Louvre Pyramid Reflected

This is an image of a reflection at the side of the large lobby under the Louvre's entrance pyramid; two visitors are at the top of the escalator.  Today was the first Sunday of the month, and thus the Louvre was free (as are most of the state-run museums in Paris). We arrived underground (at the Carrousel du Louvre) at the 9 am opening but still faced a long line for the security check--we were relieved that it was just 40 minutes.  Our particular destination was an exquisite exhibition  of drawings by Parmigianino (1503-1540), displaying the Louvre's entire collection of some 80 works--most small and delicately sketched, many preparatory to paintings (usually illustrated in excellent trilingual captions). After a while I began to feel that drawing must have come as naturally to Parmigianino as breathing!

We did not get to the Louvre at all last year, put off by a truly huge crowd the one weekday we tried. Today a helpful fellow at the information desk mentioned the option to reserve advance tickets for a specific time on the internet--we had seen that, but he stressed that there is a separate priority entrance (whoopee!).

In the afternoon we watched Ireland and Wales face off in the third of the weekend's Six-Nation rugby matches--it was as good as any I've seen, fast-paced with much open-field action; amazingly it ended in a tie, 16-16--very unusual in the tournament.

Edit:  An email comment:  "The shadowy figures in today's blip suggest a novel or movie (to be titled Pei-ton Place*), with some interesting plot twists (how does one character survive an apparent lightning strike?  who is the mystery person disappearing at the bottom of the scene?)."
[* I.M. Pei was the architect of the pyramid]