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Title: Old and New Paris, v. 1 Its History, its People, and its Places
Author: Henry Sutherland Edwards
Release Date: February 28, 2013 [EBook #42231]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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[Illustration: BOULEVARD DES ITALIENS.]
OLD AND NEW PARIS
Its History, its People, and its Places
BY
H. SUTHERLAND EDWARDS
AUTHOR OF "IDOLS OF THE FRENCH STAGE" "THE GERMANS IN FRANCE" "THE RUSSIANS AT HOME" ETC. ETC.
VOL. I
WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS
CASSELL AND COMPANY LIMITED
LONDON PARIS & MELBOURNE
1893
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
[Illustration]
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I......PAGE
PARIS: A GENERAL GLANCE......1
CHAPTER II.
THE EXPANSION OF PARIS
Lutetia--La Cit�--Lutetia taken by Labienus--The Visit of Julian the Apostate--Besieged by the Franks--The Norman Invasion--Gradual Expansion from the �le de la Cit� to the Outer Boulevards--M. Thiers's Line of Outworks.....6
CHAPTER III.
THE LEFT BANK AND THE RIGHT.
Paris and London--The Rive Gauche--The Quartier Latin--The Pantheon--The Luxemburg--The School of Medicine--The School of Fine Arts--The Bohemia of Paris--The Rive Droite--Paris Proper--The "West End".....9
CHAPTER IV.
NOTRE DAME.
The Cathedral of Notre Dame, a Temple to Jupiter--C�sar and Napoleon--Relics in Notre Dame--Its History--Curious Legends--The "New Church"--Remarkable Religious Ceremonies--The Place de Gr�ve--The Days of Sorcery--"Monsieur de Paris"--Dramatic Entertainments--Coronation of Napoleon.....12
CHAPTER V.
SAINT-GERMAIN-L'AUXERROIS
The Massacre of St. Bartholomew--The Events that preceded it--Catherine de Medicis--Admiral Coligny--"The King-Slayer"--The Signal for the Massacre--Marriage of the Duc de Joyeuse and Marguerite of Lorraine.....22
CHAPTER VI.
THE PONT-NEUF AND THE STATUE OF HENRI IV.
The Oldest Bridge in Paris--Henri IV.--His Assassination by Ravaillac--Marguerite of Valois--The Statue of Henri IV.--The Institute--The Place de Gr�ve.....30
CHAPTER VII.
THE BOULEVARDS.
From the Bastille to the Madeleine--Boulevard Beaumarchais--Beaumarchais--The Marriage of Figaro--The Bastille--The Drama in Paris--Adrienne Lecouvreur--Vincennes--The Duc d'Enghien--Duelling--Louis XVI.....43
CHAPTER VIII.
THE BOULEVARDS (continued).
H�tel Carnavalet--H�tel Lamoignon--Place Royale--Boulevard du Temple--The Temple--Louis XVII--The Theatres--Astley's Circus--Attempted Assassination of Louis Philippe--Trial of Fieschi--The Caf� Turc--The Caf�s--The Folies Dramatiques--Louis XVI. and the Opera--Murder of the Duke of Berri.....67
CHAPTER IX.
The Porte Saint-Martin--Porte Saint-Denis--The Burial Place of the French Kings--Funeral of Louis XV.--Funeral of the Count de Chambord--Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle--Boulevard Poissonni�re--Boulevard Montmartre--Frascati.....95
CHAPTER X.
BOULEVARD AND OTHER CAF�S.
The Caf� Litt�raire--Caf� Procope--Caf� Foy--Bohemian Caf�s--Caf� Momus--Death of Moli�re--New Year's Gifts.....107
CHAPTER XI.
The Op�ra Comique of Paris--I Gelosi--The Don Juan of Moli�re--Madame Favart--The Saint-Simonians.....115
CHAPTER XII.
La Maison Dor�e--Librairie Nouvelle--Catherine II. and the Encyclop�dia--The House of Madeleine Guimard.....122
CHAPTER XIII.
PLACE DE LA CONCORDE.
Its History--Louis XV.--Fireworks--The Catastrophe in 1770--Place de la R�volution--Louis XVI.--The Directory.....143
CHAPTER XIV.
THE PLACE VEND�ME.
The Column of Austerlitz--The Various Statues of Napoleon Taken Down--The Church of Saint-Roch--Mlle. Raucourt--Joan of Arc.....155
CHAPTER XV.
THE JACOBIN CLUB.
The Jacobins--Chateaubriand's Opinion of Them--Arthur Young's Descriptions--The New Club.....161
CHAPTER XVI.
THE PALAIS ROYAL.
Richelieu's Palace--The Regent of Orleans--The Duke of Orleans--Dissipation in the Palais Royal--The Palais National--The Birthplace of Revolutions.....166
CHAPTER XVII.
THE COM�DIE FRAN�AISE.
Its History--The Roman Comique--Under Louis XV.--During the Revolution--Hernani.....172
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY AND THE BOURSE.
The "King's Library"--Francis I. and the Censorship--The Imperial Library--The Bourse.....187
CHAPTER XIX.
THE LOUVRE AND THE TUILERIES.
The Louvre--Origin of the Name--The Castle--Francis I.--Catherine de Medicis--The Queen's Apartments--Louis XIV. and the Louvre--The Museum of the Louvre--The Picture Galleries--The Tuileries--The National Assembly--Marie Antoinette--The Palace of Napoleon III.--"Petite Provence".....193
CHAPTER XX.
THE CHAMPS �LYS�ES AND THE BOIS DE BOULOGNE.
The Champs �lys�es--The �lys�e Palace--Longchamps--The Bois de Boulogne--The Ch�teau de Madrid--The Ch�teau de la Muette--The Place de l'�toile.....218
CHAPTER XXI.
THE CHAMP DE MARS AND PARIS EXHIBITIONS.
The Royal Military School of Louis XV.--The National Assembly--The Patriotic Altar--The Festival of the Supreme Being--Other Festivals--Industrial Exhibitions--The Eiffel Tower--The Trocad�ro.....229
CHAPTER XXII.
THE H�TEL DE VILLE AND CENTRAL PARIS.
The H�tel de Ville--Its History--In 1848--The Communards.....242
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE.
The Palais de Justice--Its Historical Associations--Disturbances in Paris--Successive Fires--During the Revolution--The Administration of Justice--The Sainte-Chapelle.....250
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE FIRE BRIGADE AND THE POLICE.
The Sapeurs-pompiers--The Prefect of Police--The Garde R�publicaine--The Spy System.....270
CHAPTER XXV.
THE PARIS HOSPITALS.
The Place du Parvis--The Parvis of Notre Dame--The H�tel-Dieu--Mercier's Criticisms.....276
CHAPTER XXVI.
CENTRAL PARIS.
The H�tel de Ville--Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie--Rue Saint-Antoine--The Reformation.....281
CHAPTER XXVII.
CENTRAL PARIS (continued).
Rue de Venise--Rachel--St.-Nicholas-in-the-Fields--The Conservatoire des Arts et M�tiers--The Gaiet�--Rue des Archives--The Mont de Pi�t�--The National Printing Office--The H�tel Lamoignon.....298
CHAPTER XXVIII.
The Rue Saint-Denis--Saint-Leu-Saint-Gilles--George Cadoudal--Saint-Eustache--The Central Markets--The General Post Office.....311
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE "NATIONAL RAZOR."
The Rue de l'Arbre Sec--Dr. Guillotin--Dr. Louis--The Guillotine--The First Political Execution.....327
CHAPTER XXX.
THE EXECUTIONER.
The Executioner--His Taxes and Privileges--Monsieur de Paris--Victor of N�mes.....330
CHAPTER XXXI.
P�RE-LACHAISE.
The Cemeteries of Clamart and Picpus--P�re-Lachaise--La Villette and Chaumont--The Conservatoire--Rue Laffitte--The Rothschilds--Montmartre--Clichy.....333
CHAPTER XXXII.
PARIS DUELS.
The Legal Institution of the Duel--The Cong� de la Bataille--In the Sixteenth Century--Jarnac--Famous Duels.....345
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE STUDENTS OF PARIS.
Paris Students--Their Character--In the Middle Ages--At the Revolution--Under the Directory--In 1814--In 1819--Lallemand--In the Revolution of 1830.....355
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE RAG-PICKER OF PARIS.
The Chiffonier or Rag-picker--His Methods and Hours of Work--His Character--A Diogenes--The Chiffonier de Paris.....360
CHAPTER XXXV.
THE BOHEMIAN OF PARIS.
B�ranger's Bohemians--Balzac's Definition--Two Generations--Henri M�rger.....365
CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE PARIS WAITER.
The Gar�on--The Development of the Type--The Gar�on's Daily Routine--His Ambitions and Reverses.....369
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE PARIS COOK.
Brillat Savarin on the Art of Cooking--The Cook and the Roaster--Cooking in the Seventeenth Century--Louis XV.--Mme. de Maintenon.....372
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
.....PAGE
Boulevard des Italiens.....Frontispiece
Place de la Concorde.....1
The Left Bank of the Seine, from Notre Dame.....4
Right Bank of the Seine, from Notre Dame.....5
On the Boulevards--Corner of Place de l'Op�ra.....8
Th��tre Fran�ais.....9
A Street Scene.....11
Notre Dame.....12
The Choir Stalls, Notre Dame.....13
Rue du Cloitre.....16
Apsis of Notre Dame.....17
The Leaden Spire, Notre Dame.....20
Gargoyles in the Sacristy, Notre Dame.....21
Church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois.....24
(Map) Principal Streets of Paris.....25
Scene during the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.....28
The Pont-Neuf and the Louvre, from the Quai des Augustins.....30
By the Pont-Neuf.....32
Seine Fishers.....32
View from the Pavilion de Flore.....facing 33
The Pont-Neuf and the Mint.....33
Statue of Henri IV. on the Pont-Neuf.....36
The Institute.....37
The Pont-Neuf from the Island.....40
View from the Western Point of the �le de la Cit�.....41
Place de la Bastille and Column of July.....45
Junction of Grands Boulevards and Rue and Faubourg Montmartre.....48
The Bastille.....49
The Conquerors of the Bastille.....53
� la Robespierre.....56
A Lady of 1793.....56
A Tricoteuse.....56
Map showing the Extension of Paris.....57
Adrienne Lecouvreur.....61
A Duel in the Bois de Boulogne.....64
The Seine from Notre Dame.....facing 5
Recruits.....65
H�tel Carnavalet.....68
H�tel Lamoignon.....69
Statue of Louis XIII. in the Place des Vosges.....71
The Place des Vosges, formerly Place Royale.....72
The Arcade in the Place des Vosges.....73
The Winter Circus in the Boulevard des Filles de Calvaire.....77
Louis Philippe.....80
Attempted Assassination of Louis Philippe.....81
A Parisian Caf�.....84
Place de la R�publique.....85
Fr�d�ric Lema�tre.....89
Porte Saint-Martin and the Renaissance Theatre.....92
Church of Saint-M�ry, Rue Saint-Martin.....93
Apsis of Church of Saint-M�ry, Rue Brisemiche.....96
Notre Dame.....facing 97
Entrance to the Faubourg Saint-Denis.....97
Boulevard and Porte Saint-Denis.....101
Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle and the Gymnase Theatre.....104
The Boulevard Montmartre.....105
Entrance to the Th��tre des Vari�t�s, Boulevard Montmartre.....109
Caf�s on the Boulevard Montmartre.....112
Moli�re.....113
Street Coffee Stall.....114
Boulevard des Italiens.....116
The 6th of June; the Last of the Insurrection.....121
Marivaux.....124
Paris in the Seventeenth Century.....125
Rue de la Chauss�e d'Antin.....128
View from the Roof of the Opera House.....facing 129
Mlle. Clairon.....129
View from the Balcony of the Opera.....132
Avenue de l'Op�ra.....133
One of the Domes of the Opera House.....135
Eastern Pavilion, Opera House.....136
The Public Foyer, Opera House.....137
Western Pavilion, Opera House.....140
The Staircase of the Opera House.....141
The Madeleine.....144
Interior of the Madeleine.....145
Place de la Concorde.....149
Place de la Concorde, from the Terrace of the Tuileries.....152
Trial of Louis XVI.....153
Top of the Vend�me Column.....155
The Place Vend�me.....157
Rue Castiglione.....160
A First Night at the Com�die Fran�aise--The Foyer.....facing 161
Mirabeau.....161
Robespierre.....164
The Palais Royal.....165
Gardens of the Palais Royal.....168
The Palais Royal after the Siege.....169
The Montpensier Gallery, Palais Royal.....170
Entrance to the Com�die Fran�aise.....172
The Public Foyer, Com�die Fran�aise.....173
The Green Room, Com�die Fran�aise.....176
Moli�re.....177
Corneille.....180
Voltaire.....181
The Committee of the Com�die Fran�aise: Alexandre Dumas (the younger) Reading a Play.....185
Behind the Scenes, Com�die Fran�aise.....186
Entrance to the National Library in the Rue des Petits Champs.....188
The Bourse.....189
The Apollo Gallery--The Louvre.....facing 193
The Louvre, from the Place du Carrousel.....193
The Old Louvre (Pierre Lescot's Fa�ade).....195
The Colonnade of the Louvre.....196
Portion of the Fa�ade of Henri IV.'s Gallery, Louvre.....197
Top of the Marsan Pavilion, Louvre.....200
The Marsan and Flora Pavilions, Louvre, from the Pont-Royal.....201
The Richelieu Pavilion.....205
The Tuileries in the Eighteenth Century.....208
The Terrace, Tuileries Gardens.....209
The Tuileries Gardens.....209
Lion in the Tuileries Gardens.....211
The Chestnuts of the Tuileries.....212
Louis XVI. Stopped at Varennes by Drouet.....213
The Royal Family at Varennes.....216
Monument to Gambetta, Place du Carrousel.....217
The Horses of Marly, Champs �lys�es.....220
The Elys�e.....221
Saint-Philippe du Roule.....221
The Great Lake, Bois de Boulogne.....223
Avenue du Bois de Boulogne.....224
Arc de Triomphe.....facing 225
Avenue des Champs �lys�es.....225
Avenue Marigny, Champs �lys�es.....227
Fountain in the Champs �lys�es.....228
The Champ de Mars, 1889.....229
The Military School, Champ de Mars.....232
General La Fayette.....233
The Palais de l'Industrie, Champs �lys�es.....236
View Showing Exhibition of 1889.....237
View from the First Platform of the Eiffel Tower.....240
The Trocad�ro.....241
H�tel de Ville in the Fifteenth Century.....244
Attack on the H�tel de Ville, 1830.....245
Statue of �tienne Marcel on the Quai H�tel de Ville.....246
The Municipal Council Chamber, H�tel de Ville.....248
�le St. Louis.....249
The Quai de l'Horloge.....252
Pont au Change and Palais de Justice.....253
The Clock of the Palais de Justice.....255
Entrance to the Court of Assize.....256
The Palais de Justice.....facing 257
The Palais de Justice and Sainte-Chapelle.....257
The Fa�ade of the Old Palais de Justice.....260
The Salle des Pas Perdus.....261
Police Carriages.....263
The Conciergerie, Palais de Justice.....264
The Sainte-Chapelle.....265
The Lower Chapel of the Sainte-Chapelle.....267
The Upper Chapel of the Sainte-Chapelle.....268
The Tribunal of Commerce.....269
A Pompier.....272
A Guardian of the Peace.....273
An Orderly of the Garde de Paris.....274
A Gendarme.....277
Principal Court of the H�tel-Dieu.....280
Rue de Rivoli.....281
Fa�ade of the Church of St. Gervais and St. Protais; and the Apsis, from the Rue des Barres.....284
Tower of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie.....285
H�tel de Beauvais.....286
Church of St. Louis and St. Paul.....288
Rue de Rivoli and H�tel de Ville.....facing 289
Rue Grenier-sur-l'eau.....289
The Pont-Marie.....292
Rue Saint Louis-en-l'�le.....293
Pont au Change, Place du Ch�telet, and Boulevard de Sebastopol.....296
The Palmier Fountain, Place du Ch�telet.....297
Rue de Venise.....299
St. Nicholas-in-the-Fields.....300
The Conservatoire des Arts et M�tiers.....301
The Vertbois Tower and Fountain.....303
The Gaiet� Theatre.....304
In the Temple Market.....305
The Temple Market.....305
Sixteenth Century Cloisters, Rue des Billettes.....307
Palace of the National Archives.....308
H�tel de Hollande.....309
Turret at Corner of Rues Vieille du Temple and Francs Bourgeois.....309
Rue de Birague, leading to the Place des Vosges.....311
Fountain of the Innocents.....312
Saint-Eustache.....313
A Market Scene.....315
An Auction Sale of Poultry in the Central Market.....316
Rue Rambuteau in the Early Morning.....317
On the Way to the Central Markets.....319
The Fish Market.....320
Interior of the Mont de Pi�t�, Rue Capron.....facing 321
The General Post Office.....321
The Poste Restante.....321
The Public Hall, General Post Office.....323
The Telephone Room at the General Post Office.....324
Place des Victoires.....325
Rue de la Vrilli�re.....328
In P�re-Lachaise.....333
Parc des Buttes Chaumont.....336
Montmartre.....340
The Synagogue in the Rue de la Victoire.....341
St. Peter's Church, Montmartre.....343
The Bells of St. Peter's.....343
The New Municipal Reservoir and the Church of the Sacred Heart, Montmartre.....344
The Caulaincourt Bridge, Montmartre.....344
In the Parc Monceau.....345
Diana of Poitiers.....348
Marshal Ney.....352
The Race-course, Longchamps.....facing 353
Camille Desmoulins.....356
The Polytechnic School.....357
Notre Dame from the Pont Saint-Louis.....360
A Rag-picker.....361
A Rag-picker.....364
The Boulevard Poissoni�re.....368
Selling Goats.....369
The Bird Market.....373
Madame de Maintenon.....375
[Illustration: PLACE DE LA CONCORDE.]
PARIS, OLD AND NEW.
CHAPTER I.
PARIS: A GENERAL GLANCE.
"Paris," said Heinrich Heine, "is not simply the capital of France, but of the whole civilised world, and the rendezvous of its most brilliant intellects." The art and literature of Europe were at that time represented in Paris by such men as Ary Scheffer, the Dutch painter, Rossini, the Italian composer, the cosmopolitan Meyerbeer, and Heine himself. Towards the close of the eighteenth century most of the European Courts, with those of Catherine II. and Frederick the Great prominent among them, were regularly supplied with letters on Parisian affairs by Grimm, Diderot, and other writers of the first distinction, who, in their serious moments, contributed articles to the Encyclop�die. At a much remoter period Paris was already one of the most famous literary capitals of Europe; nor was it renowned for its literature alone. Its art, pictorial and sculptural, was also celebrated, and still more so its art manufactures; while of recent years the country of Auber and Gounod, of Bizet, Massenet and Saint-Sa�ns, has played a leading part in the world of music. Paris, too, has from the earliest times been a centre of science and philosophy. Here Ab�lard lectured, and here the first hospitals were established. Then, again, Paris has a military history of singular interest and variety. It has been oftener torn within its walls by civic conflicts, and attacked from without by the invader, than any other European city; while none has undergone so many regular sieges as the capital of the country of which Frederick the Great used to say that, if he ruled it, not a shot should be fired in Europe without his permission.
Paris is at once the most ancient and the most modern capital in Europe. Great are the changes it has undergone since it first took form, eighteen centuries ago, as a fortress or walled town on an island in the middle of the Seine; and at every period of its history we find some chronicler dwelling on the disappearance of ancient landmarks. Whole quarters are known to have been pulled down and rebuilt under the second Empire. But ever since the Revolution of 1789, under each successive form of government and in almost every district, straggling lanes have been giving way gradually to wide streets and stately boulevards, and suburb after suburb has been merged into the great city.
The Chauss�e d'Antin was at the end of the last century a chauss�e in fact as well as in name: a mere high-road, that is to say; and there were people living under the government of Louis-Philippe who claimed to have shot rabbits on the now densely populated Boulevard Montmartre.
The greatest changes, however, in the general physiognomy of Paris date from the Revolution, when, in the first place, as if by way of symbol, the hated fortress was demolished in which so many victims of despotism had languished. "Athens," says Victor Hugo, "built the Parthenon, but Paris destroyed the Bastille." In the days when the great State prison was still standing, the broad, well-built Rue Saint-Antoine, in its immediate neighbourhood, used to be pointed to by antiquarians as covering the ground where King Henry II. was mortally wounded in a tournament by Montgomery, an officer in the Scottish Guard. It was there, too, that, after the death of their protector, the "minions" of Henry II. slaughtered one another.
The now thickly inhabited Place des Victoires, where stands the statue of Louis XIV., lasting monument of kingly pride and popular adulation, was at one time the most dangerous part of the capital. In the open space now enclosed by lordly mansions and commodious warehouses thieves and murderers held their nightly assemblies, or even in the face of day committed depredations on the passers-by. "Could a better site have been chosen," asks an historian of the last century, "for the effigy of that royal robber, born for the ruin of his subjects and the disturbance of Europe: who aimed at universal monarchy and sacrificed the wealth and happiness of a whole kingdom to pursue an empty shadow; who lived a tyrant and died an idiot?"
Not far distant, the Halles, or general markets, stand on the spot where Charles V. made a famous speech against Charles, surnamed the Mischievous, King of Navarre; when the former was hissed and hooted by the mob because he had neither the good looks, the eloquence, nor the reasoning power of his antagonist. It was here, too, that the first dramas were acted in France; and here, significantly enough, that Moli�re was born.
At the Butte Saint-Roch, now remembered chiefly by the church of the same name, the Maid of Orleans was wounded during the siege of Paris, then in the hands of the English. Joan of Arc was not at this time--not, at least, with the Parisians--the popular heroine she has since become. Detesting Charles VII. and all his supporters, they could not love the inspired girl whose example had restored the courage of the king's troops. A Parisian of that day, who had witnessed the siege, describes her as a "fiend in woman's guise."
The bell may still be heard of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois; the very bell, it is asserted, that called the faithful to the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Near the church from which the tragic signal rang forth stands the palace from whose windows Charles IX. fired upon the unhappy Huguenots as they sought safety by swimming across the Seine; and close at hand used to be pointed out another window from which money was thrown to an agitated crowd in order to keep it from attending Moli�re's funeral, at which the mob proposed, not to honour the remains of the illustrious dramatist, but to insult them.
It was in the old Rue du Temple that the Duke of Burgundy fell by the hand of his assassin, the Duke of Orleans, only brother of Charles VI., who, though a madman and an idiot, was suffered to remain on the throne; and it was in this same Rue du Temple that Louis XVI. and Marie-Antoinette were confined before being taken to the guillotine. What scenes has not the Place de Gr�ve witnessed! from the burning of witches to the torture of Damiens, and from the atrocious cruelties inflicted upon this would-be regicide to the first executions under the Revolution, when the cry of "A la lanterne!" (to the lamp-post, that is to say, of the Place de Gr�ve) was so frequently heard.
But the most revolutionary spot in this, the most revolutionary capital in the world, is to be found in the gardens of the Palais Royal; those gardens from whose trees Camille Desmoulins plucked the leaves which the besiegers of the Bastille were to have worn in their hats as rallying signals. Here, too, assembled the journeymen printers, who, their newspapers having been suppressed by Charles X., determined, under the guidance of the journalists--their natural leaders on such an occasion--to reply by force to the armed censorship of the Government. Again, in 1848, the Palais Royal Gardens witnessed the first manifestations of discontent, though it was a pistol-shot fired on a fashionable part of the boulevard that precipitated the collision between the insurgents and the troops. The next morning, at breakfast, Louis-Philippe was told that he had better abdicate; and an hour afterwards an old gentleman, with a portfolio under his arm, was seen to take a cab on the Place de la Concorde, and drive off in the direction of Saint-Cloud, whence he reached the coast of Normandy, and in due time the shores of England.
Paris possesses one of the most ancient and one of the most characteristically modern churches in Europe--the venerable Notre-Dame, and in sharp contrast, the fashionable Madeleine, celebrated for the splendour of its essentially mundane architecture, the luxurious attire of its female frequenters, the beauty of its music, and the eloquence of its preachers. The first stone of Notre-Dame was laid, as Victor Hugo puts it, by Tiberius, who, recognising the site of the future cathedral as well-fitted for a temple, began by erecting an altar "to the god Cerennos and to the bull Esus." In like manner, on the hill of Sainte-Genevi�ve, where now stands the edifice known as the Pantheon, Mercury was at one time worshipped.
So rich is Paris in historical associations that often the same street, the same spot, recalls two widely different events. Thus the statue of Henri IV. on the Pont-Neuf commemorates the glory of the best and greatest of the French kings, and at the same time marks the very ground where, in the fourteenth century, Jacques de Molay, the Templar, was infamously burned. At No. 14 in the Rue de B�thisy Admiral Coligny died and Sophie Arnould was born. At a house in the Rue des Marais Racine wrote "Bajazet" and "Britannicus" in the room where, fifty years later, the Duchess de Bouillon is said to have poisoned Adrienne Lecouvreur. There was a time when, at the corner of the Rue du March� des Innocents, a marble slab, inscribed with letters of gold, associated the important year of 1685 with three notable events: the arrival of an embassy from Siam, a visit from the Doge of Genoa, and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. This strange record has disappeared, together with many other interesting memorials of various shapes and kinds: such, for example, as the iron cauldron in the Cour des Miracles, where, in the name of a whole series of kings who had played tricks with the national currency, and more than once produced national bankruptcy, coiners used to be boiled alive.
As we go further back in the history of Paris, lawlessness on the part of the inhabitants, and cruelty on that of the rulers, seem constantly to increase. Until the reign of Louis XI., Paris was without police, though laws were nominally in force, especially against stealing. Theft was punished much on the principle laid down in the inscription of the sixth century which adorned one of the walls of Lutetia, the Paris of the Romans: "If a thief is caught in the act he must, in the case of a noble, be brought to trial; in the case of a peasant, be hanged on the spot." The capitular of Charlemagne forbade ecclesiastics to take human life: which did not prevent the abb�s of different monasteries from besieging one another or crossing swords when, with their followers, they chanced to meet outside the fortified monasterial walls, whether in the plain or in the public street. The right of private warfare existed in France until 1235.
Paris has undergone atrocious sufferings through war, famine, pestilence, and calamities of all kinds. The Normans, after burning one half of Paris, allowed the remainder to be ransomed with an enormous sum of money. In one of the famines by which Paris in its early days was so often visited, people cast lots as to which should be eaten. The taxes were so excessive that many pretended to be lepers, in order to profit by the exemption accorded in such cases. But it was sometimes not well to be a leper, real or pretended; for it was proclaimed one day to the sound of horn and trumpet that lepers throughout the kingdom should be exterminated: "in consequence of a mixture of herbs and human blood, with which, rolling it up in a linen cloth and tying it to a stone, they poison the wells and rivers."
How terrible, and often how ridiculous, were the proclamations issued in those days! In front of the Grand-Ch�telet six heralds of France, clothed in white velvet, and rod in hand, were wont to announce after a plague, a war, or a famine that there was nothing more to be feared, and that the king would be graciously pleased to receive taxes as before. In the centre of the so-called "town"--Paris in general, that is to say, as distinct from the city--was "la Maubu�e" (derived, according to Victor Hugo, from mauvaise fum�e), where Jews innumerable were roasted over fires of pitch and green wood to punish what a chronicler of the time terms their "anthropomancy"; and what the Counsellor de l'Ancre further describes as "the marvellous cruelty they have always shown towards Christians, their mode of life, their synagogue, so displeasing to God, their uncleanliness, and their stench." The unhappy Jews, however, were not the only victims. Close by, at the corner of the Rue du Gros-Chenet, was the place where sorcerers used to be burned. Torture, moreover, in its most hideous forms was practised upon criminals even until the time of the Revolution; which, while introducing the guillotine, abolished, in addition to a variety of other torments, breaking on the wheel, and the beating of criminals to death with the iron bar.
Many of the names, still extant, of the old Paris streets recall the ferocity and the superstition of past times. The Rue de l'Arbre Sec was the Street of the Gibbet, with "Dry Tree" as its familiar name. The Rue d'Enfer, or Hell Street, was so called from a belief that this thoroughfare on the outskirts of Paris, just beyond the Luxemburg Gardens, was haunted by the fiend. In order to put an end to the scandal by which the whole neighbourhood was alarmed, it occurred to the authorities to make over the street to the Order of Capuchins who, they thought, would know how to deal with their inveterate enemy. The Capuchins accepted, with gratitude, the valuable trust; and thenceforth, whether as the result of some exorcising process or because public confidence had been restored, no more was heard of the visitor from below.
[Illustration: THE LEFT BANK OF THE SEINE, FROM NOTRE-DAME.]
To get a complete idea of the vastness and variety of Paris, it should be seen from the towers of Notre-Dame, the Pantheon, the July Column of the Place de la Bastille, the tower of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, the Vend�me Column, the Triumphal Arch, and, finally, the Eiffel Tower. From these different points panoramic views may be obtained which together would form a complete picture of Paris.
The shape of Paris is oval. The longest diameter--east to west--would be drawn from the Gate of Vincennes to the Gate of Auteuil; and the shorter--north to south--from the Gate of Clignancourt to the Gate of Italy.
Paris is divided longitudinally by the course of the Seine, whose windings are scarcely noticed by the observer taking a bird's-eye view. The river looks like a silver thread between two borders of green. These are the plantations of the quays, whose trees, during the last five-and-twenty years, have become as remarkable for their luxuriant growth as for their beauty of form. From the height of our observatory we see the Island of the City, looking like a ship at anchor, with its prow towards the west.
On all sides the summits of religious edifices present themselves: the towers of Notre-Dame, the dome of the Pantheon, the turrets of Saint-Sulpice, the steeple of Saint-Germain-des-Pr�s, the gilded cupola of the Invalides, and the lofty isolated belfry of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie.
Following the course of the Seine with careful eye, one may see its twenty-one "ports"--eleven on the right bank, and ten on the left--from Bercy to the Tuileries; also, like slender bars thrown across the river, the twenty-seven bridges connecting the two banks, from the Pont-National to the viaduct of the Point du Jour.
The double line of quays--quadruple, where the islands of St. Louis and of the City divide the river in two--presents an incomparable series of stately structures; such as the H�tel de Ville, the Palais de Justice, the Louvre, the Mint, the Institute, the Palais Bourbon, and a number of magnificent private mansions.
[Illustration: RIGHT BANK OF THE SEINE, FROM NOTRE-DAME.]
From the Gothic steeple of the Sainte Chapelle the eye wanders to innumerable domes, built under the influence of the Renaissance; for while the domes have endured, the steeples, so numerous in ancient Paris, have, for the most part, succumbed either to fire or to the vandalism of the renovating architect. It must be remembered, too, that under the reign of Louis XIV. Gothic architecture was proscribed, as recalling "the age of barbarism." Every new edifice was constructed in the Italian or Italo-Byzantine style. The finest, if not the most ancient, dome that Paris could ever boast was the one which crowned the central pavilion of the Tuileries Palace. The cupola of St. Peter's was the model adopted in the early part of the sixteenth century by all French architects who had studied in Italy, or Italian architects who had settled in France; and the masterpiece of Michael Angelo at Rome was not yet finished when the first stone of the impressive and picturesque Church of Saint-Eustace was laid in 1532 at Paris. Only a few years afterwards the French architect, Philibert de l'Orme, attached to the service of Pope Paul III., returned to Paris, and, beneath the delighted eyes of Queen Catherine de Medicis, worked out the designs which he had formed under the inspiration of Michael Angelo and of Bramante. The dome, however, of Philibert de l'Orme was destined to lose its beauty through the additions made to it by other architects.
Of late years it has been the rule in Paris not to destroy but to preserve the ancient architecture of the city. "Demolish the tower of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie?" asked Victor Hugo, when, during the reconstruction and prolongation of the Rue Rivoli, the question of keeping it standing or pulling it down was under general discussion: "Demolish the tower of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie? No! Demolish the architect who suggests such a thing? Yes!"
THE EXPANSION OF PARIS.
Lutetia--La Cit�--Lutetia taken by Labienus--The Visit of Julian the Apostate--Besieged by the Franks--The Norman Invasion--Gradual Expansion from the Ile de la Cit� to the Outer Boulevards--M. Thiers's Line of Outworks.
Lutetia, the ancient Paris, or Lutetia Parisiorum, as it was called by the Romans, stood in the midst of marshes. The name, derived, suggestively enough, from lutum, the Latin for mud, has been invested with a peculiar significance by those stern moralists who see in Paris nothing but a sink of iniquity. Balzac called it a "wen"; and Blucher, when some ferocious member of his staff suggested the destruction of Paris, exclaimed: "Leave it alone; Paris will destroy all France!" By a critic of less severe temperament Paris has been contemptuously described as "the tavern of Europe"--le cabaret de l'Europe. Lutetia, however, can afford to smile alike at the slurs of moralists and the sneers of cynics; and the etymology of her name need by no means alarm those of her admirers who will reflect that lilies may spring from mud, and that the richest corn is produced from the blackest soil.
The development of the Lutetia of C�sar's time into the Paris of our own has occupied many eventful centuries; and the centre of the development may still be seen in that little island of the so-called City--l'Ile de la Cit�--once known as the Island of Lutetia. As to the dimensions of the ancient Lutetia, neither historians nor geographers are wholly agreed. The germ of Paris is, in any case, to be found in that part of the French capital which has long been known as la Cit�, and which is the dullest and sleepiest part of Paris, just as inversely our "city," distinctively so called, is the most active and energetic part of London.
The Parisians have always been given to insurrection; and their first rising was made against a ruler who was likely enough to put it down--Julius C�sar, that is to say. Finding his power defied, C�sar sent against the Parisians a body of troops, under the command of Labienus, who crushed the rebels in the first battle. Historians give different versions of the engagement, but modern writers are content for the most part to rely on a tradition related by an author of the fourteenth century, Raoul de Presles, who published a French version of C�sar's account of the Battle of Paris, enriched by notes and comments from his own pen. Labienus, according to C�sar and Raoul de Presles, was arrested in his first attack by an impassable marsh. Then, simulating a retreat along the left bank of the Seine, he was pursued by the Gauls, in spite of Camulogenes, their cautious leader; who, unable to restrain them, fell with them at last into an ambuscade, in which chief and followers all perished.
Raoul de Presles gives some interesting details about the marsh which Labienus, on making his advance against Paris, was unable to cross. Some identify it with the Marshes of the Temple, which formed, on the north of Paris, a continuous semicircle; but Raoul de Presles seems to hold that the marsh which stopped the advance of Labienus protected Lutetia itself: that Lutetia of the Island which sprang from the mud as Venus sprang from the sea. The city of Lutetia was at that time so strong, so entirely shut in by water, that Julius C�sar himself speaks of the difficulty of reaching it. "But since then," says Raoul de Presles, "there has been much solidification through gravel, sand, and all kinds of rubbish being cast into it."
After the victory of Labienus, Lutetia, which the conqueror had destroyed, was quickly re-built; and it was then governed as a Roman town. This, however, was in C�sar's time; and the first description of Lutetia as a city was given by Strabo some fifty years later. Thus it may safely be said that of the original Lutetia nothing whatever is known.
It is certain, nevertheless, that in the new Lutetia, built by the Romans, the most important edifices stood at the western end of the island, including a palace, on whose site was afterwards to be erected the Palace of the French Kings; while at the eastern end the most striking object was a Temple to Jupiter, in due time to be replaced by the Cathedral of Notre-Dame.
As early as the fourth century Lutetia found favour in the eyes of illustrious visitors; and the Emperor Julian, known as the "Apostate," when, after defeating seven German kings near Strasburg, he retired to Lutetia for winter quarters, spoke of it, then and for ever afterwards, as his "dear Lutetia."
"Lutetia l�titia!"--Paris is my joy!--he might, with a certain modern writer, have exclaimed.
Julian is not the only man who, going to Paris for a few months, has stayed there several years; and Julian's winter quarters of the year 355 so much pleased him that he remained in them until 360. Encouraged, no doubt, by what Julian, in his enthusiasm, told them about the already attractive capital of Gaul, a whole series of Roman emperors visited the city, including Valentinian I., Valentinian II., and Gratian, who left Paris in 379, never to return.
From this date Paris ceased practically to form part of the Roman Empire.
More than a century before (in 245) St. Denis had undergone martyrdom on the banks of the Seine, walking about after decapitation with his head under his arm. This strange tradition had probably its origin in a picture by some simple-minded painter, who had represented St. Denis carrying his own head like a parcel, because he could think of no more ingenious way of indicating the fate that had befallen the first apostle of Christianity in Gaul; just as St. Bartholomew has often been painted with his skin hanging across his arm like a loose overcoat.
After the defeat and death of Gratian, the government of Lutetia passed into the hands of her bishops, who often defended the city against the incursions of the barbarians.
In 476 Lutetia was besieged by the Franks, when Childeric gained possession of it, and destroyed for ever all traces of the Roman power. It now became a Frank or French town; and, "Lutetia Parisiorum" being too long a name for the unlettered Goths, was shortened by them first into "Parisius," and ultimately, by the suppression of the two last syllables, into "Paris."
In the ninth century Paris underwent the usual Norman invasion, by which so many European countries, from Russia to England, and from England to Sicily--not to speak of the Norman or Varangian Guard of Constantinople--were sooner or later to be visited. The "hardy Norsemen"--or Norman pirates, as the unhappy Parisians doubtless called them--started from the island of Oissel, near Rouen, where they had established themselves in force; and, moving with a numerous fleet towards Paris, laid siege to it, and, on its surrender, first pillaged it and then burnt it to the ground. Three churches alone--those of Saint-�tienne, Saint-Germain-des-Pr�s, and Saint-Denis, near Paris--were saved, through the payment of a heavy ransom. Sixteen years later, after a sufficient interval to allow of a reconstruction, the Normans again returned, when once more the unhappy city was plundered and burnt. For twenty successive years Paris was the constant prey of the Norman pirates who held beneath their power the whole course of the Seine.
At last, however, a powerful fleet, led by a chief whom the French call "Siegfroi," but whose real name was doubtless "Siegfried," sustained a crushing defeat; and, simultaneously with the Norman invaders, the Carlovingian Dynasty passed away.
With the advent of the Capet Dynasty a continuous history began for Paris--in due time to become the capital of all France. Ancient Paris was three times burnt to the ground: the Paris which dates from the ninth century has often been conquered, but never burnt.
Ancient Paris, the Lutetia of the Romans, was an island enclosed between two branches of the Seine. But the river overflowed north and south, and it became necessary to construct large ditches or moats, which at once widened the boundaries of the "city." Gradually the population spread out in every direction; and when, under Louis XIV., the line of boulevards was traced, the extreme limits of the capital were marked by this new enclosure. Then under Louis XVI., the Farmers-General, levying dues (the so-called octroi) on imports into the town, established for their own convenience certain "barriers," at which persons bringing in food or drink were stopped until they had acquitted themselves of the appointed tax; and, connecting these "barriers," they thus formed the line of outer boulevards.
Paris extended in time even to these outer boulevards. Then, under Louis-Philippe, at the instigation of his Minister, M. Thiers, a line of fortifications was constructed around Paris; which, proving insufficient in 1870 and 1871 to save the capital from bombardment, has in its turn been surrounded by a circle of outlying detached forts intercommunicating with one another.
The fortifications of Paris have had a strange history. At the time of their being planned, opinions in France were divided as to whether they were intended to oppose a foreign invasion or to control an internal revolt. In all probability they were meant, according to the occasion, to serve either purpose. They were not only designed by M. Thiers, but executed under his orders; and this statesman, who had made a careful study of military science, lived to see them powerless against the German army of investment, and successful against the Paris Commune.
[Illustration: ON THE BOULEVARDS--CORNER OF PLACE DE L'OP�RA.]
Paris had been invaded and occupied in 1814, and again in 1815. On the other hand, domestic government had been upset in 1830 by a popular insurrection, which, with adequate military force to oppose it, might at once have been suppressed. Was it as patriot, people asked, or as minister of a would-be despotic king, that M. Thiers proposed to raise around Paris a new and formidable wall?
M. Thiers's circular line of outworks played no part in connection with the successful insurrection of February, 1848, nor with the unsuccessful one of June in the same year. Nor was a single shot fired from the fortifications in connection with the coup d'�tat of 1851. They did not in 1871 prevent the French capital from falling into the hands of the Germans: but they delayed for a considerable time the fatal moment of surrender; and if the army of Metz could have held out a few weeks longer--if, above all, the inhabitants of the inactive south, who practically took no part in the war, had been prepared, to fight with something like the energy displayed by the Confederates against the Federals during the American Civil War--then the fortifications would have justified the views of those who had chiefly regarded them as a valuable defence against foreign invasion.
The fortifications erected by M. Thiers have since been pulled down: partly because the constantly expanding city wanted fresh building ground, partly because, in view of new plans of defence, and of the new artillery of offence, it was considered desirable to protect Paris by a system of outlying but inter-protecting forts, at a sufficient distance from the houses of the capital to render reduction by what is called "simple bombardment" impossible. In time Lutetia, with fresh developments, may require yet another new girdle.
Paris and London--The Rive Gauche--The Quartier Latin--The Pantheon--The Luxemburg--The School of Medicine--The School of Fine Arts--The Bohemia of Paris--The Rive Droite--Paris Proper--"The West End."
An effective contrast might be drawn between London and Paris. But, unlike as they are in so many features, physical, moral, and historical, they differ most widely, perhaps, by the relative parts they have played in the history of their respective countries.
The history of Paris is the history of France itself. The decisive battles which brought the great civil and religious wars of the country to an end were fought outside or in the very streets of Paris. It was in Paris that the massacre of St. Bartholomew--darkest blot on the French annals--was perpetrated. The Revolution of 1789, again, was prepared and accomplished in the French capital; and, thenceforth, all those revolutions and coups d'�tat by which the government of the country was periodically to be changed had Paris for their scene. In England, on the other hand, London had little or nothing to do with the battles of the great Rebellion, the Revolution, or the two insurrections by which the Revolution was followed.
[Illustration: TH��TRE FRAN�AIS.]
But the English visitor to Paris is in the first place struck by external points of dissimilarity. As regards the difference in the structural physiognomy of the two great capitals (less pronounced now than at one time, though Paris is still loftily, and London for the most part dwarfishly, built), it was ingeniously remarked, some fifty years ago, that the architecture of one city seemed vertical, of the other horizontal.
To pass from the houses to their inhabitants, the population of Paris is as remarkable for variety as that of London for uniformity of costume. For in Paris almost every class has its own distinctive dress. In England, and especially in London, the employer and his workmen, the millionaire and the crossing-sweeper, wear coats of the same pattern. In London, again, every work-girl, every market-woman, wears a bonnet imitated more or less perfectly from those worn by ladies of fashion.
When Gavarni first visited London, he was astonished and amused to see an old woman in a bonnet carrying a flower-pot on her head, and made this grotesque figure the subject of a humorous design, with the following inscription beneath it: "On porte cette ann�e beaucoup de fleurs sur les chapeaux."
Shop-girls and work-girls in Paris wear neat white caps instead of ill-made, or, it may be, dilapidated bonnets; though the more aspiring among them reserve the right of appearing in a bonnet on Sundays and holidays. The French workman wears a blouse and a cap, and looks upon the hat as a sign, if not of superiority, at least of pretension.
"Car moi j'ai pay� ma casquette, Et toi, tu n'as pas pay� ton chapeau!"
was the burden of a song very popular with the working classes during the revolutionary days of 1848 to 1851.
Owing to the varieties of dress already touched upon, a crowd in Paris presents a less gloomy, less monotonous appearance than the black-coated mobs of London; and in harmony with the greater relief afforded by the different colours of the costumes are the animated gestures of the persons composing the crowd. Observe, indeed, a mere group of persons conversing on no matter what commonplace subject, or idly chatting as they sip their coffee together on the boulevards, and they appear to be engaged in some violent dispute.
To mention yet another point on which Paris differs from London: the most interesting part of Paris lies on the right bank of the Seine, whereas all that is interesting in London lies on the left bank of the Thames.
The left bank of the Seine possesses, however, buildings and streets of historical interest. Here, too, is the quarter of the schools: the Quartier Latin, as it is still called, not by reason of its Roman antiquities, which, except at the Hotel Cluny, would be sought for in vain, but because, in the medi�val period whence the schools for the most part date, even to comparatively modern times, Latin was the language of the student. On the "left bank," moreover, stand the Institute, the Pantheon or Church of Ste. Genevi�ve, as, according to the predominance of religion or irreligion, it is alternately called; the Ste. Genevi�ve Library, the Luxemburg Palace, with its magnificent picture gallery, the School of Medicine, and the School of Fine Arts. Many of the great painters, too, have their studios--often little academies in themselves--on the left bank of the river; while among the famous streets on the "left bank" is that Rue du Bac so often referred to in the chronicles and memoirs of the eighteenth century. The famous Caf� Procope, again, literary headquarters of the encyclop�dists, stands on what is now considered the wrong side of the water. So too does the Od�on Theatre, once the Th��tre Fran�ais, where, in modern as well as ancient times, so many dramatic masterpieces have been produced.
On the other hand, there is scarcely on the left bank one good hotel: certainly not one that could put forward the slightest pretension to being fashionable. Nor, except in the case of professional men connected with the hospitals or the schools, would anyone mixing in fashionable society care to give his address anywhere on the left bank.
Jules Janin, one of the most distinguished writers of his time, and one of the most popular men in the great world of Paris from the reign of Louis Philippe until that of Napoleon III., did, it is true, live for years in a house close to the Luxemburg Gardens. But Janin possessed a certain originality, and thought more of what suited himself than of what pleased others. On one occasion, having engaged to fight a duel, he failed to put in an appearance by reason of the inclemency of the weather and his disinclination to get out of bed at the early hour for which the meeting had been fixed. Such a man would not be ashamed to live on the left bank if he happened to have found a place there which harmonised with his tastes.
Apart, however, from all question of inclination and fashion, it is really inconvenient to anyone who mingles in Parisian life to live on the left bank of the Seine, remote as it is from the boulevards, the Champs �lys�es, the best hotels, the best restaurants, the best caf�s, and the best theatres.
At the same time, no sort of comparison can be established between the transpontine districts of Paris and those of London. In London, no one who is anyone would dream of living "on the other side of the water," where neither picture galleries, nor public gardens, nor artists' studios, nor famous streets, nor great houses of business, nor even magnificent shops are to be met with. Even Jules Janin, had he been an Englishman, would have declined to live in the region of Blackfriars or the Waterloo Road.
On the right bank of the Seine--the Paris West End, and something more--we find much greater concentration than in the West End of London. Here, indeed, all that is most important in the artistic, financial, and fashionable life of the capital may be found within a small compass.
The Th��tre Fran�ais is close to the Bourse, and the Bourse to the Boulevard des Italiens, which leads to the Opera by a line along which stand the finest hotels, the best restaurants in Paris. From the Opera it is no far cry to the Champs �lys�es, the Hyde Park of Paris; while, going along the boulevards in the opposite direction, one comes step by step to a seemingly endless series of famous theatres. All the best clubs, too, all the best book-shops and music-shops, are to be found on the most fashionable part of the boulevard, extending from the Boulevard des Italiens, past the Opera House, to the adjacent Church of the Madeleine: architecturally a repetition of the Bourse, as though commerce and religion demanded temples of the same character.
[Illustration: NOTRE DAME.]
