#les chats du louvre

[taiyomatsumoto]

[camerarchives]

• momie d'un chat [332 à 30 av J.C, basse époque à époque ptolémaïque, restes d'animaux enveloppés dans du lin ; dépôt du musée du Louvre, 1823]

• sarcophage [idk la photo avec les notes est illisible.]

Après-midi au musée. Me suis promenée à la partie archéologie avant de remarquer un snack au milieu de l'autre salle d'expo, à l'entrée. L'expo était les drapeaux suspendus en haut reprenant le principe du café du pauvre ou, comme je préfère en italien, café sospeso - le café suspendu. J'ai bu un earl grey gratuitement donc et avant cela j'avais dépensé une coquette somme dans des livres recommandés par la libraire. J'ai aussi une bougie qui s'appelle Madame de Sévigné et qui sent la rose et la mandarine. La mère de C. a pleuré en me voyant car elle dit que je ne fais que m'embellir comme une sorcière et que j'ai beaucoup de chance d'avoir une telle silhouette. Nous avons pris des photos dehors et je suis rentrée. Pressée de retrouver ma console et d'essayer les produits skincare - ma nouvelle routine à 30 euros... (Ça a l'air très bien honnêtement).

Une note sombre s'est glissée dans le tableau presque parfait d'une journée sans grande encombre : une fille que j'aime va tout faire pour être euthanasiée.

Pourquoi ma vie n'est pas normale ?

J'entends les paroles de Blu qui disait « Tu es le personnage principal »

[xian-moriarty]

Les espionnes du Roi, T.01 Le pacte du Louvre, de Christelle Chatel. 2021.

Synopsis : Le royaume de France est sous tension. Affaibli, Louis XIII ne fait plus confiance à personne. Pour protéger son héritier, le futur Louis XIV, qui n’a que deux ans, il décide de s’assurer l’assistance d’espionnes dont personne ne doit soupçonner le double jeu : Aurore de Saintonge, fille d’un de ses fidèles conseillers, et Angèle, fille d’un célèbre maître d’armes. Quand cette dernière découvre qu’une mystérieuse dame en rouge menace le dauphin, le roi leur ordonne de le transférer du château de Saint-Germain au Louvre dans le plus grand secret. Les routes ne sont pas sûres, mais en chemin Aurore et Angèle se découvrent une alliée: Azilys...

Plaisir de lecture : Bien que je ne sois pas le public visé, j'ai passé un très bon moment de lecutre. Tout ce que j'aurai aimé lire plus jeune. Puis c'est illustré et il y a des notes pédagogiques à la fin ! Note : 4 chats.

Historicité : Pas forcément bonne sans être mauvaise. Certains détails montrent cependant que l'autrice connait son sujet. Mais comme c'est de la jeunesse, il est normal que l'aventure (et la bonne humeur) prime. Note : 3 chats.

Disponibilité : Papier et numérique.

Adaptation visuelle : Aucune à ma connaissance.

Bonus point chat : Pas de chat, snif. Note : 1 chat.

[lonesomemao]

Au Museum d'Histoire Naturelle

Jeunes du Hamas

Predators et même Escalator

Violence contrôlée

Attaquent Israël

Le pouvoir

La démocrature ordinateur

Le non-violent régulant

Eux en sortant

Fini Benyamin Netanyahu

Predator MSI Mussolini-Kadhafi

Et puis à un sommet

Divorce d'un mariage lobby gay

Informatiquement dans l'un de mes écrits

Défense de la Gay Pride à Moscou

Couple Vladimir Poutine

Et le Grand Rabbin Juif Orthodoxe de Jérusalem

Homo Force quatre

Sotchi Le Chat du Rabbin c'est cuit

Avec l'islam chiite

Netanyahu s'est arrangé

Avec les Azéris

Le dieu Predator

Répugnance dans la zone

Bande de Gaza

Elle brille leur mitraillette

En cette noctambule quête

Les jeunes en musulmans chiites

Se libèrent de leur prison

Guerriers se disant

Etre simplement troubadour

Cela n'a pas payé

Jeunes du Hamas

A qui je dis

France

On ne dépend plus d'une Pyramide du Louvre

Mais d'un préfabriqué de chantier

Et puis vous savez quoi

Le Grand Orient franc-maçon

On n'aime pas ça

Samedi 7 octobre 2023

[ouyander]

