Meditate with a 19th century brand

In the Gospel of John (4, 1-30), when Jesus, seated on the edge of the well, meets this woman from Samaria, he asks her water to drink to calm the warmth of the day. While promising it water that will soothe, in return, all its interior thirsts. An amazing eternal life trade operates here. Recognized in her truth as a woman and a wife, the Samaritan is going to bring the good news for free to all those around her. History, overwhelming as it is revealing of the Christian spiritual experience, has crossed the centuries, reaching us.

And also up to the banks of the Seine. On the new bridge, precisely, where King Henri IV had the city’s first water lifting machine built in the 17th century, serving the entire district of the Louvre. On the pediment of the small building, the episode of the meeting of Jesus and the Samaritaine is represented there. Two centuries later, Ernest Cognacq, a young Parisian Camelot, installed a modest stall near the old pump, before opening a little further, in 1870, which became, in a few years, one of the largest stores in the capital, the Samaritaine. And a vanguard of the temples of modern consumption. All the architecture of these new kinds stores testifies to the posters that advertise them, overflowing from the convolutions of Art Nouveau. But having lost, in passing, the free gift of living water. And the joy of a thirst that nothing can buy.