The Cathedral of Notre Dame, a Temple to Jupiter--C�sar and Napoleon--Relics in Notre Dame--Its History--Curious Legends--"The New Church"--Remarkable Religious Ceremonies--The Place de Gr�ve--The Days of Sorcery--Monsieur de Paris--Dramatic Entertainments--Coronation of Napoleon
There is no monument of ancient Paris so interesting, by its architecture and its historical associations, as the Cathedral of Notre Dame; which, standing on the site of a Temple to Jupiter, carries us back to the time of the Roman domination and of Julius C�sar. Here, eighteen centuries later, took place the most magnificent ceremony ever seen within the walls of the actual edifice: the coronation, that is to say, of the modern C�sar, the conqueror who ascended the Imperial throne of France on the 2nd of December, 1804.
Meanwhile, the strangest as well as the most significant things have been witnessed inside the ancient metropolitan church of Paris.
Among the curious objects deposited from time to time on the altar of Notre Dame may be mentioned a wand which Louis VII. inscribed with the confession of a fault he was alleged to have committed against the Church. Journeying towards Paris, the king had been surprised by the darkness of night, and had supped and slept at Cr�teil, on the invitation of the inhabitants. The village, inhabitants and all, belonged to the Chapter of Notre Dame; and the canons were much irritated at the king's having presumed to accept hospitality indirectly at their cost. When, next day, Louis, arriving at Paris, went, after his custom, to the cathedral in order to render thanks for his safe journey, he was astonished to find the gates of Notre Dame closed. He asked for an explanation, whereupon the canons informed him that since, in defiance of the privileges and sacred traditions of the Church, he had dared at Cr�teil to sup, free of cost to himself and at the expense of the flock of Notre Dame, he must now consider himself outside the pale of Christianity. At this terrible announcement the king groaned, sighed, wept, and begged forgiveness, humbly protesting that but for the gloom of night and the spontaneous hospitality of the inhabitants--so courteous that a refusal on his part would have been most uncivil--he would never have touched that fatal supper. In vain did the bishop intercede on his behalf, offering to guarantee to the canons the execution of any promise which the king might make in expiation of his crime; it was not until the prelate placed in their hands a couple of silver candlesticks as a pledge of the monarch's sincerity that they would open to him the cathedral doors; and even then his Majesty had to pay the cost of his supper at Cr�teil, and by way of confession, to deposit on the altar of Notre Dame the now historical wand.
Louis XI., more devout even than the devout Louis VII., was equally unable to inspire his clergy with confidence. Before the discovery of printing, in 1421, manuscript books at Paris, as elsewhere, were so rare and so dear that students had much trouble in procuring even those which were absolutely necessary for their instruction. Accordingly, when Louis XI. wished to borrow from the Faculty of Medicine the writings of Rhases, an Arabian physician, he was required, before taking the book away, to deposit a considerable quantity of plate, besides the signature of a powerful nobleman, who bound himself to see that his Majesty restored the volume.
[Illustration: THE CHOIR STALLS, NOTRE DAME.]
Among the many legends told in connection with Notre Dame is a peculiarly fantastic one, according to which the funeral service of a canon named Raimond Diocre, famed for his sanctity, was being celebrated by St. Bruno, when, at a point where the clergy chanted the words: Responde mihi quantas habes iniquitates? the dead man raised his head in the coffin, and replied: Justo Dei judicio accusatus sum. At this utterance all present took flight, and the ceremony was not resumed till the next day, when for the second time the clergy chanted forth: Responde mihi, etc., on which the corpse again raised its head, and this time answered: Justo Dei judicio judicatus sum. Once more there was a panic and general flight. The scene, with yet another variation, was repeated on the third day, when the dead, who had already declared himself to have been "accused" and "judged" by Heaven, announced that he had been condemned: Justo Dei judicio condamnatus sum. Witness of this terrible scene, St. Bruno renounced the world, did penance, became a monk, and founded the Order of Les Chartreux.
The incident has been depicted by Lesueur, who received a commission to record on canvas the principal events in the life of the saint.
It is looked upon as certain by the historians of Paris that the Cathedral of Notre Dame stands on the site formerly occupied by a heathen temple. But how and when the transformation took place is not known, though the period is marked more or less precisely by the date of the introduction of Christianity into France. Little confidence, however, is to be placed in those authors who declare that the Paris cathedral was founded in the middle of the third century by St. Denis, the first apostle of Christianity in France; for at the very time when St. Denis was preaching the Gospel to the Parisians the severest edicts were still in force against Christians. It cannot, then, be supposed that the officials of the Roman Empire would have tolerated the erection of a Christian church. It can be shown, however, that under the episcopacy of Bishop Marcellus, about the year 375, there already existed a Christian church in the city of Paris, on the borders of the Seine and on the eastern point of the island, where a Roman temple had formerly stood. Towards the end of the sixth century the cathedral was composed of two edifices, close together, but quite distinct. One of these was dedicated to the Virgin, the other to St. Stephen the Martyr. Gradually, however, the Church of our Lady was extended and developed until it touched and embraced the Church of St. Stephen. The Church of St. Mary, as many called it, was the admiration of its time. Its vaulted roofs were supported by columns of marble, and Venantius Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers, declares that this was the first church which received the rays of the sun through glass windows. More than once it is said to have been burnt during the incursions of the Normans. But this is a matter of mere tradition, and the destruction of the cathedral by fire, whether it ever occurred or not, is held in any case to have been only partial.
In the twelfth century Notre Dame was, it is true, known as the "New Church." This appellation, however, served only to distinguish it from the smaller Church of St. Stephen (St. Etienne), which had been left in its original state, without addition or renovation.
The plan of the cathedral has, like that of other cathedrals, been changed from century to century; but in spite of innumerable modifications, the original plan asserts itself. From the fourteenth to the seventeenth century the Church of Notre Dame was left nearly untouched. Then, however, in obedience to the wishes of Louis XIII., it was subjected to a whole series of pretended embellishments, for which "mutilations" would be a fitter word. In the eighteenth century, between the years 1773 and 1787, damaging "improvements," and "restorations" of the most destructive kind, were introduced; until at the time of the Revolution the idea was entertained of depriving the venerable edifice altogether of its religious character. The outside statues were first threatened, but Chaumette saved them by dwelling upon their supposed astronomical and mythological importance. He declared before the Council of the Commune that the astronomer Dupuis (author of "L'origine de tous les Cultes") had founded his planetary system on the figures adorning one of the lateral doors of the church. In conformity with Chaumette's representations, the Commune spared all those images to which a symbolic significance might be attached, but pulled down and condemned the statues of the French kings which ornamented the gallery and the principal fa�ade. The cathedral at the same time lost its name. Temple of Reason it was now, until the re-establishment of public worship, to be called. Then new mutilations were constantly perpetrated, until at last, in 1845, the work of restoring the cathedral was placed in competent hands, when, thanks to the learning, the labour, and the taste of MM. Lassus and Viollet-Leduc, Notre Dame was made what it still remains--one of the most magnificent specimens of medi�val architecture to be found in Europe. Why describe the ancient monument, when it is so much simpler to represent through drawings and engravings its most characteristic features?
Some of the most interesting, most curious facts of its history may, however, be appropriately related. The Count of Toulouse, Raymond VII., accused of having supported the Albigenses by his arms and of sharing their errors, was absolved in Notre Dame from the crime of heresy after he had formally done penance in his shirt, with naked arms and feet, before the altar.
An attempt was made by a thief to steal from the altar of Notre Dame its candlesticks. After concealing himself in the roof, the man, aided by other members of his band, let down ropes, and, encircling the silver ornaments, drew them upwards to his hiding-place. In performing this exploit, however, he set fire to the hangings of the church, by which much damage was caused.
The interior of Notre Dame has in different centuries been turned to the most diverse purposes. Here at one time, in view of Church festivals, vendors of fruits and flowers held market. At other times religious mysteries, and even mundane plays, have been performed; while in the thirteenth century the Paris cathedral was the recognised asylum of all who suffered in mind or body.
A particular part of the building was reserved for patients, who were attended by physicians in holy orders. It was provided by a special edict that this hospital within a church should be kept lighted at night by ten lamps. All attempts, however, to keep order were in vain; and in consequence of the noise made by the invalids while religious service was going on, they were, one and all, excluded from the cathedral.
During the troubles caused by the captivity of King John the citizens of Paris made a vow to offer every year to Our Lady a wax candle as long as the boundary-line of the city. Every year the municipal body carried the winding taper, with much pomp, to the Church of Notre Dame, where it was received by the bishop and the canons in solemn assembly. The pious vow was kept for five hundred and fifty years, but ceased to be fulfilled at the time of the religious wars and of the League. In 1603 Paris had gained such dimensions that the ancient vow could scarcely be renewed, and in place of it, Fran�ois Miron, the celebrated Provost of the Merchants, offered a silver lamp, made in the form of a ship (principal object in the arms of Paris), which he pledged himself to keep burning night and day. In Notre Dame, too, were suspended the principal flags taken from the enemy, though it was only during war time that they were thus exhibited. When peace returned, the flags were put carefully out of sight. Notre Dame, while honouring peace, was itself the scene of frequent disturbances, caused by quarrels between high religious functionaries on questions of precedence. These disputes often occurred when the representatives of foreign Powers wished to take a higher position than in the opinion of their hosts was due to them. It must be noted, too, that at Notre Dame King Henry VI. of England, then ten years old, was crowned King of France.
Under the Regency the cathedral of Paris was the scene of one of the most daring exploits performed by Cartouche's too audacious band. A number of the robbers had entered the church in the early morning, and had succeeded in climbing up and concealing themselves behind the tapestry of the roof. Their pockets were filled with stones, and at a pre-concerted signal, just as the priest began to read the first verse of the second Psalm in the service of Vespers, they shouted in a loud voice, threw their missiles among the congregation, and cried out that the roof was falling in. A frightful panic ensued, during which the confederates of the thieves overhead helped themselves to watches, purses, and whatever valuables they could find on the persons of the terrified worshippers.
It was at Notre Dame, on the 10th of November, 1793, that the Feast of Reason was celebrated, the Goddess of Reason being impersonated by a well-known actress, the beautiful Mlle. Maillard.
The space in front of Notre Dame was at one time the scene of as many executions as the Place de Gr�ve, which afterwards became and for some centuries remained the recognised execution ground of the French capital.
It was on the Place de Gr�ve that Victor Hugo's heroine, the charming Esmeralda, suffered death, while the odious monk, Claude Frollo, gazed upon her with cruel delight, till the bell-ringer, Quasimodo, who, in his own humbler and purer way, loved the unhappy gipsy girl, seized him with his powerful arms, and flung him down headlong to the flags at the foot of the cathedral.
In 1587, under the reign of Henry IV., Dominique Miraille, an Italian, and a lady of �tampes, his mother-in-law, were condemned to be hanged and afterwards burnt in front of Notre Dame for the crime of magic. The Parisians were astonished at the execution: "for," says L'�toile, in his Journal, "this sort of vermin have always remained free and without punishment, especially at the Court, where those who dabble in magic are called philosophers and astrologers." With such impunity was the black art practised at this period, that Paris contained in 1572, according to the confession of their chief, some 30,000 magicians.
[Illustration: RUE DU CLO�TRE.]
The popularity of sorcery in Paris towards the end of the sixteenth century is easily accounted for by the fact that kings, queens, and nobles habitually consulted astrologers. Catherine de Medicis was one of the chief believers in all kinds of superstitious practices; and a column used to be shown in the flower-market from which she observed at night the course of the stars. This credulous and cruel queen wore round her waist a skin of vellum, or, as some maintained, the skin of a child, inscribed with figures, letters, and other characters in different colours, as well as a talisman, prepared for her by the astrologer Regnier, an engraving of which may be found in the Journal of Henry III. By this talisman, composed as it was of human blood, goats' blood, and several kinds of metals melted and mixed together, under certain constellations associated with her birth, Catherine imagined that she could rule the present and foresee the future.
Magic was employed not only for self-preservation, but with the most murderous intentions. When it was used to destroy an enemy, his effigy was prepared in wax; and the thrusts and stabs inflicted upon the figure were supposed to be felt by the original. A gentleman named Lamalle, having been executed on the Place de Gr�ve in 1574, and a wax image, made by the magician Cosmo Ruggieri, having been found upon him, Catherine de Medicis, who patronised this charlatan, feared that the wax figure might have been designed against the life of Charles IX., and that Ruggieri would therefore be condemned to death. Lamalle had maintained that the figure was meant to represent the "Great Princess": Queen Marguerite, that is to say. But Cosmo Ruggieri was condemned, all the same, to the galleys; though his sentence--thanks, no doubt, to the personal influence of Catherine de Medicis--was never executed. Nicholas Pasquier, who gives a long account of Ruggieri in his Public Letters, declares that he died "a very wicked man, an atheist, and a great magician," adding that he made another wax figure, on which he poured all kinds of venoms and poisons in order to bring about the death of "our great Henry." But he was unable to attain his end; and the king, "in his sweet clemency, forgave him."
When, after the Barricades, Henry III. left Paris, the priests of the League erased his name from the prayers of the Church, and framed new prayers for those princes who had become chiefs of the League. They prepared at the same time images of wax, which they placed on many of the altars of Paris, and then celebrated forty masses during forty hours. At each successive mass the priest, uttering certain mystic words, pricked the wax image, until finally, at the fortieth mass, he pierced it to the heart, in order to bring about the death of the king. Thirteen years later, under the reign of Henry IV., the Duke de Biron, who had his head cut off in the Bastille, publicly accused Laffin, his confidant and denunciator, of being in league with the devil, and of possessing wax figures which spoke. Marie de Medicis employed, even whilst in exile, a magician named Fabroni, much hated by Richelieu, for whom Fabroni had predicted a speedy death.
It was in front of Notre Dame that by order of the princes, dukes, peers, and marshals of France, assembled in the Grand Chamber of Parliament, Damiens was condemned to do penance before being tortured and torn to pieces. He was to be tormented, by methods no matter how barbarous, until he revealed his accomplices, and was also required to make the amende honorable before the principal door of Notre Dame. Thither, in his shirt, he was conveyed on a sledge, with a lighted wax candle in his hand weighing two pounds; and there he went down on his knees, and confessed that "wickedly and traitorously he had perpetrated the most detestable act of wounding the king in the right side with the stab of a knife"; that he repented of the deed, and asked pardon for it of God, of the king, and of justice. After this he was to be carried on the sledge to the Place de Gr�ve, where, on the scaffold, he was to undergo a variety of tortures, copied from those appointed for the punishment of Ravaillac. Finally, his goods were to be confiscated, the house where he was born pulled down, and his name stigmatised as infamous, and for ever forbidden thenceforth, under the severest penalties, to be borne by any French subject.
[Illustration: APSIS OF NOTRE DAME.]
Damiens had been educated far above his rank. His moral character, however, was peculiarly bad. His life had been one perpetual oscillation between debauchery and fanaticism. His changeableness of disposition was noticed during his imprisonment at Versailles. Sometimes he seemed thoroughly composed, as though he had suffered nothing and had nothing to suffer; at other times he burst into sudden and vehement passions, and attempted to kill himself against the walls of his dungeon or with the chains on his feet. As in one of his furious fits he had tried to bite off his tongue, his teeth were all drawn, in accordance with an official order.
When the sentence was read to him, Damiens simply remarked, "La journ�e sera rude." Every kind of torture was applied to him to extort confessions. His guards remained at his side night and day, taking note of the cries and exclamations which escaped him in the midst of his sufferings. But Damiens had nothing to confess, and on the 28th of January he was carried, with his flesh lacerated and charred by fire, his bones broken, to the place of execution.
Immediately after his self-accusation in front of Notre Dame he was taken to the Place de Gr�ve, where the hand which had held the knife was burnt with the flames of sulphur. Then he was torn with pincers in the arms and legs, the thighs and the breast, and into his wounds were poured red hot lead and boiling oil, with pitch, wax, and sulphur melted and mixed. The sufferer endured these tortures with surprising energy. He cried out from time to time, "Lord, give me patience and strength." "But he did not blaspheme," says Barbier, in his narrative of the scene, "nor mention any names."
The end of the hideous tragedy was the dismemberment. The four traditional horses were not enough. Two more were added, and still the operation did not advance. Then the executioner, filled with horror, went to the neighbouring H�tel de Ville to ask permission to use "the axe at the joints." He was, according to Barbier, sharply rebuked by the king's attendants, though in an account of the tragedy contributed at the time to the Gentleman's Magazine (and derived from the gazettes published in Holland, where there was no censorship), the executioner was blamed for having delayed the employment of the axe so long.
There are conflicting accounts, too, as to the burning of the prisoner's calves. It was said on the one hand that the garde des sceaux, Machault, caused red hot pincers to be applied in his presence to Damiens' legs at the preliminary examination; but another version declares this to be a mistake, and ascribes the burning of his legs to the king's attendants, who, seeing their master stabbed, are represented as punishing the assassin by the unlikely method of applying torches to his calves.
The torture of Damiens lasted many hours, and it was not till midnight, when both his legs and one of his arms had been torn off, that his remaining arm was dragged from the socket. The life of the poor wretch could scarcely have lasted so long as did the execution of the sentence passed upon him. A report of the trial was published by the Registrar of the Parliament; but the original record being destroyed, it is impossible to test the authenticity of this report. It fills four small volumes, and is entitled "Pi�ces Originales et Proc�dures du Proc�s fait � Robert Fran�ois Damiens, Paris, 1757."
Ivan the Terrible, when his digestion was out of order, and he felt unequal to the effort of breakfasting, used to revive his jaded appetite by visiting the prisons and seeing criminals tortured. George Selwyn claimed to have made amends for his want of feeling in attending to see Lord Lovat's head cut off by going to the undertaker's to see it sewn on again, when, in presence of the decapitated corpse, he exclaimed with strange humour, and in imitation of the voice and manner of the Lord Chancellor at the trial:--"My Lord Lovat, your lordship may rise." This dilettante in the sufferings of others is known to have paid a visit to Paris for the express purpose of seeing Damiens torn in pieces. On the day of the execution, according to Mr. Jesse ("George Augustus Selwyn and his contemporaries"), "he mingled with the crowd in a plain undress and bob wig," when a French nobleman, observing the deep interest he took in the scene, and supposing from the simplicity of his attire that he was a person of the humbler ranks in life, chose to imagine that the stranger must infallibly be an executioner. "Eh, bien, monsieur," he said, "�tes-vous arriv� pour voir ce spectacle?" "Oui, monsieur." "Vous �tes bourreau?" "Non, non, monsieur, je n'ai pas cet honneur; je ne suis qu'un amateur."
Wraxall tells the story somewhat differently. "Selwyn's nervous irritability," he says, "and anxious curiosity to observe the effect of dissolution on men, exposed him to much ridicule, not unaccompanied with censure. He was accused of attending all executions, disguised sometimes, to elude notice, in female attire. I have been assured that in 1756 (or 1757) he went over to Paris expressly for the purpose of witnessing the last moments of Damiens, who expired in the most acute tortures for having attempted the life of Louis XV. Being among the crowd, and attempting to approach too near the scaffold, he was at first repulsed by one of the executioners, but having explained that he had made the journey from London solely with a view to be present at the punishment and death of Damiens, the man immediately caused the people to make way, exclaiming at the same time:--'Faites place pour monsieur; c'est un Anglais et un amateur.'"
According to yet another story on this doleful subject, for which Horace Walpole is answerable, the Paris executioner, styled "Monsieur de Paris," was surrounded by a number of provincial executioners, "Monsieur de Rouen," "Monsieur de Bordeaux," and so on. Selwyn joined the group, and on explaining to the Paris functionary that he was from London, was saluted with the exclamation, "Ah, monsieur de Londres!"
Among the minor celebrations of which the interior of Notre Dame has been the scene may be mentioned a mass said some twenty years before the Revolution for the broken arm of the famous dancer, Madeleine Guimard. One evening, when the fascinating Madeleine was performing in Les f�tes de l'Hymen et de l'Amour, a heavy cloud fell from the theatrical heavens upon one of her slender arms and broke it. Then it was that the services of the Church were invoked on behalf of the popular ballerina.
The interesting and graceful, though far from beautiful, Madeleine, was justly esteemed by the clergy; for during the severe winter of 1768 she had given to every destitute family in her neighbourhood enough to live on for a year, at the same time paying personal visits to each of them. "Not yet Magdalen repentant, but already Magdalen charitable!" exclaimed a famous preacher, in reference to Madeleine Guimard's good action. "The hand," he added, "which knows so well how to give alms will not be rejected by St. Peter when it knocks at the gate of Paradise."
The Paris Cathedral has, strangely enough, been the scene, both in ancient and modern times, of dramatic performances. There, in the olden days, "Mysteries" were represented; and there, in 1790, a melodrama was played, entitled "The Taking of the Bastille," and described as "specially written for Notre Dame." This performance was followed by a grand Te Deum, sung by members of the Opera, though one of the first effects of the Revolution was to drive the best singers away from Paris. Soon afterwards, music, history, and religion were once more to be intermingled. This was in August, 1792. when the last day of the French Monarchy (August 10) was at hand.
The most imposing ceremony ever witnessed within the walls of Notre Dame was, as before said, the Coronation of Napoleon Bonaparte, at the hands of the Pope, on Sunday, the 2nd December, 1804. The Holy Father set out with his retinue at ten o'clock in the morning, and much earlier than the Emperor, in order that the ecclesiastical and royal processions should not clash. He was accompanied by a numerous body of clergy, gorgeously attired and resplendently ornamented, whilst his escort consisted of detachments of the Imperial Guard. A richly decorated portico had been erected all around the Place Notre Dame to receive on their descent from the royal carriages the sovereigns and princes who were to proceed to the ancient basilica. Already, when the Pope entered the church, there were assembled within it the deputies of the towns, the representatives of the magistracy and the army, the sixty bishops, with their clergy, the Senate, the Legislative Body, the Council of State, the Princes of Nassau, Hesse, and Baden, the Arch-Chancellor of the Germanic Empire, and the ministers of the different European Powers. The great door of Notre Dame had been closed, because the back of the Imperial throne was placed against it. The church, therefore, was entered by the side doors, situated at the two extremities of the transept. When the Pope, preceded by the cross and by the insignia of his office, appeared, the whole assembly rose from their seats, and a body of five hundred instrumentalists and vocalists gave forth with sublime effect the sacred chant, Tu es Petrus. The Pope walked slowly towards the altar, before which he knelt, and then took his place on a throne that had been prepared for him to the right of the altar. The sixty prelates of the French Church presented themselves in succession to salute him, and the arrival of the Imperial family was now awaited.
The cathedral had been magnificently adorned. Hangings of velvet, sprinkled with golden bees, descended from roof to pavement. At the foot of the altar stood two plain arm-chairs which the Emperor and Empress were to occupy before the ceremony of crowning. At the western extremity of the church, and just opposite the altar, raised upon a staircase of twenty-four steps and placed between imposing columns, stood an immense throne--an edifice within an edifice--on which the Emperor and Empress were to seat themselves when crowned.
[Illustration: THE LEADEN SPIRE, NOTRE DAME.]
The Emperor did not arrive until considerably after the hour appointed, and the position of the Pope was a painful one during this long delay, which was due to the excessive precautions taken to prevent the two processions from getting mixed. The Emperor set out from the Tuileries in a carriage which seemed entirely made of glass, and which was surmounted by gilt genii bearing a crown. He was attired in a costume designed expressly for the occasion, in the style of the sixteenth century. He wore a plumed hat and a short mantle. He was not to assume the Imperial robes until he had entered the cathedral. Escorted by his marshals on horseback, he advanced slowly along the Rue St. Honor�, the Quays of the Seine, and the Place Notre Dame, amidst the acclamations of immense crowds, delighted to see their favourite general at last invested with Imperial power. On reaching the portico, already spoken of, Napoleon alighted from his carriage and walked towards the cathedral. Beside him was borne the grand crown, in the form of a tiara, modelled after that of Charlemagne. Up to this point Napoleon had worn only the crown of the C�sars: a simple golden laurel. Having entered the church to the sound of solemn music, he knelt, and then passed on to the chair which he was to occupy before taking possession of the throne.
The ceremony then began. The sceptre, the sword, and the Imperial robe had been placed on the altar. The Pope anointed the Emperor on the forehead, the arms, and the hands; then blessed the sword, with which he girded him, and the sceptre, which he placed in his hand; and finally proposed to take up the crown. Napoleon, however, saved him all possible trouble in the matter by crowning himself.
"This action," says M. Thiers, in his description of the ceremony, "was perfectly appreciated by all present, and produced an indescribable effect," though it may be doubted whether in crowning himself Napoleon departed from the traditional practice at Imperial coronations. We have at all events in our own time seen, at several coronations, emperors, and even kings, assert the autocratic principle by taking the crown from the hands of the officiating prelate to place it on their own head without his aid.
Napoleon, taking the crown of the Empress, now approached Josephine, and as she knelt before him, placed it with visible tenderness upon her head, whereupon she burst into tears.
He next proceeded towards the grand throne, and, as he ascended it, was followed by his brothers, bearing the train of his robe. Then the Pope, according to custom, advanced to the foot of the throne to bless the new sovereign, and to chant the very words which greeted Charlemagne in the basilica of St. Peter, when the Roman clergy suddenly proclaimed him Emperor of the West: "Vivat in �ternum semper Augustus!" At this chant shouts of "Vive l'Empereur!" resounded through the arches of Notre Dame, while the thunder of cannon announced to all Paris the solemn moment of Napoleon's consecration.
The coronation of Napoleon has been made the subject of a masterpiece by David, whose work may be seen, and with interest studied, in the galleries of Versailles. The moment chosen by the painter is that at which the Emperor, after crowning himself with his own hands, is about to place the crown on the head of Josephine, in presence of the Pope, the cardinals, the prelates, the princes, the princesses, and the great dignitaries of the Empire. There are no less than 150 figures in this composition, and the portraits, conscientiously painted, are, for the most part, very like. The two principal figures occupy the centre of the picture. Napoleon is standing up on one of the steps of the altar, clad in a long tunic of white satin and a heavy cloak of crimson velvet sprinkled with golden bees. His hands are raised in the air, holding the crown which he is about to place on the head of the Empress. Josephine is kneeling on a cushion of violet velvet, attired in a white dress, above which she wears a crimson cloak sprinkled with bees, held up by Mme. de la Rochefoucauld, and Mme. de Lavalette, both in white dresses. Behind the Emperor is the Pope, seated in an arm-chair and holding up his right hand in sign of blessing.
David had originally represented Pius VII. with his hands on his knees, as if taking no part in the solemn scene. Napoleon, however, insisted on the painter giving him the attitude just described. "I did not bring him here from such a distance to do nothing!" he exclaimed.
[Illustration: GARGOYLES IN THE SACRISTY, NOTRE DAME.]
"In his picture of the coronation," says M. Ars�ne Houssaye, "David, carried away by his enthusiasm, has reached the inaccessible summits of the ideal. His Napoleon is radiant with health, strength, and genius. The face of Josephine beams with conjugal tenderness and exquisite grace. The group formed by the Pope and the clergy is exceedingly fine."
The execution of this picture occupied David four years. When it was finished Napoleon went to see it, not, by any means, for the first time, and said to the painter: "Very good; very good indeed, David. You have exactly seized my idea. You have made me a French knight. I am obliged to you for transmitting to future ages the proof of an affection I wished to give to her who shares with me the responsibilities of government."
When the picture was exhibited a friendly critic pointed out to the painter that he had made the Empress younger and prettier than she really was. "Go and tell her so!" was the reply.
ST.-GERMAIN-L'AUXERROIS.
The Massacre of St. Bartholomew--The Events that preceded it--Catherine de Medicis--Admiral Coligny--"The King-Slayer"--The Signal for the Massacre--Marriage of the Duc de Joyeuse and Marguerite of Lorraine.
One of the oldest and most interesting churches in Paris is that of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, which, dating from the last days of Lutetia, before the name of Parisius, or Paris, had been finally adopted for the gradually expanding city, is closely associated with the most terrible event in French history. Still, at the present time, in a perfect state of preservation, it was built about the year 572; and just one thousand years afterwards, in 1572, the signal for the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day was sounded from its belfry. Philip II., King of Spain, Pope Pius IV., and the Guises, especially Cardinal de Lorraine, were the authors of the massacre. Catherine de Medicis and her son Charles IX., King of France, were but accomplices and executants in the atrocious plot. Before speaking of the principal incidents of this ghastly day, a glance is necessary at the events which preceded it. Charles IX. and his sister Elizabeth, wife of Philip II., had brought together at Bayonne, in 1565, all the most distinguished members of the French Court. But the dominating figure of the assembly was the too famous Duke of Alva, worthy confidant and adviser of Philip II. Catherine de Medicis had frequent conferences with the duke, and in spite of the secrecy with which they were conducted, certain words reached the ear of the Prince of B�arn, afterwards Henry IV., whose extreme youth disarmed all suspicion, but who perceived, nevertheless, that the object of these conversations was to determine the best method of destroying the Protestants in France. The young prince hastened to tell the Queen of Navarre, his mother, and she informed the Prince de Cond� and Admiral de Coligny, chiefs of the Protestant party, who at once took counsel as to how the blow with which they were threatened could be averted.
The next year, in 1566, the assembly at Moulins furnished an opportunity for bringing about a reconciliation between the Catholic house of Guise and the Protestant house of Ch�tillon. But so little sincerity was there in the compact of peace, that just after the assembly had broken up Coligny was apprised that a plot had been formed for his assassination. He complained to the king, and was now more than ever on his guard.
The whole of the Protestant party became filled with mistrust; and observing this, Catherine de Medicis determined to strike her blow at once. It was difficult, of course, to raise troops without alarming the Huguenots. But it so chanced that an army sent by the King of Spain to the Low Countries was then marching along the French frontiers. As if apprehensive for the safety of her dominions, Catherine raised 6,000 Swiss troops, and after the Spaniards had passed towards their destination, marched them to the centre of the kingdom. Everything seemed to favour Catherine's designs. But someone having informed the Calvinists of the peril which threatened them, they assembled in the house of the admiral at Ch�tillon, and there resolved to seize upon the Court, which was enjoying the fine weather at Monceau, in Brie, without the least precaution for its own safety; as though it had nothing to fear from that body of men whose destruction it notoriously meditated. The design of the Protestants was to drive away the Guises, and place the king and queen at the head of their own party. The attempt, however, failed through the firm attitude of the Swiss troops, who repulsed the attack of Andelot and La Rochefoucauld, and brought the king from Meaux to Paris surrounded by a strong battalion.
The war began again, and the Calvinists, commanded by the Prince de Cond�, were defeated, the prince himself being slain, or rather assassinated, during the conflict. He had just surrendered to Dargence, when Montesquieu, captain of the Duke of Anjou's guard, on learning who he was, shot him in the head, exclaiming, "Tuez! Tuez, Mordieu!"
The Prince of B�arn now became the chief of the Protestant party, and as such, directed their forces at the Battle of Jarnac, with Coligny as second in command. The result of this engagement was a temporary peace, by which certain privileges were granted to the Protestants: not to be enjoyed, but simply to inspire a false confidence. It was not so easy to deceive Admiral Coligny, who, observing that the Guises had lost nothing of the influence they exercised over the king and queen, resolved to remain still upon his guard. At last, however, Catherine de Medicis succeeded in enticing him to the Court, and with him the Queen of Navarre, the Prince of B�arn, and the foremost chiefs of the Protestant party. Catherine spoke in a confiding tone to the old admiral about the war she pretended to contemplate against Flanders, and the king said to him, with a familiar slap on the shoulder: "I have you now, and don't intend to let you go." Flattered by these attentions, he felt secure, though many of his friends still doubted the sincerity of the king and queen. Their suspicions were confirmed by the sudden death of the Queen of Navarre, which was attributed to poison. Vainly, however, did they attempt to awaken the brave old admiral to his danger. He had, by express permission of the king, made a journey to Ch�tillon, and many of the Protestant chiefs warned and entreated him on no account to return to the Court. One of them, Langoiran by name, asked the admiral's permission to quit his service. "Why?" said Coligny, in astonishment. "Because," replied Langoiran, "they are loading us with caresses, and I would rather fly like a dog than die like a dupe." Nothing, however, could disturb the confidence of the admiral, who returned to Paris only to throw himself into the arms of his assassins.
The young King of Navarre, the future Henry IV., was about to be married to the sister of the King of France, and the ceremony was to be made the occasion of all kinds of entertainments and festivities. The enemies of the Protestants were meanwhile preparing their massacre; and in the first place the death of Coligny was resolved upon.
When Richard III., in Shakespeare's play, says to one of his pages, "Know'st thou a murderer?" the ingenuous youth replies--
"I know a ruined gentleman Whose humble means match not his haughty tastes."
A gentleman of this sort (and it was precisely from such material during the Renaissance that murderers were formed) presented himself in La Brie, the favourite country of witchery and bedevilment. He was called Maurevel, and surnamed, for no obvious reason, "the King-slayer." Hired for the purpose, he concealed himself in a house in the Rue des Foss�s Saint Germain l'Auxerrois, whence, just as Coligny passed by, on his way from the Louvre to dine at his house in Rue B�thizi, he fired at him with an arquebus, wounding him severely in the left arm and cutting off the forefinger of his left hand. Without showing much emotion, Coligny pointed to the house from which the shots had proceeded (the arquebus was loaded with several bullets), and tried to get the assassin arrested; but he had already fled. Then, leaning on his servants, he finished the journey to his own house on foot.
The king was playing at tennis when the news of the infamous act was brought to him. "Shall I never have any peace?" he exclaimed, as he threw down his racquet. The admiral's friends resolved to complain at once to the king, and to demand justice. For this purpose Henry, King of Navarre, accompanied by the Prince de Cond�, went to the palace, when Charles replied, with an oath, that he would inflict punishment. It was evident, he added, that a crime of this kind was a threat against the life of the king himself, and that no one would henceforth be safe if it were left unavenged.
The king, profanely as he spoke, was sincere; nor had the remotest thought of a massacre yet entered his head. The very day of the attack on Coligny he paid a visit of sympathy to the wounded admiral, accompanied by his mother, the Duke of Anjou, and a brilliant suite. He called him the bravest general in the kingdom, and assured him that his assailant should be terribly punished, and the edict in favour of Protestants in France absolutely obeyed.
Hitherto the queen had not dared to breathe to the king a word of her murderous designs, fearing an explosion of indignation on his part; and Charles's first bursts of passion were always terrible. But as they were returning to the Louvre from their visit to the admiral she succeeded in frightening her royal son by hinting at the dark and foul projects which she attributed to the admiral. So enraged was the king that she could now fearlessly own to him that everything had taken place by her orders and those of the Dukes of Anjou and Guise.
The too credulous Charles vowed that in face of such nefarious plots on the part of the Protestants, Coligny should die, and the Huguenots be put wholesale to the sword, so that not one should survive to reproach him with the act.
The massacre being thus decided upon, it now only remained to put the infamous project into execution. In a conference at the Tuileries between the king, the Duke of Anjou, the Duke of Nevers, the Count of Angoul�me, illegitimate brother of the king, the keeper of the seals, Birague, Marshal de Tavanne and Count de Retz, the slaughter was fixed for Sunday, August 24th, 1572, the day of the Feast of St. Bartholomew. There was a difference of opinion as to whether the King of Navarre, the Prince de Cond�, and the Montmorencys should be included in the massacre. Then Tavanne summoned Jean Charron, provost of the merchants, and in the king's presence ordered him to arm the Citizen Companies, and to march them at midnight to the H�tel de Ville for active service.
[Illustration: CHURCH OF ST.-GERMAIN-L'AUXERROIS.]
The ferocious impatience of the Duke of Guise, who had undertaken the murder of Coligny, did not allow him to await the signal agreed upon for the massacre. He hurried, at two o'clock in the morning, to the house of the admiral, and ordered the gates to be opened in the name of the king. An officer, commanding the guard stationed in the court-yard to protect the admiral's person, turned traitor, and admitted the assassins with a deferential salute. Three colonels in the French army, Petrucci, Siennois, and Besme; a German, a native of Picardy named Attin, Sarlaboux, and a few other gentlemen, rushed up the staircase, shouting, "Death to him!" At these words Coligny, understanding that his life was as good as lost, got up, and leaning against the wall, was saying his prayers, when the assassins broke into his room. Besme advanced towards him. "Are you Coligny?" he asked, with the point of his sword at the old man's throat. "I am," he replied with calmness; "but will you not respect my age?" Besme plunged his sword into the admiral's body, drew it out smoking, and then struck his victim several times in the face. The admiral fell, and Besme, hastening to the window, cried out to the Catholic noblemen who were waiting in the court-yard, "It is done!" "M. d'Angoul�me will not believe it till he sees the corpse at his feet," replied the Duke of Guise. Sarlaboux and Besme seized the body and threw it into the court-yard. The Duke of Angoul�me wiped the admiral's face with his handkerchief; Guise said, "It is really he"; and both of them, after kicking the body with ferocious delight, leaped on horseback, and exclaimed, "Courage, soldiers! we have begun well; let us now see to the others. By order of the King!"
[Illustration: THE PRINCIPAL STREETS OF PARIS.]
This crime had scarcely been consummated when the great bell of St.-Germain-l'Auxerrois gave the signal for the massacre, which soon became general. At the cries and shrieks raised round them, the Calvinists came out of their houses, half-naked and without arms, to be slain by the troops of the Duke of Guise, who himself ran along the streets, shouting "To arms!" and inciting the people to massacre. The butchery was universal and indiscriminate, without distinction of age or sex. The air resounded with the yells of the assassins and the groans of their victims. When daylight broke upon the hideous picture, bodies bathed in gore were everywhere to be seen. Dead and dying were collected, and thrown promiscuously into the Seine. Within the precincts of the palace, the royal guards, drawn up in two lines, killed with battle-axes unhappy wretches who were brought to them unarmed and thrust beneath their very weapons. Some fell without a murmur; others protested with their last breath against the treachery of the king, who had sworn to defend them. At daybreak the king went to the window of his bedroom, and seeing some unfortunate Protestants making a frantic attempt to escape by swimming across the river, seized an arquebus and fired upon them, exclaiming, "Die, you wretches!"
Marsillac, Count de la Rochefoucauld, one of the king's favourites, had passed a portion of the night with him, when Charles, who had some thought of saving his life, advised him to sleep in the Louvre. But he at last let him go, and Marsillac was stabbed as he went out.
Antoine of Clermont Renel, running away in his shirt, was massacred by his cousin, Bussy d'Amboise. Count Teligni, who, ten months before, had married Admiral de Coligny's daughter, possessed such an agreeable countenance and such gentle manners that the first assassins who entered his house could not make up their minds to strike him. But they were followed by others less scrupulous, who at once put the young man to death. An advocate named Taverny, assisted by one servant, resisted at his house a siege which lasted nine hours; though, after exhausting every means of defence, he was at last slain. Several noblemen attached to the King of Navarre were assassinated in his abode. The prince himself and Cond�, his cousin, were arrested, and threatened with death. Charles IX., however, spared them on their abjuring Calvinism.
A few days before the massacre Caumont de la Force had bought some horses of a dealer, who, chancing to be in the immediate neighbourhood when Admiral de Coligny was assassinated, hastened to inform his customer, well known as one of the Protestant leaders, of what had taken place. This nobleman and his two sons lived in the Faubourg St.-Germain, which was not yet connected with the right bank by any bridge. The horse-dealer, therefore, swam across the Seine to warn La Force, who, however, had already effected his escape. But as his children were not following him, he returned to save them, and had scarcely set foot in his house when the assassins were upon him. Their leader, a man named Martin, entered his room, disarmed both father and sons, and told them they must die. La Force offered the would-be murderers a ransom of 2,000 crowns, payable in two days. The chief accepted, and told La Force and his children to place in their hats paper crosses, and to turn back their right sleeves to the shoulder: such being the signs of immunity among the slaughterers. Thus prepared, Martin conveyed them to his house in the Rue des Petits Champs, and made La Force swear that neither he nor his children would leave the place until the 2,000 crowns were paid. For additional security, he placed some Swiss soldiers on guard, when one of them, touched with compassion, offered to let the prisoners escape. La Force, however, refused, preferring, he said, to die rather than fail in his word. An aunt of La Force's furnished him with the 2,000 crowns, and he was about to count them out to Martin, when a French nobleman came to inform La Force that the Duke of Anjou wished to speak to him. On this pretext the emissary conducted both father and sons from the house without their caps: with nothing, that is to say, to distinguish them from the victims of assassination. They were at once set upon. La Force's eldest son fell, crying out "Je suis mort." The father, pierced to the heart, uttered a similar exclamation; on which the youngest La Force had the presence of mind to throw himself to the ground as if dead. Supposed to be a corpse, he was gradually stripped of his clothes, until a man who intended to steal from him a pair of woollen stockings, of which he had not yet been divested, could not restrain, as he looked upon the boy's pallid face, some expression of sympathy. Seeing that the stranger had taken pity on him, young La Force whispered that he was not dead. He was told to keep quiet; and the man with a taste for woollen stockings wrapped him up in his cloak and carried him away. "What have you there?" asked an assassin. "My nephew," replied the man. "He went out last night and got dead drunk, and I mean, as soon as I get him home, to give him a good thrashing." Young La Force made his preserver a present of thirty crowns, and had himself conveyed in safety to the Arsenal, of which his uncle, Marshal de Biron, was governor.
The most famous, or rather infamous, of those who took part in the massacre as leaders or principal agents were Jean F�rier, an advocate, and at that time captain of his quarter, Peyou, a butcher, and Curc�, a goldsmith, who, with upturned sleeves and bloody arms, boasted that 400 Huguenots had died beneath his blade. The massacre lasted in Paris with diminishing fury for a whole month. It was enacted, moreover, in nearly all the large towns; though in some few the governors refused to execute the orders transmitted to them. At Lyons 4,000 were killed. Here the governor, Mandelot by name, finding after several days' massacre that there were still a number of Huguenots to slay, ordered the executioner to despatch them; on which that functionary replied that it was his duty to execute criminals convicted of violating the laws of State, but that he was not an assassin, and would not do assassins' work. This spirited reply recalls Joseph de Maistre's celebrated paradox about the executioner and the soldier: the former putting to death only the worst offenders in virtue of a legal mandate, yet universally loathed; the latter plunging his sword into the body of anyone he is told to slay, yet universally honoured. The explanation of the ingenious paradox is, after all, simple enough. The executioner kills in cold blood, without danger to himself; the soldier risks his life in the performance of his duty.
A Lyons butcher, less scrupulous than the executioner, killed so many Huguenots that, according to Dulaure, in his Singularit�s Historiques, he was invited to dinner by the Pope's Legate, passing through Lyons on his way to Paris. The number of Huguenots massacred throughout France was estimated at 60,000. Though the murders were generally due to fanaticism, many persons were put to death for purely private reasons. Heirs killed those from whom they expected to inherit, lovers their rivals, candidates for public offices those whom they wished to replace. On the third day of the massacre Charles IX. went to Parliament, and avowed that the slaughter of the Huguenots had taken place by his command, and in order to anticipate an intended Huguenot rising organised by Coligny. The Parliament accepted this announcement with approval; and despite the absence of all evidence against the admiral, it was decreed that his body should be dragged through the streets on a hurdle, then exhibited in the Place de Gr�ve, and ultimately hung by the heels on a gibbet at Montfaucon. His house was at the same time to be destroyed, the trees in his garden cut down, and the members of his family reduced to the condition of plebeians, or roturiers, and declared unable to hold any public office; which, however, did not prevent Coligny's daughter from becoming soon afterwards the wife of the Prince of Orange.
Not many years after the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the Church of St.-Germain-l'Auxerrois, in September, 1581, was the starting-point of a very different series of performances. "On Monday, September 18th," says the writer of a contemporary account, "the Duc de Joyeuse (Henry III.'s favourite 'minion') and Marguerite of Lorraine, daughter of Nicholas de Vaudemont, and sister of the queen, were betrothed in the Queen's Chamber, and the following Sunday were married at three o'clock in the afternoon at the parish church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois. The king led the bride, followed by the queen, the princesses, and other ladies in such superb attire that no one recollects to have seen anything like it in France so rich and so sumptuous. The dresses of the king and of the bridegroom were the same, and were so covered with embroidery, pearls, and precious stones, that it was impossible to estimate their value. Such an accoutrement had, for instance, cost ten thousand crowns in the making; and at the seventeen feasts which were now from day to day given by the king to the princes and lords related to the bride, and by other great persons of the Court, the guests appeared each time in some new costume, gorgeous with embroidery, gold, silver, and diamonds. The expense was so great, what with tournaments, masquerades, presents, devices, music, and liveries, that it was said the king would not be quit for twelve hundred thousand crowns. On Tuesday, October 16th, the Cardinal de Bourbon gave his feast in the palace attached to his abbey, St.-Germain-des-Pr�s, and caused to be constructed on the Seine a superb barque in the form of a triumphal car, which was to convey the king, princes, princesses, and the newly married pair from the Louvre to the Pr�-aux-Clercs in solemn pomp. This stately vehicle was to be drawn on the water by smaller boats disguised as sea-horses, Tritons, dolphins, whales, and other marine monsters, to the number of twenty-four. In front, concealed in the belly of the said monsters, were a number of skilled musicians, with trumpets, clarions, cornets, violins, and hautboys, besides even some firework-makers, who, at dusk, were to afford pastime not only to the king, but to fifty thousand persons on the banks." The piece, however, was not well played, and it was impossible to make the animals advance as was intended, so that the king, after having from four o'clock in the afternoon till seven watched at the Tuileries the movements and workings of these animals without perceiving any effect, said sarcastically, "Ce sont des b�tes qui commandent a d'autres b�tes," and drove away with the queen in his coach, to be present at the cardinal's feast, which was the most magnificent of all. Among other entertainments, his Eminence gave that of an artificial garden, luxuriant with growing flowers and fruits, as if it had been May or August.
[Illustration: SCENE DURING THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW.]
On Sunday, the 15th, the queen gave her feast at the Louvre, and after the feast the ballet of "Circe and her Nymphs." This work, otherwise entitled "Ballet Comique de la Reine," was represented in the large Salle de Bourbon by the queen, the princes, the princesses, and the great nobles of the Court. It began at ten o'clock in the evening, and did not finish till three the next morning. The queen and the princesses, who represented the Naiads and the Nereids, terminated the ballet by a distribution of presents to the princes and nobles, who, in the shape of Tritons, had danced with them. For each Triton there was a gold medal with a suitable inscription; and the composer, Baltazarini--or Beaujoyeux, as he was now called--received flattering compliments at the end of the representation from the whole Court. His genius was extolled and his glory celebrated in verses which hailed him as one who "from the ashes of Greece had revived a new art," who with "divine wit" had composed a ballet, and who had so placed it on the stage that he surpassed himself in the character of "inventive geometrician."
On the evening of Monday, the 16th, at eight o'clock, the garden of the Louvre was the scene of a torch-lit combat between Fourteen Whites and Fourteen Yellows. On Tuesday, the 17th, there were conflicts with the pike, the sword, and the butt end of the lance, on foot and on horseback. On Thursday, the 19th, took place the Ballet of the Horses, in which Spanish steeds, race-horses, and others met in hostile fashion, retired, and turned round to the sound of trumpets and clarions, having been trained to it five months beforehand. "All this," says the chronicler, "was beautiful and agreeable, but the finest feature of Tuesday and Thursday was the music of voices and instruments, being the most harmonious and most delicate that was ever heard. There were also fireworks, which sparkled and burst, to the fright and joy of everyone, and without injury to any."
It was in the Church of St.-Germain-l'Auxerrois, too, three centuries earlier, that a priest astonished his congregation--and afterwards, when the incident was reported, the whole of Europe--by his mode of pronouncing the excommunication decreed by Pope Innocent IV. against the Emperor Frederick II. "Hearken to me, my brethren," he said. "I am ordered to pronounce a terrible anathema against the Emperor Frederick to the accompaniment of bells and lighted candles. I am ignorant of the reasons on which this judgment is based. All I know is that discord and hatred exist between the Pope and the Emperor, and that they are accustomed to overwhelm each other with insults. Therefore I excommunicate, as far as lies in my power, the oppressor, and I absolve the one who is suffering a persecution so pernicious to the Christian religion." It has been said that a report of this strange excommunication found its way all over Europe. The priest, as might have been expected, was rewarded by the Emperor and punished by the Pope.