Le pharaon Ramsès II de retour à Paris. Une statue de Ramsès II dans le Grand Musée égyptien à Gizeh, près du Caire, en Égypte, le 4 août 2019. Pharaon Ramsès II de retour à Paris can 2019 - tut - un pharaon de 12 ans Près d'un demi-siècle après son exposition à Paris en 1976, le sarcophage de Ramsès II, star des pharaons avec Toutankhâmon, est de retour en France où il sera le clou d'une grande exposition-événement au printemps dans la capitale. "Quand on m’a annoncé qu’il arrivait à Paris, j’en pleurais presque de joie de le retrouver ici !", a confié à l'AFP l'égyptologue Dominique Farout, professeur à l'école du Louvre et commissaire scientifique de l'exposition intitulée "Ramsès et l'or des pharaons". "J'avais 16 ans en 1976, il était dans ma chambre sur une grande affiche. J'y suis allé huit fois de suite", se souvient-il, en évoquant l'exposition qui s'est tenue cette année-là au Grand Palais. Ramsès II est l'un des plus célèbres pharaons de la 19e dynastie, grand guerrier et bâtisseur prolifique de temples qui a régné pendant 67 ans. https://twitter.com/africanewsfr/status/1613177416586764288 L'exposition itinérante a démarré à San Francisco en 2022 et se poursuivra à Sydney à l'automne mais le sarcophage ne sera visible qu'en France, à la grande halle de la Villette du 7 avril au 6 septembre. Désert blanc d'Egypte0 Avec la présentation d'innombrables objets et bijoux en or et argent massif, statues, amulettes, masques et autres sarcophages, elle promet d'attirer les foules, à l'instar de celle sur Toutankhâmon, installée au même endroit en 2019 (1,4 million de visiteurs). Toutes deux sont organisées par World Heritage Exhibitions, leader mondial de ce secteur événementiel. https://twitter.com/africanewsfr/status/956639742728265728 Prêt exceptionnel de l'Egypte à la France, le célèbre sarcophage en bois de cèdre peint en jaune est "une exception" faite à la France par les autorités égyptiennes, "en reconnaissance du sauvetage de la momie de Ramsès II par les scientifiques français qui l'avait traitée contre des champignons au moment de l'exposition en 1976", selon M. Farout. Le sarcophage est présenté vide, la loi interdisant la sortie des momies royales d'Egypte. Le désert blanc, Egypte Doté de détails rehaussés de couleurs vives et d'yeux soulignés de noir sur son couvercle, il représente "le roi, en attitude osiriaque, les bras croisés, tenant le sceptre héqa et le fouet nekhakha. Il est coiffé d’un némes (coiffe rayée des pharaons, ndlr) avec la barbe postiche tressée", détaille M. Farout. https://twitter.com/africanewsfr/status/842644359749271552 Apparaissant sur tout son long, des inscriptions administratives hiératiques "témoignent du transport de la momie de Ramsès pour la sauver à trois reprises à la fin du Nouvel Empire, vers 1070 avant Jésus-Christ, puis 100 ans plus tard", explique-t-il. La cachette de Deir en-Bahri, à l’ouest de Louxor, contenait une centaine de momies Désert blanc d'Egypte Car "la tombe de Ramsès dans la vallée des rois a été pillée et son corps installé dans" ce sarcophage. "L’ensemble a été transporté dans la tombe de son père, Séthi Ier", selon l'égyptologue. Pendant la 21e dynastie, il a encore été déplacé "dans la cachette de Deir en-Bahri, à l’ouest de Louxor, qui contenait une centaine de momies dont celles des rois du Nouvel Empire". https://twitter.com/africanewsfr/status/840197623441195009 Il a fallu attendre 1881 pour retrouver cette cachette qui était en cours de pillage. "Les momies furent transportées de Louxor au Caire par bateau, et acclamées par la population qui s’était massée sur les bords du Nil", raconte-t-il. A Paris, seules des momies d'animaux pourront être admirées et en particulier de chats, "élevés et sacrifiés pour les offrir aux divinités", selon M. Farout. Ramsès II à l'est du delta du Nil pharaon Ramsès II de retour à Paris Ces momies ont été découvertes au cours

des dernières années près du Caire, dans une nécropole des rois de l’Ancien Empire (entre 2 700 et 2 200 avant JC), précise le spécialiste. A leurs côtés, le public découvrira le "trésor de Tanis", du nom de la nouvelle capitale, Tanis, reconstruite par Ramsès II à l'est du delta du Nil après que la première, Pie-Ramsès, fut envasée. A lire aussi La statue de pharaon Ramsès II de retour à Paris (France) Le trésor, constitué d'un "cercueil en argent massif, d'étuis de doigts et d’orteils ou de masques en or massif et de bijoux, provient de tombes royales retrouvées dans cette cité en 1939-40", selon le spécialiste. Par Rédaction Kafunel avec AFP Dernière MAJ: 13/01 - 14:25

[alphabetsoup-blogposts]

[The anagrams below seem obvious to me and fairly undeniable. If they are not correct they're nevertheless well-constructed and obvious alternatives that should have been considered by the people who use/push them. Whether they have anything to do with events in the news in 2018, however, I cannot possibly say. What I can tell you is that I am getting plenty of "epic fail!" messages, IRL, on Tumblr and on Twitter that range from sarcastic, through condescending to downright nasty. I can also tell you that more moderate types insist that we are in the territory of Brown/Shoot rather than Merk/Shot/Snow/Fire. I believe them—they have access and can follow lines of enquiry that I cannot—but that is not necessarily where the preponderance of reported context lies.

