Secrets of Paris_ A Novel - Luanne Rice [63]
“The builders expect me,” Michael said. “The table will be delivered today.”
“C’est pas vrai!” Anne said, sounding delighted. “I cannot wait to see it! You are terrible for not telling me sooner, but I forgive you.”
He had known she would love his idea for the information kiosk: a copy of one of Boulle’s tables from the King’s state chamber in the Palais du Louvre, the chamber planned by Lescot and Scibec de Carpi. In one of those perfect coincidences, that was the time of Madame de Sévigné. Although most of the plans had been formed before he knew her, lately she had been trying to influence him to fill the Salle with paintings and a tapestry actually purchased by Louis XIV.
Now that he had told her about the table, she insisted that he finish his coffee and prepare to leave right away. They walked to the Louvre in five minutes, when it usually took ten.
“It’s getting cooler. You can tell fall is coming,” Michael said as they crossed the Pont du Carrousel. He gazed upriver, at the great glass dome of the Grand Palais. He tried to pick his apartment house out of those that lined the banks, but it was around the bend.
“Hurry up,” Anne said, walking ahead of him.
Although the museum was an hour from opening, the first tourists trailed toward the glass pyramid, where they would enter. Michael and Anne used a more convenient, VIP entrance nearer the street.
“Patron!” called Gaston, the project foreman. He came toward Michael, shook his hand. He spoke to Anne. It didn’t exactly bother Michael that the workers knew she was his lover, but it made him uncomfortable. Anne herself did not seem to mind.
“So, where is it?” she asked Gaston.
“Downstairs. We waited for Monsieur McBride before bringing it up. It is in four pieces, wrapped, in boxes. I saw them off the truck myself.”
“Big boxes!” called Prosper, a toothless Greek whose working papers had just come through.
“Let’s bring them up,” Michael said. He led Anne, Gaston, and twelve workers down an interior staircase.
“You are Charles Lebrun,” Anne whispered to him in English, so the others would not understand. “Architect to the King of France. You are directing this band of workers, from Reims, to install a great and marvelous table of the King’s choice. It must be perfect, because guess who’s coming to dinner?”
“The court’s greatest gossip?” Michael asked.
“Hush, don’t spoil it,” Anne said, sounding hurt. “Think of her as a reporter, a chronicler of that age.”
“Okay,” Michael said. Why had he called Madame de Sévigné a gossip, intending to be mean? He felt exhilarated; the installation of the information table meant more to him than any other part of the project. He had found the artisan, ordered it commissioned. Michael remembered all the cajoling he had done to convince the maker to abandon his other work to have it ready on time. It galled him that Anne would tell him to pretend he was Lebrun. That was it. Michael admired Lebrun’s work; who wouldn’t? But why would Anne suggest that Michael, at his moment of triumph, pretend to be an architect who had lived centuries ago?
Yet when the table was carried in four sections to the second floor and the protective wrapping taken away, when it was centered in the Salle des Quatre Saisons, she gasped.
“As Marie de Sévigné said of Louis the XIV’s apartment,” Anne said, “ ‘the furnishings are divine, utter magnificence everywhere.’ ”
“It is perfect,” Gaston said. “The best information center in the Louvre.”
The table was enormous: stately, simple, and long enough to hold a banquet for the court or all the brochures, maps, and booklets necessary to guide modern tourists through the vast Louvre. He would have liked to order a copy of the one gilded and carved with heads of dragons. The Ministry of Culture had balked at that, citing time and cost, chiding Michael to remember there had been a revolution.
“Now you must turn your attention to the paintings,” Anne said. “Poussin’s Sacrament of Extreme Unction must hang there.” She indicated the long north wall. “Settle for nothing