Nearly two centuries later, in 1744, the celebrated actress and singer, Sophie Arnould, came into the world in the very room in which Admiral de Coligny was assassinated. Sophie Arnould, of whose operatic career mention is made elsewhere, was the only French actress of whom Garrick, in narrating his experiences of Parisian theatrical life, could speak with enthusiasm. As a singer she does not seem to have possessed much power, for she writes in the fragment of her "Memoirs" which has come down to us: "Nature had seconded my taste for music with a tolerably agreeable voice, weak but sonorous, though not extremely so. It was, however, sound and well balanced, so that, with a good enunciation, and without any noticeable effort, not a word of what I sang was lost even in the most spacious buildings." With regard to her personal appearance, Sophie writes: "My figure is slender and regular, though I must admit that I am not tall. I have a graceful frame, and my movements are easy. I possess a well-formed leg and a pretty foot, with hands and arms like a model, eyes well set and an open countenance, lively and attractive." Coll�, in his "Journal and Memoirs," declares that soon after her d�but Sophie was the recognised "Queen of the Opera," and he adds: "I have never yet seen united in the same actress more grace, more truthfulness of sentiment, nobility of expression, intelligence, and fire, never beheld more touching pathos. Her physiognomy represents every kind of grief, and while depicting horror her countenance does not lose one feature of its beauty."
[Illustration: THE PONT-NEUF AND THE LOUVRE, FROM THE QUAI DES AUGUSTINS.]
The Oldest Bridge in Paris--Henri IV.--His Assassination by Ravaillac.--Marguerite de Valois--The Statue of Henri IV.--The Institute--The Place de Gr�ve.
Paris in 1886 contained, according to the census of that year, 2,344,550 inhabitants, of whom 1,714,956 (or 73.15 per cent.) lived on the right bank of the Seine. So much more important indeed by the number of its population as well as by its manifestations of life in every form is the right bank than the left, that a man might live all his life in the former division of Paris and, without ever having crossed the Seine, be held to know the French capital thoroughly. One may indeed be a thorough Parisian without ever having quitted the Boulevards.
Ancient Paris, as represented by the "Cit�" of to-day, the Paris of the left bank, and the Paris of the right bank are bound together by the Pont-Neuf: the one structure which they have all three in common. The Pont-Neuf may, therefore, be made a convenient starting-point from which to approach the right bank, the left bank, and finally the "City."
The Pont-Neuf is, in spite of its name, the oldest bridge in Paris; and it is almost the only one which retains without alteration its original form. From time to time it has been partially repaired, but the lines on which it was originally constructed were never changed. Parisians have for the last three centuries regarded the Pont-Neuf as the type of solidity; and a Parisian who does not aspire to originality in conversation will not hesitate, even to this day, when asked how he is, to reply that he is "as strong as the Pont-Neuf." The first stone of the bridge was laid on Saturday, May 31, 1578, by King Henri III., in presence of his mother, Queen Catherine de Medicis, his wife, Queen Louise, and the principal officials of the kingdom. As the king had just been assisting at the obsequies of his favourites, Qu�lus and Maugiron, killed in a duel, he was very melancholy, and the bridge acquired everywhere the name of the Bridge of Tears. The idea of connecting the left bank with the island and the island with the right bank had been entertained by King Henri II. Henri III. undertook to defray the cost of construction. But this he did only in a theoretical way; for three years after his death, in 1592, the chief builder of the bridge, Guillaume Marchand, was still unpaid. The work, meanwhile, was far from complete, interrupted as it had been by the troubles of the League; and it was not until Henri IV. had established his power at Paris and throughout France that, in May, 1598, it was resumed. Three arches of the principal arm had yet to be reared, and it was only in 1603 that the king was able to perform the ceremony of crossing the bridge from left bank to right; part of the journey even then having to be made on a temporary plank, so insecurely fixed that it was by a mere piece of royal luck that the venturesome monarch did not go over into the Seine. In undertaking the hazardous passage, he indicated to the friends who tried to dissuade him his belief in the "divinity that doth hedge a king;" and he, in any case, failed on this perilous occasion either to break his neck or drown. The builder of the Pont-Neuf, Guillaume Marchand, was also its architect: so, at least, asserts his epitaph in the Church of St. Gervais: "The celebrated architect," he is called, "who created two admirable works: the Royal Castle of St. Germain and the Pont-Neuf of Paris." Marchand, however, died in 1604, so that although the bridge may have been originally planned by him, it is quite possible that the design may have been completed by another hand, and that the official title of "architect to the bridge" may have belonged to Baptiste du Cerceau, for whom it is often claimed.
What is called the Pont-Neuf consists really of two bridges: one connecting the left bank with the island, the other stretching from the opposite side of the island shore to the right bank. According to its original plan, the Pont-Neuf, like all the old Paris bridges, was to support a number of houses for which cellars had been constructed beforehand among the piles on which the bridge rested. Henri IV., however, refused to allow the intended houses to be built, determined not to spoil the view of the Louvre, which he had just constructed. Many years afterwards, however, in the reign of Louis XV., a number of little shops were raised on the Pont-Neuf, occupied by match-sellers, sellers of hot and cold drinks, dog-shearers, second-hand booksellers, chestnut-roasters, makers of pancakes and apple fritters, shoeblacks, quacks, and musicians more or less blind. These shops and stalls were maintained until the first days of the Second Empire, when they disappeared.
Henri IV. was determined to proclaim to future ages his connection with the bridge of which he considered himself in some sense the author; and on its completion he adorned it with an equestrian statue of himself in bronze which is almost as celebrated as the bridge itself. The statue stands on the promontory of the island between the two spans of the structure; and from this point a magnificent view may be obtained of the course of the Seine above and below bridge. The original statue was the work of Jean de Bologne, and of his pupil, Pierre Tacca. It was unveiled on August 23rd, 1613, at which time the corners of the pedestal were adorned by four slaves, since removed, but still preserved in the museum of the Louvre. Three years later the populace dragged to the Pont-Neuf the maimed and lacerated body of Marshal d'Ancre, and having cut it into pieces, burnt it before the statue. The so-called Marshal d'Ancre--Concini, by his family name--had come to Paris in the suite of Marie de Medicis, wife of Henri IV. He married one of the queen's attendants, and by intrigues and speculations of every kind succeeded in gaining a position of great influence, together with enormous wealth. He was known to be guilty of all sorts of abuses, and was suspected of having been privy to some of the attempts made upon the life of Henri IV. On the accession of Louis XIII., after the assassination of Henri IV. by Ravaillac, an ambush, not without the knowledge of Louis XIII., was laid for the marshal; and, to the delight of the people of Paris, he fell into it. According to a legend of the period, his heart, after he had been slain, was cut out, roasted, and eaten!
Henri IV., the first of the royal house of Bourbon, was the greatest of all the French kings, and at least the best of the kings of the Bourbon line. Such faults as undoubtedly belonged to him seem to have had no effect but to increase his popularity; perhaps because, in a degree, they belonged also to the great mass of his subjects.
This doubtful husband, good friend, and excellent ruler, beloved with warmth by his subjects, was nevertheless made the object of numerous attempts at assassination, the last of which proved fatal. His would-be murderers were for the most part religious fanatics--as dangerous in that day as the fanatics of revolution in ours; and to this class belonged Ravaillac, at whose hands Henri was destined to perish.
Francis Ravaillac, the son of an advocate, was born and educated at Angoul�me. When very young, he lived with one Rosi�res, also a lawyer, whom he served as clerk and valet. He afterwards lived with other legal practitioners, and at length, on the death of his last master, conducted lawsuits for himself. This profession he continued for several years, but to such small advantage that he finally quitted it, and gained his living by teaching. At this time his father and mother lived apart, and were so indigent that both subsisted chiefly on alms. Ravaillac, now thirty years old, and unmarried, lodged with his mother, and, becoming insolvent, was thrown into prison for debt.
[Illustration: BY THE PONT-NEUF.]
He was naturally of a gloomy disposition, and while under the depression of trouble was subject to the strangest hallucinations. In prison he often believed himself surrounded with fire, sulphur, and incense; and such fancies continued after he was released. He asserted that on the Saturday night after Christmas, 1609, having made his meditations, as he was wont, in bed, with his hands clasped and his feet crossed, he felt his mouth and face covered by some invisible agent, and was at the same time urged by an irresistible impulse to sing the Psalms of David. He therefore chanted the psalms "Dixit Dominus," "Miserere," and "De profundis" quite through, and declared that he seemed to have a trumpet in his mouth, which made his voice as shrill and loud as that instrument in war.
[Illustration: SEINE FISHERS.]
Whilst his mind was thus unhinged by fanaticism, he often reflected on the king's breach of promise in not compelling the Huguenots to return to the Catholic Church, and determined to go to Paris to admonish him to neglect this duty no longer. Arrived at Paris, he went frequently to the Louvre, and in vain begged many persons to introduce him to his Majesty. One of those applied to was Father Daubigny, a Jesuit, whom he informed not only of his desire to speak to the king, but of his wish to join the famous Order. Daubigny advised him to dismiss all these thoughts from his mind and to confine himself to bead-telling and prayer; but Ravaillac profited little by the counsel, and, under the conviction that Henri ought to make war on the Huguenots, took to loitering constantly about the Court, in hope of a chance interview with his Majesty.
[Illustration: QUAI DU LOUVRE.--�LE DE LA CIT�.--L'INSTITUT.
VIEW FROM THE PAVILLON DE FLORE.]
Some days later he happened to meet the king driving in a coach near St. Innocents' Church. His desire to speak to him grew more ardent at the prospect of success, and he ran up to the coach, exclaiming, "Sire, I address you in the name of our Lord Jesus and of the Blessed Virgin." But the king put him back with his stick, and would not hear him. After this repulse, despairing of being able to influence his Majesty by admonition, he determined to kill him. But he could come to no decision as to the mode of executing his design, and after a time returned to Angoul�me.
[Illustration: THE PONT-NEUF AND THE MINT.]
He continued in a state of intense anxiety, sometimes considering his project of assassination as praiseworthy, sometimes as unlawful. Shortly afterwards he attended Mass in the monastery of the Franciscan Friars at Angoul�me, and going afterwards to confession, admitted, among other things, an intention to murder, though without saying that Henri was the proposed victim. Nor did the confessor inquire as to the details of the crime. Still restless and disturbed, Ravaillac went back to Paris, and on entering the city, found his desire to kill the king intensified. He took lodgings close to the Louvre: but not liking his rooms, went to an inn in the neighbourhood to see if accommodation could be had there. The inn was full; but whilst Ravaillac conversed with the landlord, his eye happened to be attracted by a knife, sharp-pointed and double-edged, that lay on the table; and it occurred to him that here was a fit instrument for his purpose. He accordingly took occasion to convey it away under his doublet, and having had a new handle made for it, carried it about in his pocket.
But he faltered in his resolution, and abandoning it once more, set out on his way home. As he went along he somehow broke the point of his knife. At an inn where he stopped for refreshment he heard some soldiers talking about a design on the part of the king to make war against the Pope, and to transfer the Holy See to Paris. On this, his determination returned strong upon him and going out of the inn, he gave his knife a fresh point by rubbing it against a stone, and then turned his face towards Paris.
Arrived at the capital a third time, he felt an inclination to make a full confession of his design to a priest; and would have done so had he not been aware that the Church is obliged to divulge any secrets which concern the State.
Henceforth he never once relinquished his purpose. But he still felt such doubts as to whether it were not sinful that he would no longer receive the Sacrament, lest, harbouring his project all the while, he should unworthily eat.
Without hope of gaining admission to the king in his palace, he now waited for him with unwearied assiduity at the gates. At last, on the 17th of May, 1610, he saw him come out in a coach, and followed him for some distance, until the vehicle was stopped by two carts, which happened to get in the way. Here, as the king was leaning his head to speak to M. d'Epernon, who sat beside him, Ravaillac, in a frenzy, fancied he heard a voice say to him, "Now is the time; hasten, or it will be too late!" Instantly he rushed up to the coach, and standing on a spoke of the wheel, drew his knife and struck the king in the side. Finding, however, the knife impeded by one of the king's ribs, he gave him another--and this time a fatal--blow near the same place.
The king cried out that he was slain, and Ravaillac was seized by a retired soldier of the guard. When searched, he was found to have upon him a paper painted with the arms of France, and with a lion on each side, one holding a key, the other a sword. Above he had written these words: "The name of God shall not be profaned in my presence." There was also discovered a rosary and a piece of a certain root in the shape of a heart, which he had obtained as a charm against fever from the Capuchins, who assured him that it had inside it a piece of the real cross of the Saviour. "This, however," says an ingenuous chronicler, "when the heart was broken, proved to be false."
Ravaillac was first examined by the President of the Parliament and several commissioners as to his motives for committing the crime, and as to whether he had accomplices. During the interrogation he often wept, and said that though at the time he believed the assassination to be a meritorious action, he now felt convinced that this was a delusion into which he had been suffered to fall as a punishment for his sins. He expressed the deepest contrition for his offence, and implored the Almighty to give him grace to continue till death in firm faith, lively hope, and perfect charity.
He denied that he had any confederate, and on being requested to say at whose instigation he did the deed, replied indignantly that it originated entirely with himself, and that for no reward would he have slain his king. He answered all other questions with great calmness and humility, and when he signed his confession, wrote beneath the signature these lines:--
"Que toujours en mon coeur J�sus soit le vainqueur."
In spite, however, of Ravaillac's protests, at this and at a subsequent examination, that he was quite without advisers, abettors, or accomplices, the examiners would not believe him, and he was ordered to be put to the torture of the brodequin, or boot. This instrument, like its English counterpart, was a strong wooden box, made in the form of a boot, just big enough to contain both the legs of the criminal. When his legs had been enclosed, a wedge was driven in with a mallet between the knees; and after this had been forced quite through, a second, and even a third wedge was employed in the same way.
Ravaillac, having been sworn, was placed on a wooden bench, when the brodequin was fitted to his legs. On the first wedge being driven in, he cried out: "God have mercy upon my soul and pardon the crime I have committed; I never disclosed my intention to anyone." When the second wedge was applied he uttered horrid cries and shrieks, and exclaimed: "I am a sinner: I know no more than I have declared. I beseech the Court not to drive my soul to despair. Oh God! accept these torments in satisfaction for my sins." A third wedge was then driven in lower, near his feet, on which his whole body broke into a sweat. Being now quite speechless, he was released, water was thrown in his face, and wine forced down his throat. He soon recovered by these means, and was then conducted to chapel by the executioner. But religious exhortation only caused him to repeat once more that he had no associate of any kind in connection with his crime.
At three in the afternoon of the 27th of May, 1610, he was brought from the chapel and put into a tumbril, the crowd in all directions being so great that it was with the utmost difficulty that the archers forced a passage. As soon as the prisoner appeared before the public gaze he was loaded with execrations from every side.
After he had ascended the scaffold he was urged by two spiritual advisers to think of his salvation while there was time, and to confess all he knew; but he answered precisely as before. As there seemed to be a prospect of the murderer getting absolution from the Church, a great outcry was raised, and many persons cried out that he belonged to the tribe of Judas, and must not be forgiven either in this world or the next. Ravaillac argued the point thus raised, maintaining that having made his confession he was entitled to absolution, and that the priest was bound by his office to give it. The priest replied that the confession had been incomplete, and, therefore, insincere, and that absolution must be refused until Ravaillac named his accomplices. The criminal declared once more that he had no accomplices; and it was at last arranged that he should be absolved on certain conditions.
"Give me absolution," he said: "at least conditionally, in case what I say should be true."
"I will," replied the confessor, "on this stipulation: that in case it is not true your soul, on quitting this life--as it must shortly do--goes straight to hell and the devil, which I announce to you on the part of God as certain and infallible."
"I accept and believe it," he said, "on that condition."
Fire and brimstone were then applied to his right hand, in which he had held the knife used for the assassination, and at the same time his breast and other fleshy parts of his body were torn by red-hot pincers. Afterwards, at intervals, melted lead and scalding oil were poured into his wounds. During the whole time he uttered piteous cries and prayers.
Finally, he was pulled in different directions for half-an-hour by four horses, though without being dismembered. The multitude, impatient to see the murderer in pieces, threw themselves upon him, and with swords, knives, sticks, and other weapons, tore, mangled, and finally severed his limbs, which they dragged through the streets, and then burned in different parts of the city. Some of these wretches went so far as to cut off portions of the flesh, which they took home to burn quietly by their firesides.
Apart from his own violent death, more than one tragic story is connected with the memory of Henri IV. Close to the H�tel de Ville stands the H�tel de Sens, where, in December, 1605, lived Marguerite de Valois, the divorced wife of Henri IV. Already in her fifty-fifth year, this lady had by no means abandoned the levity of her youth. She had two lovers, both of whom were infatuated with her. The one she preferred, Saint-Julien by name, had a rival in the person of a mere boy of eighteen, named Vermond, who had been brought up beneath the queen's eyes. On the 5th of April, 1606, Marguerite, returning from Mass, drove up to the H�tel de Sens at the very moment when Vermond and Saint-Julien were quarrelling about her. Saint-Julien rushed to open the carriage door, when Vermond drew a pistol and shot him dead. The queen "roared," according to a contemporary account, "like a lioness." "Kill him!" she cried. "If you have no arms, take my garter and strangle him." The people whom her Majesty was addressing contented themselves with pinioning the young man. The next morning a scaffold was raised before the H�tel de Sens, and Vermond had his head cut off in the presence of Marguerite, who, from one of the windows of her mansion, looked on at the execution. Then her strength gave way, and she fainted. The same evening she quitted the H�tel de Sens, never to return to it.
At the time of the Revolution the mob attacked the statue of Henri IV. on the Pont-Neuf, overturned it from its pedestal, and virtually destroyed it. The present monument was erected by public subscription after the Restoration in 1814, and on the 25th of August, 1818, was inaugurated by Louis XVIII. In the pedestal is enclosed a magnificent copy of Voltaire's epic "La Henriade." The low reliefs which adorn the pedestal of this admirable equestrian statue represent, on the southern side, Henri IV. distributing provisions in the besieged city of Paris; on the northern side, the victorious king proclaiming peace from the steps of Notre-Dame.
It has been said that the Pont-Neuf is traditionally famous for its solidity. In spite of this doubtless well-deserved reputation, the ancient bridge seemed, in 1805, on the point of giving way. Changes in the bed of the river had led to a partial subsidence of two of the arches supporting the smaller arm of the bridge. The necessary repairs, however, were executed, and the bridge's reputation for strength permanently restored.
Among the many interesting stories told in connection with the Pont-Neuf may be mentioned one in which a famous actress of the early part of this century, Mlle. Contat, plays a part. She happened to be out in her carriage, and after a fashion then prevalent among the ladies of Paris, was driving herself, when, holding the reins with more grace than skill, she nearly ran over a pedestrian who was crossing the bridge at the same time as herself. In those days, when side-walks for pedestrians were unknown, the whole of the street being given up to people with carriages, it was easy enough to get run over; and Mercier, in his "Tableau de Paris," speaks again and again of the accidents that occurred through the haughty negligence and recklessness of carriage folk, and even of hirers of hackney coaches. A sufferer in these rather one-sided collisions was generally held to be in the wrong, and Mlle. Contat reproached her victim with having deliberately attempted to throw himself under her horses' feet. The pedestrian took the blame gallantly upon himself, bowed to the ground, offered the lady an apology, paid her a graceful compliment, and disappeared. Scarcely had he done so when the actress felt convinced, from his courtly manners and distinguished air, that she must have been on the point of mangling some personage of high rank, and for a long time she felt extremely curious to know who he could be. One night, about a month after the incident, when she was at the theatre, a letter from the gentleman whom she had accused of getting in the way of her horses was delivered to her. He proved to be not merely a person of high quality, as she had guessed, but a real live prince: Prince Henry, brother of the King of Prussia. He was a friend, moreover, of the drama; and he had written to beg "the modern Athalie" to do him the honour to preside at the rehearsal of a new piece in which he was interested. Partly for the sake of the piece, but principally for that of the man whom she was so near running over, Mlle. Contat complied with the prince's request. The piece was a comedy, with airs written by Baron Ernest von Manteuffel, and set to music by a composer of the day. The subject was extremely interesting, and Mlle. Contat saw that this musical comedy might prove an immense success at the Th��tre Fran�ais, where, being duly produced, it fully realised the actress's anticipations. "Les deux Pages" it was called; and the author, Prussian as he was, had written it in the French language, with which at that time the Court and aristocracy of Prussia were more familiar than with their own tongue. It will be remembered that Frederick the Great (who, by the way, was the leading personage in "Les deux Pages") wrote the whole of his very voluminous works in French.
[Illustration: STATUE OF HENRI IV. ON THE PONT-NEUF.]
Mercier, in his "Tableau de Paris," published at London in 1780 (its publication would not have been permitted at Paris), gives an interesting account of the Pont-Neuf as it existed in his time. "This," he says, "is the greatest thoroughfare in Paris. If you are in quest of anyone, native or foreigner, there is a moral certainty of your meeting with him there in the space of two hours, at the outside. The police-runners are convinced of this truth; here they lurk for their prey, and if, after a few days' look-out, they do not find it, they conclude with a certainty nearly equal to evidence that the bird is flown. The most remarkable monument of popular gratitude may be seen on this bridge--the statue of Henri IV. And if the French cannot boast of having in reality a good prince, they may comfort themselves in contemplating the effigy of a monarch whose like they will never see again. At the foot of the bridge, a large phalanx of crimps--commonly called dealers in human flesh--have established their quarters, recruiting for their colonels, who sell the victims wholesale to the king. They formerly had recourse to violent means, but are now only permitted to use a little artifice, such as the employment of soldiers' trulls for their decoy-ducks, and plying with liquors those youngsters who are fond of the juice of the grape. Sometimes, especially at Martinmas and on Shrove Tuesday, which are sacred in a peculiar manner to gluttony and drunkenness, they parade about the avenues leading to the bridge, some with long strings of partridges, hares, etc.; others jingling sacks full of half-crowns to tickle the ears of the gaping multitude; the poor dupes are ensnared, and, under the delusion that they are going to sit down to a sumptuous dinner, are in reality hastening to the slaughter-house. Such are the heroes picked out to be the support and pillars of the State; and these future great men--a world of conquerors in embryo--are purchased at the trifling price of five crowns a head."
Among the remarkable incidents which the Pont-Neuf has witnessed during its three centuries of existence must be mentioned certain amateur robberies, committed by gentlemen of the highest position. The Duke of Orleans is said to have set the fashion, which, one stormy night, after prolonged libations, was imitated by the Chevalier de Rieux, the Count de Rochefort, and a number of friends more unscrupulous than themselves. The count and the chevalier, though the only ones of the party who got arrested, played the mild part of lookers-on, taking their seats on Henri IV.'s bronze horse, while the actual work of highway robbery was being done by their companions. In due time, however, after several of the passers-by had been plundered of their cloaks, the watch was called, when the active robbers took to flight, whereas their passive accomplices, unable to get down all at once from the back of the bronze horse, were made prisoners, and kept for some time in confinement. Mazarin, indeed, was so glad to have his enemy, the Count de Rochefort, in his power, that he could scarcely be prevailed upon to let him out at all.
[Illustration: THE INSTITUTE.]
On the left bank of the Seine, at the very foot of the Pont-Neuf, stands the Institute of France, with its various academies, of which the most famous is that devoted to literature, the Acad�mie Fran�aise, where, said Piron, "there are forty members who have as much learning as four." "This establishment," writes Mercier somewhat bitterly, but with much truth, "was set on foot by Richelieu, whose every undertaking constantly tended to despotism. Nor has he in this institution deviated from the rule, for the Academy is manifestly a monarchical establishment. Men of letters have been enticed to the capital like the grandees, and with the same object: namely, to keep a better watch over them. The consequence is fatal to the progress of knowledge, because every writer aspiring to a seat in that modern Areopagus knows that his success depends on Court favour, and therefore does everything to merit this by sacrificing to the Goddess of Flattery, and preferring mean adulation that brings him academical honours to the useful, manly, and legitimate employment of his talents in the instruction of mankind. Hence the Academy enjoys no manner of consideration either at home or abroad. Paris is the only place where it can support any kind of dignity, though it is even there sorely badgered by the wits of the capital, who, expecting from it neither favour nor friendship, point all their epigrammatical batteries against its members. There is, in fact, but too much room for pleasantry and keen sarcasm. Is it not extremely ridiculous that forty men, two-thirds of whom owe their admission to intrigue or fawning, should be by patent created arbiters of taste in literature, and enjoy the exclusive privilege of judging for the rest of their countrymen? But their principal function has been to circulate and suppress new-coined words; regulating the pronunciation, orthography, and idioms of the French language. Is this a service or injury to the language? I should think the latter.
"Instead of becoming, as they ought to do, the oracle of the age and their nation, our men of letters content themselves with being the echo of that dread tribunal; hence the abject state of literature in the capital. We have some, however, who boldly think for themselves, trust to the judgment of the public, and laugh at the award of the Academy. Nothing can better mark the contempt in which a few spirited writers hold the decrees of the forty forestallers of French wit and refinement than the following epitaph which the author above cited, the terror of Voltaire, the scourge of witlings, Piron, ordered to be engraved on his tombstone:--
"'Cy g�t Piron, qui ne fut rien, Pas m�me Acad�micien.'"
Many very distinguished writers have, in every generation since the birth of the Academy, been included among its members. Very few, however, of the forty members have at any one time been men of genuine literary distinction; a duke who has written a pamphlet, an ambassador who has published a volume, having always had a better chance of election than a popular novelist or dramatist. M. Ars�ne Houssaye has written a book entitled "The Forty-first Chair," which is intended to show, and does show, that the greatest writer of each successive period, from Moli�re to Balzac, has always been left out of the Academy: has occupied, that is to say, "the forty-first chair." M. Alphonse Daudet, to judge by his brilliant novel "L'Immortel," has no better opinion of the French Academy than had Ars�ne Houssaye some forty years ago, when his ingenious indirect attack upon the Academy was first published.
The Pont-Neuf was, for a considerable time after its first construction, the most important highway in Paris. It connected Paris of the left bank with Paris of the right, and old Paris, the so-called Cit�, with both. It was the only bridge of importance; and what is now the greatest thoroughfare of Paris--the line of boulevards--was not yet in existence. The Pont-Neuf dates from the reign of Henri IV.; the boulevards from that of Louis XIV. Long, moreover, after it had ceased to be fashionable, the Pont-Neuf remained popular by reason of the vast stream of passengers perpetually crossing it in either direction. It was much in favour with itinerant dealers of all kinds, and equally so with beggars. Even in our own time it was on the Pont-Neuf that Les deux Aveugles of Offenbach deceived the public and exchanged confidences with one another. The plague of beggars is nothing, however, in these days, compared with what it was before the Revolution. "Who," asks a writer of the latter part of the eighteenth century, "seeing the populace of Paris ever merry, and the rich glittering in all the gaudy pomp of luxury, would believe that the streets of the metropolis are infested with swarms of beggars, were not the eye at every turn of the street shocked with some distressing spectacle, truly disgusting to the sight of every stranger who is not lost to all sense of humanity? Nothing has yet been done to remove this evil, and the methods hitherto practised have proved to be remedies worse than the disease. Amongst the ancients there was a class of people that might be called poor, but none reduced to absolute indigence. The very slaves were clothed, fed, had their friends; nor does any historian say that the towns and streets were full of those wretched, disgusting objects which either excite pity or freeze charity itself: wretches covered with vermin did not then go about the streets uttering groans that reach the very heart, and exhibiting wounds that frighten the eye of every passenger.
"This abuse springs from the nature of the legislation itself--more ready to preserve large fortunes than small. Let our new schemers say what they will, great proprietors are a nuisance in the State. They cover the lands with forests and stock them with fawns and deer; they lay out pleasure-gardens; and thus the oppression and luxury of the great is daily crushing the most unfortunate part of the community. In the year 1769 not only beggars, but even the poorer class of citizens were treated with much savage barbarity by secret orders from the Government. In the very dead of night old men, women, and children were suddenly seized upon, deprived of their liberty, and thrown into loathsome gaols, without the assignment of any cause for so cruel a treatment. The pretence was that indigence is the parent of crimes, that seditions generally begin among that class of people who, having nothing to lose, have nought to fear. The ministers who then wished to establish the corn-law dreaded the effect it would have on that world of indigent wretches, driven to despair, as they would be, by the advanced price of bread which was then to be imposed. Their oppressors said: 'They must be smothered;' and they were. As this was the most effectual method of silencing them, the Government never took the trouble to devise any other. When we cast an eye abroad, it is then we are convinced of the forlorn condition in which our lower sort of people drag out their miserable life. The Spaniard can cheaply provide himself with food and raiment. Wrapped up in his cloak, the earth is his bed; he sleeps soundly, and wakes without anxiety for his next meal. The Italians work little, and are in no want of the necessaries, or even luxuries, of life. The English, well fed, strong and hale, happy and free, reap and enjoy undisturbed the fruits of their industry. The Swede is content with his glass of brandy. The Russian, whom no foresight disturbs, finds abundance in the bosom of slavery; but the Parisians, poor and helpless, sinking under the burden of unremitting toils and fatigue, ever at the mercy of the great, who crush them like vile insects whenever they attempt to raise their voice, earn, at the sweat of their brow, a scanty subsistence, which only serves to lengthen their lives, without leaving them anything to look forward to in their old age but indigence, or, what is worse, part of a bed in the hospital."
The Pont-Neuf was always crowded when anything was coming off on the neighbouring Place de Gr�ve, where Ravaillac was tortured and torn to pieces, and where, in the next century, like horrors were perpetrated upon the body of Damiens, who had attacked Louis XV. with a pen-knife and inflicted upon him a slight scratch. The Place de Gr�ve has now lost its old historic name, and is called the Place de l'H�tel-de-Ville. In the open space where Ravaillac and Damiens were subjected to such abominable cruelty, and where so many criminals of various kinds and classes were afterwards to be broken and beaten to death, the guillotine was at a later date set up.
"The executioner in Paris," says Mercier (writing just before the Revolution of 1789), "enjoys a revenue of no less than 18,000 livres (�720). His figure is perfectly well known to the populace; he is for them the greatest tragedian. Whenever he exhibits they crowd round his temporary stage: our very women, even those whom rank and education should inspire with the mildest sentiments, are not the last to share in the horrid spectacles he provides. I have seen some of these delicate creatures, whose fibres are so tender, so easily shaken, who faint at the sight of a spider, look unconcerned upon the execution of Damiens, being the last to avert their eyes from the most dreadful punishment that ever was devised to avenge an offended monarch. The bourreau, although his employment brands him with infamy, has no badge to distinguish him from the rest of the citizens; and this is a great mistake on the part of the Government, particularly noticeable when he executes the dreadful commands of the law. It is not only ridiculous: it is shocking in the extreme, to see him ascend the ladder, his head dressed and profusely powdered; with a laced coat, silk stockings, and a pair of as elegant pumps as ever set off the foot of the most refined petit-ma�tre. Should he not be clad in garments more suitable to the minister of death? What is the consequence of so gross an absurdity? A populace not overburdened with the sense of sympathy are all taken up with admiration for the handsome clothes and person of our Breakbones. Their attention is engrossed by the elegant behaviour and appearance of this deputy of the King of Terrors; they have hardly a thought to bestow upon the malefactor, and not one on his sufferings. Of course, then, the intention of the law is frustrated. The dreadful example meant to frighten vice from its criminal course has no effect on the mind of the spectator, much more attentive to the point ruffles and the rich clothes of the man whose appearance should concur in adding to the solemnity than to the awful memento set up by a dire necessity to enforce the practice of virtue by showing that he who lives in crime must die in infamy. The executioner, from the stigma inherent to his profession, and of course to himself, cannot hope to form alliances among the other ranks of citizens. The very populace, though as well versed in the history of the hangman and the malefactors as the upper classes are in that of the sovereigns of Europe and their ministers, would think it a disgrace to intermarry with his family to the latest generation. It is not many years since the Bourreau of Paris publicly advertised that he was ready to bestow the hand of his daughter, with a portion of one hundred thousand crowns, on any native Frenchman who would accept it, and agree to succeed him in business. The latter clause would have staggered avarice itself; but the executioner of Paris was obliged to follow the practice of his predecessors in office, and marry his heiress to a provincial executioner. These gentlemen, in humble imitation of our bishops, take their surnames from the cities where they are settled, and among themselves it is 'Monsieur de Paris,' 'Monsieur de Rouen,' etc. etc."
[Illustration: THE PONT-NEUF FROM THE ISLAND.]
Besides breaking the bones of the criminals entrusted to his charge, torturing them in various ways, and ultimately putting them to death, the executioner, under the old r�gime, had sometimes to perform upon books, which he solemnly burnt on the Place de Gr�ve. Russia, Turkey, and the Roman Court are now the only Powers in Europe which maintain a censorship over books. But the custom of burning objectionable volumes, instead of simply pronouncing against them and forbidding their circulation, belongs altogether to the past. Plenty of books were forbidden in France under the First and Second Empire; and when the infamous Marquis de Sade sent Napoleon one of his disgraceful works, the emperor replied by ordering the man to be arrested and confined in a lunatic asylum. Under the Restoration many a volume was proscribed; but since the great Revolution of 1789 no Government in France has ventured to restore the custom of having a condemned book burnt by the executioner. When, in connection with the contest on the subject of the Church's relationship with the stage, a very able pamphlet was published, proving by the laws of France that the excommunication levelled against the stage was an illegal and scandalous imposition, it got condemned to be burnt in the Place de Gr�ve by the executioner. Whereupon Voltaire, indignant at the barbarity of such a punishment, brought out, anonymously, another pamphlet in defence of the cremated one, when this, in its turn, was sentenced to the flames. Doubtless the writer foresaw the fate of his little volume, for the tract in question contained the suggestive remark that, "if the executioner were presented with a complimentary copy of every work he was ordered to burn, he would soon possess a handsome and very valuable library."
"Monsieur de Paris" was accustomed in his best days to burn live witches as well as newly-published books; and the cremation of these unhappy wretches gave him at times much occupation.
[Illustration: STATUE OF HENRY IV. (PONT-NEUF).--THE LOUVRE.
VIEW FROM THE WESTERN POINT OF THE ILE DE LA CIT�.]
Without by any means introducing magic into France, Catherine de Medicis did her best to encourage magical practices; and in succeeding reigns the very people who, under her auspices, had cultivated relations with the fiend were punished for their tamperings with the supernatural. Catherine patronised astrologers and sorcerers of all kinds; and she was accused of holding in the woods lev�es of magicians, who arrived at the place of meeting on flying goats, winged horses, or even simple broomsticks. The assembly, according to popular rumour, began at night, and ended with cock-crow. The place selected for the "Sabbath" was lighted by a single lamp, which cast a melancholy light, and intensified rather than dispelled the prevailing darkness. The president of the "Sabbath" was the fiend in person, who took his seat on a high throne, clad with the skin of a goat or of an immense black poodle. On his right was the solitary lamp, on his left a man or woman who had charge of the powders or ointments which it was customary to distribute among those present. The ointments were supposed to enable the members of these strange associations to recognise one another by the smell. But there is so much that is evidently false and so little that is apparently true in the accounts transmitted to us of these witches' Sabbaths, that the only thing worth noting in connection with them is that they possessed the privilege of interesting Catherine de Medicis. The secret meetings of the Templars, the Anabaptists, and the Albigenses have all been represented as assemblies of sorcerers. In the "History of Artois," by Dom de Vienne, it is said that the Inquisition established in the province caused many unfortunate Waldenses to be burnt alive in consequence of diabolical practices, "to which," as the Inquisition declared, "they themselves confessed."
It may well be that the severity of the tortures inflicted on the accused, and the promise held out to them of forgiveness in case of avowal, induced many of them to admit the truth of charges without basis. The province of La Brie would seem during the magical times of Catherine de Medicis to have been inhabited almost entirely by sorcerers--by people, that is to say, who either considered themselves such or were so considered. The shepherds and herdsmen of the province possessed, it was said, the power of putting to death the sheep and cattle of their neighbours by burying various kinds of enchantments beneath the paths along which the animals were sure to pass. Some of these wonder-working shepherds were taken and prosecuted, when they confessed in many cases that they had exercised various kinds of bedevilments on the beasts of certain farmers. They made known the composition of their infernal preparations, but refused to state where they were buried, declaring that if they were dug up the person who had deposited them would immediately die. Whether the reputed sorcerers possessed the secret of some chemical mixtures which had really an injurious effect on cattle, or whether they were merely actuated by vain fancies, it would be impossible at the present time to say. But many shepherds and herdsmen of La Brie were, towards the end of the seventeenth century, condemned and executed for magical practices. Thus two shepherds, named Biaule and Lavaux, were sentenced by the same judge to be hanged and burnt; and the sentence, after being confirmed by the Parliament of Paris, was put into effect on the 18th of December, 1691.
Magical practices have been denounced by more than one Church council; nor were incantations and witchcraft supposed by any means to be confined to the ignorant classes. Pharamond passed for the son of an incubus; and the mother of Clovis for a witch. Fr�d�gonde accused Clovis, son of her husband Chilp�ric and a former wife, of sorcery; and it was not until the reign of Charlemagne that any endeavour was made to destroy the popular belief in magic. After Charlemagne's death witchcraft took a greater hold on the public mind than ever; and ridiculous historians wrote that Queen Berthe had given birth to a gosling and that Bertrade was a witch. Philip the Bold consulted a sorceress. The madness of Charles VI. and the influence exercised upon him by Valentine of Milan were ascribed to magic; and it was as a witch that the Maid of Orleans was burnt.
From the Bastille to the Madeleine--Boulevard Beaumarchais--Beaumarchais--The Marriage of Figaro--The Bastille--The Drama in Paris--Adrienne Lecouvreur--Vincennes--The Duc d'Enghien--Duelling--Louis XVI.
The most important, the most interesting, the most absorbing thoroughfare on the right bank of the Seine, and, therefore, in Paris generally is that of the boulevards, in which the whole of the gay capital may be said to be concentrated. Numbers of Parisians pass almost the whole of their life on the Boulevard des Italiens; or between the Boulevard Montmartre to the east, and the Boulevard de la Madeleine to the west of what, to the fashionable Parisian, is the central boulevard. Nothing can be easier than to breakfast and dine on the boulevards; and it is along their length or in their immediate neighbourhood that not only the best restaurants, but the finest theatres are to be found. Stroll about the boulevards for a few hours--an occupation of which the true boulevardier seems never to get tired--and you will meet everyone you know in Paris.
If, moreover, the upper boulevards, those of the Madeleine, the Capucines, and the Italiens, represent fashionable Paris, the lower boulevards, from the Boulevard Montmartre to the Boulevard Beaumarchais, represent the Paris of commerce and of industry; so that the line of boulevards, as a whole, from the Madeleine to the Bastille, gives a fair epitome of the French capital.
The poorest of the boulevards are at the eastern end of the line, and the richest at the western; and the difference in character between the inhabitants of these opposite extremes is shown by a military regulation instituted under the Second Empire. Neither the district inhabited by the needy workmen of the east nor the western district, where dwelt the richest class of shop-keepers, was allowed to furnish the usual contingent of National Guards. The artisans were too turbulent to be entrusted with arms, while the tradespeople were equally unreliable, because from timidity they allowed their arms to be taken from them.
Beginning at what most visitors to Paris will consider the wrong end of the line of boulevards, we find that on the Boulevard Beaumarchais Paris has a very different physiognomy from that which she presents on the Boulevard de la Madeleine, which the visitor may reach by omnibus, though it is more interesting to travel in some hired vehicle which may now and then be stopped, and more interesting still to make the whole of the three-mile journey on foot.
At either end of the line of boulevards is a Place, or open space, which, for want of a better word, may be called a square: Place de la Bastille to the east, Place de la Madeleine to the west. The omnibuses which ply between the two extremities bear the inscription "Madeleine--Bastille"; and, beginning at the Bastille, the traveller passes eleven different boulevards, or, rather, one boulevard bearing in succession eleven different names: Beaumarchais, des Filles du Calvaire, du Temple, Saint-Martin, Saint-Denis, Bonne-Nouvelle, Poissonni�re, Montmartre, des Italiens, des Capucines, and de la Madeleine.
Advancing from the Bastille to the Madeleine, we find the appearance of the shops constantly improving, until, from poor at one end, they become magnificent at the other. What the military authorities of Germany call "necessary luxuries" (such as coffee, tea, and sugar), as well as luxuries in a more absolute sense (such as costly articles of attire, sweetmeats, and champagne), are sold all along the line. But at the Bastille end one notices here and there a little sacrifice to the useful and the indispensable. Indeed, on the lower boulevards grocers' shops are to be found, though nothing so commonplace offends the eye on the boulevards to which the name of "upper" is given.
In like manner, the importance of the theatres increases as you proceed from the Bastille westward. Nearly half the playhouses of Paris are on the boulevards: ten on the north side, and three on the south. Many other theatres, if not entered direct from the boulevards, are in their close vicinity. The theatre nearest the Madeleine is the new Opera House; that nearest the Place de la Bastille is the Th��tre Beaumarchais. The Boulevard Beaumarchais owes its name to the brilliant dramatist who, among other works, wrote the Barber of Seville and the Marriage of Figaro, still familiar to all Europe in their musical form. From 1760 to 1831 what is now called the Boulevard Beaumarchais was known as the Boulevard St.-Antoine. In the last-named year, however, under the government of Louis Philippe, it was determined to render homage to the author of the best comedies in the French language after those of Moli�re by naming a boulevard after him.
The Marriage of Figaro was played in public for the first time on April 27th, 1784. "The description of the first performance is," says M. de Lom�nie, "in every history of the period"; for which insufficient reason M. de Lom�nie omits it in his own history of "Beaumarchais and his Times." For at least two years before the Marriage of Figaro was played in public the work must have been well known in the aristocratic and literary circles of Paris. The brilliant comedy, which was not to be brought out until April, 1784, had been accepted at the Th��tre Fran�ais in October, 1781. "As soon as the actors," writes Beaumarchais, "had received, by acclamation, my poor Marriage, which has since had so many opponents, I begged M. Lenoir (the Lieutenant of Police) to appoint a censor; at the same time asking him, as a special favour, that the piece might be examined by no one else: which he readily promised; assuring me that neither secretary nor clerk should touch the manuscript, and that the play should be read in his own cabinet. It was so read by M. Coqueley, advocate, and I begged M. Lenoir to notify what he retrenched, objected to, or approved. Six weeks afterwards I learnt in society that my piece had been read at all the soir�es of Versailles, and I was in despair at this complaisance--perhaps forced--of the magistrate in regard to a work which still belonged to me; for such was certainly not the austere, discreet, and loyal course which belongs to the serious duty of a censor. Well or ill read--perhaps maliciously mutilated--the piece was pronounced detestable; and not knowing in what respect I had sinned (for according to custom nothing was specified), I stood before the inquisition obliged to guess my crimes, but aware, nevertheless, that I was already tacitly proscribed. As, however, this proscription by the court only irritated the curiosity of the town, I was condemned to readings without number. Whenever one party was discovered, another would immediately be formed."
At the beginning of 1782 it was already a question who could obtain the privilege of hearing the play read by Beaumarchais--an admirable reciter--whether at his own house or in some brilliant salon. "Every day," writes Madame Campan, "persons were heard to say: 'I was present, or I shall be present, at a reading of Beaumarchais's piece.'"
The first performance of the Marriage of Figaro was thus described by a competent judge. "Never," says Grimm, in one of the letters addressed by him and by Diderot to the Grand Duke of Saxe-Gotha, "never did a piece attract such crowds to the Th��tre Fran�ais. All Paris wished to see this famous 'marriage,' and the house was crammed almost the very moment the doors were opened to the public. Scarcely half of those who had besieged the doors since eight in the morning succeeded in finding places. Most persons got in by force or by throwing money to the porters. It is impossible to be more humble, more audacious, more eager in view of obtaining a favour from the Court than were all our young lords to ensure themselves a place at the first representation of Figaro. More than one duchess considered herself too happy that day to find in the balconies, where ladies are seldom seen, a wretched stool side by side with Madame Duth�, Carline, and company."
Ladies of the highest rank dined in the actresses' rooms, in order to be sure of places. "Cordons bleus," says Bachaumont, "mixed up in the crowd, elbowing with Savoyards--the guard being dispersed, and the iron gates broken by the efforts of the assailants." La Harpe, in one of his series of letters to the Grand Duke Paul of Russia and Count Schouvaloff, declares that three porters were killed; being "one more than were killed at the production of Scud�ry's last piece." "On the stage, when the curtain was raised, there was seen," says De Lom�nie, "perhaps the most splendid assemblage of talent that was ever contained within the walls of the Th��tre Fran�ais, employed in promoting the success of a comedy which sparkled with wit, which carried the audience along by its dramatic movement and audacity, and which, if it shocked or startled some of the private boxes, excited and enchanted, inflamed and electrified the pit."
All the parts were entrusted to performers of the first merit. Mademoiselle Sainval, who was the tragic actress then in vogue, had, at the urgent request of Beaumarchais, accepted the part of the Countess Almaviva, in which she displayed a talent the more striking from being quite unexpected. Mademoiselle Contat enchanted the public in the character of Susanna by her grace, the refinement of her acting, and the charms of her beauty and her voice. A very young and pretty actress, destined soon afterwards, at the age of eighteen, to be nipped in the bud by death--Mademoiselle Olivier, whose talent, says a contemporary, "was as na�ve and fresh as her face"--lent her na�vet� and her freshness to the seemingly ingenuous character of Cherubino. Mol� acted the part of Count Almaviva with the elegance and dignity which distinguished him. Dazincourt represented Figaro with all his wit, and relieved the character from any appearance of vulgarity. Old Pr�ville, who was not less successful in the part of Bridoison, gave it up after a few days to Dugazon, who interpreted it with more power and equal intelligence. Delessarts, with his rich humour, gave relief to the personage of Bartholo, which is thrown somewhat into the background. The secondary parts of Basil and Antonio were equally well played by Vanhove and Bellemont. Finally, through a singular caprice, a somewhat celebrated tragedian, Larive, not wishing tragedy to be represented in the piece by Mademoiselle Sainval alone, asked for the insignificant little part of Grippe-soleil.
[Illustration: PLACE DE LA BASTILLE AND COLUMN OF JULY.]
"The success of this Aristophanic comedy," writes De Lom�nie, "while it filled some persons with anxiety and alarm, naturally roused the curious crowd, who are never wanting, particularly when a successful person takes a pleasure in spreading his fame abroad--and this foible of Beaumarchais is well known. It was in the midst of a fire of epigrams in prose and verse that the author of the Marriage of Figaro pursued his career, pouring out on his enemies not torrents of fire and light, but torrents of liveliness and fun."
Beaumarchais, on the famous first night, sat in a loge grill�e--a private box, that is to say, with lattice-work in front--between two abb�s, with whom he had been dining, and whose presence seemed indispensable to him, in order, as he said, that they might administer to him des secours tr�s spirituels in case of death.
The Marriage of Figaro was represented sixty-eight times in succession, and each time with the greatest possible success. In eight months, from April 27th, 1784, till January 10th, 1785, the piece brought the Th��tre Fran�ais, without counting the fiftieth representation (which, at Beaumarchais's request, was given for the poor), no less than 346,197 livres or francs; an immense sum for that period. When all expenses had been paid, there remained a profit of 293,755 livres for division amongst the actors, after the deduction from it of Beaumarchais's share as author, amounting to 41,469 livres.