I leave you with all the information so that you can make up your own minds.]

"Christmas Market"

is an obvious anagram of:

Merk at Christmas

where Merk is Snow, aka Shot. It could also mean something simpler and figurative like "Christmas buying opportunity".

"Marketplace"

is an anagram not just of:

Merk at place [indicated] (cathedral, square, Place Kléber, Neudorf...)

but also of:

Mac later—PEK (Beijing)

Take Cream—PL (Poland)

or

Pack later—ME (Middle East Airlines)

where Mac is Cajeta, aka Shoot, Cream is Zip and Pack is Christmas Tree or a package.

"Square"

evokes

Brick

aka, a kilogram.

and

Taxi

is slang for

Merk.

"Police Officers"

might be:

Blue

Cop

or

Quai des Orfèvres (see below)

where Blue is variable but often Fire, aka Hail, or Shoot, and Cop means Score,

Meanwhile,

"Cathedral[e]"

is one we've covered thoroughly before:

Car at LEH (Lehavre, Lahore)

is best, contextually-speaking, but it's an adaptable anagram:

Deal at CH[E]R (eg, CH Robinson or Cherbourg)

Clear—ATH/THA (Athens or Thailand)

Her at ALC/LAC (California, Alicante, Larnaca, Lac du Bourget...)

C later AH (Air Algerie)

H later CA/AC[E] (Air China, Air Canada, Lanzarote...)

Chat Deal[e]r

are all more-or-less sound, where Car and C are Snow, Clear is Montura and Her and H are Cajeta.

I think last time we did this I also said:

Date, Charle (eg, Charles de Gaulle, CDG)

or something very similar, but I do not see many abbreviations and partial solutions like this and I have since rejected it as unsound (unless and until I am given a code that features two or more 'Cathédrales").

Nonetheless, Paris is being helpfully highlighted by friends on Twitter, so what I should add here is that:

Rue des Orfèvres evokes Le Quai des Orfèvres, which is the address of central headquarters of the Police Judiciaire Paris. (The address features prominently in literature (cf Maigret) and films.)

Les Chandelles is a nightclub tucked in behind the Louvre, just across the river from Quai des Orfevres. AND

"Rue des Moulins" evokes the Moulin Rouge and Café des Deux Moulins just a little north of Les Chandelles. The café was made famous by the film Amélie.

[missjlh]

[deadscanlations]

Les Chats du Louvre - MATSUMOTO Taiyou

I bought the first volume of this, but since there are some 1200px ebook mag raws available, I instead compiled those so that I can put off scanning it. If you want to work on this, let me know and I’ll scan the tank.

Mangaupdates Download

猫 × 松本大洋 × ルーヴル美術館 ! ルーヴル美術館の屋根裏に棲みついた猫達。人間から隠れて暮らしていたが、一匹の白猫がその掟を破り、冒険に出かける。絵画から聞こえる声に導かれて入った世界には…!? 【編集担当からのおすすめ情報】 猫好き、アート好き、フランス好き、に 松本大洋が贈る絵本のような物語。

[laikagohome]

[journaljunkpage]

CHROMATIQUE

FESTIVAL ANGOULÊME

Nicolas Trespallé / © Isabelle Merlete, Taiyô Matsumoto

ISABELLE MERLET 

Coloriste émérite pour quelques-uns des plus grands auteurs de BD contemporains, la Bordelaise s’est vue sollicitée par Taiyô Matsumoto pour mettre en couleur son dernier ouvrage Les Chats du Louvre. À l’occasion de la venue à Angoulême de ce fleuron de la création indépendante japonaise et d’une grande exposition rétrospective en son honneur, elle nous livre les coulisses de cette collaboration exceptionnelle.

Vous venez de mettre en couleur Les Chats du Louvre. Quel rapport entretenez-vous avec Taiyô Matsumoto, étiez-vous familière de l’oeuvre de ce mangaka ?

