The general public sits in a gallery that looks like a shallow cupboard and is so close to the ceiling that, glancing up from below, one feels that at any moment the people perched on its shelves may come toppling down on the learned counsels' wigs.
It is plainly Paris, but the quays rise as if on stilts above the Seine, suggesting that half the river has drained or boiled away, while the feet of the Eiffel Tower are planted on a glass piazza, so that pedestrians below can glance upward and, to all appearances, watch their fellow-citizens walk on air.
They look around the place in genuine, generational bewilderment and tell me they can't quite believe how common it is to see one or other in a couple make that sly, below-table glance at a mobile phone.
Hardly anything worth a glance now sells below the $1,000 mark, whether it is Old Master prints, 18th- and 19th-century decorative art, or painted pots from Great Greece, in modern southern Italy.
At first glance, Massa Lemu's Rapture (pictured below right), which is on view at the Episcopal Diocese of Texas (EDOT Galleryy in Houston through Aug. 10, appears to be a colorful abstract painting, which may depict cells magnified under a microscope or an underwater scene.
As a glance down the list below shows, it takes a decent team to crack this particular chestnut.
As I ventured a quick glance over the edge, below us was a spectacular house perched on the edge of a rock jetty with a 180° view of the Pacific.
Glance over the tab below.
If we glance down at the abyss below, we are lost.
Your Designated Mate's glance toward the dock, far below, may reveal that his interests are not fully aligned with your new host's.
