) but she sure extends her waking hours way past mine!
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