The Palais Royal, the “number one in Paris” spot, long before a highly touted Saint Germain des Près, the flashy Champs Elysées, or the large potato masher supermarket in Les Halles.
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette, sacred monster of literature around the twentieth, lived in the Palais Royal and every day, from his window, enjoyed the Parisian spectacle. In her diary, “Paris de ma Fenêtre”, we find the singular style of “Claudine à l’école”, modern, rogue, the devil, freed. However, Colette often reminded us that writing, for her, It wasn’t a gala dinner.
At the Royal Palace, it is happy hourseccentric, excessive, the Regency, the celebrations of Philippe d’Orléans, then again the opulence of the shops under the galleries, the chic of the Grand Véfour restaurant and its emblematic dish “the pressed oxtail with truffles”. And then, it is dark hours, war, occupation, restrictions. Colette, throughout the pages, very close to the poem “courage” by Paul Eluard tells of a Royal Palace with stringy rutabaga sauce, mayonnaise without oil and without eggs and candlemas without pancakes.
And yet, Colette at the edge of her window keeps describing whimsical moments and almost joyous, the visits of his friend and neighbor Jean Cocteau and Jeannot his lover. Jeannot, alias the actor Jean Marais. Also resuscitated René the prostitute who embroiders standing rue du Beaujolais while waiting for the customer, resuscitated Pierrot the cat, Lili the turtle and she writes, “those tiny children of Paris who are five years old in stature and twenty in the expression of their gaze ”.
A summer evening 1954the window of Colette’s apartment remained closed, the garden of the Palais Royal suddenly darkened, a telegram reached the France Presse agency: “Madame Colette died at the age of 81 in her apartment Parisian, she died without suffering surrounded by her husband and her daughter”.
To read or reread, “Paris from my window” by Colette, Fayard editions.