Reader’s Digest International — August 2017

100 | August• 2017

She appears to be waiting for some-

one. No-one comes. Across the pas-

sage, in a dealership of rare stamps,

the elderly proprietor sits alone at his

register, nursing a steaktartareand a

red wine. He may be a widower, unac-

customed to solitude – or he may have

dined this way for 65 years.

IF THE BOULEVARD CAFÉSand the

galleries represent two of the great

urban theaters of theville spectacle,

the city of entertainment, as Paris was

known, the third is the department

store, what Balzac called “the great

of erotic nudes. By the time I swivel
back, they’ve set their books down
and are making small talk. By the time
I leave, they’re laughing.
Each of Paris’s galleries, I’ll dis-
cover, has its own stories, only half-
told by the time I pass through. In the
Passage des Panoramas – famous, in
Zola’s novelNana, as the place where
his titular courtesan meets her lovers

• the story may be missed opportuni-
  ties. I spy a woman of a certain age,
  overdressed in blue chiffon, sitting
  straight-backed on the terrace of a
  brasserie with a 19th-century facade.

In Paris, a kiss is more than just a kiss – it’s a shared moment in the city’s story