Sharpe's Museum

'Nother weekend without much of anything going on. The plans to go to the Salon du Livre with Laureline didn't work out on Saturday, so I continued down my list of sites I have to see before I leave. The day started out pretty, so I headed for the Musée Rodin, but by the time I got there it had begun to drizzle, so I simply crossed the street to Les Invalides.

And whoa. I'd expected to find a monument to France's military might, but nothing like what I found. 'Course I knew that Napoleon's tomb was in the central cathedral, but I determined to save that for last. I started out in the Musée de l'Armée, which chronicles armed onflict in Europe from antiquity to the the First World War, displaying every kind of weapon from flint knives to one of the first French-made tanks, the Renault FT-17. What I found most interesting were the polearms; we usually think of spears and pikes as very basic weapons that saw very minimal evolution up until gunpowder was invented, but actually, looking at the dozens of different spearblades, axes, partizans, hooks, and combinations thereof, you can tell that the science that went into making them was just as meticulous and fluid as the experimentation that goes into rifles and planes today.

The second part of Les Invalides was just as interesting, probably because I'm a cartographer's son. The Musée des Plans-Reliefs holds 28 precisely designed and detailed scale models of French fortresses and towns. They were first commissioned in 1668 by Louis XIV's war minister so that the court could play "Just How Badly Would We Murder the Dutch If They Attacked X?" in between banquets and operas.

The cathedral was beautiful, but crowded with tourists. I actually told a woman as politely as I could to stop perpetuating the stereotype of loud Americans. You may think me intolerant, but she was almost yelling in an annoying Midwestern accent about the bees on Napoleon's robe. Are there no British or Americans who respect the dead anymore?

The rain had stopped, so I went back to the Jardin Rodin. The daffodils and forsythia were in bloom, and provided an intriguing contrast to the brooding, twisting statues. The sinuous details in the statues' skin reminded of Edward Weston's pepper and shell photographs; pity Rodin and Weston never worked together.

Oh, and I bought a new hat today.