Gambling and the Sacre Coeur

When we were 21, Mary and I began the first leg of our cross-country, and ultimately around-the-world, jaunt from Mary’s home in Newport, CA. We first drove to Las Vegas where my sister and her husband were performing as backup singers for I forget who. I guess I didn’t write a letter home, since the only note I could find about it was this reference when we were in Biarritz, France, 1962.

“Last night we went to the casino, an elegant building overlooking the ocean. We arrived with three whole dollars to gamble, but they took $1.20 from us at the door, leaving us with only $1.80. Mary’s friend Jacques, who works there, gave us a cup of coffee and we watched as other people drifted in and began to play. Finally we got very very brave and went to the two-franc minimum table (40 cents). By a well-planned strategy of only playing red or black, we won and won until our 40 cents increased to $3.00! Knowing luck was with us, we cashed in $1.00, got a pretty pink chip, just one, and graduated to the 5-franc table. Again, we won.

“The other players were interesting to watch. Once, by mistake, a man took the chips I'd won and walked away with them. There was quite a commotion when the other men at the table caught up with him and made him give them back. Poor man, he was probably just frustrated since he had usually played red when I played black or vice versa, and lost. The other people at the table tipped the house sometimes as much as $10.00! We ended up with our $3.00 increased to $9.00!

“The casino wasn't as much fun as Las Vegas because the atmosphere is all business with no bands, no noise, just gambling.”

The gambling bug must have lain dormant in Mary for fifty years, because it surfaced when we went to Sacre Coeur. What a circus surrounds this brilliant white architectural wonder built on the highest hill in Montmartre!

The streets from the metro stop are like an Arabian bazaar crowded with colorful shops, shoulder to shoulder tourists, side-alley drug deals, and thieves, with a background noise of shouts, bargaining, amplified music, and live musicians.

In one block were the sleight-of-hand artists. Each had set up a table in the middle of the walkway where he deftly switched three cups over and under, then stopped and the person who had given him 5-francs got to choose which cup held the token. Rarely did anyone win, and never did they win twice.

After watching a few times, Mary knew the secret. See her in the picture handing over her 5 francs. She watched intently as the man switched the cups, then tapped the left one. Nothing. She had lost. The onlookers begged her to try again. She did. And lost. She was finished. Cured. The gambling bug was gone, and we kept walking, leaving his accomplices to find another victim.

The stairway looked too steep to climb. I remembered the many steps up to the Fourviere in Lyon and didn’t want to repeat that experience, so we rode the funicular up to the top. Well worth it. (We walked down.)

This is the fabled area where composers and artists lived in the 1800’s. Little signs point out where Van Gogh shared space with his friends. Today’s portrait artists, their easels next to outdoor cafés, make excellent pencil or charcoal drawings of tourists. I am envious of their skill, never having been good at portraits. What’s to become of them, I wonder. Art is not a well-paid profession and jobs are few, even for the exceptionally talented.

On the broad steps a man with a guitar sang American folk music, pleasing a huge crowd that was also being entertained by the basketball/gymnast specialist. This guy could do anything with a basketball (except, perhaps, get it in the basket). Spinning it, he stood on his hands, climbed the light pole, hung himself out at a 90 degree angle, threw the ball and caught it, always spinning. Agile as a monkey, he performed impossible tricks, and didn’t get nearly as many francs thrown into his hat as he should have.

Finally we entered the Basilica of Sacre Coeur, or Sacred Heart. It’s iconic for Paris, but few know that it was built in the 1880s as penance for the sins of the people of Paris. Surely, reasoned the church authorities, Parisians had sinned, for how else could the Prussians have been able to lay siege to the city from September 1870 to January 1871, cutting off all supplies and starving the people? A menu at the time from the Latin Quarter included such delicacies as:

* Consommé de cheval au millet. (horse)

* Brochettes de foie de chien à la maître d'hôtel. (dog)

* Emincé de rable de chat. Sauce mayonnaise. (cat)

* Epaules et filets de chien braisés. Sauce aux tomates. (dog)

* Civet de chat aux champignons. (cat)

* Côtelettes de chien aux petits pois. (dog)

* Salamis de rats. Sauce Robert. (rats)

* Gigots de chien flanqués de ratons. Sauce poivrade. (dog, rats)

* Begonias au jus. (flowers)

* Plum-pudding au rhum et à la Moelle de Cheval. (horse)

How could this happen to a city like Paris, in a civilized world? I had thought things like that stopped in the middle ages. Naïve me.

During the siege, pigeons and balloons carried communications to the outside world. It’s not so long ago, is it? One hundred and forty years. Wars are still with us, continuously, fought with weapons and communications far different from back then.

Somewhere on this trip we saw a poignant, monumental painting of a young man, slain, lying on the ground naked, surrounded by a few people. The story was that he was a duke, and since his uniform had been stolen, only his long fingernails allowed him to be identified. I wonder if royalty didn’t cut their fingernails even for battles. Or maybe it was only the duke’s idosyncracy.

Ah, but I must take you inside the basilica! (I could be wrong about the details. They requested no pictures be taken, and I respected that. Do look at the link.)

Picture this: From the circus atmosphere outside, you enter into a celestial simplicity of white and gold mosaics. It takes you a moment to believe what you see there. Rather than a narrow gothic aisle of high stained glass windows, the vast space opens up like the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. From behind the faraway altar, streaming upward across the entire arch of the seemingly boundless dome is Christ, the Lord of All, his arms spread out to encompass everyone, no matter how vile. This is the only major work of art in that church. Along the walls, spaced well apart, are very small mosaics, all in the same style. The clean, crisp simplicity grabbed my heart. When the knickknacks and jumble are cleared away, there is left only the essence, which is Christ.

I could have stayed there a long time.