All sorts of anecdotes were told in connection with the success of the work. A gentleman--whom gossip transformed into a duke--wrote to Beaumarchais, asking for a loge grill�e for himself and two ladies who wished to see the piece without being seen. Beaumarchais replied that he had no sympathy with persons who wished to combine "the honours of virtue with the pleasures of vice"; and, moreover, that his comedy was not a work which honourable persons need be ashamed to see.
The Boulevard Beaumarchais of the present day was (as already mentioned) called, until some fifty years after the Revolution, Boulevard St.-Antoine; where, until 1789, the year of its destruction, stood the celebrated fortress and prison of the Bastille. The destruction of the Bastille was the first event in the French Revolution; and many have asked why the fury of the crowd was particularly directed against a building which, monument of tyranny though it was, had never been employed against the people at large, but almost always against members of the aristocracy, on whose behalf the Revolutionists were certainly not fighting. But although the dungeons of the Bastille were for the most part filled with political offenders, persons of every station in life did, from time to time, find themselves enclosed within its walls.
The too celebrated fortress was originally built to protect the east of Paris, as the Louvre was constructed to guard the west. It stood on the south side of the boulevard now known by the name of Beaumarchais, and consisted of eight towers, four of which looked towards the town--that is to say, the Rue St.-Antoine--and four towards the country--that is to say, the Faubourg St.-Antoine.
Above the shop of the wine-seller who inhabits No. 232 in the Rue St.-Antoine, at the corner of the newly-built Rue Jacques-Coeur, a marble tablet sets forth that the house in question occupies the site of the outlying building into which the assailants, on the 14th of July, 1789, made their way before storming the fortress itself. The caf� which stands at the corner of the street and of the square bears for its sign, "The Cannon of the Bastille."
It was less as a fortress than as a State prison that the Bastille was known, and by the nation at large execrated. Prisoners were taken to the Bastille on a simple lettre de cachet: a sealed order or warrant, which was sometimes given out blank, so that the favoured recipient might make whatever use of it he pleased, against no matter whom. The victims were introduced secretly into the fortress; and the soldiers on guard had instructions to turn aside when any prisoner was being brought in, so that they might not afterwards recognise him. Once inside the dungeon, he was liable to undergo frequent interrogations without even knowing on what charge, or even suspicion, he had been arrested. The treatment in prison depended absolutely on the will of the governor. Those under detention were kept in solitary confinement, without anyone outside being able to obtain news as to whether they even existed. They were not allowed to receive letters from their family or friends. The internal regulations of the Bastille are sufficiently well known to us by the numerous chronicles and memoirs published in connection with it, including, in particular, those of Linguet. "During the seven years that I passed in the Bastille," says M. Pelissery, quoted by Linguet, "I had no air even in fine weather, and in winter they gave me nothing in the way of fuel except wood just taken from the river. My bed was intolerable, and the bedclothes dirty and worm-eaten. I drank, or rather poisoned myself with, foul stagnant water. What food they brought me! Famished dogs would not have touched it. Accordingly, my body was soon covered with pustules, my legs gave way beneath me, I spat blood, and became scorbutic. The dungeons received neither light nor air, except by one narrow window pierced in a wall nearly five metres thick, and traversed by a triple row of bars, between which there were intervals of only five centimetres. Even on the most beautiful days the prisoners received but feeble rays of light. In the winter these fatal caves resembled ice-houses, being sufficiently raised for the cold to penetrate; while in summer they were like damp stoves, in which it was difficult not to be stifled, since the walls are so thick as to keep out the heat necessary for drying the interior. There are some rooms--and mine was one of them--which look out directly upon the moat into which flows the great sewer of the Rue St.-Antoine. Thence ascends a pestilential exhalation, which, when once it has entered these rooms, can only with much difficulty be got out again. It is in such an atmosphere that the prisoner has to breathe. There, not to be absolutely stifled, he is obliged to pass his nights and days glued to the inside bars of the little window in the door, through which a glimmer of light and a breath of air may reach him."
"The history of the Bastille as a State prison," says Mongin, "might almost be said to include everything intellectual and political in France. Into its dungeons were thrown, one after the other, Hugues; Aubriot, who himself founded the Bastille, and who expiated by perpetual imprisonment his alleged heresy and his love relations with a Jewess; Jacques d'Armagnac, Duke of Nemours, in 1475; with many high and powerful noblemen in the time of Louis XI. and Richelieu. Here also were confined Marshal de Biron and Fouquet, the Superintendent of Finances, besides more than one officer of distinction under Louis XIV."
When the Bastille had done its work on the last remains of feudalism and on the Court aristocracy, the turn came of the people--the precursors of the Republic, the martyrs of the Revolution. After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the Bastille was filled with Protestants. Here were shut up the Jansenists and the fanatics known as the Convulsionnaires. Here, too, suffered, until he was taken to the scaffold, the brave Governor of India under the French domination, Lally, who had given offence to the Court rather than to the sovereign. Voltaire, Mirabeau, Linguet (who, after making his escape, published in London his eloquent account of the cruelties to which prisoners in the Bastille were subjected), Latude, and numberless other men distinguished in different walks of life.
The 14th of July, 1789, saw the first blow struck by the Revolutionists against that monument which, to them, symbolised all that was hateful in the ancient monarchy. War had already virtually been declared between the two sides. Everything seemed in favour of the king, the Court, the nobility, and the monarchical party generally. "If Paris must be burnt," one of the Ministers had said, "we will burn it."
Paris was, indeed, surrounded with foreign troops; and whatever might be the attitude of the French regiments, commanded by officers some of whom were Royalists and others Republicans, it was certain that the popular movement would have to count with the Swiss, Austrian, and German troops stationed at Charenton, S�vres, Versailles, at the Military School, and elsewhere in the immediate neighbourhood of the capital.
On the 8th of July the National Assembly had, on the motion of Mirabeau, demanded from the king the removal of the foreign troops. The king's only reply, a few days afterwards, was to dismiss Necker, the popular Minister. The news of this tyrannical step fell upon Paris on Sunday, July 12th, like a spark on a barrel of gunpowder. The Palais Royal, which might be regarded as the head-quarters of the Revolution, became violently agitated. It was twelve o'clock on a hot summer's day when suddenly the midday cannon, with its lens above the touch-hole, was fired by the blazing sun.
A superstitious importance was attached to the familiar incident; and the Revolutionists, with the people around them, saw in the ordinary explosion of a midday gun, intended only to interest the public by marking the time, the signal for an uprising against the ancient monarchy. A young man of twenty, then absolutely unknown, but who was afterwards to be remembered as Camille Desmoulins, rushed out of the Caf� Foy, sprang upon a table just outside, and in impassioned language addressed the crowd. "Citizens," he cried, "there is not a moment to lose! I have just come from Versailles. Necker is dismissed, and his dismissal is the signal for a new massacre of St. Bartholomew. This evening all the Swiss and German battalions will march from the Champ-de-Mars to put to death every patriot. We have but one resource: to rise to arms, after assuming cockades by which we may recognise each other. What colours do you prefer--green, the colour of hope, or the blue of Cincinnatus, the colour of American liberty and of democracy?"
"Green, green!" cried the crowd.
"Friends," continued the young man, in a sonorous voice, "the signal is already given. I see staring me in the face the spies and satellites of the police. But I will not fall alive into their hands. Let every citizen follow my example." He waved in the air two pistols, fastened a green ribbon to his hat, and descending from his chair, urged those present to take, as signs of recognition, leaves from the trees around them. Soon the trees of the Palais Royal garden were stripped. The excitement and enthusiasm spread in every direction. Arms were seized wherever they could be found. The busts of Necker and of the Duke of Orleans, idols of the moment, were carried through the streets veiled with black crape. More than one detachment of the French Guards joined the crowd. In the Tuileries Gardens several persons were killed by a cavalry charge under the command of Prince de Lambesc, of which the chief effect was to exasperate the insurgents to the utmost. Partial engagements now took place at various points. At the gates of Paris, the barriers where a tax was levied on provisions brought into the city were set in flames. Towards evening committees were formed in all the districts of the capital "for preventing tumult." The shops were now everywhere closed, and the theatres gave no performances. During the night the district assemblies held a general meeting, at which it was resolved to urge all who possessed arms to bring them to district head-quarters, that militia companies, to be promptly formed for the occasion, might be furnished therewith in a regular manner. These militia bands were intended to act on behalf of the nation; if necessary, against the populace. But the general excitement was too great to allow of such formal measures being taken as the well-to-do citizens of the hurriedly constituted district assemblies thought advisable. To all recommendations of prudence there was but one reply: "To Arms!" The Provost of the Paris merchants, De Flesselles by name, who had been elected president of the district assemblies, endeavoured to stay the spirit of revolution, now spreading so widely; but to no purpose. The H�tel de Ville, from which he held forth, was now occupied in every corner by armed men, who had no intention of giving their weapons up for the equipment of any imaginary militia company; and as yet these companies were unformed. An order to evacuate the H�tel de Ville met with no attention, and deliberations were now carried on beneath the eyes and under the pressure of the enraged mob.
[Illustration: JUNCTION OF GRAND BOULEVARDS AND RUE AND FAUBOURG MONTMARTRE.]
In place of the green colour adopted in the first instance by the insurgents of the Palais Royal, which the day afterwards was rejected as the family colour of the Counts of Artois, the tricolour had now been assumed: blue, in the new flag, being held to signify hope; red, the blood of sacrifice; and white, the ancient monarchy, against which war had not yet been declared. It was against the abuses of the ancient system, and in view of a thorough reform, that the people were rising.
[Illustration: THE BASTILLE.]
Camille Desmoulins had begun the Revolution on Sunday, the 12th of July, at noon. On the morning of Monday, July 13th, the alarm bell was rung in every church, and the drum beaten in every street. Bands were now formed, without much system, under the names of Volunteers of the Palais Royal, of the Tuileries, etc. Women were everywhere making blue and red cockades--the white was not absolutely essential; the blacksmiths were forging arms; and it has been calculated that in thirty-six hours fifty thousand pikes were made. Tumultuous meetings were held in the churches, with a view to some regular organisation of the movement. A Government d�p�t of arms was invaded, and plundered of its contents. The Place de la Gr�ve became an important centre to which arms taken from gunsmiths' shops or from Government stores, sacks of wheat and flour (stopped at the barriers), and even herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, were brought. Paris was being turned into a camp. The citizens of the district assemblies, carried away by the ardour of the people whose impetuosity they had sought to restrain, the students of the various schools, the clerks of the public offices, the workmen of the faubourgs: all hurried to the H�tel de Ville, swearing to conquer or to die. The fact that Paris was threatened by Swiss, German, and various kinds of Austrian troops could not but awaken the patriotism of Frenchmen generally. The first enemy to be fought was the army of foreigners waiting to swoop down on the city. An important collection of arms, formed by those who had obeyed the first recommendations of the district assemblies, was reported to exist at the Invalides; and an enormous quantity of powder which was being sent out of Paris by way of the River Seine, apparently under the orders of the timid citizens composing the aforesaid assemblies, was seized, carried to the H�tel de Ville, and partially distributed.
No movement, meanwhile, had been made by the foreign troops, who were for the most part encamped or quartered in the �cole Militaire; the inaction being attributable to divided counsels among the king's ministers, and to hesitation on the part of the king himself. The one thing decided upon was to stop the entrance of provisions into Paris: a sure means, it was thought, of reducing the tumult, which at the outset was scarcely looked upon as serious. The National Assembly was behaving, meanwhile, in the most heroic manner. Threatened with dissolution and arrest, and quite at the mercy of the foreign troops, it voted an expression of regret at the dismissal of Necker, a demand that the foreign troops be forthwith sent away from Paris, and a declaration that the king's ministers, whatever their rank, would be held personally responsible for any misfortunes that might result from the present condition of things.
On the morning of the 14th of July Paris was surrounded at all points by foreign troops, and was at the same time threatened with famine. But one course was open to the insurgents: that of immediate action. There was a general feeling that an attack must be made, and the object unanimously chosen for the first assault was the Bastille: symbol of everything hateful in the government it was proposed to overturn. "A la Bastille!" was now the universal cry. But a dearth of muskets retarded the impulse, and it was determined in the first instance to attack the H�tel des Invalides, where arms in large numbers were known to be stored away. Thirty thousand men hurried to the asylum of aged soldiers; when, without much time being wasted in parleying with the governor, the sentinels were seized and the place entered by force. In the cellars twenty-eight thousand muskets were discovered concealed beneath hay and straw; and with these the invaders, whose numbers had gradually increased, hastened to arm themselves. Five years before, the king, on consenting to the liberation of Latude, had promised that henceforth no one should be sent to the Bastille except for a definite period, and after formal conviction on a positive charge. But this engagement had not been kept; people had been arrested, and incarcerated (as at the present time in Russia) on the simple denunciation of police officers and spies; sometimes on mere suspicion, at others without even suspicion, and simply for the gratification of private malice. The terrible lettre de cachet, on the strength of which arrests were made without further explanation, had indeed become a purchasable thing, with a fixed price, like any other article of commerce. It was doubtless, however, the memory of a long course of ancient wrongs that, above all, animated the people in their rage against the Bastille. There was, moreover, however, a strategical reason. As a fortress, the Bastille commanded the Rue St.-Antoine and the adjoining faubourg, and indeed dominated all Paris. To destroy it, therefore, was considered at once a good moral and a good military act.
The governor, De Launay, had already prepared his defence; and in addition to the guns of position in the towers, he had placed a number in the interior courtyard. The gates and the outer walls had been loopholed and armed with wall-pieces, and a quantity of paving-stones, cannon-balls, and lumps of iron had been carried up to the towers, in order to be hurled down upon the heads of the expected assailants.
The garrison consisted only of 114 men, 32 of whom were Swiss, while the other 82 were old pensioners. The defenders, indeed, were nearly all of them aged, but experienced, soldiers. Their material appliances and the strength of their position were such that the governor looked upon the fortress as impregnable against a mob of people who had neither the art nor the time to undertake regular siege operations. With his powerful batteries, De Launay could lay the whole quarter in ruins; and foreseeing this possibility, the committee of the H�tel de Ville sent a deputation to the governor, promising not to attack him if he would withdraw the cannon, and promise not on his side to begin hostilities. A man of more energy, Thuriot de la Rozi�re, called, in the name of his district, upon the governor, and demanded the surrender of the fortress. His account of what was taking place in Paris astonished De Launay, and gained the sympathy of the French portion of the garrison. His final demand was that the Bastille should be occupied by some of the newly-formed bands conjointly with troops of the regular army. But this proposition, though more advanced than the feeble one made by the committee of the H�tel de Ville, was by no means on a level with popular demands; and Thuriot, on leaving the Bastille, was threatened by the armed bands assembled outside, who demanded, not the occupation of the Bastille, but its destruction.
A few brave men got into the outer yard through the roof of the guard-house, and at once destroyed with hatchets the chains of the drawbridge leading to the inner yard. They were followed by others, and soon the outer gates were forced. A terrible fire had been opened on the crowd of assailants, and it was resolved once more to approach De Launay by means of a deputation, which, however, was unable to reach him. At this moment the besiegers set fire to several carts of hay and manure, in order to burn the buildings which masked the fortress and to smoke out the defenders. At the same time, a constant fire was kept up from the windows and roofs of the neighbouring houses. All this, however, had but little effect on the garrison. A new deputation was now sent forward, bearing a white flag. A white flag was displayed in reply from the Bastille, and the soldiers reversed their muskets. An officer of the Swiss troops passed forward a note, by means of a crane, with these words: "We have twenty thousand pounds of powder, and we will blow up the fortress and the whole of the neighbourhood unless you accept a capitulation."
The Commissaries of the H�tel de Ville, believing in the pacific demonstrations of the garrison, were already urging the people to retire, when suddenly there was a discharge of musketry from the fortress, which laid low a good number of the insurgents. It was apparently the Swiss who had fired, heedless of the conciliatory attitude assumed by the French portion of the defending force. The whole garrison was held responsible for this act of treachery. The exasperation of the people had now gone beyond all bounds, and there was but one cry heard: "Down with the Bastille!" A number of the French guards seized five of the guns which had been brought from the Invalides, and pointed them at the fortress. The fire of the artillery proved more effective than that of the musketry, and the drawbridge was now swept by cannon-balls.
Meanwhile, the garrison was divided against itself. The pensioners wished the contest, of which the end could now be foreseen, to cease, whereas the Swiss mercenaries, careless about the effusion of French blood (and, it must be admitted, full of a more youthful courage), were determined to resist to the last.
There was another reason which made it unadvisable to prolong the defence. The fortress contained abundance of ammunition, but little or no food; and the numbers, constantly increasing, of the besiegers rendered it impossible to renew the supply. It was evident that all Paris demanded the fall of the Bastille. The Swiss, however, would hear of no surrender. As for De Launay, he felt that he was personally detested, not only for the blood he was uselessly shedding, but even more for his persecution of the prisoners under his charge. The Memoirs of Linguet and other revelations had made his name odious throughout Europe. Thus the vengeful cries of the people seemed directed against himself personally. Wild with terror, he seized a match, and was about to explode his powder magazine, when two non-commissioned officers drove him back at point of bayonet. Outside, a sort of organisation had now established itself. Many bands of volunteers had been moving together since the first uprising, with the volunteers of the Palais Royal, under Camille Desmoulins, among them. These bands were under the command of officers of the French Guards, or of energetic men who were afterwards to distinguish themselves in the military career.
According to some accounts, the surrender of the fortress took place immediately after the episode of the note thrust forward on a crane, or, according to another version, pushed through a loophole. The moment in any case arrived when, promised by some of the French Guards that their lives should be spared, the garrison agreed formally to surrender. The drawbridges were now lowered, and the Bastille was occupied in force. On being recognised, De Launay was arrested and led off towards the H�tel de Ville. Hulin, afterwards one of Napoleon's generals and nobles, took charge of the prisoner, and, forming an escort, did his best to convey him safely through the infuriated mob, which, with execrations, pressed towards him from all sides. More than once De Launay was thrown down. Having lost his hat, he was now an easier mark than ever for the assaults of the crowd. That he might not so readily be distinguished, Hulin gave him his own hat, thus running the risk of being himself mistaken for the odious governor. At last Hulin and several members of the escort were thrown together to the ground; and when Hulin managed to rise, the head of the hated governor was being carried aloft on the point of a pike.
Within the Bastille the invaders were, meanwhile, breaking open the dungeons. Only seven prisoners, however, were found, two of whom had become insane. One of the latter had a long white beard falling to his waist, and fancied himself still under the reign of Louis XV., who had been dead fifteen years. Instruments of torture were discovered. Shocking as this detail may be to a reader of the present day, it should be remembered that under the old monarchy torture was constantly employed in criminal process. It is only just to add that it was formally abolished a few years before the Revolution, and not afterwards, as is generally supposed.
The archives of the prison were in part destroyed. All that was preserved of them was afterwards published, in order once more to throw light on the iniquity of the system under which such an institution as the Bastille could exist.
The taking of the Bastille cost the assailants eighty-three killed on the spot, and fifteen who died from their injuries, besides sixty-three wounded. The garrison, on their side, protected by the walls of the fortress, lost but one killed and one wounded during a struggle which lasted five hours.
The major of the garrison, De Losme, shared the fate of the governor, except that, instead of being put to death summarily by an enraged mob, he was taken deliberately to the famous lanterne, or lamp of the Place de la Gr�ve, and hanged. Two of the pensioners, accused, like the major, of having pointed the guns of the fortress against the people, were also strung up. These were the first victims of the cry "� la lanterne!" afterwards to be heard so often in the streets of Paris. The lanterne in question was attached to an iron gibbet; and it was on this gibbet that the victims of popular fury were hoisted aloft.
The lives of all the other defenders were spared. They were set at liberty and a subscription opened for them, as they had now no means of earning an honest penny.
The news of the capture of the Bastille caused great excitement at Versailles, where Louis XVI., in his habitual state of indecision, seemed unable to give an order of any kind. He had gone to bed at his usual hour, but was awakened early the next morning by the Duke de Liancourt, who enjoyed the privilege of entering the royal bedchamber at any time. The Duke informed his sovereign of what was taking place at Paris, and impressed upon him the necessity of putting himself in accord with the nation and with the Assembly.
"Is it a revolt, then?" asked Louis XVI., with his eyes half open. "No, Sire," replied the duke; "it is a revolution." In these words, destined to become celebrated, the astonished king was informed that the ancient monarchy was at an end.
The Bastille was now pulled down: partly in the natural course of things, partly in virtue of a formal resolution. The stones were broken up into little pieces, and worn by ladies as jewellery; ornaments and playthings were also made from the remains of the detested edifice.
The conquerors of the Bastille formed a special corps, which had its recognised place in all public ceremonies. A medal was struck in their honour, and each of them was commissioned with an office. During the Revolution the ground on which the Bastille stood became a favourite place for public meetings. The Bronze Column which now lifts its head in the Place de la Bastille was erected under the reign of Louis Philippe, in memory of the Revolution of 1789 and of the lesser revolt of 1830.
Although the Revolution began in Paris, the revolutionary spirit spread rapidly to the provinces. This is clearly set forth in Arthur Young's account of what took place at Strasburg, where he had just arrived when news of the Revolution reached him.
[Illustration: THE CONQUERORS OF THE BASTILLE.
(From the Painting by Fran�ois Flaming.)]
"I arrived there," he writes, "at a critical moment, which I thought would have broken my neck: a detachment of horse, with their trumpets, on one side, a party of infantry, with their drums beating, on the other, and a great mob hallooing, frightened my French mare, and I could scarcely keep her from trampling on Messrs. the tiers �tat. On arriving at the inn, one heard the interesting news of the revolt of Paris; the Garde Fran�aise joining the people; the unreliability of the rest of the troops; the taking of the Bastille; and the institution of the milice bourgeoise--in a word, the absolute overthrow of the old government. Everything being now decided, and the kingdom absolutely in the hands of the Assembly, they have the power to make a new constitution such as they think proper; and it will be a spectacle for the world to view in this enlightened age the representatives of twenty-five millions of people sitting on the construction of a new and better fabric of liberty than Europe has yet offered. It will now be seen whether they will copy the constitution of England, freed from its faults, or attempt from theory to frame something absolutely speculative. In the former case they will prove a blessing to their country; in the latter they will probably involve it in inextricable confusion and civil wars: perhaps not immediately, but certainly in the future. I hear nothing of their removing from Versailles. If they stay there under the control of an armed mob, they must make a government that will please the mob; but they will, I suppose, be wise enough to move to some central town--Tours, Blois, or Orleans, where their deliberations may be free. But the Parisian spirit of commotion spreads rapidly; it is here; the troops that were near breaking my neck are employed to keep an eye on the people who show signs of an intended revolt. They have broken the windows of some magistrates who are no favourites; and a great mob of them is at this moment assembled, demanding clamorously to have meat at five sous a pound. They have a cry among them that will conduct them to good lengths: 'Point d'imp�t et vivent les �tats!' I have spent some time at the Cabinet Litt�raire reading the gazettes and journals that give an account of the transactions at Paris; and I have had some conversation with several sensible and intelligent men in the present revolution. The spirit of revolt is gone forth into various parts of the kingdom; the price of bread has prepared the populace everywhere for all sorts of violence; at Lyons there have been commotions as furious as at Paris, and likewise at a great many other places. Dauphin� is in arms, and Bretagne in absolute rebellion. The idea is that hunger will drive the people to revolt, and that when once they find any other means of subsistence than honest labour everything will have to be feared. Of such consequence it is to a country to have a policy on the subject of corn: one that shall, by securing a high price to the farmer, encourage his culture sufficiently to secure the people from famine. I have been witness to a scene curious to a foreigner, but dreadful to those Frenchmen who consider. Passing through the square of the H�tel de Ville, the mob were breaking the windows with stones, notwithstanding that an officer and a detachment of horse were on the spot. Observing not only that their numbers increased, but that they grew bolder and bolder every moment, I thought it worth staying to see how the thing would end, and clambered on to the roof of a row of low stalls opposite the building against which their malice was directed. Here I could view the whole scene. Perceiving that the troops would not attack them except in words and menaces, they grew more violent, and furiously attempted to beat the door in pieces with iron crows, placing ladders to the windows. In about a quarter of an hour, which gave time for the assembled magistrates to escape by a back door, they burst everything open, and entered like a torrent, amid a universal shout of triumph. From that minute a medley of casements, sashes, shutters, chairs, tables, sofas, books, papers, pictures, etc., rained down incessantly from all the windows of the house, which is seventy or eighty feet long; this being succeeded by a shower of tiles, skirting-boards, banisters, framework, and whatever parts of the building force could detach. The troops, both horse and foot, were quiet spectators. They were at first too few to interpose, and when they became more numerous the mischief was too far advanced to admit of any other course than that of guarding every avenue around, permitting no fresh arrivals on the scene of action, but letting everyone that pleased retire with his plunder; guards at the same time being placed at the doors of the churches and all public buildings. I was for two hours a spectator of this scene: secure myself from the falling furniture, but near enough to see a fine lad of about fourteen crushed to death by some object as he was handing plunder to a woman--I suppose his mother, from the horror pictured in her countenance. I remarked several common soldiers with their white cockades among the plunderers, and instigating the mob even in sight of the officers of the detachment. Mixed in the crowd, there were people so decently dressed that I regarded them with no small surprise. The public archives were destroyed, and the streets for some way around strewed with papers. This was a wanton mischief, for it will be the ruin of many families unconnected with the magistrates."
Although at the critical moment the first object of the revolutionists' attack was the Bastille, that hateful building did not, according to Mercier, inspire the common people with any peculiar indignation. It will be seen from his own words that he was in this particular a less keen-sighted observer than he is generally reputed to have been. Writing just before the Revolution, Mercier saw well that his fellow-countrymen were oppressed, but believed they were too much inured to this oppression ever to rise against it.
"I have already observed," he writes, "that the Parisians in general are totally indifferent as to their political interest; nor is this to be wondered at in a place where a man is hardly allowed to think for himself. A coercive silence, imposed upon every Frenchman from the hour of his birth on whatever regards the affairs of government, grows with him into a habit which the fear of the Bastille and his natural indolence daily strengthen, till the man is totally lost in the slave. Kingly prerogative knows no bounds, because no one ever dared to resist the monarch's despotic commands. It is true that at times, in the words of the proverb, the galled horse has winced. The Parisians have at times attempted to withstand tyranny; but popular commotions amongst them have had very much the air of a boyish mutiny at school; a rod with the latter, the butt end of a firelock with the former, quiets all, because neither act with the spirit and resolution of men who assert their natural rights. What would cost the minister his life in those unhappy countries where self-denial and passive obedience are unknown is done off in Paris by a witty epigram, a smart song, etc.; the authors of which, however, take the greatest care to remain concealed, having continually the fear of ministerial runners before their eyes; nor has a bon mot unfrequently occasioned the captivity of its author."
Mercier at the same time points out that never since the days of Henri IV. had France been so mildly governed as under Louis XVI. One of the last acts of Louis XV. had been to cast into the Bastille all the volumes of the Encyclop�dia. One of the first acts of Louis XVI. was to liberate from the Bastille all prisoners who had not been guilty of serious, recognisable offences.
"At the accession of his present Majesty," writes Mercier, "his new ministers, actuated by humanity, signalised the beginning of their administration with an act of justice and mercy, ordering the registers of the Bastille to be laid before them, when a great number of prisoners were set at large." Among those liberated was a man of whom Mercier tells the same story that was afterwards to be told of one of the seven prisoners who were freed at the taking of the Bastille.
"Their number included a venerable old man, who for forty-seven years had remained shut up between four walls. Hardened by adversity, which steels the heart when it does not break it, he had supported his long and tedious captivity with unexampled constancy and fortitude; and he thought no more of liberty. The day is come. The door of his tomb turns upon its rusty hinges, it opens not ajar, as usual, but wide, for liberty, and an unknown voice acquaints him that he may now depart. He thinks himself in a dream; he hesitates, and at last ventures out with trembling steps; wonders at everything; thinks to have travelled a great way before he reaches the outward gate. Here he stops a while; his feeble eyes, long deprived of the sun's cheering beams, can hardly support its first light. A coach waits for him in the streets; he gets into it, desires to be carried to a certain street, but unable to support the motion of the coach, he is set down, and by the assistance of two men at length he reaches the quarter where he formerly dwelt; but the spot is altered, and his house is no more. His wandering eye seems to interrogate every passenger, saying with heartrending accents of despondency: 'Where shall I find my wife? Where are my children?' All in vain; the oldest man hardly remembers to have heard his name. At last a poor old decrepit porter is brought to him. This man had served in his family, but knew him not. Questioned by the late prisoner, he replied, with all the indifference which accompanies the recollection of events long passed, that his wife had died above thirty years before in the utmost misery, and that his children were gone into foreign countries, nothing having been heard of them for many years. Struck with grief and astonishment, the old gentleman, his eyes riveted to the ground, remains for some time motionless; a few tears would have eased his deeply wounded heart, but he could not weep. At last, recovering from his trance, he hastens to the minister to whose humanity he was indebted for a liberty now grown burdensome. 'Sir,' he says to him, 'send me back to my dungeon! Who is it that can survive his friends, his relations, nay, a whole generation? Who can hear of the death of all he held dear and precious, and not wish to die? All these losses, which happen to other men by gradation, and one by one, have fallen upon me in an instant. Ah, sir! it is not dreadful to die; but it is to be last survivor.' The minister sympathised with this truly unfortunate man. Care was taken of him, and the old porter assigned to him for his servant, as he could speak with this man of his wife and children: the only comfort now left for the aged son of sorrow, who lived some time retired, though in the midst of the noise and confusion of the capital. Nothing, however, could reconcile him to a world quite new for him, and to which he resolved to remain a perfect stranger; and friendly death at last came to his relief and closed his eyes in peace."
Although, as frigid historians have pointed out, the Bastille never did any harm to the common people, it was sometimes made use of to punish actresses who were much admired by the populace. Mlle. Clairon, a distinguished actress and excellent woman, on quitting the stage from religious scruples--or rather because, contrary to her own views on the subject, she found the profession of actress condemned absolutely by the Church--was sent to the Bastille on the ground that, being a paid servant of the king, she refused to do her duty. "The case of this lady," said a writer of the time, "is indeed hard. The king sends her to prison if she does not act, and the Church sends her to perdition if she does." Mlle. Clairon was much troubled at the view taken of her profession by the clergy; and after consulting her confessor, she came to the conclusion that so long as she remained on the stage she could have no hope of salvation. It was then that she refused any longer to act, and determined to retire altogether from the stage. So indignant had Mlle. Clairon become on learning for the first time under what severe condemnation the stage lay, that she raised a strong party with the view of removing so great a scandal. Much was written and said in favour of the comedians, but all to no purpose. The priests stood firm to their text, and, in the words of a French writer, would by no means give up "their ancient and pious privilege of consigning to eternal punishment everyone who had anything to do with the stage."
[Illustration: � LA ROBESPIERRE.]
[Illustration: A LADY OF 1793.]
Mlle. Clairon's retirement threw her manager into the greatest confusion. She was by far the best actress of the day, and such a favourite that it was almost impossible to do without her. The theatre was soon deserted by the public, and still Mlle. Clairon refused to act. Then it was that by royal mandate she was imprisoned. She had not, however, been long in the Bastille, when an order came from the Court for the players to go to Versailles to perform before the king. Mlle. Clairon was released, and commanded to make her appearance with the rest of the company. Being already very tired of the Bastille, she decided to obey, and performing at Court with immense success, and finding that all attempts to gain even the toleration of the Church were in vain, she resigned herself to her fate and went on acting as usual. Some years previously, Mlle. Clairon, accused of organising a cabal against a rival, had been sent to another State prison, Fort l'�v�que, where, instead of pining, as at the Bastille, she held high court, receiving visits from all kinds of illustrious people, whose carriages are said to have made the approach to the prison impassable.
[Illustration: A TRICOTEUSE.]
[Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE EXTENSION OF PARIS.]
Besides the Bastille and Fort l'�v�que, there was yet another prison, La Force, to which recalcitrant actresses used to be sent in the strange days of the ancient r�gime. Thus Mlle. Gavaudin, a singer at the Opera, having refused the part assigned to her in a piece called the "Golden Fleece," was sent to La Force, where she enjoyed herself so much, that she was warned as to the possibility of her being punished by solitary confinement in a genuine dungeon. On this, she agreed to appear in the character which she had at first rejected. When, however, an official came to the prison to set her at liberty, in order that she might play her part that very evening, she told him that for the present she would remain where she was, that she had ordered an excellent dinner, and meant to eat it. The official charged with her liberation insisted, however, on setting her free, telling her that after he had once got her into the street she might go wherever she chose. She simply returned to the prison, where she dined copiously, with a due allowance of wine. "Then," says a narrator of these incidents, "she went to the Opera, had a furious scene with the stage-manager, who, during her imprisonment, had given her dressing-room to another singer, and after a quarter of an hour of violent language calmed down, dressed herself for the part of Calliope, and sang very charmingly." It may be mentioned that before she was consigned to the Bastille, Mlle. Clairon's case interested greatly some of the best writers of the day, including Voltaire, who published an eloquent defence of the stage against the overbearing pretensions of the Church.
It seems strange that in France, where the drama is cultivated with more interest and with more success than in any other country, actors and actresses should so long have been regarded as beyond the pale of Christianity. Happily, this is no longer the case. But the traditional view of the French Church in regard to actors and actresses was, until within a comparatively recent time, that they were, by the mere fact of exercising their profession, in the position of excommunicated persons. This is sufficiently shown not only by the case of Mlle. Clairon in connection with the Bastille, but also by the circumstances attending the burial of Moli�re in the seventeenth, of Adrienne Lecouvreur in the eighteenth, and of Mlle. Raucourt in the nineteenth century. Acting in Le Malade Imaginaire, Moli�re broke a blood-vessel, and was carried home to die. He was attended in his last moments by a priest of his acquaintance; he expired in presence of two nuns whom he frequently entertained, and who had come to visit him on that very day. Funeral rites were denied him, all the same, by the Archbishop of Paris; and when Mme. Moli�re appealed in person to Louis XIV., the king took offence at her audacious mode of address, and threw the whole responsibility on the Archbishop of Paris--to whom, nevertheless, he sent a private message. As a result of the king's interference--not a very authoritative one--a priest was allowed to accompany Moli�re's body to its otherwise unhonoured grave. The great comedy-writer was buried at midnight in unconsecrated ground; and of course, therefore, without any religious service.
Adrienne Lecouvreur, who, more than a century after her death, was to be made the heroine of Scribe and Legouve's famous drama, is known to all playgoers as the life-long friend of Marshal Saxe, whom she furnished with money for his famous expedition to Courland. Voltaire entertained the greatest regard for her, and was never so happy as when he had persuaded her to undertake a part in one of his plays. Adrienne died in Voltaire's arms, and no sooner was she dead than public opinion accused her rival, the Duchess de Bouillon, of having poisoned her from jealousy and hatred; for the duchess had conceived a passion for Marshal Saxe to which that gallant warrior could not bring himself to respond. The clergy refused to bury Adrienne, as in the previous century they had refused to bury Moli�re. Her body was taken possession of by the police, who buried it at midnight, without witnesses, on the banks of the Seine. "In France," said Voltaire, "actresses are adored when they are beautiful, and thrown into the gutter when they are dead."
Nearly a hundred years after the death of Adrienne Lecouvreur died another great actress, Mlle. Raucourt, who, like Adrienne Lecouvreur and like Moli�re, was refused Christian burial. This was in 1815, just after the Restoration, at a time when the clergy, so long deprived of power, were beginning once more to exercise it in earnest. The Cur� of St.-Roch refused to admit the body of the actress into his church. An indignant crowd assembled, and became so riotous that the troops had to be called out. At last King Louis XVIII. ordered the church doors to be opened, and with the tact which distinguished him, commissioned his private chaplain to perform the service. In such horror was the stage held by the French clergy (if not by the Catholic clergy throughout Europe) so late as the beginning of the present century, that money offered to the Church by actors and actresses for charitable purposes, although accepted, was at the same time looked upon as contaminating. Thus, when Mlle. Contat gave performances for the starving poor of Paris, and handed the proceeds to the clergy of her parish for distribution, they refused to touch the money until it had been "purified" by passing through the hands of the police, to whom it was paid in by the stage, and by whom it was afterwards paid out to the Church.
* * * * *
The Place de la Bastille was formed in virtue of a decree of the First Consul, but it was not completed until after the establishment of the Empire. The principal ornament of the square was to be a triumphal arch to the glory of the Grand Army. But after taking the opinion of the Academy of Fine Arts, the emperor altered his views; and the triumphal arch was reserved for the place it now occupies at the top of the Champs �lys�es. Oddly enough, too, a massive object, intended originally for the spot now occupied by the Arc de l'�toile, was carried to the Bastille in the form of an elephant, whose trunk, according to the fantastic design, was to give forth a column of water large enough to feed a triumphal fountain, which was inaugurated December 2nd, 1808. The wooden model of the elephant, covered with plaster, was seventeen metres long and fifteen metres high, counting the tower which the animal bore on its back. Set up for a time on the western bank of the Canal de l'Ourcq, the plastered elephant was afterwards abandoned, like the project in which it played a preliminary part, and its wooden carcase became a refuge for innumerable rats. The remains of the elephant were not removed until just before the completion of the bronze column which now stands in the centre of the Place de la Bastille, in memory of the victims of the Revolutions of 1789 and 1830.
The first stone of this monument was laid by King Louis Philippe on the 27th of July, 1831. It was finished at the beginning of 1843; and on the 28th of July of that year were placed, in the vaults constructed beneath the column for their reception, the remains of the insurgents of 1830, which for ten years had been lying buried in all parts of Paris, but particularly in the neighbourhood of the markets and at the foot of the Colonnade of the Louvre, where the relics reposed side by side with those of the Swiss soldiers who had died in protecting the palace. The figure lightly poised on the ball at the top of the column represents the Genius of Liberty.
At a short distance from the Place de la Bastille, and easily accessible by train, is Vincennes: known by its wood, at one time the favourite resort of duellists; by its military establishment, to which the famous Chasseurs de Vincennes owed their name when, after the downfall of Louis Philippe, it was thought desirable to get rid of their former designation--that of Chasseurs d'Orl�ans; and for its castle, in whose ditch the ill-fated Duke d'Enghien was shot, after a mock trial, on an all but groundless accusation.
The Duke d'Enghien, who, according to one of his biographers, had no fault but the one common to all the Bourbons--that of being "too easily influenced by beautiful eyes"--was living on the German side of the Rhine, nearly opposite Strasburg, with his wife, a Princess de Rohan-Rochefort, to whom he had been secretly married. As a royalist and a member of the royal family, he was naturally the enemy of Napoleon and the Napoleonic r�gime. But he had taken no part in any conspiracy, unless the League of Sovereigns and States formed against Napoleon could be so considered. The duke frequently crossed over from the right or German bank, especially at Binfelden, where the Prince de Rohan-Rochefort, his wife's father, had taken apartments at the local inn. It became known, moreover, to the French authorities that the Prefect of Strasburg had for some time past been sending various agents to the German side. The princess received at this time from an officer of the Strasburg garrison, who had been formerly attached to the Rohan family, secret intelligence that inquiries were being made in regard to the Duke d'Enghien. Soon afterwards a small body of troops crossed the Rhine, surrounded the little castle or Gothic villa where the duke was living at Ettenheim, seized him, and brought him over to Strasburg. He was permitted to write, and lost no time in sending a note to the princess, who, from the windows of the house, had followed in painful anxiety all the events of the alarming drama acted before her eyes.
"They have promised me," wrote the duke from the citadel of Strasburg, "that this letter shall be delivered to you intact. This is the first opportunity I have had of reassuring you as to my present condition, and I do so now without losing a moment. Will you, in your turn, reassure those who are attached to me in your neighbourhood? My own fear is that this letter may find you no longer at Ettenheim, but on the way to this place. The pleasure of seeing you, however, would not be nearly so great as the fear I should have of your sharing my fate.... You know, from the number of men employed, that all resistance would have been useless. There was nothing to be done against such overpowering forces.
"I am treated with attention and politeness. I may say, except as regards my liberty (for I am not allowed to leave my room), that I am as well off as could be. If some of the officers sleep in my chamber, that is because I desired it. We occupy one of the commandant's apartments, but another room is being prepared for me, which I am to take possession of to-morrow, and where I shall be better off still. The papers found on me, and which were sealed at once with my seal, are to be examined this morning in my presence."
The first letters written by the young man from Strasburg to his wife (they are still preserved in the French Archives) showed no apprehension of danger; nothing could be proved against him except what was known beforehand, that he was a Bourbon and an enemy of Napoleon. "As far as I remember," wrote the duke to his wife, "they will find letters from my relations and from the king, together with copies of some of mine. In all these, as you know, there is nothing that can compromise me, any more than my name and mode of thinking would have done during the whole course of the Revolution. All the papers will, I believe, be sent to Paris, and it is thought, according to what I hear, that in a short time I shall be free; God grant it! They were looking for Dumouriez, who was thought to be in our neighbourhood. It seems to have been supposed that we had had conferences together, and apparently he is implicated in the conspiracy against the life of the First Consul. My ignorance of this makes me hope that I shall obtain my liberty, but we must not flatter ourselves too soon. The attachment of my people draws tears from my eyes at every moment. They might have escaped; no one forced them to follow me. They came of their own accord.... I have seen nobody this morning except the commandant, who seems to me an honest, kind-hearted man, but at the same time strict in the fulfilment of his duty. I am expecting the colonel of gendarmes who arrested me, and who is to open my papers before me."
Transferred to Vincennes, the duke was tried summarily by court-martial, sentenced to death, and shot in the moat of the fortress on the 21st of March, 1804. Immediately before the execution he asked for a pair of scissors, cut off a lock of his hair, wrapped it up in a piece of paper, with a gold ring and a letter, and gave the packet to Lieut. Noirot, begging him to send it to the Princess Charlotte de Rohan-Rochefort. Lieut. Noirot forwarded the packet to General Hulin, who transmitted it to an official named R�al, together with the following letter:--
"Paris, 30th Vent�se, Year 12 of the French Republic.--P. Hulin, General of Brigade commanding the Grenadiers on Foot of the Consular Guard, to Citizen R�al, Councillor of State charged with the conduct of affairs relating to the internal tranquillity and security of the Republic. I have the honour, Councillor of State, to address you a packet found on the former Duke d'Enghien. I have the honour to salute you. (Signed) P. HULIN."
The receipt of the package was thus acknowledged by Citizen R�al:--
"Paris, 2 Germinal, Year 12 of the Republic.--The Councillor of State, especially charged with the conduct of all affairs relating to the internal tranquillity and security of the Republic, has received from the General of Brigade, Hulin, commanding the Grenadiers on Foot of the Guard, a small packet, containing hair, a gold ring, and a letter; this small packet bearing the following inscription: 'To be forwarded to the Princess de Rohan from the former Duke d'Enghien.'
"(Signed) R�AL."
The last wishes of the unfortunate duke were not carried out. The packet was never forwarded to his wife. She may have received the letter, but the ring, the lock of hair, and some fifteen epistles, written in German, from the princess to the duke, and found upon him after his death, remained, without the duke's letter, in the Archives of the Prefecture of Police. A fortnight after the duke's execution, his widow addressed from Ettenheim, on the 16th of July, 1804, the following letter to the Countess d'Ecquevilly:--
"Since I still exist, dear Countess, it is certain that grief does not kill. Great God! for what frightful calamity was I reserved? In the most cruel torments, the most painful anxiety, never once did the horrible fear present itself to my mind that they might take his life. But, alas! it is only too true that the unhappy man has been made their victim: that this unjust sentence, this atrocious sentence, to which my whole being refused to lend credence, was pronounced and thereupon executed. I have not the courage to enter into details of this frightful event; but there is not one of them which is not heartrending, not one that would not paralyze with terror--I do not say every kind-hearted person, but anyone who has not lost all feeling of humanity. Alone, without support, without succour, without defence, oppressed with anxiety, worn out with fatigue, denied one moment of the repose demanded by Nature after his painful journey, he heard his death-sentence hurriedly pronounced, during which the unhappy man sank four times into unconsciousness. What barbarity! Great God! And when the end came he was abandoned on all sides, without sympathy or consolation, without one affectionate hand to wipe away his tears or close his eyelids.
"Ah! I have not the cruel reproach to make to myself of not having done everything to follow him. Heaven knows that I would have risked my life with joy, I do not say to save him, but to soften the last moments of his life. Alas! they envied me this sad delight. Prayers, entreaties, were all in vain; I could not share his fate. They preferred to leave me to this wretched existence, condemned to eternal regret, eternal sorrow."
Princess Charlotte died at Paris in 1841; and quite recently a note on the subject of her last wishes appeared in the Paris Interm�diaire, the French equivalent of our Notes and Queries. It was as follows:--"After the death of the Princess Charlotte, there was found among her papers a sealed packet, of which the superscription directed that it should be opened by the President of the Tribunal--at that time M. de Balli. This magistrate opened the packet and examined its contents. He found the whole correspondence of Bonaparte's victim with 'his friend,' as the worthy magistrate put it: avec son amie. The president gave the packet to the family notary after re-closing it, saying that the letters were very touching, very interesting, but that they must be burnt; which was in fact done."
[Illustration: ADRIENNE LECOUVREUR.
(From the Bust by Courtet in the Com�die Fran�aise.)]
The marriage of the Duke d'Enghien to the Princess de Rohan had been informal; the informality consisting solely in its having been celebrated without some necessary sanction: probably that of the king, Louis XVI. The ceremony was performed by Cardinal de Rohan, the bride's uncle; and it is evident from her first letters that she was regarded by her nearest friends and relatives as the duke's lawful wife.
Let us now, passing from political to private executions, say a few words about some of the famous duels of which Vincennes, or rather the wood of Vincennes, has from time to time been the scene.
Duels in France are generally fought with swords; and as it depends upon the combatants to strike or not to strike at a mortal part, a hostile meeting is by no means always attended with serious consequences. It is a mistake, however, to assume, as Englishmen frequently do, that a duel in France fought for grave reasons is not itself a grave affair. Plenty of sword duels have placed the worsted combatant in imminent danger of his life; though it is undeniable that the pistol, being a more hazardous weapon, proves, as a rule, deadlier than the sword. When M. Paolo Fiorentino, blackballed at the Society of Men of Letters, on the ground that he had accepted bribes, undertook to fight every member of the association, beginning with M. Am�d�e Achard, whose name, thanks to its two A's, headed the alphabetical list, the Italian critic and bravo ran his first opponent through the body, and all but killed him. M. Henri de P�ne received like treatment at the hands of an officer by reason of his having described the unseemly conduct of officers generally, as shown at a ball of which the �cole Militaire was the scene. Both Achard and P�ne, however, recovered. Not so the unfortunate Armand Carrel, one of the boldest and most brilliant writers that the Republican Press of France possessed. Armand Carrel and his antagonist, �mile de Girardin, another famous journalist of Louis Philippe's reign, fought with pistols in that Bois de Vincennes whose name at once suggests crossed rapiers or whizzing bullets.
M. de Girardin was the inventor of the cheap press, not only in France, but in Europe. To reduce the price of the newspaper, and thus increase the number of subscribers, while covering any possible loss on the sale by the enlarged revenue from advertisements, which would flow in more and more rapidly as the circulation widened: such was Girardin's plan. According, however, to his enemies, he proposed to "enlarge the portion hitherto allotted in newspapers to mendacious announcements to the self-commendations of quackery and imposture, at the sacrifice of space which should be devoted to philosophy, history, literature, the arts, and whatever else elevates or delights the mind of man."
