Last Sunday, on my way up the hill to my neighborhood farmer’s market, I found myself dodging falling horse chestnuts, a sure sign, despite unseasonably warm temperatures, that autumn has arrived. At the market, there were further signs: mountains of plump green “Italia” grapes from Sicily, bunches of deep purple Muscat grapes from France, fresh figs, and vine peaches, an early autumn variety, whose fruit is blood-red.
I buy some of each because I know they won’t be around for long. Soon the choices will be limited to oranges, bananas, pears and apples, winter staples, which is nothing to complain about. One of my fondest childhood memories is of Sunday excursions to Blazer Orchards, in the Hegins Valley, to buy McIntosh apples. We couldn’t wait to get home to eat them, we couldn’t even wait to get back into the car. From a bushel basket, we’d grab an apple and bite into the crispy fruit, through the red skin into the white flesh, tinged here and there with a pink blush. Sweet and tart all at once, those apples captured the perfect bittersweet flavor of early autumn, a gift of sun and warmth, a frosty tang as an aftertaste.
I haven’t experienced a Pennsylvania autumn in more than twenty-five years and it is something I deeply miss. Autumn is not vacation time for teachers, so I’ll have to wait for my still distant retirement years if I hope to once again observe, first hand, leaves falling in a symphony of colors.
For the Parisian I have become, autumn has taken on other distinctive shades. Besides horse chestnuts and the bounty of my local market, there’s the annual International Dahlia Show, which takes place each year in late September at Parc floral, a botanical garden at the eastern edge of Paris. There, in a confined space, when compared to the Pennsylvania hills, I can immerse myself in a riot of intense color, which partially satisfies my yearning for a crisp, sunny autumn day, taken in, let’s say, from the southwestern slope of Sharp Mountain, looking out over Indian Run.
Unfortunately, autumn in the city also means crowds. All those who fled the dog days of summer have returned and in the metro, we’re back to riding cheek to cheek, conscious of fellow travellers who had garlic or a glass of wine with their most recent meal. Only last evening, I stepped into a crowded car permeated with the sickeningly sweet odor of urine. As we all do, I’ve noticed, I looked around for the source, for the “culprit” (of course, it couldn’t be me!), but, unable to find one, I just grabbed onto a pole (sitting in the metro is a luxury of summertime) and limited myself to shallow breaths. That’s when I noticed “he” was standing next to me, a poor soul, dressed in drab clothes that were giving off “that odor.” The car was too crowded for me to move away. What if people began thinking it was me! I forgot all about the smell and began to worry about guilt by association!
Luckily, he got off at the next stop, clearing the air and clearing me of guilt because he took the smell away with him. For the last part of the ride, I could concentrate on pleasant memories of the day I had just spent visiting hidden treasures of Paris, open to the public one weekend each year. In fact, all over Europe, the weekend of September 15th and 16th was “le weekend du patrimoine,” “heritage weekend,” another annual fall event I always look forward to.
In Paris, for two days, buildings generally closed to the public open their doors to welcome us. Those ready to stand in line for five hours can step over the threshold of Elysée Palace, home to President François Hollande. Rumor has it that on Sunday, he was guiding some of the tours himself. Those with a bent for law and order and its inseparable opposite, crime, can penetrate the inner courtyard of 36, quai des Orfèvres, the “Scotland Yard” of Paris, located on Ile de la Cité, the island at the city’s heart. For those seeking treasures on a smaller scale, every city neighborhood holds surprises, some unusual, others of unexpected beauty, many in our own “backyard.”
That’s why my friend Nathalie and I decided to concentrate on hidden treasures close to home. Our destination was some nearby “hôtels particuliers,” once the elegant townhouses of wealthy members of the French aristocracy, located in the Marais (which means “swamp”), on the Right Bank of the Seine. At the beginning of the 17th century, it was the most fashionable neighborhood in Paris, but then as now, trends in fashion are quick to change. By the end of the century, those same aristocrats were abandoning their homes for the Left Bank, which had become the new “quartier à la mode.” The townhouses of the Marais were transformed into warehouses, apartments, workshops and shops. It was not until the latter part of the 20th century that many were restored to their former glory.
In 1813, one of the most elegant became the barracks of a company of fire-fighters, members of a national corps created by Napoleon in 1811, a function it continues to serve. Hidden from view, located in a street where I’ve often walked, never suspecting its existence, this elegant townhouse, “Hôtel Bouthillier de Chavigny,” occupies part of a large inner courtyard, once a formal French garden, today a dusty plot where fire-fighters’ children can play and firemen park their cars.
Their home is a magnificent palace in the pure French classical style, designed by François Mansart (1598-1666) who sought to adapt the architecture of Antiquity to his times. On the ground floor, former reception rooms are today the fire-fighters’ gym. The upper floors have been divided into apartments. In one wing, there is a small museum devoted to the brigade’s history, in another, a recreation room. An adjacent building, off-limits to visitors, houses all the fire-fighting equipment Many Parisians would love to live in such a setting, but few would be ready to do a fire-fighter’s job.
Next weekend, autumn festivities continue with an annual festival of American literature with Toni Morrison as this year’s special guest. In the city, there’s certainly lots to do, but I’d throw it all over for a walk in “Penn’s woods” on a perfect fall day.
