The new statue of Thomas Jefferson along the banks of the Seine. It was installed on the fourth of July, five years ago to date. By lovers of the ancient traditions of French-American fascination and friendship. Forever a dying breed, but one that still wields prestige, money (the Virginians) and pens (French), and that can still get one of their American heroes cast in bronze and placed directly opposite the Louvre.

Jefferson stands facing the hôtel de Salm, which inspired Jefferson's Monticello. Of which Jefferson was himself the architect. The statue is a-political, a statue of a foreign leader standing right between the French assembly and the Louvre is a bit much as it was. However, semingly innocently Jefferson is waving in his left hand his blueprint for his Monticello. A building inspired by the Paris' example in front of him. A nod then to the America he built. One build not just out of stone, but of ideas, for both of which he drew inspiration from his years in Paris. He holds his architectural plans for the new world directly at the left bank, the centres of state power to his right, of learning to his right. The statue seduces, subtly, like a man can who's lived in Paris for five years, as Jefferson did. He seduces by ostensibly paying a compliment, by drawing inspiration from what he sees in front of him. Drawing the spectator closer, inspiring to take a closer look, for him to discover that, although looking at France it is America that Jefferson is drawing, a whole new world, to love and to draw inspiration from in return.

It is beautiful.