A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Guillotine

I spent a morning wandering through the astonishingly badly curated Carnavalet Museum of the history of Paris last week, and once my headache (caused by how badly the artworks and historical artifacts were organized and displayed) diminished to a dull throb, I was able to enjoy some of the items it had to offer. Here's one that especially caught my eye. I had just gone through the French Revolution rooms, and I unwittingly read "guillotine" instead of "guinguette" on the caption to the drawing below, so that I thought it was called A Family on its Way to the Guillotine:

Family on its Way to the Guingette

Don't they look a little too... happy? I leaned in for a closer look and saw that it said guingette, which means a sort of open-air market, or picnic, not guillotine, which made their clueless smiles much less worrisome than if they were about to get their heads lopped off.

Sadly, it was just about the highlight of my visit. I am dying to get my hands on this place and to whip it into shape. Great collection, great potential, zero planning. I'll put it on my list of things to do.