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The Manfriend in the Museum


They descended into the Louvre underneath the great glass Pyramide du Louvre by I.M. Pei. Severus had her hand in a tight grip as the crowd pressed around them like the purple and grey storm clouds that tossed high above the glass ceiling.

"I think I might be a little old for you," he muttered, eyeing a youthful couple entwined in an embarrassingly passionate embrace in the shadow of the stairs.

Elaine rolled her eyes. "How old are you?"

"Forty–Five."

"That's only ten years older than me. I really don't think you should worry about it." She hurried on before he could continue. "I am so excited! We will see the Venus de Milo, Leonardo's Mona Lisa, Eugene Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People, Rigauld's Louis XIV, and Caravaggio's Death of the Virgin. They even have the Code of Hammurabi. Did you know that the Louvre's Islamic art collect is over three thousand objects?" She tugged him gently towards the ticket counter.

He allowed her to lead, his expression soft and affectionate. "Perhaps we ought to spend our last few days here," he teased, intercepting her hand as she reached for her purse to pay for the tickets.

She watched him unfold his own Euros for a moment before smiling up at him. "Maybe they would let us set up some cots in the hallways."

He offered her his arm and she clutched the tickets as they walked to the entrance closest to the wing housing the Mona Lisa, their shoes and his cane tapping on the gleaming marble floor.

"You know, I've been meaning to speak to you about paying for this lovely holiday." She watched his expression go blank, then hard, out of the corner of her eye.

"You'll not pay for anything," he said flatly.

Elaine presented their tickets and they were ushered through into the museum proper. "Severus, really, if we are going to be in a romantic relationship we have to renegotiate."

It was as though his eyes had turned to chips of ice. She tugged him into a quiet alcove.

"Renegotiate?" he asked quietly, his voice sharply edged and dangerous.

Elaine twisted the fabric of her blouse through her fingers. "Well—yes. I thought—that is…you shouldn't pay me if I'm to be your girlfriend. I'd feel like a kept woman. And you should let me take some of the burden of expense—I've got money." She couldn't meet his eyes, too afraid of what she might find in his expression.

"I'm a little old to have a girlfriend, don't you think?" His voice was warm again and faintly teasing. He squeezed her hand gently before tugging her into an embrace. "Let's talk again when we get home to England."

She nodded against his shoulder. "I'll not forget you know," she threatened playfully.

"Unfortunately," he muttered, leaning down for a chaste kiss. "Girlfriend does have a nice ring to it—but I refuse to be a boyfriend."

"Manfriend?" Elaine teased sweetly with a giggle.


Purple, #83


I. M. Pei's glass pyramid was completed in 1989. It is an ingenious solution enabling hundreds of thousands of visitors to enter the Louvre by going underground in the center of the Cour Napoléon, avoiding the congestion of the old entryways.

Venus de Milo is an ancient Greek statue created sometime between 130 and 100 BC. It is one of the most famous works of ancient Greek sculpture.

The Mona Lisa has been acclaimed as "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world."

Liberty Leading the People commemorates the July Revolution of 1830, which toppled King Charles X of France. A woman, personifying Liberty, who holds the flag of the French Revolution (the tricolor flag still in use today) in one hand and a bayoneted musket in the other, leads the people forward over the bodies of fallen soldiers.

Hyacinthe Rigaud is inseparable from his best-known work: a 1701 painting of Louis XIV (Louis the Great, or the Sun King) in his coronation costume. There are two copies: one in the Louvre & another (also requested by Louis XIV) in the Palace of Versailles.

The Death of the Virgin, painted in 1606, was completed by the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio who is renowned for his dramatic use of lighting called chiaroscuro.

The Code of Hammurabi is a Babylonian law code carved into a large diorite stele, dating back to about 1770 BC. It is one of the oldest deciphered writings of significant length in the world.