Remembering Nancy

Socially distancing as I am by nature, it cannot be that I miss my trips to Nancy. Yet, perhaps in the wake of a beautiful French love story, filmed with an eye trained on Dutch Master’s interior scenes — Vermeer, Dou; and my reflections on the Old Goat Goethe; I spent the morning cleaning my office while my mind wandered round Nancy: Place Stanislas, Place Carnot, and the area around the Musee d’Ecole de Nancy and Grand Nancy Thermal. There is, in that narrow street, a tiny antique shop stuffed full of art nouveau glass; it is just two steps from Lycee Frederic Chopin and a place where an older, refined gentleman might accidentally make acquaintance of an artistically minded bacalaurette. Or not. What bacalaurette takes interest in old glass? A lovely morning, though, remembering, imagining.