More about old places

Before I left for Paris, I wrote about the layers of history that so many buildings and monuments in the city embody. Yesterday I was in the Place Vendôme; it was at number 12, Place Vendôme that Chopin died. In the Place is a column with panels set into it depicting what turned out to be Napoleon's triumph at Austerlitz, with a statue of Napoleon at the top. The panels were cast out of bronze obtained from enemy cannons captured during the battle. The statue is not the original; the original was supposedly the one that was melted down to replace the statue of Henri IV on the Pont Neuf, which in its turn had been melted down during the Revolution. Paris is a palimpsest.

Another tie between yesterday's musical pilgrimage and the statue on the Pont Neuf is that Berlioz wrote in his memoirs that when he was on the outs with his family and short on funds, he used to eat his meager dinners at the foot of the status on the bridge:

"It was summer. I bought my delicacies at the nearby grocer’s and usually took them to the little terrace on the Pont Neuf, at the foot of Henry IV’s statue. There I sat and, trying not to think of the boiled chicken which the good king wished his peasants to have for their Sunday dinner, ate my frugal meal, watching the sun go down behind Mont Valérien, gazing entranced on the endless play of light and reflection on the waters of  the shining Seine as it glided before me ... ."

I thought of this several days ago when I paused at the foot of the statue, imagining Berlioz on short rations eating there. Henri IV is supposed to  have said that he wanted every peasant to have a chicken in his pot every Sunday; although the phrase about "a chicken in every pot" is associated with Herbert Hoover, it goes back much further than that.