Pas vraiment, non, j’avais juste lu quelques-uns de ses titres. J’étais très surprise qu’il connaisse mon travail, c’était tout à fait impossible à imaginer. J’ai su qu’il avait pris sa décision après avoir vu mes couleurs sur Lune l’envers de Blutch et L’Art du chevalement de Loo Hui Phang et Philippe Dupuy, tous deux dans des tonalités claires, avec des nuances de gris colorés. Matsumoto a demandé à Futuropolis s’il était possible de travailler avec moi, j’ai fait un essai qu’il a apprécié, mais ça n’a pas été si simple…

Quelles ont été les difficultés ?

Lorsque j’ai reçu les premières pages, je trouvais que le livre n’était pas fait pour la couleur [l’album est sorti également en noir et blanc, NDLR]. C’était un magnifique travail de noir et de valeur de gris que la couleur risquait de dénaturer. J’avais certes proposé un premier essai accepté, mais n’étais pas convaincue. J’avais le sentiment que je n’arriverais à rien de vraiment intéressant. C’est après une discussion avec Sébastien Gnaedig, l’éditeur, à qui je faisais part de ma réserve, que j’ai proposé de passer le trait en couleur. Tout le monde a été enchanté, et, à partir de là, j’ai pu avancer vraiment. J’ai refait quasiment 25 pages. Puis, on m’a demandé d’attendre, car Matsumoto voulait refaire des dessins sur les premières pages déjà livrées. Il a donc donné la priorité à la prépublication japonaise avant de se consacrer au livre, qui est un pavé de 460 pages ! Cela a été un projet élastique, entre les délais de dessins, la traduction, les corrections, j’ai dépensé une énergie considérable pour venir à bout de cet album. On m’a contactée en septembre 2016 et le livre est sorti en octobre 2018 !

Comment avez-vous défini la gamme chromatique du livre, est-ce lui qui vous a orientée vers cette palette subtile de couleurs pastel ?

Non, pas de façon explicite. Mais l’on agit en fonction d’un dessin et d’un récit, et ici le dessin était tellement fort que je ne pouvais faire qu’un accompagnement le plus discret possible. Pour autant, si je n’avais aucune indication générale, j’avais à suivre des demandes de vêtements pour les personnages. J’ai reçu un petit catalogue photo de tous les vêtements des personnages – manteaux, écharpes, pulls, jupes, etc. Et il m’a indiqué aussi la couleur des chats, qu’il avait définie dans les planches couleur pour la prépublication japonaise. Donc, c’était une carte blanche à contraintes, ce qui est toujours le cas. Les auteurs ont toujours en tête quelques couleurs, que ce soit de vêtements, d’accessoires, voire de cheveux ou de carnation. Cela dit, chaque couleur a des dizaines de variations, ce ne sont donc pas des contraintes trop écrasantes. On compose, comme en musique.

Taiyô Matsumoto, Les Chats du Louvre, version en couleur d’Isabelle Merlet, Futuropolis / Louvre éditions.

« Dessiner l’enfance » – Rétrospective Taiyô Matsumoto.

[theluckiestlb]

I was doing some geographic research of Paris for my fic and came across their official site for tourists.

They have a whole page dedicated to the show and???? It’s so adorably detailed?? They talk about various locations that were showcased, but also reference specific episodes. Not just season one either—   

A significant moment in the series takes place in Place du Châtelet, at the Fontaine des Victoires (also known as Fontaine du Châtelet and Fontaine des Palmiers). Ladybug kisses Cat Noir in front of this fountain, commissioned by Napoleon in 1806 to provide free drinking water to all Parisians. It is pillar shaped and adorned with sculpted palm leaves, with four sphinxes at its base. The gilded bronze Victory statue on top holding up a laurel crown in either hand was sculpted by Louis-Simon Boizot. 

The original statue is now housed in the Musée Carnavalet – maybe because of the damage Guitar Villain inflicted on the fountain when he played his ‘Shocking Riff’ against Cat Noir?

Fontaine des Victoires – place du Châtelet, Paris 1st

The Tour Montparnasse inspired an episode as action-packed as any Hollywood thriller. Adrien’s bodyguard, who has been akumatized into Gorizilla, chases Cat Noir and Ladybug to the top of the 210-metre-high tower offering a spectacular 360° view over Paris. The skyscraper was built on the site of the former Montparnasse station and inaugurated in 1973. Its weight rests on 56 reinforced concrete pillars, buried 70 metres underground.

Tour Montparnasse – rue de l’Arrivée, Paris 15th

Ladybug foils off attacks by three akumas inside the Louvre – Jalil Kubdel, who has transformed into The Pharaoh; The Mime, and Volpina, who creates amazing illusions. The world’s biggest museum was originally a castle built to protect Paris from Norman attacks. Today, it extends over an area of 243,000 m² and displays some 35,000 works. It has 403 rooms, 14.5 km of corridors and 10,000 steps. Stroll around soaking up more than 800 years of history, and do admire the glass and metal pyramid designed by I.M. Pei, where another of Ladybug’s adventures takes place.