The proposed change was really one which Democrats and Republicans should have hailed with delight; for it promised to extend a knowledge of public affairs to readers who had hitherto been prevented from becoming acquainted with them by the high price of the newspapers, which, apart from their own articles on political affairs, published long accounts of the debates in the Chamber.
M. de Girardin, however, found his innovation attacked as the device of a charlatan. He was accused of converting journalism into the most sordid of trades: of making it "a speaking-trumpet of the money-grabber and the speculator." Some of M. de Girardin's opponents went so far as to hint that he was not working in good faith, and that the losses to which the diminution of price must expose his journal were to be made good by a secret subsidy. Armand Carrel, as editor of the National, entered into the quarrel, and took part against Girardin, who, on his side, wrote a bitter attack upon Carrel. No sooner had Carrel read the scathing article than he called upon its author, demanding either retractation or personal satisfaction. He entered Girardin's room, accompanied by M. Adolphe Thibaudeau, holding open in his hand the journal which contained the offensive lines. Girardin asked Carrel to wait until he also could have a friend present. M. Lautour-M�zeray was sent for; but pending that gentleman's arrival some sharp words were interchanged.
Armand Carrel conceived that he was justified in regarding the course adopted by M. de Girardin as indicating an intention to bring the matter to a duel, and on his suggesting as much, M. de Girardin replied, "A duel with such a man as you, sir, would be quite a bonne fortune." "Sir," replied Carrel, "I can never regard a duel as a bonne fortune." A few moments afterwards M. Lautour-M�zeray arrived. His presence served to give the discussion a more conciliatory tone, and it was ultimately agreed that a few words of explanation should be published in both journals. On M. de Girardin's proposing to draw up the note at once, "You may rely upon me, sir," said Armand Carrel, with dignity. The quarrel seemed almost at an end; but an incident reanimated it. M. de Girardin required that the publication of the note should take place simultaneously in the two journals. Carrel, on the contrary, held that it ought to appear first in the Presse, Girardin's paper; but he experienced on this point the most determined resistance. It was then that, carried away with indignation, wounded to the quick, utterly unable to adhere any longer to the moderation which, by a determined effort, he had hitherto enforced upon himself, Carrel rose and exclaimed, "I am the offended person; I choose the pistol!"
It was early on the morning of Friday, July 22, 1836, that Armand Carrel and M. de Girardin found themselves face to face in the Bois de Vincennes.
While the pistols were being loaded, Carrel said to M. de Girardin, "Should chance be against me and you should afterwards write my life, you will, in all honour, adhere strictly and simply to the facts?" "Rest assured," replied his adversary. The seconds had measured a distance of forty paces; the combatants were to advance within twenty of each other. Armand Carrel immediately took his place and advanced, presenting, despite the urgent entreaties of M. Ambert that he would show less front, the whole breadth of his person to his adversary's aim. M. de Girardin having also advanced some paces, both parties fired nearly at the same instant, and both fell wounded, the one in the leg, the other in the groin.
"I saw him," wrote Louis Blanc some time afterwards, "as he lay; his pale features expressing passion in repose. His attitude was firm, inflexible, martial, like that of a soldier who slumbers on the eve of battle."
M. de Girardin was profoundly grieved at the result of the duel, and he made a vow never to fight again. Many years afterwards, under the Republic of 1848, he visited the grave of the man he had killed, to express his regret and ask for pardon in the name of the form of Government to which he had now become a convert, and which Carrel had always placed above every other.
The duelling chronicles of the Bois de Vincennes would lead us far away from the Paris of to-day. It may be mentioned, however, that in this wood Alexandre Dumas the elder fought his famous duel with a collaborateur, who claimed to have written the whole of the Tour de Nesle and who, undoubtedly, supplied to the skilful dramatist the framework of the piece.
Dumas was in all truth a skilful dramatist, though one may hesitate to give him the title of dramatic poet, which he loved to claim. "What are you?" said the judge of the Rouen Tribunal to the author of so many clever pieces, who had to give evidence in a certain case. "If I were not in the city of Corneille," answered Alexander the Great, "I should call myself a dramatic poet." "There are degrees in everything," replied the judge. Alexandre Dumas was, all the same, a great inventor, and he possessed an extraordinary talent for putting dramatic things into shape. When, therefore, the future editor of the Courier des �tats-Unis claimed to have written all that was important in the Tour de Nesle, he doubtless declared what from a literary point of view was false. Dumas not only rejected his contention, but declined to allow his own name to appear in the bill side by side with that of his collaborateur. Hence angry words and a duel: once more a serious one, and with pistols, not swords.
With a calm desire to kill his man, of which, were he not his own accuser, one would refuse to suspect him, Dumas tells us, in his Memoirs, how, when he appeared on the ground, he examined his adversary's costume, and, while thinking it excellent as a "make-up," was sorry to find that it offered no salient mark for a pistol-shot. M. Gaillardet was dressed entirely in black; his trousers, his buttoned-up coat, his cravat were all as inky as Hamlet's cloak, and according to the Parisian fashion of the time, he wore no shirt-collar. "Impossible to see the man," said Dumas to himself; "there is no point about him to aim at." He at the same time made a mental note of the costume, which he afterwards reproduced in the duel scene of the "Corsican Brothers." At last he noticed a little speck of white in his adversary's ear: simply a small piece of cotton-wool. "I will hit him in the ear," said Dumas to himself; and on his confiding the amiable intention to one of his seconds, the latter promised to watch carefully the effect of the shot, inasmuch as he was anxious to see whether a man hit with a bullet through the head turned round a little before falling or fell straight to the ground. Dumas's pistol, however, missed fire. The delightful experiment contemplated could not, therefore, be tried; and the encounter was bloodless.
At Vincennes was confined for a few days, just before his expulsion from France, the Young Pretender, or "Charles Edward," as the French called him. The Duke de Biron had been ordered to see to his arrest; and one evening when it was known that he intended to visit the Opera, Biron surrounded the building with twelve hundred guards as soon as the prince had entered it. He was arrested, taken to Vincennes, and kept there four days; then to be liberated and expelled from France, in accordance with the treaty of 1748, so humiliating to the French arms. The servants of the Young Pretender, and with them one of the retinue of the Princess de Talmont, whose antiquated charms had detained him at Paris, were conveyed to the Bastille; upon which the princess wrote the following letter to M. de Maurepas, the minister: "The king, sir, has just covered himself with immortal glory by arresting Prince Edward. I have no doubt but that his Majesty will order a Te Deum to be sung to thank God for so brilliant a victory. But as Placide, my lacquey, taken captive in this memorable expedition, can add nothing to his Majesty's laurels, I beg you to send him back to me." "The only Englishman the regiment of French guards has taken throughout the war!" exclaimed the Princess de Conti, when she heard of the arrest.
"Besides the Bastille and the Castle of Vincennes, which are the privileged places of confinement for State prisoners, there are others," says an old chronicler, "which may be called the last strongholds of tyranny. The minister by his private lettre de cachet sends an objectionable individual to Bic�tre or Charenton. The latter place, indeed, is for lunatics; but a minister who deprives a citizen of his liberty because he so wills it may make him pass for what he pleases; and if the person taken up is not at that time, he will in a few months be, entirely out of his senses, so that at worst it is only a kind of ministerial anticipation. Upon any complaint laid by the parents or other relations, a young man is sent to St.-Lazare, where sometimes he will remain till the death of the complainants; and Heaven knows how fervently this is prayed for by the captive!"
Under the reign of Charles VII. there stood in the Wood of Vincennes a castle which the King named Ch�teau de Beaut�, and presented to Agnes Sorel. Of this abode the royal favourite duly took possession. Charles was by no means popular with his subjects, whom he taxed severely; and they were scandalised by the way in which Agnes Sorel squandered money, by her undisguised relations with the king, and by the kindness with which she was apparently treated even by the queen. Far, then, from rendering honours to "the beautiful Agnes," the Parisians murmured at her prodigality and arrogance; and the favourite, indignant to find herself so ill received in Paris, departed, saying that the Parisians were churls, and that if she had suspected they would render her such insufficient honour she would never have set foot in their city: "which," says a contemporary writer, "would have been a pity, but not a great one."
[Illustration: A DUEL IN THE BOIS DE BOULOGNE.]
After saying so much against Agnes Sorel, it is only fair to add that, according to many historians, it was she who roused Charles VII. from his habitual lethargy, and inspired him with the idea of driving the English out of France.
Vincennes is a military station, where a considerable body of troops is maintained. Hence, as already mentioned, the once famous Chasseurs derived their name. Each division has now its own battalion of Chasseurs. It may be added that special corps of infantry, such as Chasseurs de Vincennes, Zouaves, Turcos, together with the Chasseurs d'Afrique and other kinds of ornamental cavalry, have been abolished: to the detriment of the picturesqueness, if not the practical efficiency, of the French army.
[Illustration: THE SEINE, FROM NOTRE-DAME.]
The infantry regiments are all armed and dressed absolutely alike, with the exception of the battalions of "chasseurs" (corresponding to the "sch�tzen" battalions of the German Army), whose tunics are of a lighter blue than those of the line regiments. The Germans, by the way, have only one battalion of sharpshooters to each army corps, whereas the French have two, one to each division. As the French are adopting as much as possible the principle of uniformity in their army, it seems strange that they should have made any distinction between chasseurs and infantry of the line; that, in short, they should have retained chasseurs in their army at all. Formerly sharp-shooters carried rifles and were supposed to be particularly good shots; whereas infantry of the line were armed with smooth-bore muskets, and if they could pull the trigger, could certainly not aim straight. Now every infantry soldier is supposed, more or less correctly, to be a good marksman; and linesmen and chasseurs are armed alike.
[Illustration: RECRUITS.]
Lancers exist no more; and the French cavalry, but for differences of uniform, would all be of the same medium pattern, neither "light" nor "heavy," but presumably fit for duties of all kinds. Some cavalry regiments are uniformed as dragoons, some as chasseurs, some as hussars; and every army corps has attached to it, or rather included in its integral force, four cavalry regiments of one of these three descriptions.
The Recruitment Bill of 1872 and the Organisation Bill of 1873 form a net which, with the additions since made to them, takes at one sweep everybody whom the military authorities can possibly want. Even seminarists and students of theology are no longer exempted.
Postmen, policemen of all kinds, workmen in Government factories, students of a certain age in Government schools and in all educational establishments private or public, members of the custom house and octroi service, firemen, Government engineers, clerks and workmen in the Department of Woods, Bridges, and Mines, scavengers, lighthouse-keepers, coast-guardsmen, engine-drivers, stokers, guards, pointsmen, station-masters, signalmen and clerks of the railway service, all persons employed in the telegraph service, all seamen not already on the lists of the navy, and generally all members of bodies having some recognised constitution in time of peace, may in time of war be formed into special corps in order to serve either with the active army or with the "territorial army"--as the French equivalent to the German Landwehr is called. "The formation of these special corps," says the text of the Law on the General Organisation of the French Army, "is authorised by decree. They are subject to all the obligations of military service, enjoy all the rights of belligerents, and are bound by the rules of the law of nations."
For private gentlemen going out in plain clothes to shoot at invaders from behind hedges no provision is made; and such persons, whether called "francs-tireurs" or by any other name, would, if caught by the enemy, evidently be left to their fate. The franc-tireur, in fact, though still popular with the sort of people who delight in stories of brigands and highwaymen, is not looked back to with admiration even by his own Government. "These articles," says the report on the Law of Military Organisation in reference to the clause above cited, "are introduced in order to prevent the return of such unhappy misunderstandings as occurred in the last war, during which it is said that National Guards and francs-tireurs were shot by the enemy because our military laws had not given them the rights of belligerents." The rules under which these bodies of armed civilians, temporarily endowed with the military character, may be organised are strictly defined, so that the country may at no future time be troubled by "the formation of bands of foreign adventurers who have during all the worst epochs of our history fallen upon France, and, under pretext of defending her, have often subjected her to devastation and pillage." This is, of course, meant for the bands of Garibaldians. They were, nevertheless, regularly organised under officers bearing commissions from the Minister of War, and, apart from the question of "devastation and pillage," were the only bodies of partisans who showed any aptitude for guerilla warfare.
H�tel Carnavalet.--H�tel Lamoignon.--Place Royale.--Boulevard du Temple.--The Temple.--Louis XVII.--The Theatres.--Astley's Circus.--Attempted Assassination of Louis Philippe.--Trial of Fieschi.--The Caf� Turc.--The Caf�s.-The Folies Dramatiques.--Louis XVI. and the Opera.--Murder of the Duke of Berri.
Let us return now from Vincennes to the Place de la Bastille and the Boulevard Beaumarchais.
Perhaps the most interesting house on this boulevard is number twenty-three, which was built by Mansard, the famous architect, for his own occupation. One set of rooms in the house was occupied by the celebrated Ninon de Lenclos, who died there October 17, 1703, at the age of eighty-nine, preserving, according to tradition, her remarkable beauty to the very last. Here Voltaire, then in his twelfth year, was presented to her; nor did she forget to assign to him in her will 2,000 francs for the purchase of books.
Next door to the house of Mansard and Ninon de Lenclos is the little Beaumarchais theatre, which, constructed in forty-three days, was opened on the 3rd of December, 1835, under the style of Th��tre de la Porte St.-Antoine. In 1842 it was re-named Th��tre Beaumarchais. Then at different periods it bore the titles of Op�ra Bouffe Fran�ais, and Fantaisies Parisiennes, until at length, in 1888, when it was entirely rebuilt, it became once more the Th��tre Beaumarchais.
The Government of 1830 did right in giving the name of Beaumarchais to the boulevard on which he at one time lived, and where he possessed a certain amount of property. During the stormy years that immediately preceded the Revolution of 1789 Beaumarchais was an important figure; and the effect of the "Marriage of Figaro" on the public mind was in a good measure to prepare it for the general overthrow then imminent. The King, the Queen, the Ministers, were all, in the first instance, afraid of the "Marriage of Figaro"; and we have seen that to get it produced Beaumarchais displayed as much diplomacy and energy as would suffice in the present day to upset a Cabinet.
While living at his mansion near the Porte St.-Antoine, Beaumarchais built close at hand the Th��tre du Marais, where, after letting it to a manager, he brought out, in 1792, his "M�re Coupable"--the third part of his Figaro Trilogy, in which the Count and Countess Almaviva, Figaro and Susannah, are shown in their old age. The "guilty mother" is the Countess herself; the charming and, as one had hoped, innocent Rosina of the "Barber of Seville." The male offender is Ch�rubin, better known under his operatic name of Cherubino, who after saying in the French comedy, with a mixture of timidity and audacity, "Si j'osais oser!" ends by daring too much. "La M�re Coupable" obtained but little success, and deserved none. Closed by Imperial order in 1807, the Th��tre du Marais existed only for fifteen years. It must not be confounded with the ancient theatre of the same name where in 1636 Corneille produced his famous tragedy "Le Cid."
The Marais or marsh, whose name recalls the early history of Paris, when Lutetia was defended by marshes as by a broad impassable moat, has long been known as the favourite abode of small pensioners and fundholders, who in this remote quarter found food and shelter at inexpensive rates.
The Marais, however, has had, like most other parts of Paris, its illustrious residents; and when about the middle of the eighteenth century the immortal actress Mlle. Clairon lived there she was the third famous inmate of the tenement in which she had taken up her abode. "I was told of a small house in the Rue du Marais," she writes in her memoirs, "which I could have for two hundred francs, where Racine was said to have lived forty years with his family. I was informed that it was there he had composed his imperishable works and there that he died; and that afterwards it had been occupied by the tender Lecouvreur, who had ended her days in it. 'The walls of the house,' I reflected, 'will be alone sufficient to make me feel the sublimity of the author and develop the talents of the actress. In this sanctuary then I will live and die!'"
Close to the Rue du Marais, in the Rue de S�vign�, stands the Mus�e Carnavalet, established in the former H�tel Carnavalet, where Mme. de S�vign�, author of the famous Letters, lived from 1677 to 1698. It was restored in 1867 by Baron Haussmann, who converted it into a museum for preserving various monuments, statues, inscriptions, tombstones, ornaments, and objects of various kinds, proceeding from the wholesale demolition to which sundry streets and even whole quarters of Paris were at that time being subjected, under the orders of Baron Haussmann himself in his capacity of Prefect of the Seine.
Another remarkable mansion in the same street is the H�tel Lamoignon, now occupied by different manufacturers, especially of chemical products, but which, in its earliest days, had highly aristocratic and even royal occupants. Begun by Diana of France, legitimatised daughter of Henri II., the H�tel Lamoignon was bought and finished in 1581 for Charles de Valois, Duke of Angoul�me, natural son of Charles IX., who, according to Tallemant des R�aux, would have been "the best fellow in the world if he could only have got rid of his swindling propensities." When his servants asked him for money, he would reply to them: "My house has three outlets into the street; take whichever of them you like best." The architecture of the H�tel Lamoignon is that of an ancient fortress, though its walls and fa�ades are ornamented with crescents, hunting horns, and the heads of stags and dogs; the whole in allusion to the Diana for whom the building was originally planned.
[Illustration: H�TEL CARNAVALET.]
Having once left the upper boulevard to enter the adjacent Marais, we cannot but go on towards the Place des Vosges, better known as the Place Royale, where, in 1559, Henri II. took a fancy one day for trying his powers at tilting against Montgomery, captain in the Scotch Guard; when the shock was so violent that a splinter from Montgomery's lance penetrated the king's eye through the broken visor of his helmet. The king was carried to the H�tel des Tournelles, where, without having regained consciousness, he died on the 15th of July, 1559. The hotel or palace where the king breathed his last was thenceforth abandoned as a fatal and accursed place. In the course of four years it fell into a ruinous condition, and Charles IX. ordered it to be pulled down. The park belonging to the old palace was turned into a horse market, which was the scene in 1578 of the famous encounter between the favourite courtiers of Henri III. known as the Mignons and the partisans of the Duke of Guise. Four combatants, Maugiron, Schomberg, Riberac, and Qu�lus, lost their lives in this affair. The horse market, or Place Royale as it afterwards became, witnessed many sanguinary duels, until at last Richelieu determined to put an end to a fashion which was depriving France of some of her bravest men. With this view he cut off the head of Montmorency-Bouteville and of Count des Chapelles, his second in the duel which cost Bussy d'Amboise his life. In 1613 the Cardinal erected in the centre of the Place Royale an equestrian statue of his royal master Louis XIII. The Place Royale was at that time the favourite quarter of the French nobility, and the rendezvous of all that was witty, gallant, and distinguished in France.
[Illustration: H�TEL LAMOIGNON.]
The house number six on the Place Royale is particularly interesting as having been inhabited in Richelieu's time by the brilliant and too celebrated Marion de Lorme, and two centuries later by Victor Hugo, who, in the very room that Marion de Lorme had occupied, wrote, at the age of twenty-five, the splendid tragedy of which she is the heroine.
The statue of Louis XIII. which Richelieu had raised was overturned and broken to pieces in 1792, when the most critical period of the Revolution was at hand. It was replaced after the Restoration, under the reign of Charles X., by the present statue.
The Boulevard du Temple owes its name to a building which was first occupied by the Order of Templars, and which, towards the close of the last century, enjoyed a sad celebrity as the prison where Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, and the young Dauphin were confined.
No less than forty-eight works are said to have been written on the imprisonment of Louis XVII., and matters connected with it, including the histories of some dozen "claimants," asserting, in his name, their right to the French throne. Most of these pretenders, with Naundorff--who had been the Dauphin's valet in the Temple--prominent among them, had no difficulty in finding enthusiasts and dupes to further their designs; and even in France one of them caused himself to be described on his tombstone as "Louis de France." The Emperor Napoleon III. took, however, the liberty of ordering the inscription to be effaced.
Soon after the death of the Count de Chambord, M. de Chantelauze published in the Illustration an account of Louis XVII.'s life in the Temple, and of his last illness, death, and post-mortem examination, together with certificates which leave no doubt as to the young prince having really died in his prison. Simon, the gaoler, according to M. de Chantelauze's view, was, like so many other bad men, not wholly bad; while his wife was for the most part good, the appearance of badness or roughness which she manifested when the child confided to her care was visited by members of the Commune being assumed in order to inspire her employers with confidence. The task assigned to Simon was not, as has often been supposed, to reduce the young prince, by ill-treatment, to such a point that he would at last be attacked by illness and carried off, but simply to get from him evidence against his mother, the Queen, with respect to her complicity in the Varennes plot, and the various plans formed for effecting the escape of the child. The evidence having been obtained by the simple process of first putting it into the child's mouth, and afterwards taking it out, the special work assigned to the Simons was at an end, and the young prince experienced from them nothing but kindness. If he ultimately fell ill and died, his confinement and the bad air he breathed may well have been the cause.
The life of Louis XVII., from the departure of the Simons until his death, can be made out continuously; and the evidence of his having died in the Temple is quite conclusive. Nevertheless, Louis XVIII., in view of the pretension constantly springing up, instituted for his own satisfaction an inquiry into the whole matter; and the proofs adduced in the course of it as to the identity of the "child in the Temple" with the son of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette seem decisive.
M. Nauroy, however, author of "Les Secrets des Bourbons," is convinced that the true Louis XVII. was carried out of the Temple in a bundle of linen, and that by like means the child who ultimately died there was substituted for him. M. Nauroy finds in support of his belief abundant evidence, positive and negative, which he derives from a variety of sources, and sometimes discovers in the most unexpected places.
The appearance of a long succession of impostors claiming to be Louis XVII. proves nothing, and will pass for what it is worth in the native land of Arthur Orton. It is remarkable, however, that Royalists and Republicans, including eminent personages on both sides, have agreed in maintaining that the child who died in the Temple was not Louis XVII. Louis Blanc favours this view in his "History of the Revolution." Nor does he do so without taking a calm, judicial survey of all the evidence in the case. He may consciously or unconsciously have been influenced by party spirit; and the moral he draws from the whole matter is that there is danger in the principle of "divine right" when, through a variety of accidents, it may be impossible to show on whom this questionable right has devolved.
Those Royalists who deny that Louis XVII. died in the Temple, explain the announcement of his death and the proclamation of Louis XVIII. in the Royalist camp, first, by the inconvenience of bringing forward as King of France a child of tender years; secondly, by the difficulty of producing this child; and, thirdly, by the danger, when Louis XVIII. had once gained acceptance with the party, of dividing it by a revelation of the fact that his nephew, son of Louis XVI., was still alive.
M. Nauroy, as already hinted, sees proofs of his favourite theory where no one else would perceive them. When, for instance, the Duke of Berri, dying from the stroke of an assassin, had some final words to whisper to his brother, the Duke of Angoul�me--"What," asks M. Nauroy, "could this have been but the truth in regard to Louis XVII.?" When, again, one of the doctors who made the post-mortem examination of the supposed Louis XVII. offered to Louis XVIII. the heart which he had concealed and preserved, and the king declined the present--"Why," asks M. Nauroy, "should he have accepted the heart which he knew was not that of Louis XVII., but that of the child by whom the young prince was replaced in his prison?"
Meanwhile, that some of the great Royalist families believed Louis XVII. to have been replaced in the Temple by another child and himself carried to La Vend�e is beyond doubt; and a letter on the subject, addressed, December 4, 1838, to the Times, shows that this view of the matter was held by at least a section (probably a very small one) of the Royalist party.
On January 19th the cobbler Simon ceased to do duty as gaoler. At that time there were, as M. Nauroy sets forth, only four persons in the Temple--the Dauphin, Simon, his wife, and the Princess Elizabeth, afterwards Duchess of Angoul�me. Simon died on the scaffold six months afterwards, on the 28th of July. The Princess Elizabeth, confined in a room apart from her brother, never saw him again, and consequently knew nothing of him except by hearsay. From January 19th to July 28th there was no warder at the Temple. The child was watched by Commissaries, who were relieved from day to day, and of whom not one could establish his identity. When regular gaolers were appointed, not one of them had ever seen the Dauphin. If, then, after the departure of Simon, another child could have been substituted for Louis XVII., there was no one to notice the change when it had once been accomplished. The Dauphin was in perfect health at the time when Simon and his wife left him. But the child in the Temple fell ill immediately afterwards; and on the 6th of May, 1795, Dr. Desault, summoned to attend the "Dauphin," declared his little patient to be some other child. He had visited the Dauphin's brother in 1789, and on that occasion had seen the Dauphin himself at the Tuileries. If, as M. Nauroy asserts, Dr. Desault drew up a report on the subject, that report has disappeared. Indirect evidence, however, as to Dr. Desault's conviction that the child he attended in the Temple could not be the Dauphin, was given fifty years afterwards in a letter written and signed by the widow of P. A. Thouvenin, Dr. Desault's nephew, who claimed to remember what his uncle had frequently said on the subject.
[Illustration: STATUE OF LOUIS XIII. IN THE PLACE DES VOSGES.]
Whether or not Louis XVII. escaped to La Vend�e to be cherished by the Vendean chiefs even when, in the Royalist army which was invading France from Germany, Louis XVIII. had been proclaimed, he is now in any case no more. The eighteenth Louis was ten years old when the child of the Temple is supposed to have died in prison; and according to the most convinced, not to say credulous, of those writers who maintain that Louis XVII. escaped, to live for years afterwards, he breathed his last in 1872 at Saveney (Loire Inf�rieure), under the name of Laroche, at the age of eighty-seven. The numerous impostors who with more or less success personated the unhappy prince had died much earlier. But the descendants of Naundorff, his valet, the most famous of all these pretenders, claim still to be of the blood royal, and on the occasion of the Count de Chambord's death they displayed a proud consciousness of their rights by publishing somewhere in Holland a manifesto asserting gravely the title of the chief of the family to the throne of France.
[Illustration: THE PLACE DES VOSGES, FORMERLY PLACE ROYALE.]
Another prisoner in the Temple of whom mention must be made is Sir Sidney Smith, whose friends were making every effort for his liberation, when a Royalist officer in the French army, named Boisgerard (who under the Revolution had quitted military life to become ballet-master at the Opera), effected his escape. With this view he had obtained an impression of the seal of the Directorial Government, which he affixed to an order, forged by his own hand, for the delivery of Sir Sidney Smith into his care. Accompanied by a friend, disguised, like himself, in the uniform of an officer of the revolutionary army, he did not scruple personally to present the fictitious document to the keeper of the Temple, who, opening a small closet, took thence some original document, with the writing and seal of which he carefully compared the forged order. Desiring the adventurers to wait a few minutes, he then withdrew and locked the door after him. Giving themselves up for lost, the confederates determined to resist, sword in hand, any attempt made to secure them. Highly interesting is Boisgerard's own description of the period of horrible suspense he now passed through. Under the dread that each successive moment might be attended by a discovery involving the safety of his life, the acuteness of his organs of sense was heightened to painfulness; the least noise thrilled through his brain, and the gloomy apartment in which he sat seemed filled with strange images. Both he and his companion, however, retained self-possession, and after the lapse of a few minutes their anxiety was terminated by the re-appearance of the gaoler, with his captive, who was delivered to Boisgerard. But here a new and unexpected difficulty occurred. Sir Sidney Smith, not knowing Boisgerard, refused for some time to quit the prison; and considerable address was required on the part of his deliverers to overcome his scruples. At last the precincts of the Temple were cleared. The fugitives rode a short distance in a fiacre, then walked, then entered another carriage, and in this way so successfully baffled pursuit that they ultimately got to Havre, where Sir Sidney was put on board an English vessel. Boisgerard, on his return to Paris, was a thousand times in dread of detection and had a succession of narrow escapes until his visit to England, which took place after the peace of Amiens. A pension had been granted to Sir Sidney Smith by the English Government for his meritorious services; and on Boisgerard's arrival here a reward of a similar nature was bestowed on him through the influence of Sir Sidney, who took every opportunity of testifying his gratitude.
[Illustration: THE ARCADE IN THE PLACE DES VOSGES.]
If the prison of the unfortunate king and queen who were to suffer for the sins of their predecessors was at the eastern end of the line of boulevards, as marked by the Boulevard du Temple, their place of execution on the Place Louis XV., now known as Place de la Concorde, was at the western extremity, which in due time we shall explore.
Meanwhile from one end of the boulevards to the other, from the tiny Th��tre Beaumarchais to the magnificent Op�ra, there is a long series of playhouses. Close to the Beaumarchais Theatre stands the Cirque d'Hiver, opened in 1852 under the title of Cirque Napol�on, which seats 3,800 persons. It occupies the site of the first circus that was ever established in Paris. In 1785 the Astleys, father and son, came to Paris and there opened a circus exactly like the one they had just founded in London. Under their direction this theatre, situated at number twenty-four Rue du Faubourg du Temple, and measuring twenty metres in diameter, was lighted by 2,000 lamps and furnished with two rows of boxes. The price of the seats varied from twelve sous to three francs. Astley junior is said to have possessed a remarkably fine figure; and, in the words of a contemporary writer, "his beauty was sculptural." Bachaumont, in his memoirs of the time, speaks of the numerous passions inspired by the young equestrian in too susceptible feminine hearts. The tricks of the circus, now so familiar, that in England, at least, no one cares to see them, were at that time new, and the sight of a man attitudinising on the back of a horse at full gallop excited the greatest wonder.
Astley's Circus in Paris possessed, as so many operatic theatres have done, a sort of international character. Engagements were made for it by diplomatists abroad. It can be shown, indeed, that diplomatists have long and almost from time immemorial been in the habit of doing agency work for artists and managers of good position. Operatic celebrities have been particularly favoured in this respect. A great Minister of State, Cardinal Mazarin, introduced, or aided powerfully in introducing, opera into France. The engagement of Cambert as director of music at the Court of Charles II. was effected by diplomatic means. Gluck, more than a century later, was induced to visit Paris through the representations of a secretary of the French Embassy at Vienna--that M. du Rollet who arranged for Gluck, on the basis of Racine's Iphig�nie, the libretto of Iphig�nie en Aulide; and Piccini, at the instigation of Madame du Barry, was secured at Paris as opposition composer through the instrumentality of Baron de Breteuil, French Ambassador at Rome, working in co-operation with the Marquis Carraccioli, Neapolitan Ambassador at Paris.
The great Montesquieu, moreover, when he was in England, had not thought it unbecoming to interest himself in the welfare of the French artists who occasionally arrived in England with recommendations addressed to him. Nor did the illustrious Locke occupy himself so exclusively with the "human understanding" as to have no time to bestow on the material interests of foreign danseuses. Locke was not indeed one of those practically Epicurean philosophers of whom M. Ars�ne Houssaye discourses so agreeably in his "Philosophes et Com�diennes." He had no general taste either for the public performances or for the private society of ballerines; but a certain Mlle. Subligny having come to him with a letter of introduction from the Abb� Dubois, he is known to have made himself useful, and therefore, no doubt, agreeable, to her during her stay in England.
Locke, it is true, was a metaphysician, and had nothing whatever to do with diplomacy. But his friend Montesquieu was a personage of political importance, and in his anxiety to assist French artists in London he even went so far as to bring to their performances as many of the English nobility as were willing to attend. About the same time, at the suggestion of the Regent of Orleans, a Minister of State, M. de Maurepas, made overtures to Handel concerning a series of representations which it was proposed that his celebrated company should give at the Acad�mie Royale of Paris. M. de Maurepas wished, like Mr. Washburne at a later day, to secure for Paris the best available talent; and he looked to Handel's opera-house for singers, as Mr. Washburne looked to the circuses of the United States for "bare-back riders."
On this subject Ebers's "Seven Years of the King's Theatre" shows that immediately after the peace of 1815 all the offers of engagements to artists of the Paris opera were made through the medium of the English Embassy to the Court of France, or by special missions with which diplomatists of distinction were glad to be entrusted. The committee of noblemen who aided Ebers in his management treated, through the English Ambassador at Paris, with the Director of the Academy, or with the Minister of Fine Arts; though, as a matter of fact, they failed to secure by these elaborate means the services of artists who, in the present day, would be engaged through an exchange of telegrams.
The outbreak of the Revolution was the signal for the Astleys and their company to recross the Channel, and the Astley Circus remained unoccupied until 1791. Then a company calling themselves "The Comedians without a Title" (Les Com�diens sans titre) opened it as a theatre on Thursday, March 20th, and closed it on the 23rd. Finally Franconi took it over, and achieved a triumphal success, his management being destined to last many years. In 1801 he moved his enterprise to the Garden of the Capucines, which had become a public promenade in the heart of Paris, subsequently transferring it to the theatre in the Rue du Mont-Thabor. In 1819 he returned with his company to the circus of the Faubourg du Temple, reconstructed by the architect Dubois, but doomed, on the night of March 15th, 1826, to be burnt to the ground. The destruction of the circus by fire excited much sympathy. Public subscriptions were opened, and public representations given for the benefit of the sufferers, the result being so satisfactory that the theatre was at once reconstructed, this time on the Boulevard du Temple, with a magnificent fa�ade, and Franconi once more threw open his doors, about a year after the fire, on the 31st of March, 1827. The stage, which in the old building was an accessory, became in the new one of the first importance. It was now possible to perform military manoeuvres on a large scale. At the restored circus was represented during the last years of the reign of Charles X. the Siege of Saragossa; and under Louis Philippe a number of military pieces founded on incidents in the history of the Republic and the Empire.
Every Government in France since the first Napoleon has had victories of its own, important or unimportant, to celebrate. The martial triumphs of Louis XIV. seem, by common consent, to have been forgotten, either because French history dates for the immense majority of the population from the time of the Revolution, or because the battles won under the old Monarchy are now too remote to stir the national pride. The reign of Napoleon I., however, was a series of brilliant victories. Under the Restoration a campaign was undertaken in Spain, the incidents of which so lent themselves to dramatic treatment that playwrights reproduced them on the stage and in the arena of the circus. The reign of Louis Philippe, too, had its military glories; first in Belgium, in connection with the War of Independence undertaken in 1830 by the Belgians, with the assistance of France and England, against the Dutch. It was in Africa, however, and in the neighbourhood of Algiers, that Louis Philippe's army played for many years so active a part. The war against the Dey of Algiers was begun by Charles X., whose consul had been insulted by that potentate; Louis Philippe continued it, chiefly, it was thought, in order to keep open for discontented spirits a field of activity at a safe distance from France. Many restless adventurers sought distinction and found it in the Algerian campaigns; and Algeria was the principal training-ground for those generals who were afterwards to aid Prince Louis Napoleon in executing his coup d'�tat. It was under Louis Philippe that those picturesque troops, the Chasseurs d'Orl�ans and Chasseurs d'Afrique, were created, not to mention the Zouaves and the Spahis.
According to the criticisms of German officers, the laxity of discipline in the Algerian campaigns had a considerable effect in producing, or at least hastening, the long series of military defeats to which France was subjected in the war of 1870. The news of victories gained in Africa was, all the same, constantly reaching France; and each successive triumph was made the subject of a new dramatic spectacle at the circus or hippodrome. Abd-el-Kader became a familiar theatrical figure, and his famous interview with General Bugeaud was represented in more than one equestrian piece.
Abd-el-Kader had by the most violent means been prevailed upon to make peace; and an interview was arranged at which the Arab chief and Bugeaud, the French commander, were to ratify it by a personal interchange of promises. Abd-el-Kader did not, however, keep his appointment, and seems, indeed, to have studiously missed it. The French general, in a fit of impatience, left his room, and went forward with a small escort, military and civil, towards the quarters of the unpunctual Arab chief, in order to stir him up. On reaching the advanced posts, the French general called a chieftain of one of the tribes, who pointed out to him the hill-side where the emir lay encamped. "It is unbecoming of your chief," said Bugeaud to this Arab, "to bring me so far, and then make me wait so long;" whereupon he continued resolutely to advance. The emir's escort now appeared. The Arab chieftains, most of them young and handsome, were magnificently mounted, and made a gallant display of their finery. Presently from their ranks a horseman advanced dressed in a coarse burnoose, with a camel-hair cord, and without any outward sign of distinction, except that his black horse, which he sat most elegantly, was surrounded by Arabs holding the bridle and the stirrups. This was Abd-el-Kader. The French general held out his hand; the other grasped it twice, then threw himself quickly from his horse, and sat down. General Bugeaud took his place beside him, and the conversation began. The emir was of small stature; his face serious and pale, with delicate features slightly marked by time, and a keen sparkling eye. His hands, which were beautifully formed, played with a chaplet that hung round his neck. He spoke gently, but there was on his lips and in the expression of countenance a certain affectation of disdain. The conversation turned, of course, upon the peace which had just been concluded, and Abd-el-Kader spoke of the cessation of hostilities with elaborate and feigned indifference. When the French general, after pointing out to him that the treaty could not be put into force until it was ratified, observed that the truce, meanwhile, was favourable to the Arabs, since it would save their crops from destruction so long as it lasted, the chief replied: "You may destroy the crops this moment, and I will give you a written authority to do so, if you like. The Arabs are not in want of corn."
The conversation at an end, General Bugeaud stood up, and the emir remained seated; whereupon the former, stung to the quick, seized the emir's hand and jerked it, saying "Come, get up." The French were delighted at this characteristic act of an imperious and intrepid nature, and the Arabs could not conceal their astonishment. As for the emir, seized with an involuntary confusion, he turned round without uttering a word, sprang on his horse and rode back to his own people; his return being a signal for enthusiastic cries of "God preserve the Sultan!" which echoed from hill to hill. A violent thunder-burst added to the effect of this strange scene, and the Arabs vanished among the mountain gorges.
Until 1860 the Boulevard du Temple was noted for a number of little theatres, where marionettes might be seen dancing on the tight-rope, or where pantomimes in the Italian style were performed. Then there was the cabinet of wax figures, together with other little shows, difficult to class: all destined in that year to disappear. The reconstruction of this portion of Paris caused the removal of many theatres, which were built again at other points. The site of the former circus was now occupied by the Imperial Theatre of the Ch�telet. The circus reappeared, for winter performances, in the Boulevard des Filles de Calvaire, for the summer season in the Champs �lys�es. In connection with the winter circus the Popular Concerts started by the late Pasdeloup must not be forgotten. Here the finest symphonic music of the French and other composers, chiefly modern, was performed in admirable style. Here the French public were familiarised with the works of Berlioz, and, in spite of a certain opposition at the outset, with selections from some of the operas of Wagner. Pasdeloup, who after thirty years' unremitting work died in poverty, used to find worthy imitators and successors in M. Colonne and M. Lamoureux, both renowned among the musical conductors of the period.
Number forty-two of the Boulevard du Temple marks the house, formerly number fifty, whence the notorious Fieschi, on the 28th of July, 1835, exploded his infernal machine which was intended to kill Louis Philippe and his sons, and which, in fact, struck down by their side one of the veterans of the Empire, Marshal Mortier, Duc de Tr�vise, and several other superior officers.
Not even in Russia have so many sovereigns been assailed by their subjects as in France. Since, indeed, the murder of Henri III. by Jacques Cl�ment, it has been the rule, rather than the exception, with royal personages in France to be struck by the assassin or the executioner; or, if spared in body, to be brought all the same to some tragic end. Henri IV. fell by the hand of Ravaillac. No such fate awaited Louis XIII., Henri IV.'s immediate successor; but Louis XV. was stabbed by Damiens, Louis XVI. was guillotined, Louis XVII., imprisoned in the Temple, died one scarcely knows how or where. The Duke of Enghien was shot by order of Napoleon. Louis XVIII. had to fly from Paris at the approach of Napoleon returning from Elba; the Duke of Berri was assassinated by Louvel; Charles X. lost his crown by the Revolution which brought Louis Philippe to the throne; and Louis Philippe, who was ultimately to disappear in a hackney cab before the popular rising which led to the establishment of the Second Republic, and soon afterwards of the Second Empire, was meanwhile made the object of some half-dozen murderous attacks, the most formidable being the one planned and executed by Fieschi, otherwise G�rard. What, it may be asked, had a quiet, peaceful, and eminently respectable monarch like Louis Philippe done to provoke repeated attempts upon his life? The explanation is simple. Charles X. had been driven away in 1830 by the Republicans, not that another king might be appointed in his stead, but that the Republic might be established. Louis Philippe was, from their point of view, an interloper who must, at all hazards, be removed.
[Illustration: THE WINTER CIRCUS IN THE BOULEVARD DES FILLES DE CALVAIRE.]
Fieschi's experiment with his infernal machine created a sensation all over Europe; and the papers for some time afterwards were full of particulars, more or less authentic, of the diabolical attempt upon King Louis Philippe's life. The Revolutionists, whose action against Charles X. had led to the establishment, not of a Republic, but of a Monarchy--hateful to them in whatever form--had evidently sworn that he should die. It was ascertained by M. Thiers, the First Minister, that on the occasion of a journey which the King intended to make from Neuilly to Paris certain conspirators had arranged to throw a lighted projectile into the royal carriage; and His Majesty, therefore, was requested to let the royal carriage proceed on its way, at the appointed time, without him, and occupied simply by his aides-de-camp, no previous announcement being made as to the absence of the King. Louis Philippe having protested against this suggestion as unfair to the aides-de-camp: "Sire," replied M. Thiers, "it is their duty to expose themselves for the safety of your person, and they surely will not complain when they find the Minister of the Interior by their side in the threatened carriage." The King, however, rejected this proposition, declaring that he had resolved on the journey, and, hazardous as it might be, would undertake it. His resolution having been combated in vain by M. Thiers, the preparations for departure were ordered. Just as the King was about to get into the carriage, the Queen and the princesses suddenly presented themselves in an agony of terror and of tears. "It is impossible," says M. Louis Blanc, "to say whether a skilful indiscretion on the part of the Minister had initiated them into the secret of what had taken place, or whether they had received no other intimation than that supplied by the instincts of the heart." However this may have been, the Queen, finding that Louis Philippe would not abandon his intention, insisted on accompanying him, and it was quite impossible to prevent her from doing so. M. Thiers then begged the honour of a seat in the threatened carriage, and the journey was risked. The attack apprehended was not, however, on this occasion to be made; and it was as long afterwards as the 28th of July, 1835, on the occasion when Louis Philippe drove through Paris in memory of the "Three Days" of July, 1830, that Fieschi put his murderous project into execution. "On the 28th of July," says M. Louis Blanc, "the sun rose upon the city, already perplexed with fears and doubts. The drum which summoned the National Guards early in the morning beat for some time in vain: a heavy apathy, in which there mingled a sort of morbid distrust, weighed upon everyone. At ten o'clock, however, the legions of the Garde Nationale stretched in an immense line along the boulevards, facing 40,000 of the regular troops, horse and foot. The Boulevard du Temple having been pointed out by rumour as the scene of the contemplated crime, the police had orders to parade it with particular watchfulness, and to keep a close eye upon the windows." On the previous evening M. Thiers had a number of houses in this quarter searched. But the remonstrances of the inhabitants became so violent, that his original intention of examining every building on the boulevard had to be abandoned.
The clock of the ch�teau was striking ten when the King issued from the Tuileries on horseback. He was accompanied by his sons, the Dukes of Orleans, Nemours, and Joinville; by Marshals Mortier and Lobau; by his ministers; and by a numerous body of generals and other superior officers and high functionaries. Along the whole line which he traversed there prevailed a dead silence, broken only at intervals by the ex officio acclamations of the soldiers. At a few minutes past twelve the royal cort�ge arrived in front of the Eighth Legion, which was stationed along the Boulevard du Temple. Here, near the end of the Jardin Turc, as the King was leaning forward to receive a petition from the hands of a National Guardsman, a sound was heard like the fire of a well-sustained platoon. In an instant the ground was strewn with the dead and dying. Marshal Mortier and General Lachasse de Verigny, wounded in the head, fell bathed in their blood. A young captain of Artillery, M. de Villat�, slid from his horse, his arms extended at full length, as though they had been nailed to a cross; he had been shot in the head, and expired ere he touched the ground. Among the other victims were the colonel of gendarmerie, Raff�; M. Rieussec, lieutenant-colonel of the Eighth Legion; the National Guardsmen Prudhomme, Benetter, Ricard, and L�ger; an old man upwards of seventy years of age, M. Lebrouste; a poor fringe-maker named Langeray; and a girl of scarcely fourteen, Sophie Remy. The king was not wounded, but in the confusion his horse reared and he sustained a violent shock in the left arm. The Duke of Orleans had a slight contusion on the thigh. A ball grazed the croup of the Duke of Joinville's horse.
Thus the odious attempt failed in its object; the royal family was saved. No language can express the utter horror which this frightful and cowardly attack created in the minds of the assembled multitudes. An aide-de-camp immediately galloped off to reassure the Queen, and the King continued his progress amidst manifestations of the deepest sympathy and the most enthusiastic loyalty.
As a striking exemplification of the sang-froid of Louis Philippe it has been gravely related, on the alleged authority of Marshal Maison, that immediately after the fatal occurrence, and while all around were overwhelmed with dismay and grief, the King's mind rapidly glanced over all the possible advantages which might be drawn from the event, and that he exclaimed, "Ah, now we are sure to get the appanages!" But this anecdote, in itself improbable, must be received with more than the usual grain of salt.
Meantime, at the moment of the explosion, clouds of smoke were seen to issue from a window on the third floor of the house number fifty. A man got out of this window, and seizing a double rope which was fastened inside, slid down it on to the roof of a lower building. He was but half-dressed, and his face streamed with blood. A flower-pot which was caught in the movement of the rope after he quitted hold of it fell to the pavement, and the noise attracted the attention of an agent of police who had been posted in the courtyard of the house. "There is the assassin escaping on the roof!" he exclaimed; and one of the National Guards at once called upon the fugitive to surrender, threatening to fire if he refused. But the man, wiping away with his hand the veil of blood which obscured his sight, dashed on and made his way through an open window into an adjoining house. A track of blood indicated his route, as though his own crime pursued him. He reached the courtyard too late to escape unobserved, and was at once taken into custody.
In the room whence he had fled were found the smoking remains of his death-dealing machine. It was raised upon a sort of scaffolding on four square legs connected together by strong oak cross-pieces. Twenty-five musket barrels were fastened by the breech upon the cross-piece at the back, which was higher than the front traverse by about eight inches. The ends of the barrels rested in notches cut in the lower traverse. The touch-holes were exactly in a line, so as to take fire simultaneously by means of a long train of gunpowder. The guns had been placed so as to receive the procession slantingly, embracing a large range, and rising from the legs of the horses to the heads of the riders. The charge in each barrel was a quadruple one. Fortunately, the calculations of the assassin were frustrated. Two of the barrels did not go off, four of them burst; and to these chances the King doubtless owed his life.
Fieschi was found, on inquiry, to have lodged in the house for several months. He stated himself to be a machinist. The porter had never been inside Fieschi's room since he had occupied it. There had been but one man to see Fieschi, whom he represented as his uncle, and three women, who, he said, were his mistresses. On the morning of the 28th he had been noticed to go in and out, up and down, in a visible state of agitation, and once, though habitually abstemious, he went into a neighbouring cafe to drink a glass of brandy. At the military post where he was taken upon his arrest, a National Guard having asked him who he was, "What's that to you?" he replied, "I shall answer such questions when they are put by the proper people." Some gunpowder having been found upon his person, he was asked what it was for. "For glory!" he exclaimed.
The trial of Fieschi and his accomplices took place on the 30th of January, 1836, before the Court of Peers assembled in the palace of the Luxembourg. In the body of the court, in front of the clerk's table, were displayed, among other proofs against the prisoners, a machine supporting a number of guns in an inclined position, an extinguished firebrand, a dagger, a shot belt with a quantity of bullets in it, an iron gauntlet, and a bloodstained rope.
