Colette, Maria and Guy

Monday, November 5. I decide to walk to the rental agency today, just to talk to them in person, instead of being a faceless email. Fortunately, it's in the 2nd arrondisement, not too far, and it's a gorgeous day. As I'm walking up r. Beaubourg (the continuation of r. du Renard), the sun is shining on the back side of the Centre Pompidou, and the colors (red, blue, green) are reflected in the tall windows of the building across the street. It's like watching a rainbow as you walk by! (So much in life is being at the right place at the right time, isn't it? And today, in this one little way, I am!) There's a bright blue sky with little white clouds here and there, and the sun is warm on my neck.

Noted on walk:
-Stereotypical "french" man: medium height, lean, wearing a beret and sporting a little goatee in the center of his chin!
-Another man, walking down the street with a rug slung over his shoulder, offering it for sale.
-A random sign sitting above the first floor of a building "Keep School." Didn't seem to be connected to anything in the building.
-Another pigeonnier at the Square Pierre Lazareff.

I reach the Paris Attitude office and have a nice meeting with Sylvain, all in French! I give him a list of about 10 apartments on their website that I would be interested in. He will contact the owners to see what's available.

Walk down the r. des Petits Carreaux which becomes the r. Montorgueil. Take photos of two doorways (r. Tiquetonne), an Indian grocery store with many kinds of colorful rice, and a giant snail above a restaurant. At the bottom of the street is a square with two cafes sitting directly in the sun. So I pick one (La Pointe St Eustache) to have lunch. The sun is shining, it's in the 50s, and everyone is sitting outside, eating, drinking, reading, writing letters, working on their laptops. The atmosphere is so convivial. I sit for a long time, perusing the little guide book that Camille handed out to us on the last day of class. It's so small that I've kept it in my backpack as a handy reference. I'm looking to see what I still want to do before I leave, but it's such a gorgeous day that I don't want to do something indoors. There's an interesting entry for something called Cite des Fleurs in the 17th arrondisement, so I hop on the metro to Brochant.

Cite des Fleurs. This is a lovely tree-lined street with "pavilions" on either side. The gates at either end of the street are locked at night. There's a plaque on the wall in front of #25:

Le 18 mai 1944 dans cet immeuble ont arretes par la gestapo

les principaux responsables du service faux papiers du MLN.

Executee sur place: Colette Heilbronner

Mort au Deportation: (six names follow this notation)

Tombe au Champ d'Honneur: Jean Meyer

As I'm standing there reading the plaque, the woman who lives at #25 returns from marketing with her little shopping trolley. So, of course, we wind up talking. She tells me that Colette was shot in the garden, that there was a medical clinic across the street at the time and they came immediately but it was too late. What a story. And to live in the house where such history occurred. It's a darling little house too.

At the end of the street, I turn right onto the r. Jonquiere to walk to the metro stop Guy Moquet. Before entering the metro, I detour down the r. Collette to see the Square des Epinettes where there is a statue of Maria Desraismes, femme de lettres, fondatrice en 1869 de la Societe pour l'amelioration du sort des femmes. Bet she was a hot ticket.

Inside the metro station there is a plaque explaining that Guy Moquet was a young French WWII resistance fighter, born in 1924 and executed on 22 October 1941 as revenge for the killing of German Feldkommandant Karl Hotz by members of the French Resistance. Guy wrote a letter to his parents before his execution that received wide coverage and resulted in his becoming one of the emblematic heroes of the French resistance.

Following Nicolas Sarkozy's election as President of France, one of his first decisions was to make all schools read Guy Moquet's letter to their students. Here is a little of the letter:

Petite maman chérie,mon tout petit frère adoré,mon petit papa aimé,
Je vais mourir ! Ce que je vous demande, toi, en particulier ma petite maman, c'est d'être courageuse. . .
Certes, j'aurais voulu vivre. Mais ce que je souhaite de tout mon cœur, c'est que ma mort serve à quelque chose.
Un dernier adieu à tous mes amis, à mon frère que j'aime beaucoup. Qu'il étudie bien pour être plus tard un homme.
17 ans et demi, ma vie a été courte, je n'ai aucun regret . . .
Je vous quitte tous, toutes, toi maman, Serge, papa, en vous embrassant de tout mon cœur d'enfant. Courage !
Votre Guy qui vous aime.
Dernières pensées : vous tous qui restez, soyez dignes de nous, les 27 qui allons mourir !

OK, between Guy Moquet's letter and Colette being shot in the garden, I'm completely wrung out.

Later at home: There's a problem with the internet connection tonight. I assume it's just my connection, but later Christos comes by to use my telephone. Apparently both his phone and his internet connection are down. He's trying to get through to the telephone company. Complains about service in France! Might as well go to bed.