Musée du Louvre -Pyramide du Louvre, Paris 1st

The park near the Dupain-Cheng’s bakery was inspired by the Place des Vosges. In the series, the park has a statue of Ladybug and Chat Noir sculpted by the fictional artist Théo Barbot. The real Place des Vosges – the oldest square in Paris – is in the Marais district. It was built in 1605 on the site of a royal palace, the Palais des Tournelles, and indeed initially named Place Royale. It is surrounded by 36 pavilions, all identical except the king’s own pavilion at the southern end and the queen’s at the northern end, both intentionally higher.

Place des Vosges, Paris 4th

When she isn’t busy catching evil akumas sent out by Hawk Moth, Marinette likes meeting up with her friends Alya, Adrien and Nino at ‘Troca’, where she also finds inspiration to design her new outfits. Facing the Eiffel Tower across the river, Trocadéro boasts gardens, ponds and some fine buildings. Start on Place du Trocadéro across from the Palais de Chaillot. From here, you will enjoy one of the loveliest vistas of Paris, and a breathtaking view of the Eiffel Tower.

Le Trocadéro – place du Trocadéro, Paris 16th

Ok, but?? Referencing Nino and Alya too?? Whoever writes/updates the page clearly loves the show. You can read more here.

[taiyomatsumoto]

[valeriehervo]

Valérie Hervo runs Les Chandelles, the legendary Paris sex club where members of French high society, politicians, barristers and rock stars (and an increasing number of Brits) come to indulge their erotic fantasies. Can it survive the twin threats of the pandemic and a moral backlash?

Adam Sage

Saturday March 20 2021, 

Valérie Hervo is outraged. She has just been listening to a radio station where two male presenters, chatting about her forthcoming appearance on their show, kept referring to her as the owner of a “group sex club”.

“That really is low-class vocabulary,” she tells me. “It’s very macho as well. Only a man would say something like that.

“And it is not what this place is about. To me, it is a journey through the mystery of the senses to a land of sensuality and encounters.”

Hervo is particularly aggrieved at what she took to be the implication that she organised sexual games for the benefit of men.

Nothing could be further from the truth, she insists. “Here, everything revolves around women’s pleasure. This is a place where a woman can do what she wants, when she wants and with whom she wants – and if she wants to do nothing, she does nothing.”

Hervo opened Les Chandelles, her recreational club – as she would prefer it described – in 1993, and it has since become a part of French high-society folklore.

Any Parisian will tell you that this is the place where the country’s political, economic and cultural elites live out their sexual fantasies beyond the sight of ordinary mortals, where government ministers, television presenters, rock stars and chief executives engage in the ancient practice of libertinage.

But what exactly goes on behind the plain façade in a narrow street near the Louvre in central Paris? And what might this tell us about French values? Or indeed about British values, given the steady flow of clients rumoured to have crossed the channel in recent years in the hope of fulfilling their “erotic potential” under Hervo’s stewardship?

With telephones barred from the club (they have to be left at the entrance) and hardly anyone willing to talk openly about their evenings there – “It’s a matter of intimacy,” says Hervo. “You don’t start telling everyone about your sex life at dinner parties” – such questions have given rise to few answers and much speculation.

Now, with the club closed because of the pandemic, Hervo, 53, has written a book that explains what happens when the dancefloor empties, usually around 1.30am, and the salons around it fill with writhing, sighing bodies.

Les dessous des Chandelles, which could be translated either figuratively as The Secrets of the Chandelles or literally as Underneath the Candelabras, is the portrait of a quintessentially French establishment.

Where else would the lost property include designer thongs or customers eat Ladurée macarons off the back of a naked woman, a famous male barrister end up in an alcove with his female rival days after their clash in a criminal court, or Mick Jagger reportedly be turned away for wearing a pair of jeans?

Hervo explains that her club is a bastion of French “savoir vivre”, where a select group of beautiful, intelligent and well-educated people conduct themselves in a way befitting a nation that has given the world some of its greatest suggestive literature, from Molière’s Dom Juan to Laclos’ Les liaisons dangereuses.

Consider, for example, her account of one of the Eyes Wide Shut theme parties she holds from time to time. “A naked woman, her gaze hidden by a Venetian mask, lies on a table,” she writes. “A nymph in a transparent toga joins her. She kneels down and delicately pulls her legs apart.”

She has torrid encounters herself, for instance with a woman whose perfume she found bewitching and whose body she discovered behind a veil in an alcove.