Fieschi, the chief conspirator, is described by Louis Blanc as "endowed with an energy and shrewdness which merely served to promote the aims of an inveterate and grovelling turpitude. Vain to a degree which almost approached insanity, this man had stained his life with every infamy. A Corsican by birth, he had fought bravely in the service of Napoleon. After the peace, however, he had launched upon a career of vice and crime. He had invented the so-called infernal machine (which was simply a battery of guns so arranged that they could be discharged from a window), not from any political or personal hatred of Louis Philippe, but simply as the hireling of a band of Republican and Revolutionary conspirators."
Fieschi and his accomplices were duly guillotined. Other attempts had been made and were still to be made on the life of Louis Philippe. The ferocious exploit, however, of Fieschi remains the most notorious one of this reign. At last the Citizen King lost his nerve; and in February, 1848, disappeared in face of a danger not more formidable, if firmly met at the outset, than the one which he had despised thirteen years previously, in 1835.
Fieschi was simply guillotined; and he was the first regicide or would-be regicide in France who escaped torture. The horrible cruelties inflicted on the assassins of French kings may make many persons less sensitive than they otherwise would be to the misfortunes reserved for the successors of these princes. The only possible excuse for the diabolical punishments devised for regicides under the old French Monarchy is that such barbarity was of the age. The torture of Damiens was imitated in every detail from the torture of Ravaillac, which had for precedent the torture of G�rard, the assassin of the Prince of Orange. An ingenious French writer attempted to decide whether Ravaillac's torments were greater than those of G�rard. It is certain in any case that the latter suffered with much greater constancy. Ravaillac shrieked out in a terrible manner, whereas Balthasar G�rard never uttered a groan.
In this connection it is curious that, from the middle of the eighteenth century until the time of the French Revolution, the name of Damiens, or Damian, at present venerated throughout the civilised world, was in France, its country of origin, one of such opprobrium that nobody ventured to bear it. No Frenchman, indeed, would have dared to do so; for after the attempt upon the life of Louis XV. the name of Damiens, or D'Amiens, his would-be murderer, with all names of similar sound or spelling were, by a special edict, absolutely proscribed. To go by the name of D'Amiens, Damiens, or Damian, was to proclaim oneself affiliated nearly or remotely to the unspeakable being--the regicide, the parricide--who had lifted his hand against the Lord's anointed. Time has its revenges. The name associated a century and a half ago with villainy and crime is now suggestive only of heroism and virtue. Everyone knows by what glorious acts of self-sacrifice Damien, enthusiast and martyr, has brought honour to a once unutterable name.
[Illustration: LOUIS PHILIPPE.]
The French Revolution, which was separated from the torture of Damiens by only thirty-eight years, is associated with a number of sanguinary deeds. But it at least put an end to torture. No such horrors as had been perpetrated under the French Monarchy were ever to take place under the French Republic. Even in the case of ordinary criminals not specially condemned to torture, death, under the old Monarchy, was inflicted in the cruellest fashion. "After a prisoner has seen death under so many forms," says a writer of the time of Louis XVI., "when his soul is in a manner withered, his spirit exhausted, and life is grown a burthen, the sentence that ends his sufferings should be welcome to him--and it would be so were not our laws more calculated to torture the body than simply to punish the criminal. A man who pays the forfeit of his life to the injured laws of his country has, in the eyes of reason, more than sufficiently atoned for his crime; but here industrious cruelty has devised the most barbarous means of avenging the wrongs done to society; and the breaking the bones of a wretch on a cross, twisting his mangled body round the circumference of a wheel, are inventions worthy of the fertile brains of a Phalaris, and show to the utmost that such inhuman laws were more levelled against the man than the crime for which he is doomed to suffer."
Opposite the house on the Boulevard du Temple associated with the outrage of Fieschi stood formerly the Caf� Turc, which offered to the generation of its day a shady retreat and varied amusements. Here the celebrated Jullien, better known in London than even in Paris, gave in the early years of Louis Philippe's reign orchestral pieces of his own composition adorned with fireworks and emphasized by the booming of cannon. Little by little the Caf� Turc was to disappear; and now repeated alterations have reduced it to a beer-house, or brasserie.
The Caf� Turc was the first of the French caf�s-concerts or music halls; for, like so many of our dramatic entertainments, the music hall is an adaptation from the French. The English music hall differs, however, from the French caf�-concert about as much as an English farce differs from a French vaudeville. The caf�-concert may be looked upon either as a caf� at which there is singing, or as a concert where refreshments are served between the pieces and "consumed" during the performance. But whether you enter the place for the sake of art or with the view of sustaining nature, it is equally necessary that you should "consume"; and that there may be no mistake on this point, a curtain is at some establishments let down from time to time with "On est pri� de renouveler sa consommation," and, at the side, in English, "One is prayed to renew his consumption," inscribed on it. The renewal of one's consumption is often a very costly proceeding.
To avoid being classed with theatres, and, as a legal consequence, taxed for the benefit of the poor, no charge for admission is made at the doors of the caf�-concert. But at those where such stars as the once celebrated Th�r�se are engaged, the proprietor finds it necessary to attach extravagant prices to refreshments of the most ordinary kind, so that a bottle of lemonade may be quoted in the tariff at three francs, a cup of coffee at a franc and a half, and even the humble glass of water at fifty centimes. In England the music hall proprietor would be often glad to obtain a dramatic licence. He has no fear of the poor before his eyes, and would be only too happy to combine with the profits of musical publican those of the regular theatrical manager. Why he should or should not be so favoured has been argued at length before the magistrates and duly reported in the columns of the newspapers. The result has been that, as a rule, the London music hall proprietor does not give theatrical performances, though he often ventures upon duologues and sometimes risks a dramatic trio. The argument of London managers against music hall proprietors may thus concisely be stated: the manager cannot by the terms of his licence allow the audience to smoke and drink in presence of a dramatic performance; and, correlatively, the music hall proprietor ought not to be allowed to give dramatic performances while smoking and drinking are going on.
[Illustration: ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF LOUIS PHILIPPE.]
Paris is celebrated above all the capitals of Europe for its caf�s; and the beverage which gives its name to these establishments seems to have been known earlier in France than in any other European country. Coffee was introduced into central Europe in 1683, the year of the battle of Vienna; and from the Austrian capital the use of coffee spread rapidly to all parts of Germany. The circumstances under which the Austrians first became acquainted with it were somewhat curious.
The Turks had brought with them to Vienna an imposing siege train. No European power possessed such formidable artillery; and their stone balls of sixty pounds each were not only the largest projectiles ever fired, but were regarded as the largest which by any possible means could be fired. According to the ingenious, but incorrect, view of one of Sobieski's biographers (the Abb� Coyer), the amount of powder requisite for the discharge of a missile of greater weight would be so enormous as not to give time for the whole of it to become ignited before the ball left the cannon.
Kara Mustapha, the Turkish general, had also brought with him a number of archers; and when a letter from Sobieski to the Duke of Lorraine was intercepted by a Turkish patrol, the document was attached to an arrow and shot into the town, accompanied by a note in the Latin language to the effect that all further resistance was out of the question, and that the Vienna garrison had now nothing to do but accept its fate. The Turks, moreover, brought to Vienna an immense number of women, whose throats, when the Turkish army was forced to retire in headlong flight, they unscrupulously cut. The stone cannon balls of prodigious weight, the arrows, and the women could all be accounted for. But the Turks left behind them a large number of bags containing white berries, of which nothing could be made. Of these berries, however, after duly roasting and pounding them, an Austrian soldier, who had been a prisoner in Turkey, made coffee; and as he had distinguished himself during the battle, the Emperor granted him permission to open a shop in Vienna for the sale of the Turkish beverage which he had learned under such interesting circumstances to prepare.
According to another less authentic anecdote, the use of the mysterious white berries found among the stores of the defeated Turks was first pointed out by a Turkish soldier who had been working in the trenches before the besieged city, and had so fatigued himself by his ceaseless toil, that he fell asleep and slumbered on throughout the whole of the battle, undisturbed by the cavalry charges, the musketry fire, and the explosions of the artillery with its terrible sixty-pounders. When at last, after sleep had done its restorative work, the exhausted soldier woke up to find himself in the hands of the Christians, he was terribly alarmed. But his life was spared, and in return for this clemency on the part of his enemies he taught them how to make coffee.
Parisians, however, pride themselves on having known coffee fourteen years earlier than the Viennese. It is said, indeed, that an enterprising Levantine started a coffee-house at Paris in the very middle of the seventeenth century, and not later than the year 1650. The name of the stimulating beverage that he offered for sale was, as he wrote it, cahoue. But the unhappy man had not taken the necessary steps for getting his new importation spoken of beforehand in good society; and, no one knowing what to make of the strange liquor he wished to dispense--hot, black, and bitter--the founder of the first coffee-house or caf� became bankrupt.
The French, however, during, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were sworn friends of the Turks, whose power they played off on every occasion against that of the hated Empire. Vienna might, indeed, on two occasions have been captured, plundered, and burnt by the infidels for all France cared to do towards saving it. France, on her side, was viewed with favour by the Turks; and in 1669 an ambassador, Soliman Aga by name, was sent by the Porte on a mission to Louis XIV., at whose court he made known the virtues of the berry which long previously the Arabs had introduced throughout the East.
Properly presented, coffee met in Paris with a success which elsewhere it had failed to attain, and before long it became the rage in fashionable society. When it was at the height of its first popularity, however, Madame de S�vign� condemned it, saying that the taste for coffee, like the taste for Racine, would pass away. Racine, in spite of the beauty of his at once tender and epigrammatic lines, is not much read in the present day, and is scarcely ever acted. Coffee, on the other hand, is as popular now as in the days when Pope wrote his couplet on
"Coffee, which makes the politician wise, And see through all things with his half-shut eyes."
"There are in this capital," wrote the author of the "Tableau de Paris" more than a hundred years ago, "between six and seven hundred coffee-houses, the common refuge of idleness and poverty, where the latter is warmed without any expense for fuel, and the former entertained by a view of the crowds who make their entrance and exit by turns. In other countries, where liberty is more than an empty name, a coffee-house is the rendez-vous of politicians who freely canvass the conduct of the Minister, or debate on matters of State. Not so here! I have already given a very good reason why the Parisians are sparing of their political reflections. If they speak at all on State matters it is to extol the power of their sovereign, and the wisdom of his counsellors. A half-starved author, with all his wardrobe and movables on his back, dining at these restaurants on a dish of coffee and a halfpenny roll, talks big of the immense resources of France, and the abundance she offers of every necessary of life; whilst his only supper is the steam arising from the rich man's kitchen, as he returns to his empty garret."
The writer goes on to show that the coffee-houses were haunted by cliques of critics, literary and artistic, and his description sometimes reminds one of Button's, in the days of Addison and Steele. "Those," he says, "who have just entered the lists of literature stand in dread of this awful tribunal, where a dozen of grim-looking judges, whilst they sip and sip, deal out reputation by wholesale. Woe to the young poet, to the new actor or actress! They are often sentenced here without trial. Catcalls, destined to grate their affrighted ears, are here manufactured over a dish of coffee."
The writer then proceeds to lament the absence of sociability at the coffee-house, and the gloomy countenances of its frequenters, as contrasted with the convivial faces of those "brave ancestors" of his generation who used to pass their leisure, not at coffee-houses, but at taverns. One cause of the difference he finds in the change of beverage. "Our forefathers," he explains, "drank that mirth-inspiring liquor with which Burgundy and Champaign supplied them. This gave life to their meetings. Ours are more sober, no doubt, but is this sobriety the companion of health? By no means. For generous wine we have substituted a black beverage, bad in itself, but worse by the manner in which it is made in all the coffee-houses of this fashionable metropolis. The good Parisians, however, are very careless in the matter; they drink off whatever is put before them, and swallow this baneful wash, which in its turn is driven down by more deadly poisons, mistakenly called cordials."
Since the above was written, coffee, far from dying out, has become more and more popular, and musical caf�s, theatrical caf�s, and literary caf�s have been everywhere established in Paris. There are financial caf�s, too, chiefly, of course, in the region of the Bourse; and among the caf�s by which the Bourse is partly surrounded used to be one which owed its notoriety to the fact that Fieschi's mistress--in the character of "dame du comptoir"--was exhibited there to the public.
Two days after the execution of the would-be regicide and actual maker of the famous infernal machine, a crowd of people might have been seen struggling towards the doors of a caf� on the Place de la Bourse, which was already as full as it could hold. "Those," says an eye-witness, "who performed the feat of gaining admission, saw, gravely seated at a counter, adorned with costly draperies, an ordinary-looking woman, blind of one eye, and possessing in fact no external merit but that of youth: It was Nina Sassave. There she was, her forehead radiant, her lip quivering with delight, her whole expression that of unmingled pride and pleasure at the eager homage thus offered to her celebrity. A circumstance eminently characteristic of the epoch! Here had a creature, only known to the world as a base and treacherous informer, as the mistress of an assassin, been caught up for a show by a shrewd speculator. And what is more remarkably characteristic still, the public took it all as a perfect matter of course, and amply justified the speculator in his calculations."
On the same side as the Caf� Turc, but further on towards the Rue du Temple, stood the tennis ground of the Count d'Artois (afterwards Charles X.), built by the architect Belanger, one of the most intimate and faithful friends of the famous Sophie Arnould.
[Illustration: A PARISIAN CAF�.]
On the site of the Count d'Artois' tennis ground was erected, at the beginning of the Second Empire, a theatre, called in the first instance Folies-Meyer, but which, after various changes of title, became at last the Th��tre D�jazet, under the direction of the celebrated actress of that name, already seventy years of age, or nearly so, but still lively and graceful. For this theatre in 1860 Victorien Sardou wrote his first successful piece, "M. Garat," in which D�jazet herself played the principal part, supported by Dupuis, who was afterwards to become famous in opera-bouffe as the associate of Mademoiselle Schneider.
The line of boulevards here presents an enormous gap, in the centre of which, between two fountains, stands a monument to the glory of the Republic. The rest of the open space serves twice a week as a flower market, the largest in Paris. At the beginning of the century La Place du Ch�teau d'Eau, as the open space in question is called, did not exist. The fountain which gave its name to the Place was constructed under the First Napoleon in the year 1811, but this fountain was replaced in 1869 by a finer one inaugurated by Napoleon III. The later fountain was itself, however, to disappear, soon afterwards to be replaced by the aforesaid monument to the Republic. Behind one of the large depots on the north side of the Place du Ch�teau d'Eau, looking out upon the Rue de Malte, was constructed in 1866 the Circus of the Prince Imperial, afterwards called the Theatre of the Ch�teau d'Eau, where at one time dramas, at another operas, have been given, never with success. Ill-luck seems to hang over the establishment, which, with its 2,400 seats, must be reckoned among the largest theatres in Paris. In Paris, however, as in London, theatres have often the reputation of being unlucky when, to succeed, all they require is a good piece with good actors to play in it.
[Illustration: PLACE DE LA R�PUBLIQUE.]
The Boulevard du Temple had at one time its famous restaurants, like other boulevards in the present day. Here stood the celebrated Cadran Bleu and the equally celebrated Banquet d'Anacr�on. The last of the great restaurants on this boulevard was the one kept by Bonvalet, who, during the siege of Paris, was generous enough to supply additional provisions to unfortunate actors and actresses who found themselves reduced to the limited rations distributed by the Municipal Council.
The Rue de Bondi, running out of the Boulevard Saint-Martin, brings us once more to a group of theatres. The Folies Dramatiques stands at number forty. This theatre was started in 1830 by M. Alaux, previously manager of the Dramatic Parnassus on the Boulevard du Temple. It was opened on January 22nd, 1831, under the direction of M. L�opold, who produced at this house a long series of successful pieces. Among these may be mentioned "Robert Macaire" with Fr�d�ric Lema�tre in the leading part. When, amidst demolitions and reconstructions, the original Folies Dramatiques came down, the company was transferred to the new building which now stands in the Rue de Bondi. Here were brought out Herv�'s "OEil Crev�" and "Petit Faust," Lecoq's "Fille de Madame Angot," Planquette's "Cloches de Corneville," and other works which were soon to become known all over Europe. Vaudevilles are now played at this theatre alternately with operettas. The house contains 1,600 seats. The Ambigu-Comique, built on a sort of promontory which dominates the Boulevard Saint-Martin and the Rue de Bondi, was opened in 1829, in place of the original Ambigu, burnt to the ground two years previously. The new house, which contains 1,600 seats, was inaugurated in presence of the Duchess of Berri, widow of the unhappy nobleman who a few years before was stabbed by Louvois on the steps of the Opera House. In 1837 this theatre was entirely rebuilt under the direction of M. Rochart. Untrue, like so many theatres, to its original name, the Ambigu-Comique was to become associated with nothing in the way of ambiguity, nothing in the way of comedy, but with melodramas, often of a most blood-curdling kind. Here, it is true, was produced the "Auberge des Adr�ts," which, in the hands of Fr�d�ric Lema�tre, was to be transformed from a serious drama into a wild piece of buffoonery; so that the author of the work, too nervous to attend the performance himself, was almost driven mad when his trusted servant returned home and reported to him the bursts of laughter with which the work had been received. At the Ambigu were brought out some of the best pieces of Alexandre Dumas the elder, Fr�d�ric Souli�, Adolphe Dennery, and Paul Feval.
Immediately adjacent to the Ambigu stand the Porte Saint-Martin and Renaissance Theatres, covering the triangle formed by the Boulevard Saint-Martin, the Rue de Bondi, and the Place de la Porte Saint-Martin. The Porte Saint-Martin Theatre has a long and interesting history, dating from June 8, 1781, when it was opened as an Opera House after the destruction by fire of the one in the Rue Saint-Honor�. A performance was going on at the time, and the singers had to fly in their operatic dresses from the stage to the street. In the midst of the general consternation, the musical director, Rey by name, whose "Coronis" was the opera of the night, startled those around him, already sufficiently terrified, by exclaiming, "Save my child! Oh, Heaven, save my child!" As Rey was not known in the character of a family man, his friends thought he had gone mad. But it was the creature of his brain that was troubling him; and after heroic struggles, the score of "Coronis" was rescued from the flames. The fascinating Madeleine Guiniard had on this occasion a narrow escape of her life. She was in her dressing-room, and had just divested herself of her costume when inquiries were made for her, and it was found that, like Brunhilda in the legend, she was enveloped on all sides by flames. A Siegfried, however, was found in the person of a stage carpenter, who, making his way through the ring of fire, reached the unhappy valkyrie, wrapped her up in a blanket, and brought her out in safety, though he himself, in his second passage through the flames, was somewhat scorched.
The new house established in the Porte Saint-Martin was opened 109 days after the destruction of the Opera House in the Rue Saint-Honor�. Here were brought out the "OEdipus Coloneus" of Sacchini, the "Daniades" and other works of Salieri, the "Demophon" of Cherubini, the "Re Teodoro" of Paisiello, and a French version of Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro." Many of the operas of Sacchini, Salieri, and Cherubini were composed specially for the French theatre. Paisiello's and Mozart's works were, of course, produced in translations. Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro" was brought out in the middle of the Reign of Terror, March 20, 1793.
Meanwhile, doubts had always been entertained as to the solidity of the theatre, which had been run up in from fifteen to sixteen weeks; and on April 14, 1794, the Committee of Public Safety ordered the transfer of the opera from the Porte Saint-Martin to the Salle Montansier, in the Rue Richelieu. M. Castil Blaze, excellent writer, but by no means free from prejudices, insists, in his "History of the Royal Academy of Music," that in the removal of the Opera to the Rue Richelieu there was a determination on the part of the Committee of Public Safety to burn down the National Library, opposite which the Opera was now installed. "How was it," he asks, "that the Opera was moved to a building exactly opposite the National Library--so precious and so combustible a repository of human knowledge? The two establishments were only separated by a street very much too narrow; if the theatre caught fire, was it not sure to burn the Library? That is what a great many persons still ask; this question has been reproduced a hundred times in our journals. Go back to the time when the house was built by Mademoiselle Montansier; read the Moniteur Universel, and you will see that it was precisely in order to expose this same Library to the happy chances of a fire that the great lyrical entertainment was transferred to its neighbourhood. The Opera hung over it, and threatened it constantly. At this time enlightenment abounded to such a point that the judicious Henriot, convinced in his innermost conscience that all reading was henceforth useless, had made a motion to burn the Library. To shift the Opera to the Rue Richelieu--that Opera which twice in eighteen years had been a prey to the flames--to place it exactly opposite our literary treasures was to multiply to infinity the chances of their being burnt." Mercier, in reference to the literary views of the Committee of Public Safety, writes in the Nouveau Paris thus:--"The language of Omar about the Koran was not more terrible than that by the members of the Committee of Public Safety, when they carried this resolution:--'Yes, we will burn all the libraries, for nothing will be needed but the history of the Revolution and its laws.'" If the motion of Henriot had been put into effect, David, the great Conventional painter, was ready to propose that the same service should be rendered to the masterpieces in the Louvre as to the literary wealth of the National Library. Republican subjects, according to David, were alone worthy of representation.
The Opera in the Rue Richelieu was, however, to be destroyed, as will afterwards be seen, not by fire, but in deliberate process of dilapidation.
Meanwhile, Louis XVI. and his family had fled from Paris on the 28th of June, 1791. The next day, and before the king was brought back to the Tuileries, the title of the chief lyric theatre was changed from Acad�mie Royale to simply the Opera. At the same time, the custom was introduced of announcing the performers' names, which was evidently an advantage to the public, and which was also not without its benefit for the inferior singers and dancers, who, when they unexpectedly appeared in order to replace their betters, used often to get hissed to a handsomer degree than they ever could in their usual parts.
By an order of the Committee of Public Safety, dated the 16th of the following September, the title of the Opera was again changed to Acad�mie Royale de Musique. This was intended as a compliment to the king, who had signed the Constitution on the 14th, and who was to go to the Opera six days afterwards. On the 20th the royal visit took place. "'Castor and Pollux' was played," says M. Castil Blaze, "and not 'Iphig�nie en Aulide,' as is asserted by some ill-informed historians, who even go so far as to pretend that the chorus 'Chantons, c�l�brons notre reine' was hailed with transports of enthusiasm, and that the public called for it a second time." The house was well filled, but not crammed, as we see by the receipts, which amounted to 6,636 livres 15 sous. The same opera of Rameau's, vamped by Candeille, had produced 6,857 livres on the 14th of the preceding June. On the night previous to the royal representation a gratuitous performance of "Castor and Pollux" had been given to the public in honour of the Constitution. The royalists were present in great numbers on the night of state, and some lines which could be applied to the queen were loudly applauded. Marie Antoinette was delighted, and said to the ladies who accompanied her, "You see that the people are really good, and wish only to love us." Encouraged by so flattering a reception, she determined to go the next night to the Op�ra Comique, but the king refused to accompany her. The piece performed was "Les �v�nements impr�vus." In the duet of the second act, before singing the words "Ah! comme j'aime ma ma�tresse," Mdme. Dugazon looked towards the queen, when a number of voices cried out from the pit, "Plus de Ma�tresse!" "Plus de Ma�tre!" "Vive la Libert�!" This cry was answered from the boxes with "Vive la reine! Vive le roi!" Sabres and swordsticks were drawn, and a battle began. The queen escaped from the theatre in the midst of the tumult. Cries of "A bas la reine!" followed her to her carriage, which went off at a gallop, with mud and stones thrown after it. Marie Antoinette returned to the Tuileries in despair. On the 1st of October, fourteen days afterwards, the title of Op�ra National was substituted for that of Acad�mie Royale de Musique. The Constitution being signed, there was no longer any reason for being civil to Louis XVI. This was the third change of title in less than four months.
To conclude the list of musical performances which have derived a gloomy celebrity from their connection with the last days of Louis XVI., we may reproduce the programme issued by the directors of the Op�ra National on the first anniversary of his execution, 1724. It ran thus:--"On behalf of and for the people gratis. In joyful commemoration of the death of the tyrant, the National Opera will give to-day, 6 Pluviose, year 2 of the Republic, 'Miltiades at Marathon,' 'The Siege of Thionville,' 'The Offering to Liberty.'"
The Opera under the Republic was directed until 1792 by four distinguished sans-culottes--Henriot, Chaumette, Le Roux, and H�bert, the last named of whom had once been check-taker of the Acad�mie. The others knew nothing whatever of operatic affairs. The management at the theatre was afterwards transferred to Francoeur, one of the former directors associated with Cell�rier, an architect; but the dethroned impresarios, accompanied by Danton and other Republican amateurs, constantly made their appearance behind the scenes, and very frequently did the chief members of the company the honour of supping with them. In these cases the invitations, as under the ancient r�gime, proceeded, not from the artists, but from the artists' patrons; with this difference, however, that under the Republic the latter never paid the bill.
"The chiefs of the Republic," says M. Castil Blaze, "were very fond of moistening their throats. Henriot, Danton, H�bert, Le Roux, Chaumette, had hardly taken a turn in the coulisses or in the foyer before they said to such an actor or actress, 'We are going to your room. See that we are properly received.' A superb collation was brought in. When the repast was finished and the bottles were empty, the National Convention, the Commune of Paris, beat a retreat without troubling itself about the expense. You think, perhaps, that the dancer or the singer paid for the representatives of the people? Not at all; honest Maugin, who kept the refreshment room of the theatre, knew perfectly well that the actors of the Opera were not paid, that they had no sort of money, not even a rag of an assignat; he made a sacrifice: from delicacy he did not ask from the artists what he would not have dared to claim from the sans-culottes, for fear of the guillotine."
Sometimes the executioner, who, as a public official, was entitled to certain entr�es, made his appearance behind the scenes, and it is said that, in a facetious mood, he would sometimes express his opinion about the "execution" of the music.
Operatic kings and queens were suppressed by the Republic. Not only were they forbidden to appear on the stage, but even their names were not to be pronounced behind the scenes, and the expressions c�t� du roi, c�t� de la reine, were changed into c�t� jardin, c�t� cour, which, at the Theatre of the Tuileries, indicated respectively the left and right of the stage, from the stage point of view. But although, at first, all pieces in which kings and queens figured were prohibited, the dramas of sans-culotte origin were so stupid and disgusting that the Republic was absolutely obliged to return to the old monarchical repertory. The kings, however, were turned into chiefs; princes and dukes became representatives of the people; seigneurs subsided into mayors; and substitutes more or less synonymous were found for such offensive words as crown, throne, sceptre, etc. In a new Republican version of "Le D�serteur," as represented at the Opera Comique, le roi, in one well-known line, was replaced by la loi, and the vocalist had to declaim "La loi passait, et le tambour battait aux champs!" A certain voluble executant, however, is said to have preferred the following emendation: "Le pouvoir ex�cutif passait, et le tambour battait aux champs!" The scenes of most of the new operas were laid in Italy, Prussia, Portugal--anywhere but in France, where it would have been indispensable from a political, and impossible from a poetical, point of view to make the lovers address one another as citoyen, citoyenne. On the 19th of June, 1793, the directors of the Opera having objected to give a gratuitous performance of the "Siege of Thionville," the Commune of Paris issued the following edict:--"Considering that for a long time past the aristocracy has taken refuge in the administration of various theatres; considering that these gentlemen corrupt the public mind by the pieces they represent; considering that they exercise a fatal influence on the revolution: it is decreed that the 'Siege of Thionville' shall be represented gratis, and solely for the amusement of the sans-culottes, who, to this moment, have been the true defenders of liberty and supporters of democracy." Soon afterwards it was proposed to shut up the Opera, but H�bert--the ferocious H�bert, better known as Le p�re Duchesne--undertook its defence, on the ground that it procured subsistence for a number of families, and "caused the agreeable arts to flourish."
Whatever the Opera may have been under the Reign of Terror, it was conducted infinitely better in one important respect than under the ancient r�gime.
[Illustration: FR�D�RIC LEMA�TRE.]
In the days of the old monarchy, as we learn from Bachaumont, a girl once inscribed on the books of the Opera was released from all control on the part of her parents. She might present herself for engagement of her own accord, or her name might be entered on the list by anyone who had succeeded in leading her away from her parents. In neither case had her family any further power over her. Lettres de cachet were issued, commanding the person named in the order to join the Opera, and many young girls were thus victimised. It can scarcely be supposed that the privileges granted to the Opera were intended, in the first instance, to be turned to such evil account as they afterwards were. Indeed, young men equally with young women could be seized and committed to operatic control wherever they were found. "We wish, and it pleases us," says King Louis XIV., in the letters-patent granted to the Abb� Perrin, first director of the Acad�mie Royale de Musique (1669), "that gentlemen (gentilshommes) and ladies may sing in the said pieces and representations of our Royal Academy without being considered, for that reason, to derogate from their titles of nobility, or from their rights and immunities." Many aristocrats of both sexes profited by this permission to appear either as singers or as dancers at the Opera. Young girls, amateurs, male and female, whose voices had been remarked, could be arrested and forced to perform at the Opera; and in the case of young girls it was evidently to the interest of the Acad�mie Royale de Musique that it should be able to profit by their talents without interference on the part of parents, who might well object to see their children condemned to such service. Besides being liberated from all parental restraint, the pupils and associates of the Academy enjoyed the right of setting creditors at defiance. The salaries of singers, dancers, and musicians belonging to the Opera were explicitly liberated from all liability to seizure for debt. Of the freedom conferred by an engagement at the Opera, the young woman who enjoyed it would probably have been the last to complain; for, side by side with operatic conscription, a system of operatic privileges was in force. It was not the custom for young ladies in good society to visit the Opera before their marriage; but a brevet de dame could be obtained, and the fortunate holder of such a document could without infringing any law of etiquette, attend all operatic performances. "The number of these brevets," says Bachaumont, in his M�moires Secrets, "increased prodigiously under Louis XVI., and very young persons have been known to obtain them. Thus relieved from the modesty and retirement of the virginal state, they gave themselves up with impunity to all sorts of scandals. Such disorder has opened the eyes of the Government, and it is now only by the greatest favour that one of these brevets can be obtained."
It has been seen that, according to Mercier and, after him, Castil Blaze, the extreme revolutionists among the Terrorist party desired that the Opera House in the Rue Richelieu might meet with the ordinary fate of theatres, in the hope that flames or flaming embers blown from the conflagration might reach the National Library, just opposite. This does not accord with the fact that the Convention did its utmost to encourage learning, literature, and art. The free system of the University, the College or Gymnasium at from eight to ten francs a month, and the Conservatoire de Musique, with its endowments, its scholarships, and its free tuition, all date from the first days of the Republic of 1789. As to the formal demolition of the Opera House, whose destiny was supposed to be fire, it happened in this way:--
On the 13th February, 1820, which was the last Sunday of the Carnival, an unusually brilliant audience had assembled at the Opera House, or Acad�mie Royale, as it now once more was called. The Duke and Duchess of Berri were present; and before the performance had been brought to an end, the duke, struck by an assassin, was a dead man.
The circumstances of the murder were very dramatic, not only by their theatrical surroundings (for the performance still went on while the duke was expiring in the manager's private apartments), but also by the remarkable way in which his whole life--with his double marriage and his two families--reproduced itself in the last few hours of his existence. The opera or operetta of the evening was at an end, and a portion of the ballet had been played, when the duke accompanied the duchess to her carriage, intending to return to his box to see the remainder of the performance. Then it was that the assassin grappled with him and pierced him to the heart. The duke was carried to the director's room, and in accordance with the practice of the day, was at once bled in both arms. The internal hemorrhage was still so great, that it was thought necessary to widen the orifice.
"There," says a contemporary writer, "lay the unhappy prince on a bed hastily arranged, and already soaked with blood, surrounded by his father, brother, sister, and wife, whose poignant anguish was from time to time relieved by some faint ray of hope, destined soon to be dispelled. When Dupuytren, accompanied by four of his most eminent colleagues, arrived, it was thought for a moment that the duke might yet be saved. But it soon became evident that the case was hopeless. The duke's daughter had now been brought to him, and after embracing her several times, he expressed a desire to see the king, Louis XVIII. Then arrived two other daughters, the children of the union he had contracted in England. The duchess, seeing them now for the first time, received them with the greatest kindness, and said to them: 'Soon you will have no father, and I shall have three daughters.' In a neighbouring room the assassin was being interrogated by the Ministers Decaze and Pasquier, with the bloody dagger on the table before them; while on the stage the ballet of 'Don Quixote' was being performed in presence of an enthusiastic public. In the course of the night the king arrived, and his nephew expired in his arms at half-past six the next morning, begging that his murderer might be forgiven, and entreating the duchess not to give way to despair."
The theatre on whose steps the crime had been committed was now demolished. The other Paris theatres were not indeed pulled down, but they were shut up for ten days, and there was general mourning in France, not only because a prince of the blood had been murdered, but also because the direct line of succession had to all appearance been brought to an end. It was not until more than seven months after the tragic scene at the Opera that the prince who was to have saved France, the "Enfant du Miracle," was born.
The arrival of the two daughters born and brought up in England has been differently regarded by writers of different political views. Alexandre Dumas, in his Memoirs, and Castil Blaze, in his Histoire de l'Acad�mie de Musique, represent the incident as a purely domestic one. M. Mauroy, in his recently published works, Les Secrets des Bourbons and Les derniers Bourbons, lays stress on the fact that these children were treated with a consideration not shown to other children of the duke's, who were certainly born out of wedlock, and thus derives an argument in support of his proposition that the Duke of Berri contracted in England with the mother of these girls a regular marriage, invalid only in so far as it had never been sanctioned by the head of his house. Chateaubriand, as a royalist, would not allow the character of legitimate children to the two girls brought to the bedside of their dying father, and entrusted by him to the care of his wife, the duchess.
"The Duke of Berri," writes Chateaubriand, in the M�moires d'outre-Tombe, "had had one of those liaisons which religion reproves, but which human frailty excuses. It may be said of him as the historian has said of Henri IV.: 'He was often weak, but always faithful, and his passions never seemed to have enfeebled his religion.' The Duke of Berri, seeking vainly in his conscience for something very guilty, and finding only a few weaknesses, wished, so to say, to collect them around his death-bed, to prove to the world the greatness of his contrition and the severity of his penance. He had a sufficiently just opinion of the virtue of his wife to confess to her his faults, and to fulfil, beneath her eyes, his desire to embrace those two innocent creatures, the daughters of his long exile. 'Let them be sent for,' cried the young princess; 'they are my children also.' When the Viscountess de Gontaut, who had not been told beforehand, seemed astonished, Madame (i.e. the Countess of Artois) noticed it, and said to her: 'She knows everything; she has been sublime!'"
The rest of Chateaubriand's narrative, especially as regards the Duke of Berri's two daughters, corresponds closely enough with the one left by Dupuytren, whose style, somewhat expressive, somewhat emphatic for a man of science, is less copious, and also less magniloquent than that of the marvellous author of Le G�nie du Christianisme and of the M�moires d'outre-Tombe.
What the prince chiefly thought of in his last moments was his murderer, Louvel. "Twenty times in the course of the fatal night," says Dupuytren, the famous physician, whose account of the scene was published not many years ago, "he cried out, 'Have I not injured this man? had he not some personal vengeance to exercise against me?' In vain did Monsieur repeat to him, with tears in his eyes: 'No, my son, you never injured, you never saw this man; he had no personal animosity against you.' The prince returned incessantly to this groundless idea, and, without being conscious of it, furnished by his public and repeated inquiries the best proof that he had not provoked the frightful calamity which had befallen him. With this first idea he constantly associated another--that of obtaining pardon for his assassin. During his long and painful agony the prince begged for it at least a hundred times, and did so more earnestly in proportion as he felt his end approaching. Thus, when the increasing gravity of the symptoms made him fear that he would not live long enough to see the king, he called out piteously, 'Ah! the king will not arrive. I shall not be able to ask him to forgive the man.' Soon afterwards he appealed turn by turn to Monsieur and to the Duke of Augoul�me, saying to them, 'Promise me, father, promise me, brother, that you will ask the king to spare the man's life.' But when at last the king arrived, he no sooner saw his Majesty than, summoning all his strength, he cried out, 'Spare his life, sir! spare the man's life!' 'My nephew,' the king replied, 'you are not so ill as you think, and we shall have time to think of your request when you have recovered.' Yet the prince continued as before, the king being still on his guard not to grant a pardon which was equally repugnant to the laws of nature and to those of society. Then this generous prince exclaimed in a tone of deep regret: 'Ah, sir! you do not say "yes,"' adding shortly afterwards: 'If the man's life were spared, the bitterness of my last moments would be softened.' As his end drew near, pursuing the same idea, he expressed in a low voice, broken by grief, and with long intervals between each word, the following thought: 'Ah!... if only ... I could carry away ... the idea ... that the blood of a man ... would not flow on my account ... after my death....' This noble prayer was the last he uttered. His constantly increasing and now atrocious pain absorbed from this moment all his faculties."
The heroism of the Duke of Berri and his dying prayer for the pardon of his murderer may be contrasted with the cowardice of his grandfather, Louis XV., taking the last sacrament twice over when he had only been scratched; and the cruelty with which he caused his assailant, who, murderously disposed, no doubt, had nevertheless scarcely injured him, to be subjected to the most frightful tortures, and finally torn to pieces by four horses.
[Illustration: PORTE SAINT-MARTIN AND THE RENAISSANCE THEATRE.]
Let us now return to the Porte Saint-Martin Theatre, which, abandoned by the Opera, remained deserted for eight years, from 1794 to 1802. On September 30th of this year it was re-opened under the direction of the author and actor Du Maniaut, who brought out operas, melodramas, comedies, and pantomimes until the publication, in 1806, of the decree which put an end to the liberty of the stage. He afterwards, however, obtained permission to represent pantomimes and prologues, or vaudevilles, on condition that in each of these little pieces not more than two actors were employed. In September, 1810, Du Maniaut produced "The Man of Destiny"--a title indicating the Emperor Napoleon, whose victories were represented in a series of historical and allegorical pictures in honour of his marriage with Marie Louise. The music was by the celebrated Piccini, attached to the private staff of his Majesty the Emperor. The Man of Destiny was impersonated by a dancer and mimic named Chevalier, and his career, begun in Egypt, was continued up to the triumphal entry of the French troops into Berlin. After remaining closed for several years, the Porte Saint-Martin Theatre was re-opened in 1814, and thenceforward played a very important part in connection with the dramatic literature of the country. Here Mlle. Georges, Mme. Dorval, Fr�d�ric Lema�tre, and many other famous artistes, appeared. Here, too, were produced with enormous success "Marion Delorme," "Lucr�ce Borgia," and "Marie Tudor," from Victor Hugo's pen; all the dramas of Alexandre Dumas, including "Antoine," "Ang�le," "Richard Darlington," and "La Tour de Nesle": "The Mysteries of Paris" and "Mathilde" of Eug�ne Sue, "The Two Locksmiths" of F�lix Pyat, the "Dame de Saint-Tropez" and "Don C�sar de Bazan" of Adolphe d'Ennery. Here, too, the "Vautrin" of Balzac was brought out--to be stopped, after sixteen representations, by Government order, on the ground that Fr�d�ric Lema�tre's make-up in the part of the hero was intended to throw ridicule on the person of King Louis Philippe. The house built by Le Noir, which the Committee of Public Safety had looked upon as of doubtful solidity, enjoyed a life of ninety years, and might have been in existence still; but on the 24th of May, 1871, without any apparent motive for so useless and stupid an act, the Communists set fire to it. The old theatre was burnt to the ground, together with an adjoining building, which, in the days of the Republic of Vienna, had belonged to the Venetian Ambassador.
[Illustration: CHURCH OF ST. M�RY, RUE ST.-MARTIN.]
Rebuilt on the same site, but after a different plan, the Porte St.-Martin Theatre was re-opened in the autumn of 1873, when Victor Hugo's "Marie Tudor" was revived. To this succeeded a couple of great successes--"The Two Orphans" and "Round the World," the former written by that fertile inventor of new plots, M. Adolphe d'Ennery, and the latter adapted by him from Jules Verne's famous novel.
Close to this famous playhouse is the new Renaissance Theatre, which first opened its doors on the 8th of March, 1873. The Porte Saint-Martin contains 1,800 seats, the Renaissance only 1,200. Started as a dramatic theatre, with Belot's "Femme de Feu" and Zola's "Th�r�se Raquin" in the bill, it was destined to obtain its chief success as an operetta theatre with the charming works of Charles Lecoq, including "La petite Mari�e," "Le petit Duc," etc. In these works Mesdames Th�o, Jeanne Granier, and Zulma Bouffar first appeared.
At the point where the Boulevards St.-Martin and St.-Denis meet stands the Triumphal Arch known as the Porte St.-Martin, which Louis XIV. erected in 1674 on the site of the previous Gate, which dated from the minority of Louis XIII. The Porte St.-Martin faces on the one side the Rue St.-Martin, and on the other the Faubourg St.-Martin: that is to say, south and north. The low reliefs decorating the arch on all sides represent the taking of Besan�on, the taking of Limburg, and the defeat of the Germans, in the form of an eagle repulsed by Mars. The pedestal bears a Latin inscription, which in English would run thus:--"To Louis the Great, for having twice taken Besan�on and Franche-Comt�, and for having crushed the German, Spanish, and Dutch armies. The Provost of the Merchants and the Citizens of Paris, 1674."
At the end of the Rue St.-Martin, leading out of the boulevard of that name, stands the Church of St. M�ry, near which a most determined struggle took place in that insurrection of the 6th of June, 1832, which was one of the numerous Republican movements directed against Louis Philippe by the disappointed revolutionists of 1830, who, aiming at a Republic, had brought about the re-establishment of a Monarchy. The Republicans received powerful aid from the Bonapartists: these two parties being at this, as on so many other occasions, ready to unite against royalty, while reserving to themselves the ultimate decision of the question whether the Empire or the Republic should be re-established.
The occasion chosen for the outbreak was the funeral of General Lamarque--equally popular with Bonapartists and Republicans. A number of enthusiastic young men drew the funeral car, which was followed by exiles from all parts of Europe. Among the pall-bearers were General Lafayette, Marshal Clausel, and M. Laffitte. Of the insurgents, some took part in the procession, while others looked on in expectation of events that were inevitable. The crowd broke into several gunsmiths' shops, and finally into the arsenal. Many, too, had brought arms with them; and after a few hours' fighting the insurgents had gained several important positions, and determined to attack the bank, the post-office, and some neighbouring barracks. Their chief object at this moment was to render inaccessible the Rue Saint-Martin and the surrounding streets. Here they intended to establish the head-quarters of their insurrection, without having the slightest notion that at that very instant M.M. Thiers, Miguet, and other members of the Government were dining together at the Rocher de Cancale, fifty yards only from the camp wherein the Republicans were fortifying themselves with the firm resolution of proclaiming a Republic or dying in the attempt. A remarkable example was given towards the evening of this day of what M. Louis Blanc calls the sympathy of the Paris National Guard for heroism, though most persons would regard it as a proof of incapacity and cowardice.
Eight insurgents, returning from the Place Maubert, presented themselves towards the decline of day at one of the bridges of the city which was occupied by a battalion of the National Guard. They authoritatively claimed their right to go over and join their friends who were fighting on the other side of the river, and as the guards hesitated to let them pass, they advanced resolutely towards the bridge at half charge, with fixed bayonets. The soldiers instantly ranged themselves on either side, and gave unimpeded passage to these eight men, whose infatuated heroism they at once admired and, reflecting upon its inevitable result, deplored.
The enthusiasm of the insurgents at this period is shown by many a curious incident, such as that of their moulding bullets from lead stripped off the roofs of houses; whilst boys, too young to bear weapons, loaded the guns, using for wadding the police notices they had torn off the walls, or, when that resource failed, taking the shirts off their own backs to tear to shreds for the purpose. It was all, however, a forlorn hope; and the rising was destined to be crushed by superior force.
More than one reference to the defence of the Clo�tre St.-M�ry will be found in the novels of Balzac, and a dramatic description of it occurs in the memoirs of Alexandre Dumas.
The Porte St.-Martin--Porte St.-Denis--The Burial Place of the French Kings--Funeral of Louis XV.--Funeral of the Count de Chambord--Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle--Boulevard Poissonni�re--Boulevard Montmartre--Frascati.
Just beyond the Porte Saint-Martin the Boulevard Saint-Denis crosses the great thoroughfare, which is called on one side Boulevard de S�bastopol, on the other, Boulevard de Strasbourg. The Boulevard de Strasbourg was so designated (long before the Franco-German war, which suggests quite another origin for the name) in honour of the city where Prince Louis Napoleon made his first attempt to restore the Empire in France. The circumstances of the rash enterprise, represented at the time by the Government newspapers as merely ridiculous, were sufficiently romantic to deserve a few words of mention. Quitting his mother, with whom he had been living at the Castle of Arenberg, in Switzerland, he went as if to take the waters at Baden-Baden, a place he found suitable to his purpose from its vicinity to Alsace, and from the opportunity it afforded him of covering his ambitious views under the mask of pleasure. It was there that the prince gained the co-operation of Colonel Vaudrey, who commanded the 4th regiment of artillery at Strasburg, in which frontier city the prince had resolved to proclaim the restoration of the Empire before marching towards the capital. The Alsacian democrats were to be gained over by holding out to them a prospect of a fair representation of the people, while the garrison of Strasburg was to be captivated by the cry of "Vive l'Empereur!" The citizens were to be summoned to liberty, and the young men of the schools to arms. The ramparts were then to be entrusted to the keeping of the national guards, and the prince was to march to Paris at the head of the troops. "And then," says Louis Blanc, in his sketch of the project, "the pictures that naturally presented themselves to the mind of Louis Napoleon were towns surprised, garrisons carried away by the movement, young men eagerly enlisting among his adventurous followers, old soldiers quitting the plough from all quarters to salute the eagle borne aloft, amidst acclamations, caught up by echo after echo along the roads; bitter recollections of the invasion, proud memories of the great wars, reviving, meanwhile, in every part of the Vosges, Lorraine, and Champagne." The ardour of the conspirators steadily increased, and had they not possessed resolution and daring of their own, there was a woman in their midst who would have set them a bold example. Madame Gordon, the daughter of a captain of the Imperial Guard, had been initiated at Lille into the projects of Louis Napoleon without the knowledge of the prince himself, and entering impetuously into the conspiracy, she hastened to Strasburg, or rather to Baden-Baden in the immediate neighbourhood, and, appearing there as a professional singer, gave a series of concerts. Prince Louis was charmed with the lady's talents, and, on expressing his admiration, was astonished to find that she had come to Baden-Baden with no object but to help him in the attempt he was about to make on the other side of the Rhine.
The Strasburg expedition having failed, it pleased the enemies of the prince to cast ridicule upon it; and he was accused of having exhibited himself in his uncle's boots, just as some years afterwards, in connection with the Boulogne expedition, he was said to have carried with him a trained eagle which at a given moment was to fly to the top of the Boulogne Column in memory of the Great Army. Both at Boulogne, however, and at Strasburg the prince had considerable chances of success: a fact sufficiently proved (apart from any demonstration in detail) by the popularity he was seen to possess when, in 1848, he appeared as candidate for the Presidency of the French Republic. At Strasburg, as afterwards at Boulogne, he did not make his attack until after he had had the ground thoroughly reconnoitred, and had ascertained that the troops before whom he was about to present himself were largely composed of his partisans.
The soldiers of the 4th regiment of artillery were waiting, drawn up face to face in two lines, with their eyes fixed on Colonel Vaudrey, who stood alone in the centre of the yard. Suddenly the prince appeared in the uniform of an artillery officer, and hurried up to the colonel, who introduced him to the troops, crying out: "Soldiers, a great revolution begins at this moment. The nephew of the Emperor stands before you. He comes to place himself at your head. He is here on French soil to restore to France her glory and her liberty. He is here to conquer or to die for a great cause--the cause of the people. Soldiers of the 4th regiment of artillery, may the Emperor's nephew reckon on you?" At these words an indescribable transport seized the troops. As one man they cried, "Vive l'Empereur!" and brandished their arms amid shouts of enthusiasm. Louis Napoleon, deeply affected, made signs that he wished to speak. "It was in your regiment," he said, "that the Emperor Napoleon, my uncle, first saw service; with you he distinguished himself at the siege of Toulon; it was your brave regiment that opened the gates of Grenoble to him on his return from the island of Elba. Soldiers, new destinies are reserved for you!" And, taking the Eagle from an officer who carried it, "Here," he said, "is the symbol of French glory, which must henceforth be also the symbol of liberty." The shouts were redoubled, they mingled with the strains of martial music, and the regiment prepared to march.
