all, mirrors with a memory. Before his invention, men had stared into stilled ponds, plates of glass, and mirrors with simple fascination at their own aspect. Now they imagined themselves in the stop-time of a photograph, their flaws etched, their lucent eyes alighting on some future viewer, a grandchild in an attic, a bereft widow, and they were taken, if only for a moment, with their own mortality and the residue of a human life. They felt a fondness for their future dead selves, the specter laid down in the mercurous grain.
Louis had a stable hand bring his carriage around and carried his daguerreotype equipment downstairs. He emerged onto the street and noticed the perfection of the day. The pavestone had been glossed by an overnight rain, and from his stoop the entire boulevard stretched away like an expanse of oiled slate. He could smell the bakery ovens firing and the chalky odor of wet sandstone. As he loaded his equipment into the carriage, old men passed with their dogs, traveling in twos and threes behind leashed spaniels and hounds, complaining about their wives and the price of tobacco. Fraternity is not dead. We will die as brothers. Louis ran a hand over a horse flank and climbed up onto the box seat. He filled with the pleasure of the day ripening, with the wild luck of being alive in the middle of the nineteenth century. An artist, a scientist; he was on his way to chronicle the heavens.
The Paris Observatory stood on its namesake avenue, a stone rectangle with two wings attached, each facade facing a cardinal point of the compass. Louis admired the building’s symmetry before entering. The building marked zero latitude—it was literally the center of the world.
Louis knew from François Arago that the foundations and basement of the observatory were as deep as the building was high—about fourteen meters. The subterranean rooms were guarded with some secrecy. On one occasion, a colleague had mentioned that beneath the observatory was an underground portal into the catacombs. These tunnels serviced rock quarries of the Roman era and the mass graves of the revolution, when the cemeteries were abandoned for below-street tombs. In the high and final days of Charles X, before the July Revolution of 1830, the king had thrown wild parties in the catacombs as an affront to revolutionary blood: he held underground orgies, strange feasts of shaved ice and marinated eel. This had always struck Louis as wretched; even though he sometimes favored the monarchy over the revolution, the image of the monarch rav-aging courtesans beside entombed remains saddened him on behalf of the people. But it pleased him to think that above this debauchery, science went on unabated. Astronomers continued their night watch at the height of state corruption; they tracked and measured, gave names to the flash of comets and the pinwheel of stars.
As Louis entered the building, it occurred to him that the catacombs were the perfect place to store his doomsday portraits. Sealed off, far below the city, they stood a chance of surviving whatever storm of terror came with the final days. He would ask Arago on some other pretext for access to the catacombs. François Arago was not the sort of man to share an apocalyptic prophecy with—he was, among other things, a professor of analytical geometry. He believed in form and coherence, that a set of parallel lines extended to infinity.
Louis was led up a long spiral staircase and into a waiting area outside Arago’s office. From out in the street he heard the sound of attendants unloading the photographic equipment from his carriage. There came a loud clatter, and he crossed swiftly to the window. A man in overalls was carrying the tripod over one shoulder as if it were a side of beef.
“Mind the equipment, you oaf!” Louis yelled from the sill.
He was surprised by the volume of his voice. The man looked up, swore under his breath, and plodded into the observatory. Louis felt oddly
Louis had a stable hand bring his carriage around and carried his daguerreotype equipment downstairs. He emerged onto the street and noticed the perfection of the day. The pavestone had been glossed by an overnight rain, and from his stoop the entire boulevard stretched away like an expanse of oiled slate. He could smell the bakery ovens firing and the chalky odor of wet sandstone. As he loaded his equipment into the carriage, old men passed with their dogs, traveling in twos and threes behind leashed spaniels and hounds, complaining about their wives and the price of tobacco. Fraternity is not dead. We will die as brothers. Louis ran a hand over a horse flank and climbed up onto the box seat. He filled with the pleasure of the day ripening, with the wild luck of being alive in the middle of the nineteenth century. An artist, a scientist; he was on his way to chronicle the heavens.
The Paris Observatory stood on its namesake avenue, a stone rectangle with two wings attached, each facade facing a cardinal point of the compass. Louis admired the building’s symmetry before entering. The building marked zero latitude—it was literally the center of the world.
Louis knew from François Arago that the foundations and basement of the observatory were as deep as the building was high—about fourteen meters. The subterranean rooms were guarded with some secrecy. On one occasion, a colleague had mentioned that beneath the observatory was an underground portal into the catacombs. These tunnels serviced rock quarries of the Roman era and the mass graves of the revolution, when the cemeteries were abandoned for below-street tombs. In the high and final days of Charles X, before the July Revolution of 1830, the king had thrown wild parties in the catacombs as an affront to revolutionary blood: he held underground orgies, strange feasts of shaved ice and marinated eel. This had always struck Louis as wretched; even though he sometimes favored the monarchy over the revolution, the image of the monarch rav-aging courtesans beside entombed remains saddened him on behalf of the people. But it pleased him to think that above this debauchery, science went on unabated. Astronomers continued their night watch at the height of state corruption; they tracked and measured, gave names to the flash of comets and the pinwheel of stars.
As Louis entered the building, it occurred to him that the catacombs were the perfect place to store his doomsday portraits. Sealed off, far below the city, they stood a chance of surviving whatever storm of terror came with the final days. He would ask Arago on some other pretext for access to the catacombs. François Arago was not the sort of man to share an apocalyptic prophecy with—he was, among other things, a professor of analytical geometry. He believed in form and coherence, that a set of parallel lines extended to infinity.
Louis was led up a long spiral staircase and into a waiting area outside Arago’s office. From out in the street he heard the sound of attendants unloading the photographic equipment from his carriage. There came a loud clatter, and he crossed swiftly to the window. A man in overalls was carrying the tripod over one shoulder as if it were a side of beef.
“Mind the equipment, you oaf!” Louis yelled from the sill.
He was surprised by the volume of his voice. The man looked up, swore under his breath, and plodded into the observatory. Louis felt oddly
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