In this holiday of furry bunnies, painted eggs, and chocolate, let us not forget the mystery of occupied Paris — the first time the city was occupied, in the fabulous 1890s. For four years they ruled the city and played a bizarre game involving eggs and chocolate that spanned the labyrinthine city. The world chocolate supply was threatened by these mad rabbits whose appetite for treats was insatiable.
Anthropologists believe the rabbits were a remnant from pagan times, having run to the hills first when the Romans arrived and stayed there during the Christian era.
The first rabbits to openly appear in the city were part human, like the sculptor August Rodin. People grew accustomed to seeing bunny ears in cafes and in the bordellos, and of course the street musicians on the East Bank. No one cared, at first, how much poetry they wrote or how much chocolate they consumed. Their sexual habits were considered at first, well, simply French.
Henri Greville was the pen name of widely-translated author Alice Durand, but was she in reality a giant female rabbit? Certainly a time of peaceful coexistence between humans and rabbits brought a blossoming of the arts, the so-called “Belle Lapin” Epoque, the days of beautiful rabbits, and many babies were born with fuzzy tails and whiskers.
By 1888, a few rabbit-headed humans (hubbits) had succeeded in business and politics. Harvey Zajac, pictured right, ran a perfumery and was among them. His half-rabbit sense of smell made him a natural and his line bloomed internationally. He may have funded, “Burning Bunny,” a chocolate festival where only edible garb was allowed. The gathering reached orgiastic proportions and created a scandal when a number of priests attended, wearing only chocolate vest-mints.
How did things take a strange turn by 1892? Perhaps the arrival of the Queen, a 200 foot (63 meter) rabbit, caused fear. She requested homage and recompense for the years of suppression of Pagan ways. She could eat an entire trainload of chocolate in an hour. She is pictured at the top of the article, under the Eiffel Tower, in the only known photo verified to be her. Satie wrote the Gymnopedies in her memory, and Picasso said of her in 1962, “She lit the tastebuds of the city aflame, and we could not be sated. We broke every rule to please her.”
In this photo above, children are being dipped in chocolate and placed into egg-shaped containers. Was this a game the children enjoyed? Where they, as some conservative human politicians purported, being eaten by the rabbits? Certainly, on Easter Sunday, the rabbits hunted for the painted Eggs and chocolate was consumed, but what of the children? At front, we see either a sculpture by Degas or a child encased in chocolate.
The rabbits apparently become addicted to the chocolate and the intense, unnatural sugar added, and were forced to retreat back into the mountains. Baudelaire, who had a rabbit lover, writes that an incident occurred when the rabbits were high on sugar which was used as a pretext to attack the rabbits.
The rabbits’ offspring, after exposure to chocolate, were reduced to chocolate treats, only fit for human consumption, which we still eat to this day.
Many wonder now, if the best of the rabbits– the artists, pagans, witches, and feminists, the gender-bending rabbits of the Seine — had continued to co-exist with humans, what would have happened? It is unclear how events transpired, what lead to the unease between people and rabbits, as the history was written primarily by white, human males.
The artistic, spiritual, and genetic makeup of France had been given something ancient and revitalizing. Jews remember the story of the “blood libel” and know it is a terrible thing to be falsely accused. We can trace many of the egg-hunting traditions through the heady days of the giant rabbits of Paris. May our love of chocolate, bunnies, and finding what was hidden in painted eggs live on, from the tips of our bunny ears to the swing of our bunny tails. If you’re feeling frisky, perhaps you have a bit of hubbit blood running through your chocolate system.