Much of her time, however, is spent looking after her patrons, like the couple of regulars who realised to their horror that their adult son and his partner had also begun going to Les Chandelles. Hervo tells how they begged her to help them avoid what they said would be a “regrettable” meeting.

On another occasion, a male customer arrived with his mistress, explaining to Hervo that his wife was stuck at home because she was ill. An hour later, the wife arrived with a younger man, she writes. “Don’t say anything to my husband,” she told Hervo. “He thinks I’ve got the flu.”

Hervo promptly rushed downstairs where she found the husband, “naked and frolicking with his partner and a few other accomplices”. She advised him to leave through the emergency exit.

I am discussing these and more adventures with Hervo at a table in her club’s pink and white restaurant, which is to be found at the bottom of stairs that wind down from an ordinary-looking blue door on the street.

Opposite us is another staircase that leads to what could easily be mistaken for an 18th- century Parisian literary salon – were it not for the mattress in the alcove at the end of it.

A third staircase, encased in walls painted in gold leaf, descends to a dancefloor, a bar and more salons with their alcoves, benches and mattresses.

It is difficult to find an English word to describe Les Chandelles. Some have called it a swingers’ club, although that conveys none of the cerebral sophistication and cultural aspirations that go with elite sex in France.

Others have used the term wife-swapping (or échangisme, as the French call it), but Hervo is no more happier with that than with group sex.

“For me, échangisme is very reductive and sad,” Hervo explains. “It involves some kind of contract between four people and they all need to agree, which can’t happen very often.”

What prevails at her club, she says, is libertinage, a concept dating back to a 12th-century rebellion against the church by disaffected clerics who were determined to place physical love above the courtly version promoted by troubadours and their ilk.

The contemporary version of this philosophy involves making “everything possible and nothing obligatory”, Hervo says.

One couple might go for sex, either with each other or with someone else, she says. A second might go along to watch. A third could be happy with a turn on the dancefloor.

“For some, it is enough to have an imaginary journey. For others, they will want a little bit more. But what happens in the salons is the icing on the cake and it doesn’t matter if nothing happens, because we’ve had such fun with the preliminaries.

“Everyone goes at their own rhythm. You may be happy with a look, a caress or with voyeurism. But that is all very different to échangisme.”

Libertinage, which has come and gone in France over the centuries – the early 17th and the mid-18th being among the high points – enjoyed a return to fashion from the late Nineties with the emergence of hundreds of clubs amid a spirit of unrestrained freedom.

The number has since fallen, with adepts taking to organising their own house parties. At the last count there were 269 such clubs left, according to French state radio.

The health crisis looks likely to drive many more out of business, their activities scarcely being compatible with social distancing.

Les Chandelles, however, has a status apart, and this should offer it protection against the vicissitudes of fortune.

Hervo says her customers include “politicians from both the left and the right” and “celebrities from across the whole world” (she refuses to divulge their names).

Hervo says that as her club’s fame has grown, so has its allure to visitors from Europe, the US, Asia and “a lot from Britain”.

It is not enough just to cross the channel and knock on the door, though. In order to get in, you need erotic knowhow, Hervo says, along with familiarity with Parisian savoir-vivre.

“It is an alchemy. A way of being,” she says.

In his Histoire du libertinage, Didier Foucault, a history lecturer at Toulouse University who is a specialist on the subject, writes of how the practice became fashionable after 1600 among aristocrats driven “by a haughty refusal to bow either to common law or to any authority whatsoever, be it temporal or divine”.

There may be something similar about the French elite that frequents Les Chandelles. The entrance fee is €96 for two, or €310 with dinner and a bottle of Deutz champagne thrown in. If Deutz is too downmarket, there is Cristal Roederer for €490 or Dom Pérignon Rosé for €470.

But the selection policy is not based on money, Hervo insists. More important to her are “elegance, refinement, education and taste.

“I have a very tough door policy. I turn away a lot of people.”

The badly dressed, the ugly, the vulgar, have no hope of getting past her, she says, while the overweight may struggle as well, at least if they are male.

“I know I shouldn’t be saying this, but I am going to say it anyway. I think I would be more concerned by a fat man than a round woman. Round women can be very beautiful but, in general, men who are fat are… Well, someone who lets himself go physically is someone who does… not respect himself. And if he doesn’t respect himself, he is less likely to respect other people.”

Les dessous des Chandelles is a strange, almost dual work. On the one hand, it is a window onto this secretive world of privilege and exclusion created by Hervo beneath Rue Thérèse in the French capital.

On the other, it is a tale of the author’s personal voyage through libertinage and her claim that the sexual liberation she found along the way, first in other clubs and then in her own, helped to unshackle her from a traumatic childhood marked by incest, guilt and depression.

Our conversation reflects the same duality.