[Illustration: APSIS OF CHURCH OF ST. M�RY, RUE BRISEMICHE.]
[Illustration: NOTRE-DAME.]
The excitement went on increasing, and cries of "Vive l'Empereur!" filled the air, when suddenly a strange rumour began to spread. It was said that the self-proclaimed nephew of the emperor was in reality the nephew of Colonel Vaudrey. The enthusiasts of a second before, lending ear to the idle whisper, now hesitated; and in revolts the man who hesitates or meets with hesitation is lost. The people of Strasburg had shown numerous marks of sympathy for the heir of the first Napoleon, and many officers and soldiers had espoused his cause. But the first impulse had received a check, and the power of discipline and routine soon asserted itself. The question now was, how the heir of the first Napoleon might escape from the mass of troops by which he was surrounded. Two of his adherents offered to cut a way for him, sword in hand; but this wild proposal was naturally rejected, and the prince had to surrender himself prisoner.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE FAUBOURG SAINT-DENIS.]
What to do with him, however, was for some time a difficult problem to the authorities. To try the Prince by an ordinary jury would be awkward, inasmuch as there was a considerable chance of his acquittal; while it was already known that if he were brought before the Chamber of Peers, many members of that august body had declared their resolution not to sit in judgment upon him. At last it was resolved to send him into exile. He was not allowed to go back to Switzerland, where he had been living for some years, and he was ultimately ordered to make America his destination. It was said that he promised to remain there for not less than ten years. But there is no proof of any such compact having been entered into, and the prince was soon to be heard of again in London.
Formerly associated solely with the first attempt of Prince Louis Napoleon to place himself on the throne of France, the Boulevard of Strasburg now seems to mark the fact that the Alsatian city, so thoroughly French in feeling, has been made the capital of a province of the German Empire.
It has been said that the Boulevard Saint-Denis crosses the Boulevard de Strasbourg; and it terminates at the Porte Saint-Denis, erected two years earlier than the Porte Saint-Martin, to which it is superior both by the boldness of its architecture and by the magnificence of its ornamentation.
The Porte Saint-Denis was constructed in 1672 by the order and at the expense of the City of Paris, to celebrate the success of that astonishing campaign in which, during less than sixty days, forty strongholds and three provinces fell before the armies of the victorious monarch. The town side of the arch bears, on the left, a colossal figure of Holland, on the right, another of the Rhine: two masterpieces, due to the chisel of the Auguier Brothers. At the top of the arch is a frieze representing in low relief the famous passage of the Rhine under the orders of Louis XIV. On the Faubourg side the low relief at the top of the arch represents the taking of Maestricht. The Porte Saint-Denis bears this simple inscription: "Ludovico Magno"--"To Louis the Great."
At the end of the Rue Faubourg Saint-Denis is the necropolis of Saint-Denis--the burial-place of the French kings.
The obsequies of French kings have from the earliest times been attended with as much pomp and show as their coronations. It was not enough to embalm the body, place it in several coffins, and finally carry it to the royal burial place at Saint-Denis--to observe an elaborate ceremonial, which the Court functionaries and the officials of State followed out to the minutest detail; the effigy of the dead king was exposed for forty days in the palace, stretched on a State bed, clothed in royal garments, the crown on the head, the sceptre in the right hand, and the brand of justice on the left, with a crucifix, a vessel of holy water, and two golden censers at the foot of the couch. The officers of the palace, meanwhile, continued their duties as usual, and even went so far as to serve the king's meals as though he were still living. The embalmed body was afterwards transported to the Abbey of Saint-Denis, with the innumerable formalities laid down beforehand; while at the interment so many honours were paid to it that to enumerate them would be to fill a small volume. The details of the ceremony were so minute and fastidious that battles of etiquette constantly took place among the exalted persons figuring in the assembly.
At the burial of Philip Augustus, the Papal Legate and the Archbishop of Rheims disputed for precedence; and as neither would give way, they performed service at the same time in the same church, but at different altars. A like scandal occurred at the funeral of St. Louis. When his successor, Philip III., wished to enter the Abbey of Saint-Denis at the head of the procession, the doors were closed in his face. The abbot objected to the presence, not of the king, his master, but of the Bishop of Paris and the Archbishop of Sens, whom he had observed among the officiating clergy, and who, according to his view, had no right to perform service in the Abbey of Saint-Denis, where he alone was chief. The difference was arranged by the archbishop and bishop stripping themselves of their pontifical garments, and acknowledging the supremacy of the abbot in his own sanctuary.
At the death of Charles VI. it was found necessary to consult the Duke of Bedford as to the conduct of the funeral ceremony, and under the direction of the foreigner it was performed with great magnificence. The duke observed as nearly as possible the ancient ceremonial, the only important variation being that (possibly in his character of Englishman) he ordered the interment to be followed by a grand dinner. Even at the dinner--where, at least, concord might have been expected--there were absurd wranglings on points of etiquette between the State officials.
These royal funerals naturally cost enormous sums of money, which were charged partly to the Crown, partly to the City of Paris. The obsequies of Francis I. took five hundred thousand livres from the purse of his successor, without counting the contribution, probably of equal amount, from the town. The effigies of his two sons who had died before him were carried with his own relics to Saint-Denis. Thus there were three coffins in the procession. By the observance of a similar custom, there were in the funeral procession of St. Louis no fewer than five.
At the interments of the old kings genuine grief was often exhibited by the people. Such, however, was not the case at the obsequies of Louis XIV. The Duke de Saint-Simon, in his Memoirs, speaks of this funeral as a very poor affair, remarkable only for the confused style in which it was conducted. The king had left no directions in regard to his burial; and partly for the sake of economy, partly to save trouble, it was decided to regulate the ceremonies by those observed at the interment of Louis XIII., who, in his will, had ordered that they should be as simple as possible. "His modesty and humility, like the other Christian and heroic qualities he possessed, had not," says Saint-Simon, "descended to his son. But the funeral of Louis XIII. was accepted as a precedent, and no one saw the slightest objection to it, attachment and gratitude being virtues which had ceased to exist." Nor did the Duke of Orleans pay a flattering tribute to the royal memory, when, regent though he had only just become, he absented himself from the ceremony of carrying the king's heart to the Grand Jesuits: "that heart," says Saint-Simon, "which loved no one, and which excited so little love."
In addition to the usual distribution of alms, the Regent of Orleans associated the funeral of Louis XIV. with an exceptional act of mercy. A number of persons had been arbitrarily imprisoned on lettres de cachet and otherwise, some for Jansenism and various religious and political offences, others for reasons known only to the king or his former ministers. The regent ordered all the captives to be set at liberty, with the exception of a few who had been duly convicted of serious political or criminal misdeeds. Among the prisoners liberated from the Bastille was an Italian whose confinement had lasted thirty-five years, and who had been arrested the very day of his arrival at Paris, which he had come to see simply as a traveller. "No one ever knew why," says Saint-Simon; "nor, like most of the others, had he ever been interrogated. It was thought to be a mistake. When his liberty was announced to him, he asked sadly of what use it was to him. He said that he had not a child, that he knew no one at Paris, nor even the name of a street, that his relations in Italy were probably dead, and that his property must have been divided among his heirs, on the supposition that he was dead. He asked to be allowed to remain at the Bastille for the rest of his life, with board and lodging. This was granted to him, with liberty to go out when he pleased. As for the prisoners released from the dungeons into which the hatred of the Ministers and that of the Jesuits had thrown them, the horrible condition in which they appeared inspired horror, and rendered credible all the cruelties they related when they were in full liberty." The story of the Italian prisoner who declined to leave the Bastille is interesting from its having anticipated--perhaps it suggested--the one told by another prisoner on the occasion of the Bastille being taken by the Revolutionists in 1789.
The funeral of Louis XV. was a very hurried affair. The king died on the 10th of May, at twenty minutes past three. The whole Court instantly took flight, and there only remained with the body a few persons required for the care of it. The utmost precipitation was used in removing it from Versailles. None of the usual formalities were observed. Everyone was afraid to go near the body--undertakers, like the rest, feared the small-pox, of which the king had died--and the corpse was carried to Saint-Denis in an ordinary travelling carriage, under the care of forty members of the body-guard and a few pages. The escort hurried on the dead man in the most indecent manner, and all along the road the greatest levity was shown by the spectators. The public-houses were filled with uproarious guests; and it is said that when the landlord of one of them tried to silence a troublesome customer by reminding him that the king was about to pass, the man replied: "The rogue starved us in his lifetime. Does he want us to perish of thirst now that he is dead?" A jest different in style, but showing equally in what esteem Louis XV. was held by his subjects, is attributed to the Abb� of Sainte-Genevi�ve. Being taunted with the powerlessness of his saint and the little effect which the opening of his shrine, formerly so efficacious, had produced, he replied: "What, gentlemen, have you to complain of? Is he not dead?"
The last of the Bourbons buried at Saint-Denis was Louis XVIII., whose obsequies were conducted as nearly as possible on the ancient regal pattern. The exhibition of the king's effigy in wax had in Louis XVIII.'s time been out of fashion for more than a century. But the customs observed in connection with the lying-in-state of Louis XIV. were for the most part revived. The king, who died on the 16th of September, 1824, was embalmed, and on the 18th his body was exposed on a State bed in the hall of the throne. His bowels and heart had been enclosed in caskets of enamel. The exhibition of the body lasted six days, during which it was constantly surrounded by the officers of the Crown and the superior clergy. The translation of the remains to St.-Denis took place on the 23rd, in the midst of an imposing civil and military procession. The princes of the blood and grand officers of State occupied fourteen mourning coaches, each with eight horses, and the tail of the procession was formed by 400 poor men and women bearing torches. Received at the entrance to the church by the Dean of the Royal Chapter and the Grand Almoner of France, the body was placed on trestles in the chancel, while prayers were recited by the clergy. It was afterwards removed to an illuminated chapel, where it lay exposed for a whole month, the chapter performing services night and day. The interment took place on the 25th of October. The grand almoner celebrated a solemn mass; and after the Gospel a funeral oration was pronounced by the Bishop of Hermopolis. Then four bishops uttered a benediction over the body, and absolution was pronounced; twelve of the body-guard thereupon carrying the coffin down to the royal vault, where the grand almoner cast a shovelful of earth on it, and blessed it, saying: "Requiescat in pace." The king-at-arms approached the open vault, threw into it his wand, helmet, and coat-of-arms, ordered the other heralds to imitate him, and calling up the grand officers of the Crown, told them to bring the insignia of the authority they held from the defunct king. Each came in succession with the object entrusted to his care: such as the banner of the royal guard, the flags of the body-guard, the spurs, the gauntlets, the shield, the coat-of-arms, the helm, the pennon, the brand of justice, the sceptre, and the crown. The royal sword and banner were only presented at the mouth of the vault. The Grand Master of France now inclined the end of his staff towards the coffin, and cried in a loud voice: "The king is dead!" The king-at-arms, taking three steps backwards, repeated in the same tone: "The king is dead; the king is dead!" Then, turning towards the persons assembled, he added: "Let us now pray to God for the repose of his soul." The clergy and all present fell on their knees, prayed, and then stood up. The grand master next drew back his staff, raised it in the air, and exclaimed: "Long live the king!" The king-at-arms repeated: "Long live the king! Long live the king! Long live King Charles, the tenth of the name, by the grace of God King of France and of Navarre; very Christian, very august, very powerful; our honoured lord and master, to whom may God grant a life long and happy. Cry all 'Long live the king! Long live Charles X.!'" The tomb was closed, and the ceremony was at an end.
At the funeral of the Count de Chambord the hearse was surmounted by a dome, on which rested four crowns. It was not explained what kingdoms these crowns were intended to represent. As the head of the House of France, the right of the count, heraldically speaking, to wear the French crown would scarcely be disputed. The four symbolical crowns on the count's hearse were possibly, then, meant to be simple reminders that the Bourbons claimed sovereign rights over four different countries; and in the days of Louis Philippe they indeed reigned in France, Spain, Naples, and Parma. But the Revolution of 1848 in France and the war of 1859 in Italy cleared three thrones of their Bourbon occupants, and the last of the reigning Bourbons disappeared when, in 1868, Isabella of Spain fled from Madrid. Thus, in the course of twenty years the four Bourbon crowns lost all real significance; and the Bourbon sovereigns had simply increased the numbers of those "kings in exile," so much more plentiful during the period of M. Alphonse Daudet than at that of Voltaire, who first observed them, in Candide, as a separate species.
Now that the Comte de Chambord reposes by the side of his grandfather, Charles X., there are as many of the Bourbons buried at G�ritz as at Saint-Denis, where, in the burial-place of the French kings, the only really authentic bodies are those of the Duke of Berri, the Count of Chambord's father, and Louis XVIII., his great-uncle. In regard to the later occupants of the French throne, it is at least certain where they are interred; Napoleon I. at the Invalides, Louis Philippe at Claremont, Napoleon III. at Chiselhurst, and the last two representatives of the Bourbons at G�ritz. The first of the Bourbons, Henri IV., as likewise his successors, Louis XIII., Louis XIV., and Louis XV., were buried at Saint-Denis, in the vault known as that of the Bourbons; and to the coffins still supposed to contain their remains were added, after the Restoration, two more, reputed--without adequate foundation for the belief--to hold the bodies of Louis XVI. and of the child who died in the Temple--the so-called Louis XVII. The body of the Duke of Berri was laid in the vault of the Bourbons a few days after his assassination in 1820; and that of Louis XVIII. was consigned to the same resting-place in 1824. But in 1793 the tombs of the French kings had been dismantled, and their contents re-interred promiscuously in two large graves, hastily dug for the purpose; and the identity of the bones asserted to be those of Louis XVI. and Louis XVII., which were not placed in the Bourbon vault of the Saint-Denis church until 1815, could scarcely be demonstrated.
[Illustration: BOULEVARD AND PORTE SAINT-DENIS.]
"To celebrate the 10th of August, which marks the downfall of the French Throne, we must, on its anniversary," said Barr�re, in his report addressed to the French Convention, "destroy the splendid mausoleums at Saint-Denis. Under the monarchy the very tombs had learned to flatter the kings. Their haughtiness, their love of display, could not be subdued even on the theatre of death; and the sceptre-bearers who have done so much harm to France and to humanity seem even in the grave to be proud of their vanished greatness. The powerful hand of the Republic must efface without pity those arrogant epitaphs and demolish those mausoleums which would revive the frightful recollections of the kings."
The proposition of Barr�re was adopted, and the National Assembly decreed "that the tombs and mausoleums of the former kings in the Church of Saint-Denis should be destroyed." The execution of the decree was undertaken on the 6th of August, and three days afterwards thirty-one tombs had been swept away. Not the least remarkable of these tombs was the earliest, erected by St. Louis in honour of "Le Roi Dagobert," of facetious memory, famed in song for having put on his breeches "� l'envers." It is one of the most curious monuments of the thirteenth century, and at least as interesting for its subject as for its architecture. On three zones, superposed one upon the other, is represented the legend of Dagobert's death. On the lowest zone we see St. Denis revealing to a sleeping anchorite, named Jean, that King Dagobert is suffering torments; and close by, the soul of Dagobert, represented by a naked child bearing a crown, is being maltreated by demons, frightfully ugly, who hold their prey in a boat. In the middle zone, the same demons are running precipitately from the boat, in the most grotesque attitudes, at the approach of the three saints, Denis, Martin, and Maurice, who have come to rescue the soul of King Dagobert. In the highest of the bas-reliefs the soul of King Dagobert is free. The naked child is now standing in a winding-sheet, of which the two ends are held by St. Denis and St. Martin; and angels are awaiting him in heaven, whither he is about to ascend. The commission appointed by the Convention did not destroy this tomb. They had it transported, with many other objects of artistic and intrinsic value, to Paris.
The last King of France and of Navarre died on the 6th of July, 1836, and it was not until nine days afterwards that the fact was made known to the French public through the columns of the Gazette de France. The heart of Charles X. was, according to royal custom, separated from the body; though, instead of being preserved apart, as in the case of former French kings, it was enclosed in a box of enamel, and fastened with screws to the top of the coffin. The Comte de Chambord, on the other hand, was buried in the ordinary manner, and not, like Charles X., with his heart on the coffin lid; nor, like Louis XVIII., with his heart in one place and his body in another. The dead, according to the German ballad, "ride fast." But the living move still faster; and in France, almost as much as in England, the separation of a heart from the body, to be kept permanently as a relic, is in the present day a process which seems to savour of ancient times, though, as a matter of fact, it was common enough among the French at the end of the last century. In our own country the discontinuance of what was at one time as much a custom in England as in France, or any other continental land, is probably due to the influence of the Reformation, which, condemning absolutely the adoration of the relics of saints, did not favour the respectful preservation of relics of any kind. Great was the astonishment caused in England when in the last generation it was found that Daniel O'Connell had by will ordered his heart to be sent to Rome. The injunction was made at the time the subject of an epigram, intended to be offensive, but which would probably have been regarded by O'Connell himself as flattering: setting forth, as it did, that the heart which was to be forwarded to Rome had never in fact been anywhere else. The reasons for which in the Middle Ages hearts were enclosed in precious urns may have been very practical. Sometimes the owner of the heart had died far from home, and in accordance with his last wishes, the organ associated with all his noblest emotions was sent across the seas to his living friends. Such may well have been the case when, after the death of St. Louis at Tunis, the heart of the pious king was transmitted to France, where it was preserved for centuries--perhaps even until our own time--in La Sainte Chapelle. In the year 1798, while some masons were engaged in repairing the building which had been converted into a dep�t for State archives, they came across a heart-shaped casket in lead, containing what was described as "the remains of a human heart." The custodians of the archives drew up a formal report on the discovery, and enclosing it in the casket with the relics, replaced the casket beneath the flagstones whence it had been disinterred. In 1843, when the chapel was restored, the leaden heart-shaped receptacle was found anew, and a commission was appointed to decide as to the genuineness of the remains, believed to be those of St. Louis. An adverse decision was pronounced, the reasons for discrediting the legend on the subject being fully set forth by M. Letrenne, the secretary of the commission.
The Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, which comes next to the Boulevard Saint-Denis, is bounded on the right by the Faubourg Poissonni�re, and on the left by the Butte aux Gravois, on which was built in the seventeenth century the quarter named, after its parochial church, Notre-Dame de Bonne Nouvelle. The Bonne Nouvelle Bazaar, constructed in the reign of Louis Philippe, contained, in the basement, a sort of theatre of considerable size, where, in 1848, several political clubs and other conventions were established. Here on one particular day, arriving together by opposite staircases, Victor Hugo and Fr�d�ric Lema�tre would present themselves at the speaker's desk erected for political orators. Ultimately, but not without some hesitation, the interpreter of Ruy Blas gave way to the creator of the part. The object of the assembly was to constitute in a permanent way a club for Parisian writers and artists of the dramatic and other schools. Close by, at No. 26, is the Viennese beer-house, established on the site of the theatre opened in 1838, where the company of the old Vaudeville Theatre took refuge when, on the 18th of July in that year, they were burnt out.
There is now but one theatre on the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle--that of the Gymnase, opened on the 20th of December, 1820, under the patronage of the Duchess of Berri, who four years afterwards allowed it to take the title of "Th��tre de Madame," which it retained until the Revolution of 1830. It was then entitled the "Gymnase Th��tre Dramatique," afterwards to be known simply as the Gymnase. For the last seventy years the Gymnase has been one of the very best theatres of the second order, ranking immediately after the theatres subventioned by the State. It was at the Gymnase that Scribe made his brilliant reputation with a long succession of little masterpieces, until at length he was followed by Alexandre Dumas the younger, who here produced "Le Demi-Monde," "Diane de Lys," and many other pieces less imposing, perhaps, but more thoughtful and more powerfully written than those of his predecessor. It was at the Gymnase, too, that Sardou brought out many of his best pieces, such as "Les Ganaches," "La Perle noire," "Nos bons Villageois," and "Fernande." This theatre, moreover, was the birthplace of Meilhac and Hal�vy's "Frou-Frou."
The first house on the Boulevard Poissonni�re, at the corner of the street of that name, bears an inscription which fixes at this point the boundary of Paris in 1726, though by some authorities 1726 is said to have been substituted for the true year in which the boundaries of Paris were marked--namely, 1702.
With the last house on the Boulevard Poissonni�re, at the corner of the Faubourg Montmartre, begins a whole series of celebrated restaurants. As the origin of this familiar word is not universally known, it may here be mentioned that it originated with an eating-house keeper, who inscribed above his establishment in large letters the following passage from the Gospel: "Venite ad me et ego 'Restorabo' vos." This restaurateur, or restaurant-keeper, had imitators, and the name which his quotation had suggested was applied to all of them. Paul Br�bant, known as the restaurateur des lettres, has fed more than one generation of authors and journalists, who have not neglected him on becoming senators or ministers. A great number of monthly entertainments are given at this restaurant. Here dine together the Society of Men of Letters, the Dramatic Critics' Club, the Parisians, the Spartans, etc. Passing on, we next reach the ancient caf� of the Porte Montmartre, installed in the house which once belonged to the Marchioness de Genlis, sister-in-law of the authoress who superintended the education of the Orleans princes.
Close by is the bazaar or arcade known as the Passage des Panoramas, which owes its name to a series of panoramas representing Paris, Lyons, London, and Naples, established here, under special privilege, by Robert Fulton, the inventor of steamers. The money which he made by exhibiting the panoramas enabled him to continue his experiments in marine locomotion. To the left of the Passage des Panoramas was a strip of land, on which, in 1806, the Th��tre des Vari�t�s was built. This little theatre, which, under the name of Vari�t�s Montansier, occupied the site where now stands the Th��tre du Palais Royal, had committed the offence of attracting the public and filling its coffers with gold, while the Com�die Fran�aise, close to it, had scarcely been able to make both ends meet. The famous theatre where, at that time, the principal actor was Talma and the principal actress Mlle. Mars, uttered a formal complaint; and the liberty of the stage being then at an end, the Th��tre des Vari�t�s was expelled from the Palais Royal, but allowed to take refuge in a new house built especially for it on the before-mentioned strip of land.
For many years the Th��tre des Vari�t�s undertook to amuse the public with the lightest comedies, in which such actors as Brunet, Potier, Vernet, and Odry, such actresses as Flore and Jenny Vertpr� appeared. After the Revolution of July, 1830, it made experiments in a more serious style, producing, for instance, the "Kean" of Dumas the elder, with Fr�d�ric Lema�tre in the principal character, and Bressant in the part of the Prince of Wales. Under the Second Empire the Vari�t�s returned to its old trade, besides adopting an entirely new one--that of opera-bouffe, as cultivated by Offenbach. Here the earliest and best works of this master, such as "La belle H�l�ne" and the "Grand Duchess of Gerolstein," were first performed, with Schneider and Dupuis in the principal parts. Here, too, some of the best comedies of Meilhac, Hal�vy, and Labiche were brought out.
The Boulevard Montmartre, in front of the Vari�t�s, is the most animated part of the whole line of boulevards. The late Henri Dupin, the famous boulevardier, who died a centenarian, used to pretend that he had shot rabbits between the Rue Montmartre and the adjoining Rue Richelieu. This was doubtless an exaggeration. But a representation of this part of Paris, painted in the days of the First Empire, shows that at the point in question there were ditches intersecting a road lined with trees. The Boulevard Montmartre combines some of the features of the upper and of the lower boulevard, the shops which here abound offering for sale objects of use and of ornament, of interest and of luxury: clothes, bonnets, books, chocolate, bonbons, and music.
[Illustration: BOULEVARD BONNE-NOUVELLE AND THE GYMNASE THEATRE.]
At the corner of the Boulevard Montmartre and the Rue Vivienne stood the famous public gambling-house of Frascati, where, until the reign of Louis Philippe, as at a similar establishment in the Palais Royal, games of hazard were publicly played. These gambling-houses bore an important, and often, no doubt, disastrous part in the social life of the French capital, and innumerable anecdotes have been told of the sums lost and won within their walls.
Both comedy and tragedy bore a part in the scenes produced by the fascinating cards. Materials for a farce might be found in one scene, in which Mlle. Contat, the famous actress, figured. She was far too beautiful to want, even from her girlhood, a host of admirers. Her first love affair was sufficiently unfortunate. The successful suitor was a certain M. de Lubsac, an officer in the king's household. He was a man of inferior birth, with an empty purse; but he was as handsome as Apollo, and a wit into the bargain. He laid such persistent siege to the actress that she at length yielded in sheer weakness to his importunity. De Lubsac was distinguished by two vices: he loved wine and cards. His passion for play was so reckless that one night he staked his beautiful mistress, or at least put to hazard the whole of her diamonds and trinkets. He lost; and the next day, just as Mlle. Contat was about to attend a f�te, she looked for her jewellery in vain. The caskets were all empty; a clean sweep had been made of everything. She set up a cry of "Thieves!" and called in the police. De Lubsac thought it discreet to silence her by a free confession of his "fault." He admitted that he had pledged the whole of the missing property. She was furious, and De Lubsac expressed the deepest contrition. "Ah!" he cried, wringing his hands, "if I only had a few louis at this moment I could repair everything!" "How?" cried Mlle. Contat, with a sudden gleam of hope. "Why, to-night," replied Lubsac, "I feel that my luck is in. I should win everything back. But I have not a solitary sou." The repentance of the criminal was so comic that it touched the actress's heart. Presently she smiled, then she laughed outright. In the end she lent the gambler a couple of louis, the last she had in the world, and he hurried off to the gaming-table. In less than an hour he returned triumphant. He had won. He brought back the whole of the jewellery, which he had taken out of pawn, and he had a few louis in his pocket besides. It was impossible to be too severe with such a man. The actress, however, could not put up with him many months. He at length proved such a desperate rake that she dismissed him in disgust.
[Illustration: THE BOULEVARD MONTMARTRE.]
Every reader of Balzac's invaluable novels will remember one or more scenes in which some public gambling establishment is introduced. At the Frascati people lost their money according to rule, and under the superintendence of the police. Nor did the spendthrifts who haunted it cease to play even when ruin began to stare them in the face, for an occasional piece of luck would always revive the delusion that one day the goddess Fortune would return them the sums they had squandered in wooing her. Attached to the Frascati gambling-house were illuminated gardens, imitated from those of the Italian Ridotto, and largely resorted to, under the Directory and the Consulate, by fashionable citizens. The original proprietor of the Frascati establishment, Garchi by name, died insolvent. The place was seized, and in 1799 passed into the hands of one Perrin, whom Fouch�, the celebrated minister of police, appointed Farmer-General of Games. Public gambling-houses were kept up in Paris until the year 1836, when, under Louis Philippe, the "Citizen King," they were brought to an end.
With the Frascati Gardens disappeared the charming villa built by Brongniart, with its Italian roof, its portico, and its statues. It was replaced by a house which was to enjoy a celebrity of its own. On the ground-floor it was occupied by Jannisset, the fashionable jeweller; on the first floor by Buisson the tailor, who had the honour of dressing Balzac, the greatest novelist that France, if not the world, has produced. Balzac had inspired the man with the same sort of admiration that a certain wine-merchant felt for the unfortunate Haydon. "Ought a man who can paint like that to be in want of a glass of sherry?" said Haydon to the art loving vintner who had come to ask for a settlement of his bill. "Indeed, no," replied the wine-merchant, who not only went away without asking even for a trifle on account, but hastened to forward several dozen of sherry for Haydon's encouragement and stimulation.
Buisson was treated by Balzac on the most friendly footing. Not only did the great novelist allow the fashionable tailor to dress him for nothing, but he also paid him long visits, and used a special set of apartments assigned to him in a lofty region of Buisson's house, where in the midst of the workshops he was beyond the reach of troublesome creditors. Far from being ungrateful to his benefactor, Balzac has rendered him immortal by naming him again and again in his works. Buisson will, thanks to Honor� de Balzac, be always known as the fashionable tailor of Louis Philippe's reign.
The name of Frascati at one time belonged to the present Boulevard Montmartre. It is still retained by the pastrycook who sells ices and tarts in his shop at the corner of the boulevard. It should be mentioned that this pastrycook's shop was preceded by the Caf� Frascati, which owed its success entirely to the beauty of the lady who presided at the counter. When the dame du comptoir disappeared the caf� became deserted, and had to close its doors.
The Caf� Litt�raire--Caf� Procope--Caf� Foy--Bohemian Caf�s--Caf� Momus--The Death of Moli�re--New Year's Gifts.
The history of France is in a large degree the history of its caf�s; and the French might well retort that the history of England is to be read in its tavern signs. On the connection between our tavern signs and our naval and military heroes it would be superfluous to insist. We have, it is true, our Dogs and Ducks, our Geese and Gridirons, our Bells and Horns, but we have also our Admiral Keppels, our Wellington Arms, our Napier's Heads; and taking them altogether, the names of our hostelries indicate the various epochs of their origin in a remarkable manner. Another characteristic of the British tavern sign as compared with the French enseigne, whether of the caf�, the restaurant, or the tobacco-shop, is the permanency of the former. Who ever heard of the "Earl of Chatham" being converted into the "Sir Robert Peel," or of "Lord Nelson" turning into "Sir Charles Napier"? Just the contrary takes place in France, where all the caf�s, tobacco-shops, theatres, steamers, and even omnibuses that rejoice in what may be called representative titles, change their signs and their appellations with each successive dynasty.
But it is above all in the caf�s proper that the history of France is to be read; and not the political history alone, for it can be shown that they also reflect every social, literary, and commercial change that takes place in the French metropolis. The demoiselle du comptoir in the more popular quarters of Paris is herself an important historical figure, appearing as she did during the African war as an Alg�rienne, in the days of the Second Republic as a priestess of Liberty, and during the siege of Sebastopol as a Tartar girl of the Crimea. But she is a political rather than a social index. Such also were the United Cooks, whose miserable gargotes flourished during the Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity period, with their boeuf � la R�publique, their agneau � la Robespierre, their veau � la ba�onnette, and their mouton � la sauce rouge. It would be difficult to say which of these was the most economical, or, above all, the most indigestible.
Far different were the restaurants and caf�s whose titles and interior arrangements might be looked upon as indicative of the social and intellectual movement of the nation. Of these, the most remarkable have, at various periods, been the huge Literary Caf� on the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, the Electric Caf�s--of which there were at one time several--between the Porte Saint-Martin and the Th��tre Lyrique, and the Caf� Oriental, near the Boulevard du Temple. Most provincial Frenchmen and foreigners who have visited Paris in the character of sight-seers have been conducted to the dreary Caf� des Aveugles, and probably to the absurd Caf� des Singes; but it is only those who have wandered idly about the boulevards, careless how they might be devoured, that can have found their way to the Literary, the Electric, or the Oriental Caf�.
The Caf� Litt�raire (to go back to some ancient notes made on the subject by the present writer) "was a building of which it would be little to say that it was more magnificent than an English palace. Above the portico the title of the establishment, in gigantic letters and in striking relief, was conspicuous. The stone staircase which led to the entrance was so imposing that as you ascended it you instinctively put your hand in your pocket to assure yourself that you had a respectable number of francs at your disposal. In the vestibule stood two officials; one the under-waiter, the other the sub-editor of the establishment. 'Does monsieur wish to eat?' 'Does monsieur wish to read?' said the two functionaries at the same moment. Anxious to offend neither, and not possessing the art of eating and reading simultaneously, we replied that we wished to play billiards. 'You will find the professor and tables in abundance on the first floor,' said the under-waiter. 'Allow me to present you with the carte of my department;' and he handed me an ordinary carte du jour. 'Here is the carte of the department with which I have the honour to be connected,' said the sub-editor, giving me at the same time an astounding unheard-of literary bill of fare, with poetic dishes by Lamartine and Victor Hugo, and prose entr�es by the elder Dumas, Souli�, and George Sand. At the foot of the menu were printed the following General Rules:--Every customer spending a franc in this establishment is entitled to one volume of any work, to be selected at will from our vast collection; or in that proportion up to the largest sum he may expend. N.B.--To avoid delay, gentleman consumers who may require an entire romance are requested to name their author with the soup.' After dining we repaired to the billiard-room and played a couple of games, for which two francs and a half were charged. Having paid the debt, and received a voucher for the sum, we were waited on by the editor-in-chief. In strict justice, the voucher entitled us to two volumes and a half, but the editor assured us that it was contrary to the rules of the establishment to serve less than an entire livraison. To ask for half a livraison, he said, was like ordering half a mutton-chop or half a lemonade."
The establishment of the Caf� Litt�raire was contemporaneous with the first issue, on a large scale, of three-franc volumes and four-sou livraisons, with liberty of the Press, open discussion, and the ascendency of literary men in connection with politics. As a natural consequence of this general intellectual activity, a taste for popular science arose, which the astronomer on the Pont-Neuf, with his long telescope and his interminable orations, was unable to satisfy.
The electric caf�s instituted at this period were sufficiently curious establishments. A thirsty Parisian entering one of them for the first time in his life, found himself in a place which resembled a buffet more than a caf�, and in which the most remarkable object was an enormous metal counter. Having swallowed his beverage, he proceeded to place his piece of money on the counter, when, to his astonishment, he received a violent shock in the right arm, which probably caused him to drop the coin as if it were red-hot. "I have had an electric shock!" he would exclaim to some frequenter lounging near him. "Impossible!" would be the reply. "You must have knocked your funny-bone against the edge of the counter." Protesting that he had received a galvanic shock, the victim was assured by the lounger, who had been lying in wait for his joke, that he had simply been electrified by the charms of the young lady behind the counter, just as a theatrical audience is said to be electrified by an actress or prima donna. Again, however, on receiving his change the new customer experienced a sharp shock, being the more astonished inasmuch as the habitu�s present put down and took up their money evidently without feeling the electric current. Then he went away mystified, to return, perhaps, later in the evening with an inexperienced friend, whom, partly from curiosity, partly in a spirit of mischief, he led up to the counter. His friend no sooner touched it than he started back electrified, but he himself found that he could this time touch it with impunity. He had now obviously been admitted amongst the initiated; and when he had gone on drinking and spending enough to entitle him to confidence, the beautiful demoiselle du comptoir condescended to explain to him the entire mystery. At the foot of the metal counter was a piece of strip iron connected with one of the wires of a galvanic battery, the other wire communicating with the counter itself. When any of the initiated touched the counter the presiding goddess stopped the current, which only novices were intended to feel. The whole device was simply employed to amuse customers. The electric counters became very popular, and had rapidly spread all over Paris, when the Government, thinking probably that such practical jokes might sometimes be carried too far, absolutely suppressed the caf�s �lectriques.
A whole chapter might be devoted to the literary caf�s of Paris, much more numerous than ever were the literary coffee-houses of London in the last century. The first Paris caf� destined to identify itself with literature was the Caf� Procope, so called from the name of its founder, Procopio Cultelli, who, in the earliest days of coffee-drinking among the French and among Europeans generally, installed himself at No. 13, Rue des Foss�s-Saint-Germain, opposite the Com�die Fran�aise. The wily Sicilian had evidently opened his coffee-house in view of the French actors. But it was the authors who became its principal frequenters; first the dramatists connected with the Com�die Fran�aise, and afterwards authors of all kinds. In France, however, there are scarcely any authors who do not at least try their hand at dramatic writing. Neither Cr�billon, with his Catalina, nor Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, with Jason, nor Piron, with Fernand Cortez, nor Diderot, with Le Fils naturel, nor Voltaire, with so many celebrated plays, can be regarded solely or specially as dramatists; yet all of them contributed to the French theatre, and all are remembered among the frequenters of the Caf� Procope.
The Caf� Procope was still at the height of its reputation when, in 1784, Beaumarchais' Marriage of Figaro was produced; and it was the scene of a great literary gathering immediately before the representation of that famous comedy. After the Revolution, however, it gradually lost its character as a literary centre.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE TH��TRE DES VARI�T�S, BOULEVARD MONTMARTRE.]
And now the Com�die Fran�aise crossed the water--an unmistakable sign that the left bank no longer possessed its ancient importance, and that everything not already to be found on the right bank was gradually moving to that favoured shore. The Caf� Procope still exists, but it has quite lost its old literary character; nor is it much frequented even by the students, who on the left bank form so important a part of the community.
The Caf� de la R�gence owes its name to the period in which it was established. Haunted as it was by chess-players, it was nevertheless the resort of distinguished writers, with Voltaire, d'Alembert, and Marmontel amongst them. Here Diderot sat side by side with the Emperor Joseph II. Robespierre looked in now and then to have a game of chess, and among other occasional visitors of distinction was the youthful General Bonaparte. Nor, from the list of the modern frequenters of the Caf� de la R�gence, must M�ry or Alfred de Musset be omitted.
Close to the Caf� de la R�gence stood the Caf� Foy, celebrated under the Regency for its beautiful dame du comptoir, of whom the Duke of Orleans became desperately enamoured. It was from this cafe that Camille Desmoulins, on the 12th of July, 1789, marched forth to begin the attack which ended in the overthrow of the ancient r�gime. Until its demolition, not many years ago, the Caf� Foy was known as one of the very few caf�s in Paris where smoking was not allowed. In ancient days caf�s were broadly divided into caf�s simply so called and caf�s-estaminets; and in the latter only, as in a beer-house, could the customer smoke. The Caf� Foy was at one time greatly in favour with old gentlemen, dating from a now remote period, when the smoking of tobacco was considered not altogether (in Byronic language) a "gentlemanly vice." The Caf� Foy was known, moreover, by a certain swallow painted on the ceiling by Carle Vernet (father of the more celebrated Horace Vernet). He was lunching there one day with a joyous party of friends, when a bottle of champagne was opened, of which the cork struck the ceiling and left a mark there. To compensate for this mishap, the famous painter ordered a ladder to be brought in, and hurriedly, but with consummate art, painted a swallow where the cork had struck. Years passed, and still the swallow remained fresh. The form and colour of the bird were renewed from time to time by other painters; but to the sight-seer, as informed by the waiters of the caf�, it was always the very swallow that had been painted in the midst of a champagne luncheon by Carle Vernet. It was as clear and bright as ever when at last it disappeared with the ceiling it had so long adorned.
Close to the Caf� Foy stood the Caf� des Aveugles, with an orchestra of blind men as its distinctive feature. It seems at that period to have been thought strange that blind men should be able to perform on musical instruments. In the present day no virtuoso of any pretension plays with notes; though those, no doubt, are the least blind who do not pride themselves on disregarding what may well be a valuable, if not indispensable, aid to memory. A traditional figure associated with the orchestra of blind musicians was a so-called "savage": some personage, that is to say, from one of the Paris faubourgs, disguised with feathers, paint, and tattooing.
After the Revolution the caf�s became more and more political. Under the Republic, as in a less degree under the Empire, there had been no opposition caf�s. But with the Restoration some freedom of thought returned. Imperialism had its head-quarters at the Caf� Leinblin, where the officers of the Grande Arm�e exchanged ideas on the subject of the humiliations undergone by France now that the great Napoleon was an exile, and that power was vested in the hands, not of a military dictator, but of a mere Parliament, with a constitutional king as figure-head. At the Caf� Foy congregated the Liberals of the new r�gime; at the Caf� Valois came together the Royalists, who believed in nothing but the throne and the altar as maintained under the ancient monarchy.
The caf�, in spite of the number of new clubs established in Paris, continues to be one of the most popular and most flourishing institutions of the French capital. Numbers of Parisians are not rich enough to belong to clubs, but can well afford from day to day the expenditure of fivepence or sixpence on a cup of coffee and a petit verre.
Of Bohemian caf�s--those frequented, that is to say, by the gipsies of literature and art--the most celebrated is, or was in the time of Henri Murger, the brilliant author of "La Vie de Boh�me," the Caf� Momus. Here it was that poets, painters, and musicians of the future, blessed for the present with more genius than halfpence, waited until some comparatively wealthy lover of art and literature came to their relief, or until, by their noisy and reckless talk, they forced the alarmed proprietor to beg them to retire, and come in some other day to pay for their refreshment. Champfleury, gleaning here and there after Murger's abundant harvest, has told us how, armed with one cup of coffee and a small glass of brandy, half-a-dozen Bohemians would take absolute possession of the first floor of this establishment.
Sometimes a Bohemian, not absolutely destitute, would order a cup of coffee and petit verre, and go upstairs. Soon afterwards a second Bohemian would come in, ask if the first Bohemian were in the caf�, and go upstairs to join him. A third would ask for the second, a fourth for the third, and so on, until around the solitary cup of coffee and the unique glass of liqueur a party of six had assembled. The proud paymaster, after sipping a little of the coffee, would pass it to a friend, who, having helped himself, would hand the remainder to some other member of the party. The cognac was in like manner shared, and the last served came in for the sugar, with which he would sweeten a glass of water. The Bohemian frequenters of the Caf� Momus were more liberal in giving their orders when one of them had sold a picture or a piece of music, a book or a play; and they would afterwards order on credit as long as credit could be obtained. A story is told of one Bohemian who persisted in ordering after his credit had been stopped, and who, having told the waiter repeatedly, but in vain, to bring him a cup of coffee, went himself to the counter, and said in a stern voice, "I have ordered a cup of coffee half-a-dozen times; either serve it at once or lend me five sous, and I'll go and get it elsewhere."
It must be supposed that it somehow suited the proprietor of the Caf� Momus to encourage, or at least tolerate, his Bohemian visitors; otherwise he would have taken steps to exclude them permanently. Occasionally, it is said, they would barricade themselves in their favourite room on the first floor, and refuse absolutely to give up possession. The probability is that when they were in funds they spent their money lavishly; and they undoubtedly gave a certain reputation to the Caf� Momus, which became known throughout Paris as the caf� of literary aspirants, and attracted on that ground a certain number of sympathisers and admirers.
The house formerly occupied by the Frascati establishment bears on the Rue Richelieu side a medallion with an inscription to the memory of Cardinal de Richelieu, put up by Antoine Elwart, professor of composition at the Conservatoire. The other side of the Boulevard Montmartre, whence springs the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre, is no less animated than the theatre side. Here, too, caf�s abound, each of which, in theatrical phrase, is "full to overflowing"; for numbers of customers sit out in the street at the little tables in front of the caf�. The arcade on this side of the boulevard is known as the Passage Jouffroi. It runs through what was once the ground-floor of the house which, under the Restoration, was inhabited by three distinguished composers: Rossini, Carafa, and Boieldieu. A little further on, always in the direction of the Madeleine, stands an important club, called officially Le Grand Cercle, familiarly, Le Cercle des Ganaches. It is composed chiefly of commercial men and civil servants. It is considered old-fashioned, and the dinner-hour there is six o'clock, as it was in most Paris houses fifty years ago.
At the right corner of the Rue Grange Bateli�re stands an immense house, on a site occupied, until a few years ago, by the mansion built in the eighteenth century, by two well-known farmers-general, the Brothers Lunge, which from 1836 to 1847 was the haunt of the Jockey Club, the best-known and most fashionable club in Paris, now installed further to the west, but still in the line of boulevards.
Ask any Parisian in the present day for "the house of Moli�re," and he will tell you that La Maison de Moli�re is only another name for the Th��tre Fran�ais. The house, however, where Moli�re lived is situated at the corner of a little street off the Boulevard Montmartre; and here it was that he breathed his last.
On the 10th of February, 1673, the "Malade Imaginaire" was performed for the first time. The curtain rose at four o'clock, and a few minutes afterwards Moli�re was on the stage, and acting with his accustomed humour. Everyone was laughing and applauding. None of the audience suspected that the actor who was throwing all his energy into the part he had himself created was now on the point of death. In the burlesque ceremony, just as Argan has to utter the word "Juro," a convulsion seized him, which he disguised beneath a forced laugh. But it was now necessary to carry him home. The performance went on, though without Moli�re, who meanwhile had been taken to his house in the Rue Richelieu. It had been found impossible to get his clothes off. The dying man was still wearing the dressing-gown of the "Imaginary Invalid." He was presently attacked with a violent fit of coughing, in the course of which he burst a blood-vessel and threw up a quantity of blood. A few minutes later he expired, surrounded by the members of his family, and supported by two nuns to whom he was in the habit of offering hospitality when they visited Paris. In his dying moments he had asked for religious consolation; but the priest of St.-Eustache rejected his prayer. Now that he was dead, Christian burial was denied to him: a piece of intolerance due to the Archbishop of Paris, Harley de Champvalon. So soon as Moli�re's wife heard of the archbishop's refusal, she exclaimed with indignation: "They refuse to bury a man to whom, in Greece, altars would have been erected." Then calling for a carriage, and taking with her the Cur� of Auteuil, who was far from sharing the views of his ecclesiastical superior, she hurried to Versailles, threw herself at the king's feet, and demanded justice. "If," she exclaimed, losing all self-control--"if my husband was a criminal, his crimes were sanctioned by your Majesty in person." At these words the king frowned, and the Cur� of Auteuil is said to have found the moment opportune for introducing a theological discussion, in the course of which he sought to disculpate himself from an accusation of Jansenism. But Louis XIV. had been affronted, and he told both actress and cur� that the matter concerned the archbishop alone. He sent secret orders, however, to the churlish prelate, the result of which was a compromise. The body was refused entrance into the church, but two priests were allowed to accompany it to the cemetery. The archbishop's concession seemed to some bigots out of place: a proof that the ecclesiastical authorities were not alone in their wish to have Moli�re interred without Christian rites. They could not now prevent his being buried in sacred ground. But on the day of his funeral they organised a riot in front of his house, which Mme. Moli�re, frightened by the cries and menaces of the crowd, could only appease by throwing money out of the window, to the amount of about a thousand francs. It was on the 21st of February, 1673, that the remains of the great man were borne to their resting-place, without pomp, without ceremony, at night, and almost furtively, as though he had been a criminal. Moli�re was buried in the Cemetery of Saint Joseph, Rue Montmartre. His widow placed above the grave a great slab of stone, which was still to be seen in the early part of the eighteenth century, when the brothers Parfait published their Histoire du Th��tre Fran�ais. "This stone," writes M. du Tillet, "is cracked down the middle: which was caused by a very noble and very remarkable action on the part of the widow. Two or three years after Moli�re's death a very cold winter set in, and she had a hundred loads of wood conveyed to the cemetery, and burned on the tomb of her husband, to warm all the poor people of the quarter, when the great heat of the fire caused the stone to split in two."
[Illustration: CAF�S ON THE BOULEVARD MONTMARTRE.]
The Church of Rome has pronounced again and again at councils, and through the mouths of distinguished prelates, against the abomination that maketh not "desolate," but joyful. In the fifth century it excommunicated stage-players, and the order of excommunication, though practically it may have ceased to be effective, has never been rescinded. In France up to the time of the Restoration (1814), or at least during the Restoration, it was in full force, so that the history of the relations between Church and stage in that theatre-loving country has been the history of the refusal of Christian burial in successive centuries to stage-players. Happily, for many years past theory and practice have been at variance in France with regard to the excommunicated position of actors and actresses. The Church, however much it may stand above society, cannot but reflect in some measure the views of society at large; and, if only from policy, it cannot permit itself to outrage a universal feeling. Accordingly, since the doors of Saint-Roch were closed, in 1817, against the body of the famous actress, Mlle. Raucourt--an incident which was followed by a popular outbreak, the calling out of the troops, and ultimately interference on the part of Louis XVIII., who ordered that the religious service should be performed by his own chaplain: since those days there have been few examples in France, and none in Paris, of any actor or actress being treated as beyond the pale of the Church.
