Un grand magasin et une petite chapelle

Headed off to Printemps department store today for Brent's annual business shirt purchases...and then a quiet break at the Expiatory Chapel in Square Louis XVI in the 8th arrondissement.  King Louis XVIII was responsible for the building of the chapel to commemorate the place in the former Madeleine cemetery where his brother Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were buried after their execution in 1793. 

A black, marble altar in the crypt marks the place where Louis XVI was buried, and rows of symbolic gravestones in the inner garden commemorate the Swiss guards who lost their lives in 1792 when the king was arrested at the Tuileries.  The marble gravestones are adorned with poppy heads, cypress and oak branches, indicating that the victims of the Revolution came from all classes of society, and the garden is considered hallowed ground, being composed of excavated material and remains from the former revolutionary mass graveyard.

In the chapel a dress rehearsal by a small operatic group was taking place, accompanied by a solo pianist.  The exaggerated emotions of the opera and the soaring voices brought the chapel to life.  What a setting:  standing below the vaulted ceilings, to one side a marble statue of Marie-Antoinette kneeling before Religion, a plaque engraved with her last letter written to the king's sister; on the other side, a statue of the king supported by an angel, a plaque engraved with his Will.

A day of contrasts!