For much of the interview, Hervo comes across as the archetypal Parisian businesswoman, complete with carefully applied make-up, an elegant hairdo, an articulate discourse, a headstrong Yorkshire terrier and a well-trained fiancé – Tom, the maker of an excellent Sancerre white wine, who rushes off shortly after I arrive and returns later with an armful of her outfits for the photoshoot, including an all-white suit and a glittering jacket.

One minute she is talking with off-putting clarity about the female orgasm, telling me in a tone that brooks no argument that “a woman’s sexuality is so much richer than that of a man”. The next she is explaining, with equal equanimity, how she resisted underworld attempts to take over her club following her divorce in 2005.

Like all self-respecting Parisiennes, she knows how to throw a strategic fit of pique as well, announcing that the photographer is driving her mad and that Tom had better summon a friend for help, and be quick about it. The friend duly arrives with a bottle of sancerre to enable Hervo to get through the afternoon session.

Yet, from time to time, there are signs of the scars left by childhood, as when she concedes that she took refuge in libertinage in part because “at night-time, you can’t see the suffering so much… the glitter masks the pain”.

At one point, her eyes fill with tears as she discloses that her relatives have refused to speak to her since the publication of her book, which recounts her rape by her grandfather as a young girl, her parents’ refusal to believe her, her teenage struggles with depression, her toxic marriage to a man 20-odd years her senior, and her salvation in swingers’ clubs.

It was her former husband who introduced her to libertinage. She writes of her first experience in a club where “in a salon plunged into darkness… some couples are making love while others are observing them”.

She did not want to join in – at least not the first time – but says, “My emotion [was]great and my excitement real.”

“I was 24 and I instinctively knew it was right for me,” Hervo tells me. “What I liked in those places was a feeling of freedom and especially a feeling that I was meeting couples who seemed to get on well together.

“That was not the image of the couple I had received as a child because my parents argued all the time. It was like Disneyland as far as I was concerned.”

When her former husband suggested opening their own swingers’ club in Paris, she jumped at the chance. He put up some of the money, they borrowed the rest and she became the manager.

“It was a success straight away, because I think it was the first club to give so much importance to women,” she says. “At that time, in 1993, in other clubs, the women were just treated as objects and it was the men who took charge of the games and who brought along their wives.

“I think that they were probably men of little courage who were not able to cheat on their wives and who went to this sort of place instead. But that was not at all in the spirit of libertinage.”

Les Chandelles would be different, she decided. “Women who are objects are women without humanity. Here, I made sure that the women were subjects.

“In fact, I created here what I never had myself. I tried to encourage women to take their time, to dare to set the tempo, to ask men to be attentive and unhurried and to be gallant, because women adore gallantry.”

She says her door policy has always involved refusing entrance to couples if she suspects that the woman is being dragged along against her will or kept in the dark about the true nature of Les Chandelles. “Even now in 2021, there are boors who don’t tell their partners where they are taking them,” she says. “It’s increasingly rare but it still happens. But if I have the slightest doubt, I question them. You get a feeling for these things.”

Inside the club, no means no, she says, explaining that men can be expelled for repeating a request to a female customer if they are turned down the first time.

“I think women are much safer in this sort of place than in traditional nightclubs where they get hassled all the time,” she tells me.

She says that she herself came to see Les Chandelles – of which she has been the sole owner since extracting herself from her disastrous marriage 16 years ago and buying her former husband’s share – as a refuge from the wounds left by her troubled childhood.

“This has been my bunker and my incubator,” she says. “It was where I revitalised myself, and where I discovered myself too.”

Can her club really be as idyllic as she pretends?

For years, Les Chandelles has been described in the French press as a favourite haunt of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, who resigned following his arrest on suspicion of rape. Although the charge was ultimately dropped, reports of his attendance at Les Chandelles have done nothing for its image.

Recently, it has also been linked with Gérald Darminin, President Macron’s interior minister, who, it has emerged, went to Les Chandelles in 2009 with a woman who had asked him for help in overturning her criminal conviction – he was legal affairs adviser for an opposition political party at the time – and who has accused him of raping her later that evening.

He denies her claim, but the publicity has scarcely been an advertisement for Hervo’s establishment.

She says the coverage has been misleading and unfair. DSK, for instance, barely ever visited Les Chandelles, she insists.

“There are many other politicians who came more often than him and who were much more important than him,” she says.

As for Darmanin, she says that when he dropped into the club a little over a decade ago, he was a young bachelor, and that young bachelors sometimes visit “for an evening with – what’s that word they use now? – oh yes, les sex friends, that’s it.

“And there’s nothing wrong with that. If you find yourself on your own for a year or so, you might want a regular one of those. Why not?”

