Paris

Dad came to visit me here in Paris!

But this afternoon after Dad left to go back to the States, (he stopped by to visit me last night/this morning after finishing at his conference in Leon, Spain- it was a great visit and I couldn't have been happier to see anyone!) I made my way over to the gardens with my copy of The Hunchback of Notre Dame for a relaxing and enjoyable afternoon.

While reading Hugo's prose, I came across this quote, the last sentence of the eleventh chapter, this afternoon and it is so completely expressive of the city that I had to share it:

"Listen, then, to this tutti of steeples: diffuse over the whole the murmur of half a million of people- the everlasting plaint of the river- the boundless breathings of the wind- the grave and far quartet of the four forests placed upon the hills in the distance like so many vast organs, immersing in them, as in a demi-tint all in the central concert that would otherwise be too rugged or too sharp; and then say whether you know of anything in the world more rich, more joyous, more golden, more dazzling than this tumult of bells and chimes- this furnace of music- these thousand voices of brass, all singing together in flutes of stone three hundred feet high- this city which is all one orchestra- this symphony as loud as a tempest."