No crime in the fountains

I reserve the right to make a non-crime-fiction post every few months, and I think it's been a few months since the last one, so . . .

Today's principal activity was a stroll along the avenue des Champs-Élysées that culminated in a half-hour or so of reading in the Tuileries, where reasonably comfortable chairs are provided for the purpose or for sitting and watching the birds. In the U.S., the chairs would be of concrete, bolted down, stolen, or eliminated by a local government that has no time for such fripperies.

Yesterday, I visited the Pantheon, which is as awe-inspiring as any great church you'd care to name. That's appropriate, since it used to be a church. Of course, the church was modeled after a "pagan," Roman building. Not only that, but right from the beginning, the church borrowed its administrative structure from those same Romans. From pagans ye came; unto pagans thou shalt return, as some waggish member of the Convention surely must have said sometime in the 1790s.

The tombs of Rousseau and Voltaire face one another in the building's crypt. The remains of many great Frenchmen and at least one great French woman also repose there. This woman achieved epoch-making discoveries, as outlined in a short display just outside her tomb. The display includes pictures, and I noted that she was rather attractive. In fact, if not for the danger that I would be accused of outrageous word play, I might even say she was hot.

Can you name this woman?

© Peter Rozovsky 2007