Until now, the interview has gone smoothly enough, interrupted only by the barking of Cerise, Hervo’s Yorkshire terrier, at the emergence of the photographer from below.

But then I make a big mistake. Noting the entrance policy favours single women – who are allowed in on evenings otherwise reserved for couples, when single men are banned – I ask Hervo whether she uses them as an enticement for male patrons seeking a threesome with their wives and another partner.

She looks daggers across the table. “That is really a stupid, male, Cro-Magnon thing to say,” she tells me. “It’s very maladroit of you.

“Single women come because they want to have fun, because they could meet a man who pleases them, or a woman, or perhaps neither. Sometimes, it’s just two women friends who come for a drink because they know that here they won’t be bothered and because they will be appreciated because they are pretty.

“When I began here, I didn’t receive single women in the evening, because society considered that a woman who came alone to an establishment like mine was either a whore or a bitch. I fought to make people understand that life does not work like that, and I am proud to say that today I have single women among my customers.”

I ask Hervo if she is a feminist. “I certainly am not a neo-feminist,” she says, explaining that she laughs off wolf whistles in the street, likes being complimented on her looks and wants to “seduce or to be seduced, freely. But I am feminist for some things. I am in favour of women being able to experience pleasure alone at first, to discover their bodies and to enjoy their bodies, and only afterwards to share all that with a partner if they so wish.

“That sort of thing has not always been possible in the past.”

Pointing out that Foucault’s history of libertinage shows how sexual freedoms have come and gone over the centuries in France, I wonder out loud whether the country is shifting back towards greater restraint.

“You’re right, it is,” she says. “The difference is that today, it is not religion that is trying to cover everything up, it’s our moralising society. There is a very prudish scent around these days.”

In a thinly veiled attack on #MeToo, she complains in her book that the social networks have been transformed into “popular tribunals”, that the law has come to treat women “as weak beings which have to be protected” and that the ancestral French game of seduction is being subjected to new codes and new rules.

It is difficult to determine whether the pandemic will brake or accelerate this trend. Some predict that when the crisis ends, we will see a repeat of les années folles (the mad years), as the Twenties were known in France, with a yearning for freedom, parties and libertinage.

Others forecast the continued spread of the Anglo-Saxon-style feminism that Hervo abhors and the curtailment of French love-making and seduction. She is not overly worried, though. On a personal level, she has emerged from years of therapy able to confront her past and look forward to the future, she says. She has become a part-time therapist herself, has a house in the country, where she has spent much of the past year, and is planning to “marry the man I love” this summer.

Even if the moral backlash gathers strength, she thinks that Les Chandelles will continue to triumph.

“There have always been currents and countercurrents, but if society goes one way, people will need a place of liberty where they can do what they want, where they will have the freedom to talk, to exchange.”

Indeed, she believes that her club may even come to play a role similar to that of literary salons in the 18th century, when they nurtured the ideas that helped to topple the ancien régime.

Only in France could there be dreams of Enlightenment amid the shadows of a basement sex club. Les dessous des Chandelles by Valérie Hervo is published by Cherche Midi

[xian-moriarty]

Les espionnes du Roi, T.02 : Le poison du jardin des Plantes.

Christelle Chatel.

2022.

Synopsis :

Après la tentative d’enlèvement du dauphin sur la route du Louvre, son père, Louis XIII, est inquiet. Et lorsque le jardin des Plantes est inauguré, le roi demande à ses trois espionnes de veiller sur le jeune garçon qui doit l'accompagner. Mais pendant l’inauguration, un poison est dérobé. Aurore, Angèle et Azilys se lancent sur la piste du voleur. Une nouvelle menace plane sur Paris… celle d’un poison !

Plaisir de Lecture :

Encore une petite aventure, certes toute simple, mais qui fonctionne. Je ne suis pas le public type.

J’ai passé un très bon moment.

Une petite appréhension à la fin avec l’arrivée du frère d’Aurore.

Note : 3 chats.

Historicité :

Très relative, mais ce n'est pas le but.

Cependant, certains éléments montrent que l'autrice connait son sujet.

Dossier pédagogique en fin d'ouvrage pour découvrir le Jardin du Roi.

Note : 3 chats.

Disponibilité :

Papier ou numérique payant.

Neuf ou occasion.

Adaptation audiovisuelle :

Aucune à ma connaissance.

Bonus Point Chat :

Pas de chat. Snif.

Note : 1 chat.

[anamorph0se]

Les chats du Louvre

[dogandcatcomics]

Taiyō Matsumoto (松本大洋) (Japan, 1967-)  and Ilan Nguyên. Les chats du Louvre.  Paris:  Futuropolis/Louvre, 2017.  American edition as Cats of the Louvre, Viz Media, 2019.