[Illustration: MOLI�RE.
(From the Painting by Coypel in the Com�die Fran�aise.)]
To be seen in all its glory, the Boulevard Montmartre--perhaps the most crowded of all the boulevards, especially by business people--should be traversed at the beginning of the New Year, when in the booths which line the great thoroughfare nearly along its whole length all kinds of objects supposed to be suitable as New Year's gifts are offered for sale.
In England, the custom of making Christmas presents and New Year's gifts had, except among relatives, died out, when a few years ago some apparently childish, but in reality very ingenious, person invented Christmas cards. The invention was not successful at first; and the strange practice of exchanging pieces of cardboard adorned with commonplace pictorial designs, and inscribed with conventional expressions of goodwill, was, for a time, confined to the sort of persons who might be suspected of sending valentines. Eventually, however, it spread. The initiative in this matter seems to have been taken by enterprising young ladies, whose attentions it was impossible to leave unrecognised; and endeavours were naturally made to return them cards of superior value to those which they had themselves despatched. Thus a noble spirit of emulation was generated, which the designers, manufacturers, and vendors of Christmas cards did their best to gratify and stimulate; so that, latterly, there has been a marked rise in these products as regards price, and even quality. Many of them possess undeniable artistic merit, and during the last few years some very beautiful varieties of the Christmas card have been brought out at Paris. These pictorial adaptations from the English are at least more graceful and more original than the great majority of our own dramatic adaptations from the French.
If, as everyone knows, the sending of Christmas cards is a custom of but a few years' standing, New Year's gifts are by no means of recent invention; and under the Roman Empire, as now in Russia, presents used, as a matter of course, to be made on the first day of the New Year to the magistrates and high officials. In the end, the practice of making New Year's gifts grew so popular that every Roman at the opening of a new year presented the reigning emperor with a certain amount of money, proportionate to his means; and what had, in the first instance, been among ordinary individuals but a token of esteem, was now, in regard to the sovereign, an assurance of loyalty, besides being a tolerable source of income. The barbaric nations, with simpler habits, had simpler ceremonies in connection with the New Year; and the Gauls were content to present one another at this season with sprigs of mistletoe plucked from the sacred groves.
Coming to much more recent times, we find the custom of giving New Year's presents in full force at the Court of Louis XIV., when, on the 1st of January, ladies received tokens from their lovers, and gave tokens in return.
The custom of making New Year's gifts became at length so general that servants murmured if their masters neglected them in this respect; and an amusing story is told of the stingy Cardinal Dubois, who, on his major-domo asking for his �trennes, replied, "Well, you may keep what you have stolen from me during the last twelvemonth." This, however, occurred a long time ago; and had the cardinal lived in the present century, he would scarcely have dared to make such an answer. The Frenchman who nowadays ventures to refuse to his servants, or to any other dependants, the expected annual gifts must be prepared to bear the bitterest sarcasm, which will possibly not cease to assail him even beyond the grave; for it may be his fate to have inscribed on his tomb some such epitaph as the following quite authentic one:--
"Ci-g�t, dessous ce marbre blanc, L'homme le plus avare de Rennes; S'il est mort la veille de l'an C'est pour ne pas donner d'�trennes,"
which may be roughly rendered in English thus:--
"Here lies, beneath this marble white, The miserliest man in Rennes; If New Year's Eve he chose for flight, 'Twas that he need not give �trennes."
Towards the end of the eighteenth century an edict was published in France forbidding New Year's gifts; but without avail. The �trennes only became more numerous and more costly as the greed of the recipients grew more and more insatiable; and in the present day the meaning of the word �trenne will be only too well understood by any Englishman who, in Paris at the time of the New Year, may venture to have dealings with the waiters at the caf�s, with hair-dressers, drivers, or any other set of men who delight in certain traditional customs.
The Op�ra Comique of Paris--I Gelosi--The Don Juan of Moli�re--Madame Favart--The Saint-Simonians.
The Boulevard des Italiens derives its name from the so-called Com�die Italienne, the original Op�ra Comique of Paris, which owes its existence to letters patent granted to it as far back as 1676. One of the most celebrated establishments on this boulevard is the Caf� Cardinal, at the corner of the Rue Richelieu. It justifies its title by exhibiting the bust of the famous political prelate, concerning whom the great Corneille, after receiving, first benefits, then injuries, at his hands, wrote these lines:--
"Qu'on parle mal ou bien du fameux cardinal, Ni ma prose, ni mes vers n'en diront jamais rien. Il m'a fait trop de bien pour en dire du mal, Il m'a fait trop de mal pour en dire du bien."[A]
[A] "Whether good or evil be spoken of the famous Cardinal, neither my prose nor my verse shall say a word of him. He has done too well by me for me to speak ill of him; he has done too ill by me for me to speak well of him."
Formerly known as the Caf� Dangest, the title it now bears has belonged to it only since the year 1830. Just round the corner stands the house of the well-known music publishers, Messrs. Brandus and Co., founded by Moritz Schlesinger, who, as a young man, brought out many of Beethoven's works, and was indeed one of Beethoven's first appreciators. During the coup d'�tat of 1851 M. Brandus's hospitable residence was the scene of an outrage which threatened to become a tragedy on a large scale. He was entertaining a party of friends, among whom were M. Adolphe Saxe, the inventor of saxophones, and the eminent musical critic of the Times, the late Mr. J. W. Davison. The boulevards and many of the streets leading out of them were full of troops, for the most part in a state of great excitement, and some infantry soldiers at the corner of the Boulevard des Italiens and the Rue Richelieu believed, or affected to believe, that shots had been fired at them from M. Brandus's windows. Possibly some bullets discharged by the soldiers themselves had glanced back from the house or one of the neighbouring houses, and fallen into the street. The troops, in any case, forced M. Brandus's door, and his servant, who went downstairs to remonstrate with the invaders, was at once shot dead. The soldiers then made their way into the room where M. Brandus and his guests were at table, arrested them, and brought them down to the boulevard with the intention of shooting them in a formal manner, as if by way of example. Fortunately, the general in command was an amateur of music and a personal friend of Adolphe Saxe: whom he particularly remembered, moreover, as having fought with courage against the insurgents during the sanguinary days of June, 1848. Saxe at once declared that the accusation made by the soldiers was entirely without basis, and the general did not hesitate to accept his assurance. He enjoined him, however, to hurry away as quickly as possible from the boulevard, which was about to be "swept" by a fusillade. Saxe and his friends managed narrowly to escape.
The Op�ra Comique Theatre, or Com�die Italienne, as it was more generally called, was founded originally in the H�tel de Bourgogne; and it was only in 1783 that it was re-established on the boulevard to which the Com�die Italienne was to give its name.
The Op�ra Comique of France descends indeed in a straight line from the most ancient dramatic entertainments given in that country. These were introduced in the sixteenth century by natives of the land to which the French owe nearly all the lighter and more ornamental part of their civilisation, from opera and the drama to ices and confectionery: from architecture, pictures, and statues, to gloves, fans, gambling-houses, and masked balls.
In 1576 Henri III. invited from Venice to Paris a company known as "I Gelosi." The actors were "jealous" or "zealous" to please; and a contemporary writer informs us that after playing at the H�tel de Bourgogne, where everyone was charged four sous for admission, they took possession of the H�tel du Petit Bourbon, where such crowds assembled that "the four best preachers in Paris could not together have collected such a congregation." The same writer adds that on the 26th of June following the Parliament forbade "I Gelosi" to play their comedies any longer, as they taught "nothing but impropriety." The Italian actors, however, resisted the Parliamentary decree, and they obtained from the king letters patent permitting them to continue their performances, "consisting," says M�zerai, "of pieces of intrigue, amourettes, and agreeable inventions for awakening and exciting the softest passions."
The Italian actors presented these letters patent to the Parliament the month following, when the letters were rejected, and they themselves forbidden to present to the Court such documents, under a penalty of ten thousand Paris livres. The Italians, however, appealed once more to the king, when Henri III. granted express permission, in virtue of which they re-opened their theatre in December, 1577. As, however, the country was now agitated by political troubles, "I Gelosi" discreetly returned to their native land. A few years afterwards a second troop of "Gelosi," and then a third, came to Paris; and later on Henri IV. brought from Pavia a new company, which stayed in Paris for two years.
Cardinal Mazarin (or Mazarini) did much to familiarise Parisians both with Italian operas and Italian plays; and about 1660 one of several Italian companies which had recently visited Paris obtained permission to play at the H�tel de Bourgogne alternately with the French actors.
But at last, in their love of satire, the Italian actors forgot themselves so far as to turn into ridicule no less a personage than Mme. de Maintenon. "The king," says the Duke de Saint-Simon, writing on this very subject, "drove out very precipitately the whole troop of Italian actors, and would suffer no others in their place. As long as they restricted themselves to indecency, or even impiety, nothing but laughter was excited." But they took the liberty of playing a piece called The False Prude, in which Mme. de Maintenon was easily recognised. Accordingly, everyone went to see it; but after three or four representations, the actors were ordered to close their theatre and quit the kingdom within a month.
This caused a great noise; and if the actors lost their establishment by their boldness and folly, the Government which drove them out did not gain by the freedom with which the ridiculous incident was criticised. The Lieutenant of Police, accompanied by an army of commissaries, sergeants, and constables, had invaded and seized the manuscript of The False Prude. Jherardi, the harlequin of the troupe, hurried to Versailles, where he begged and entreated, but without being able to move Louis XIV., who had so many times protected the Italian comedians. "You came to France on foot," said the king, "and you have gained enough here to go back in carriages."
During their stay in Paris the Italian actors expelled by Louis XIV. had accustomed themselves to play in French, and the celebrated comedy writer, Regnard, had entrusted them with several of his pieces. This rendered them more than ever disliked by the French actors, with whom they were always in rivalry. The pieces performed by the Italian actors consisted for the most part, and always when they confined themselves to their own language, of mere dramatic sketches, for which dialogue was supplied by the actors themselves.
It was not until 1716 that the Italian actors re-appeared in France, and they now played at a theatre in the Palais Royal, occupied alternately by them and by the company of the Grand Opera. In time the Italian company varied their pieces, and even introduced songs in the midst of the dialogue. This at once exposed them to attacks from the Op�ra, or Acad�mie Royale de Musique, as it was called; and in conformity with the privileges secured to the Op�ra, the Italians were forbidden to sing. Soon afterwards they produced a piece in which a donkey was brought on to the stage and made to bray, whereupon one of the actors cried out to the animal, "Silence! singing is forbidden on these boards." Ultimately, as the result of much opposition and many minatory decrees, an arrangement was made between the Italian actors and a company of French actors and singers which led to the establishment of the French Op�ra Comique.
At last the Italian and the French actors played together; but French wit and Italian wit were said not to harmonise, and in order to simplify matters, the Italians, with the exception of one or two who had adopted the French language, were sent out of the country. The theatre now given up to French comic opera continued, however, to be called the Th��tre Italien, to receive afterwards, in memory of Mme. Favart and her husband, the title of Salle Favart, and at a later period, under the Republic, that of Op�ra Comique.
The performances of the Italians came permanently to an end in 1783. In spite of the jealousy with which they were regarded by the great bulk of the theatrical profession, the Italian actors had an excellent effect on the development of the French stage, which, when the first troupe of Gelosi arrived in Paris, had no substantial existence. Moli�re profited much by their performances and borrowed freely from their productions, taking from them, according to his well-known saying, "his property" (that is to say, all that naturally belonged to him through affinity and sympathy) wherever "he found it." Apart from many other subjects and scenes, Moli�re borrowed his version of Don Juan from the Italians. Much of it, including most of its philosophy and wit, belongs in the very fullest sense to the great comic dramatist of France. But the very title, Festin de Pierre--an incorrect and, indeed, unintelligible translation of Il Convitato de Pietra--is enough to show the origin of Moli�re's admirable work.
The new establishment had been only ten years on the Boulevard des Italiens when its name was altered definitely from Com�die Italienne to Op�ra Comique. A few years later the establishment was moved to the Rue Feydeau, where it was destined to enjoy a long life and a merry one. Meanwhile, the house which had given its ancient name to the Italian boulevard remained unoccupied--or but rarely occupied--for some considerable time, until, in 1815, the celebrated Catalani opened it for serious Italian opera.
The Th��tre des Italiens now became the most fashionable theatre in Paris. Here Madames Pasta, Malibran, Grisi, Persiani, MM. Rubini, Tamburini, Lablache, etc., were heard. Here, too, Rossini for a time acted as musical director.
This theatre, like all others, was soon destined to perish by fire; and Italian opera has of late years led a somewhat wandering life in France, to find itself ultimately without any home at all.
The early history of the Op�ra Comique, from the middle of the eighteenth until the first days of the nineteenth century, is sufficiently represented by the lives of two of its most distinguished ornaments: Mme. Favart and her successor in parts of the same kind, Mme. Dugazon. Mme. Favart--Duronceray by her maiden name--was the wife of Charles Simon Favart, the well-known dramatist, who for many years supplied the Op�ra Comique with all its good pieces. The marriage took place in 1745, and immediately afterwards the Op�ra Comique, as an establishment recognised and subventioned by the State, was suppressed. Favart had some time before made the acquaintance of Marshal Saxe, who may be said to have played almost as great a part in connection with the stage as with the camp; and he was now invited by the famous commander to organise a company for giving performances at the head-quarters, and for the entertainment of the army in Flanders generally. Favart hurried to Brussels, where Marshal Saxe was about to arrive; and on reaching the head-quarters, the commander-in-chief gave an entertainment to the ladies whose husbands were serving on his staff, and to the wives generally of the officers. The performance consisted of national dances by the Highland contingent, whose scanty costumes are said to have at once amused and scandalised the ladies. Then a piece of Favart's was played; and with so much success, that it became the fashion to attend Favart representations as often as they were given. Marshal Saxe told Favart that it was part of his policy to give theatrical entertainments, and the manager soon saw that his musical comedies interested the officers sufficiently to take them away from cards and dice, to which previously they had given themselves up with only too much devotion. The marshal pointed out to Favart, moreover, that a lively couplet, a few happy lines, would have more effect on French soldiers than the most eloquent harangues. Besides amusing his own people and keeping them out of mischief, Marshal Saxe found Favart's Comic Opera Company useful in promoting his negotiations with the enemy. Having heard of the Favart performances, the enemy desired much to see them; and the representations given in the enemy's camp had no slight effect in facilitating peace arrangements. Mme. Favart--Mlle. Chantilly, to describe her by her stage name--was a member of the operatic company engaged by the marshal to follow the army of Flanders; and the commander-in-chief--as, with a man of his well-known temperament, was sure to happen--fell in love with the charming prima donna. Mme. Favart was at last obliged to make her escape, and, forsaking the camp, returned to the capital. Here she appeared at the so-called Italian Theatre, which was really the Op�ra Comique under another name.
That Mme. Favart was greater as an actress than as a vocalist (which may be said of so many singers who have distinguished themselves at the Op�ra Comique of Paris) is beyond doubt. "She is not a singer," said Gr�try, the composer; "she is an actress who speaks song with the truest and most passionate accent." "What a wonderful woman!" exclaimed Boieldieu, after a representation of his Caliph of Bagdad. "They say she does not know music; yet I never heard anyone sing with such taste and expression, such nature and fidelity."
Boieldieu, through Auber, his successor, brings us to modern times. With Ambroise Thomas, the composer of Mignon, and Bizet, the composer of Carmen, the Op�ra Comique has always been the most French of all the French musical theatres. At the Grand Op�ra, or Acad�mie, nearly all the successful works have been composed by foreigners: by Lulli, Gluck, Piccinni, Spontini, Rossini, Meyerbeer, Donizetti, and Verdi. The most popular works at the Op�ra Comique have, on the other hand, been composed by Frenchmen. La Dame Blanche, for instance, of Boieldieu; the Fra Diavolo, The Black Domino, The Crown Diamonds of Auber; the Mignon of Ambroise Thomas, and the Carmen of Bizet, have all been due to the genius of Frenchmen.
The Op�ra Comique, since its formal separation from all connection with Italy, has itself had strange and tragic adventures. The last of these was its destruction by a terrible fire, in which more than one hundred lives were lost. Since this catastrophe, which took place on the 22nd of May, 1887, the Op�ra Comique has been provisionally established in the Place du Ch�telet.
To make an inevitable excursion which here presents itself, the Rue Monsigny, deriving its name from one of the most famous composers connected with the Op�ra Comique, will always be remembered as the head-quarters of the Saint-Simonians during the first meeting of that strange association, founded by Saint-Simon, lineal descendant of the duke who wrote the famous Memoirs. The aims of the Saint-Simonians, visionary as they may have been, were at least noble; and the society numbered among its members some of the most able and high-minded young men of the day. The truth of this latter assertion is proved by the distinguished part played by many of the Saint-Simonians in very different spheres after the society had come to an end. Michel Chevalier, the political economist, Duveyrier, the dramatist, and F�licien David, the composer, may be mentioned among those Saint-Simonians whose names will be familiar to many Englishmen.
Saint-Simon, founder of the sect named after him, began his self-imposed career with a sufficiently large fortune to enable him to test various modes of existence. His purpose was, after studying society, to reform it. He had resolved to study it thoroughly in all its phases: all those, at least, which offered any special intellectual or physical character. Without apparently having conceived any system beforehand, he was constantly working towards one, making observations and writing down notes. That he might waste no time from sluggishness or sloth, he ordered his servant to wake him every morning with these significant words: "Rise, Count; you have great things to do." (Levez-vous, Monsieur le Comte, vous avez de grandes choses � faire.) The great political principle that he ultimately adopted was that "all legislation should be for the benefit of the poorest and most numerous class," which was little more than a variation of Jeremy Bentham's "greatest good of the greatest number."
He lived in aristocratic society a life of pleasure, studied science among scientific men, and finally, occupying himself with books and newspapers, made himself the centre of all kinds of literary gatherings. When, however, he had, according to his own previously formed conception, completed his knowledge of life, he had exhausted his means of living, and was quite unable to turn to account his accumulated experience. The descendant of the proud duke could only keep himself alive by copying manuscripts and by doing clerk's work in the Government Pawn Office, or Mont-de-Pi�t�. At last his misfortunes were too great for him, and he endeavoured to commit suicide. But the bullet with which he had intended to blow his brains out glanced along the frontal bone and destroyed one of his eyes, without inflicting any mortal wound. The unhappy experimentalist had now had a bitter experience of poverty, which may or may not have been in his general programme. His enthusiasm ended in any case by inspiring a few rich men who possessed the money necessary for carrying out his ideas.
Saint-Simon's mantle fell upon Le P�re Enfantin, who presided over the Saint-Simonian family in the Rue Monsigny, until pecuniary embarrassments caused the learned and venerable father to give up the publication of the admirably written Saint-Simonian journal, The Globe, and to retire from a house for which, unhappily, rent had to be paid, to a house and garden of his own at M�nilmontant. Here he collected around him forty disciples, determined to work together under Le P�re Enfantin's direction. "Poets, musicians, artists, engineers, civil and military," says a writer, fully in sympathy with the Saint-Simonians, even if he was not himself a member of their body, "applied themselves by turns to the hardest and rudest labours.
"They repaired the house, regularly swept and kept in order the rooms, offices, and courtyard, cultivated the grounds, covered the walks with gravel, which they procured from a pit they had themselves with much toil opened, and so on. To prove that their ideas upon the nature of marriage and the emancipation of women were not founded upon the calculations of a voluptuous selfishness, they imposed upon themselves the law of strict celibacy. Every morning and evening they refreshed their minds with the discourses of Le P�re Enfantin, or sought in the life of one of the Christian saints, read aloud by one of them to the rest, examples, precepts, encouragement. Hymns, the music to which had been composed by one of their number, M. F�licien David, served to exalt their souls, while soothing their labour. At five o'clock the horn announced dinner. The workmen then piled their tools, ranged the wheelbarrows round the garden, and took their places, after having chanted in chorus the prayer before meat. All this the public were admitted to see: a spectacle in which a sneering, jesting nation only marked the singular features, by turns simple and sublime, but which was assuredly deficient in neither broad aim nor in abstract grandeur. For in this practice of theirs the apostles of M�nilmontant went far beyond their own theories, and were sowing around them unconsciously the seeds of doctrine which were destined one day to throw their own into oblivion."
It was on the 6th of June, amidst the roar of the cannon in the Rue Saint-M�ry, and not far from the bloody theatre whence arose the cries of the combatants--it was on this very 6th of June that for the first time since they had entered it, the Saint-Simonian family threw open the doors of their retreat. "At half-past one," writes M. Louis Blanc, "they were assembled, standing in a circle in front of the house, while outside a second circle, formed of those whom the inmates of M�nilmontant termed the exterior family, was a small group of spectators, attracted by the curiosity of the thing."
No sooner had the Government suppressed the formidable insurrection, which was finally stamped out in its last retreat at the corner of the Rue Saint-M�ry, than, as if to assert the authority it had gained, it commenced proceedings against the Saint-Simonians, a noble-minded, highly moral body of men, who were accused, nevertheless, of spreading immoral doctrines. In his defence, Le P�re Enfantin admitted, while rejecting with indignation the charge of immoral teaching, that one of the main objects of Saint-Simonianism was the reorganisation of property. "The misery," he said, "of the working classes and the wealth of idle men are the main causes of the evils we seek to remedy. But when we say that there ought to be an end to that hereditary misery and hereditary idleness which are the results of the existing constitution of property, founded, as it is, on the right of birth, our opponents charge us with an intention of overturning the State.
"It is of no use for us to urge that this transformation of property can only be effected progressively, pacifically, voluntarily: that it can be effected much better than was the destruction of feudal rights, with every imaginable system of indemnity, and with even greater deliberation than you apply to the expropriations which you now effect for purposes of public utility: we are not listened to; we are condemned off-hand as reckless disturbers of order. Unweariedly we seek to show you that this transformation is called for by all the present and future wants of society: that its actual progress is marked out in the most palpable manner by the creation of the code of commerce, by all the habits of industry which have sprung up on every side, encouraging the mobilisation of property, its transference from the idle and incapable to the laborious and capable hand; we show you all this, but still you cry out, shutting your eyes, 'Your association is dangerous!'"
In the end Enfantin, Duveyrier, and Michel Chevalier were condemned to a year's imprisonment and a fine of a hundred francs each, other less prominent members being let off with smaller degrees of punishment. Simonianism, as an organised thing, was now extinct, but its principles did not die with the organisation, and in the best forms of socialism and of democracy were soon to show themselves anew.
The Rue Marivaux, another of the most interesting outlets from this part of the Boulevards, commemorates the witty and agreeable comedy writer who invented the half bantering, half complimentary style of dialogue to which the name of "marivaudage" is given.
[Illustration: THE 6TH OF JUNE: THE LAST OF THE INSURRECTION.]
La Maison Dor�e--Librairie Nouvelle--Catherine II. and the Encyclop�dia--The House of Madeleine Guimard.
At the corner of the Rue Marivaux stands the Caf� Anglais, now the only one remaining of the historical Paris restaurants, which for the most part date their reputation from the years 1814 and 1815, when the European Allies had their head-quarters in the French capital. The invasions which restored the French Monarchy, and which had been undertaken with no other object, brought defeat, but at the same time prosperity and gaiety to Paris; whereas the invasion of 1870 and 1871 caused nothing but misery to the vanquished. During the early days of the Restoration such houses as Les Trois Fr�res Proven�aux, in the Palais Royal, La Maison Dor�e, the Caf� Riche, and the still extant Caf� Anglais, did a magnificent trade, thanks to the number of Prussian, Russian, Austrian, and English officers who frequented them, and who, after the toils of war, abandoned themselves willingly to some of the joys of peace.
Most of these famous restaurants sprang from wine-shops; for it is a fact that every celebrated dining-place in Paris has owed its reputation primarily to the quality of its wine. The three brothers from Provence who started the restaurant known under their name were simply three young men who, having vineyards of their own and a connection with other wine-growers, maintained an excellent cellar. But when people came in to taste its contents it was absolutely necessary, in order to render appreciable the flavour of the wine, to give them something to eat. Then, as they spent their money freely, it was found possible and even desirable to engage a first-rate cook; until at last the reputation of the cellar was equalled by that of the kitchen.
Who has not read of Les Trois Fr�res Proven�aux in Balzac's "Scenes from Paris Life"? It was in one of their upstairs rooms, moreover, facing the garden of the Palais Royal, that the hero of Alfred de Musset's "Enfant du Si�cle" had his last sad interview, his last sad meal, with the young woman from whom he was about to separate for ever.
La Maison Dor�e, too, was a famous house. The scene of many an orgie, it kept its doors open continuously. Here it was that M. de Camors, in Octave Feuillet's novel of that name, at the end of an extremely late supper threw a gold piece into the mud and told a ragpicker who happened to be passing that if he would pull it out with his teeth he could have it for himself; and who does not remember how, so soon as the chiffonnier had performed this feat, the dissipated but not altogether degraded gentleman begged the poor man to knock him down in return for the insult offered to him.
La Maison Dor�e used to be kept by a proprietor named Hardy, and the fact that the neighbouring caf� and restaurant, of almost equal celebrity and dearness, belonged to a Monsieur Riche, whose name it bore, gave rise to the saying that a man must be "tr�s riche pour d�ner chez Hardy, et tr�s hardi pour d�ner chez Riche."
The Caf� Riche used to be the favourite dining place of Jules Janin on evenings of first performances. Here on these interesting occasions he was always to be seen; and the usual genial tone of his criticisms was possibly attributable to the excellence of M. Riche's chef. Not, however, that Janin wrote his notices of new plays the same night. He published them week by week in the feuilleton of the Journal des D�bats, afterwards to be corrected and published under the title of "Questionable History of Dramatic Literature."
The Caf� Riche was never such a late house as La Maison Dor�e, which went on day by day and year by year, never closing, regardless of the clock. Thus it was at once the earliest and the latest of Paris taverns; and if it was possible to get supper there at 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning after a dull evening party, a traveller was equally sure that the place would be open when, arriving at Paris by train at, say, 6 in the morning, the vacuum in his stomach demanded an immediate breakfast.
A story is told of a gentleman who, living immediately opposite the side entrance of La Maison Dor�e, dedicated to this famous hostelry all the time he did not spend in bed. Rising extremely late, he turned into the Maison Dor�e towards four in the afternoon to look at the papers, converse with some of the frequenters, take a preparatory glass of absinthe, and finally dine--this being, of course, the great event of his well-spent day. His dinner began at an advanced hour of the evening, and lasted well into the night. Then he was joined by friends from the theatre bent on supping; and it was not till towards sunrise that he returned to his apartments over the way.
Unlike the Temple of Janus, which was never shut in time of war, the Maison Dor�e could only keep its doors open in time of peace. Such war, at all events, as the Prussians brought to the gates of Paris and to Paris itself in 1870 and 1871 was fatal to its existence. Since those terrible years Paris has lost something of its gaiety and frivolity. The Caf� Anglais still exists; but even at this celebrated supping-place of former years supper is now an unknown meal. Nothing is served in the Caf� Anglais after nine o'clock. This caf�, oddly enough, seems to have been named after a nation which in the year 1815 can scarcely have been popular among the French. Its origin, or at least its name, dates from the year of the Waterloo campaign, and, strangely enough, it is the only great restaurant of that period which to this day survives. Possibly the establishment was not called Caf� Anglais merely by way of invitation to the English portion of the occupying forces. The title may have been meant to indicate that the service of the table was conducted after the English rather than the French fashion. The French, it must be admitted, preceded us in the matter of napkins, and also, if their boast on the subject can be admitted, in the earlier use of four-pronged forks, made by preference of silver. But in the year 1815 the French knew nothing of salt-spoons; and though plates were changed frequently enough, the same knife and fork served throughout the various courses, the diner cleaning on a piece of bread a knife which did duty for every dish which came on the table. It replaced the salt-spoon, and was frequently used for conveying food to the mouth. Not only English dining-places, but English hotels were highly esteemed in 1815; and Dr. V�ron, in his "M�moires d'un Bourgeois de Paris," speaks of cleanliness as an English invention unknown to the French until the peace which followed the Napoleonic wars.
In the art of living the French have generally been considered by the rest of Europe to have reached the greatest proficiency; and their methods and customs have accordingly been more imitated than those of any other nation. Of their cookery there is but one opinion; for every man in Europe who can afford a great table keeps either a French cook or a cook educated in the French school. The variety given by French cooks to the very simplest dish is too well known to require emphasis; and even Macaulay quotes the story of that Parisian chef who could make twelve different dishes out of a poppy-head.
In the matter of table as of drawing-room etiquette the French in Arthur Young's time seem to have been both superior and inferior to the English. It is true that the French artisan would not dine without a clean napkin on his knee; but it is equally true that the French aristocrat would sometimes spit about the floor in presence of a duchess with a freedom which would be resented in any English tap-room.
If Paris be really "the Tavern of Europe," the Caf� Anglais is at this moment the Tavern of Paris. Scarcely any foreigner of distinction visits the French capital without dining, perhaps even by special arrangement supping, at the Caf� Anglais, which is now under the management, not of an enterprising landlord, but of a well-regulated Limited Liability Company.
At the corner of the Rue de Grammont, separated from the Caf� Anglais by the Theatrical Bureau, or "Office de Th��tre," which supplies tickets for every playhouse in Paris, is the Librairie Nouvelle, where, exhibited for sale, may be seen all the latest novels in vogue and most of the standard works which, in spite of, or perhaps in consequence of, their ancient fame, still find readers. Books are published at much lower prices in Paris than in London. Lending libraries are now quite out of date in the French capital, and persons really interested in a new work do not get it to read at so much a volume or a subscription of so much a year, but buy it once and for all. Forty or fifty years ago the circulating library system had been pushed further in Paris than any point it has yet reached in London. Novels by popular authors were issued in six or eight volumes with from eighty to one hundred words in each page; a sore temptation to the Belgian pirates, who, in the days before International Copyright Conventions, vexed the soul of every French author by reproducing his works at so low a price that he had no more chance of selling his editions in Belgium than has an English author of to-day of vending his in the United States. Instead, however, of being separated from France as America is from England by thousands of miles of sea, Belgium was conterminous with the country it loved to despoil. It was impossible to prevent the fraudulent imitations of Belgium entering France; and to put an end at once to Belgian piracy and to the absurd circulating library system, a spirited and intelligent Paris publisher, Charpentier by name, introduced the novel at three and a half francs--a price which, as originally fixed, or at a reduction of half a franc, is still maintained. Copyright affairs between France and Belgium are now regulated under the clauses of the same International Convention which binds all other countries, with the exception of Russia and Holland on one side of the Atlantic, and the United States of America on the other.
[Illustration: MARIVAUX.
(From the Bust by Mlle. Dubois-Davesne in the Com�die Fran�aise.)]
To offer new books for sale in London at the strangely high prices fixed for the benefit of the circulating libraries would be out of the question; but at the Librairie Nouvelle all the latest works produced in Paris may be seen, partially read, and finally, if such be the desire of the reader, purchased. Many a Parisian, however, or visitor to Paris, whether from love of literature or merely to pass the time, strolls into the Librairie Nouvelle and looks through book after book without buying a single volume. Some day such an institution as this will possibly exist in London; not, however, until the prices of our new books are considerably lowered. But although the frequenters of the Librairie Nouvelle are not called upon, or even expected, to make purchases, only a small fraction of them leave the establishment without doing so; and it is as astonishing as it is interesting to see with what rapidity copies of a new novel of genuine popularity will sometimes go off.
No trade has made such progress in France since the Great Revolution as that of bookselling. This result is due alike to the increase in the number of readers through cheap, gratuitous, and obligatory education, and to the liberty of the Press enjoyed by the French, with some interruptions (as under the First Empire and a few years of the Restoration), for an entire century. "How I should like to have Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot writing for me in one of my garrets," a French bookseller is represented as saying in Mercier's "Tableau de Paris," published only a few years before the Revolution. "I would feed them well, but, by Heaven, I would make them work! Why is one of them too rich, and the others too independent to write at so much per sheet?"
It is noticeable that not one of these three authors whose works sold so largely was able to publish in France everything he wrote. Even the volume in which the above story is told was published in London. Many of Voltaire's works were brought out in London or Amsterdam. More than one of Rousseau's books were prohibited in France; and the publication of the "Encyclop�die," to which Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot all contributed, was not only prohibited, but cast materially into the Bastille, where the volumes were found on the destruction of the building; which gave the despotic, but in regard to literature, liberal-minded Catherine II. an opportunity of offering to continue the publication of the work in Russia.
[Illustration: PARIS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.]
Until the time of the Revolution nearly the whole of the book trade was in the hands of hawkers. "The business of these people," says a writer of the 18th century, "is to be the itinerant beasts of burden of literature, as the booksellers are its caterpillars. Illiterate, and hardly able to read, the hawkers may be said to deal in a ware as perfectly foreign to them as the business of mixing up colours would be to the blind. They only know the price of each book they offer for sale. They are haunted everywhere by police-runners, and such is their apprehension of falling under the censure of the despotic magistrate, and, altogether, their ignorance, that some sell even prayer-books under the cloak with as much care and circumspection as if it were an immoral or political pamphlet. These poor harmless hawkers, who give circulation to the clandestine works of the writers of every denomination without being able to read a single line; who, though far from suspecting it, are the asserters of public freedom, and with no other view than to procure to themselves a scanty subsistence--these are the first to feel the resentment of the offended great. It would be, perhaps, if not dangerous, at least impolitic, to attack the author himself; but a hawker sent to the Bastille or fastened in the public market by an iron carcanet is a matter of too little importance to be noticed by the public."
The very method employed to prevent the spread of ideas amongst the French people helped to overthrow the despotism by which it had been devised. This is well shown by Arthur Young, writing about the same time as the author whose account of the persecution in France of literature in all its forms has just been quoted. Such ignorance in Young's time was imposed on the French nation by a tyrannical censorship that, for aught the country knew to the contrary, their representatives were in the Bastille; and the mob was accustomed to pillage, burn, and destroy from sheer want of knowledge. Even in the large provincial towns Young could not see a newspaper. At the caf�s there was nothing to read but the Gazette de France, a sheet in which the professed "news" was so dished up that "no man of common-sense" would attempt to digest it. The consequence was that the frequenters of caf�s and restaurants could be heard gravely discussing news a fortnight old.
On the first floor of the house of which the ground-floor is occupied by the Librairie Nouvelle, we find the Club of the Two Worlds, or "Cercle des Deux Mondes," established in an abode which was occupied for some time by the Jockey Club, until this latter, after deserting the mansion built by the Farmer-General de Lange on the Boulevard Montmartre, continued its western progress, to reach ultimately the domicile it at present inhabits on the Boulevard des Capucines.
At the corner of the Rue de Choiseul is the well-known establishment of Potel and Chabot, who keep what, in London--for want of a better name, and probably in virtue of some tradition on the subject--is called an "Italian warehouse." This firm, however, does not confine itself to the lighter description of comestibles and dainties. In these it deals largely enough; and among the tempting delicacies offered to the passer-by are early vegetables, fruit, olives, ham, sausages of rare manufacture, and game pies. But besides selling stray articles to the chance epicure, the house of Potel and Chabot undertakes the supply of dinners on a very large scale, and employs a number of chefs, sous-chefs, scullions, roasters, pastry-cooks, and other functionaries of the kitchen. It was the firm of Potel and Chabot which, in July, 1888, supplied in the Champ de Mars the banquet offered to 10,000 mayors from all parts of France, furnishing it hot, so that many of the guests declared they had never before been anywhere so well served. The dinner was simple, but it is said to have been excellent. The ten thousand guests had one glass and two plates apiece; 500 waiters flitted about with the wines and the dishes.
The end of the Boulevard des Italiens is marked by a circular pavilion, which has lost something of its original shape through the repairs necessitated by the ravages of time; though it still bears a number of sculptural ornaments which are much admired, including certain masks, reputed to be masterpieces. It is called the Pavilion of Hanover, and is so named from having been erected and adorned by the architect Cheveautel for the Duc de Richelieu at the end of the garden attached to his mansion, after the campaign of Hanover, in 1757, which he terminated by securing the capitulation of Closterseven. Under the Directory and the Consulate, in the first years of the Empire, the Pavilion of Hanover and a portion of the grounds belonging formerly to the Duc de Richelieu were the scene of public assemblies, balls, and concerts; and it was here that Tortoni established his famous ice-shop and caf� in partnership with another Italian, named Velloni. The latter is now forgotten; but Tortoni, who continued the business on his own account, is, in the world of caf�s, an historical figure.
Let us not hurry past the former H�tel Choiseul, where, during the Reign of Terror, Pace, Minister of War, resided; where, under the Directory, the staff of the Army of Paris was established; and where Murat afterwards lived in the capacity of Governor. When the Restoration came to pass it was turned into the headquarters of the National Guard. Finally it was put up for sale, when, after the assassination of the Duc of Berri on the steps of the Opera House in the Rue Richelieu, it was determined to pull down the lyric temple and erect another on the site occupied by the H�tel Choiseul. We shall see in the proper place that the demolition of the Opera House of the Rue Richelieu was due to the representations of the Archbishop of Paris, who refused to allow the last sacrament to be administered to the dying prince unless he received a promise that the profane building, in which so holy an act had to be performed, should immediately afterwards be destroyed. The H�tel Choiseul was bought by the City of Paris, and close to what remained of the ancient mansion rose the new Opera House, opening on to the Rue Le Pelletier, where, between the years 1821 and 1823, so many great works were brought out, including Rossini's Guillaume Tell, Auber's Masaniello, as it is called in England, Donizetti's Favorite, Verdi's V�pres Siciliennes, and Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable, Proph�te, and Africaine. On the night of Tuesday, October 20, 1873, the eve of the hundredth representation of Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet, flames burst out in the wardrobe, and the next day the Opera House was a heap of ruins.
It is a curious fact, not hitherto noticed, that the destruction by fire of the Opera House in the Rue Le Pelletier took place precisely two hundred years after the production of Lulli's earliest opera, the first lyrical piece ever performed in Paris under the royal patent which authorised the establishment of a regular opera house. Lulli has been represented, in a famous picture, receiving his "privilege" from the hands of Louis XIV. as a reward and encouragement for services rendered. It can scarcely be said, however, that Lulli, though he established opera in Paris, was the first to introduce it. Cardinal Mazarin brought Italian opera to Paris in 1645, when Lulli was but a child; and the French opera named Ak�bar, Roi de Mogol, written and composed by the Abb� Mailly, was represented the year afterwards in the episcopal palace of Carpentras under the direction of Cardinal Bichi. A public performance, moreover, was given of Pomone, words by Perrin, music by Cambert, in 1671; but though Pomone was the first French opera offered in Paris to a general audience, Lulli's Cadm�e was the first of that long series of lyrical productions given at the State Opera House which extended, with but two short breaks, from 1673 to 1873.
The new Opera House, which was to replace the one burnt down in 1873, had already, on a scale of unprecedented magnificence, been designed, constructed, and all but finished under Napoleon III. But 1873, scarcely more than two years after the disasters of the siege and Commune, was not the time at which to complete and inaugurate a sumptuous Opera House; and it was not until 1875 that the famous edifice, which may challenge comparison with any other of the kind in Europe, threw its doors open to the public.
Another celebrated building in this neighbourhood, at the corner of the Rue Taitbout, is the former H�tel de Brancas, built by the architect B�langer, a devoted friend of the famous Sophie Arnould, to whom he was faithfully attached until her death. His endeavours to obtain for her, in default of a pension that was never paid, a portion of the large sum due to her from the directors of the Th��tre Fran�ais show him to have been a man of energy as well as heart. It was in the character of architect that B�langer first became acquainted with the brilliant and witty actress; and when he made her an offer of marriage, which she did not accept, she at once observed that no one was better fitted than an architect to build up her damaged reputation. From the family of Brancas the mansion erected by B�langer passed to the wife of General Rapp, then to the Marchioness of Hertford, to her son Lord Seymour, and to Sir Richard Wallace. Under Napoleon III. magnificent entertainments were given there by the late Khalil Pasha. On the ground-floor of the edifice appeared and disappeared the Caf� de Paris, celebrated in the reign of Louis Philippe, and for some years afterwards, as the rendez-vous of celebrities in literature, art, and the world of fashion. It was in time to be followed by other excellent restaurants, now vanished, but not forgotten.
The last house on the Boulevard des Italiens, at the corner of the Rue de la Chauss�e d'Antin, occupies the site of the old Military School, founded, for 200 officers' sons, under the name of D�p�t des Gardes Fran�ais; where for twenty years of his life Rossini lived on the first floor, and whence he moved to the villa at Passy offered to him by the City of Paris. It was in this retreat that he ended his days.
[Illustration: RUE DE LA CHAUSS�E D'ANTIN.]
The Chauss�e d'Antin, formerly a high road leading from the boulevards into the open country, is full of interesting associations. In the Chauss�e d'Antin, or close to that thoroughfare in its present form, stood the celebrated Temple of Terpsichore built for Madeleine Guimard, the dancer; which so excited the jealousy of Sophie Arnould, the vocalist, that she insisted on having a mansion of equal magnificence side by side with that of her operatic friend and rival. Madeleine Guimard, according to one of her biographers, excited as much admiration and scattered as many fortunes as any woman that ever appeared on the stage. She was, nevertheless, ugly, thin, of sallow complexion, and marked with the small-pox. She is said to have preserved, in a marvellous manner, her youth and a certain indescribable charm which constituted her chief attractions. She possessed, moreover, such a perfect acquaintance with all the mysteries of the toilet that by the arts of dress and adornment alone she could still make herself look young when age had crept upon her. Queen Marie Antoinette would often consult her about matters of dress, and especially the arrangement of her hair; and once when, for her rebellious attitude at the theatre, she had, in accordance with the strange customs of the times, been ordered to prison, she is reported to have said to her maid: "Never mind, I have sent a letter to the queen telling her that I have discovered a new way of doing the hair. We shall be out before the evening." But to return to the Temple of Terpsichore, which, built in the finest architectural style, and magnificently furnished, was decorated internally by Fragonard, one of the most famous painters of that day. In his wall-pictures he never failed to introduce the face and figure of the light-footed divinity of the place: until at last he became enamoured of his model, and, presuming on one occasion to show signs of jealousy, was promptly discharged, to be replaced by the most unsuitable artist that can be conceived--by David, the painter of heroic figures, of Republican subjects, and of Napoleon in all his glory. The celebrated painter of the Consulate and the Empire was, in Madeleine Guimard's time, a very young man--a mere student, in fact. But he was a stern Republican, and when the luxurious but sympathetic dancer saw that the work of decorating her voluptuous palace did not accord with his lofty aspirations, she gave him the sum he was to have received for covering her walls with fantastic designs, in order that he might continue his studies in the style which best suited him.
[Illustration: Mont Val�rien and the Arc de Triomphe.--Church of St. Augustine.
VIEW FROM THE ROOF OF THE OPERA HOUSE.]
The house built by Sophie Arnould next door to Madeleine Guimard's Temple of Terpsichore bore no distinctive name. But it was of the same size as the "Temple," and on the portico, which was supported by two Doric columns, could be seen the figure of Euterpe with the features of Sophie Arnould. The first floor contained the reception rooms, with spacious ante-chambers for the servants. On the second floor were the bedrooms of the children, who, at a later period, were acknowledged by their father, Count Brancas de Lauragais, and bore his name. In the National Library of Paris several drawings and plates are exhibited of the different portions of Sophie Arnould's house; and the representation of the fa�ade bears this inscription:--"Fa�ade of a projected house for Mlle. Arnould in the Chauss�e d'Antin. To be constructed side by side with that of Mlle. Guimard, and of the same dimensions.--B�langer."
[Illustration: MLLE. CLAIRON.]
So much care did the amorous architect of the new house bestow on his work, and so agreeable did he make himself to the lady for whom it was being built, that he was asked to share it with the owner; and there was at one time a serious prospect of Sophie Arnould becoming Mme. B�langer. To serve some purpose of her own she spread the report that she was married to the architect, who showed himself quite disposed to give reality to the fiction. He was a merry man, and pleased Sophie as much by his ready wit as by his agreeable manners. After a time she got tired of him, and having formed an attachment for the actor Florence, wrote B�langer a letter of dismissal, at the same time addressing to Florence an avowal of her love. B�langer, however, found an opportunity of changing the envelopes, so that Florence the actor received the letter intended for B�langer the architect. The next time Florence saw Sophie he was naturally somewhat cold in his demeanour towards her, and this coldness was naturally resented by Sophie, who had written to him with much warmth. B�langer triumphed, and his triumph was of long duration; Sophie, indeed, remained attached to him throughout her life. Of all her former friends the only ones who showed genuine solicitude for her in her latter days of poverty and sickness were B�langer and Lauragais.
Many years afterwards, in the gloomiest and most sanguinary days of the Revolution, when B�langer was poor and Sophie Arnould still poorer, the architect begged the actress and singer to accept, as from an old friend, a piece of two louis which he at the same time forwarded to her. Sophie replied that she did not desire his money, but that she was deeply obliged to him for such thoughtfulness, and in memory thereof would wear the gold piece next her heart. When she was on her death-bed, the famous architect, himself without means, wrote to the Minister of Fine Arts a letter in which he reminded him that a considerable sum of money was due to Mlle. Arnould from the Opera; of which, now that she was in the greatest distress, it was impossible for her to obtain payment, even to the extent of a few louis. "This unhappy woman," he continued, "of whom Gluck said, 'Without the charm of the accent and declamation of Mlle. Arnould my Iphigenia would never have been accepted in France,' finds herself without even the means of prolonging her life."
In October, 1802, Sophie Arnould died, after receiving absolution from the cur� of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, the parish in which she was born.
Another remarkable personage who lived in, or rather close to, the Chauss�e d'Antin, was that devoted lover of Mdlle. Clairon, Monsieur de S----, who succeeded in inspiring the famous actress with esteem, but not with any warmer feeling; and who, according to her belief, as well as that of several of her friends, paid her visits of complaint and menace after his death. "His humour," writes Mlle. Clairon, in her "Memoirs," "was gloomy and melancholy. 'He was too well acquainted with men,' he would say, 'not to despise and shun them.' His desire was to live only for me, and that I should live only for him. This last idea particularly displeased me. I might have been content to be restrained by a garland of flowers, but could not bear to be confined by a chain. I saw from that moment the necessity of destroying the flattering hope which nourishes attachment and of disallowing his frequent visits. This determination, which I persisted in, caused him a serious indisposition, during which I paid him every possible attention; but my constant refusal to indulge the passion he entertained for me made the wound still deeper."
Afterwards, when the young man had partly recovered, Mlle. Clairon, convinced that his absence from her would be to his advantage, constantly refused his letters and his visits. "Two years and a half," continues Mlle. Clairon, "passed between our first acquaintance and his death. He entreated me to assuage the last moments of his life by repairing to his bed-side. My engagement prevented me from complying with this request, and he expired in the presence of his domestics and an old lady whom he had alone for some time suffered."
The house in which M. de S---- died was the one previously referred to in the Chauss�e d'Antin; and at eleven o'clock the same night Mlle. Clairon, who was living far off in the Rue de Bussy, near the Rue de Seine, was startled--as were also, she declares, several friends in company with her at the time--by "the most piercing cry" she had ever heard. "Its long continuance and piteous sound," she continues, "astonished everyone. I fainted away, and was nearly a quarter of an hour insensible." Every night at the same hour Mlle. Clairon heard the same bitter wail. "All of us in the house," she writes, "my friends, my neighbours, the police even, have heard this very cry repeated under my windows at the same hour, and appearing to proceed from the air." She was recommended by an incredulous acquaintance to invoke the phantom the next time it announced its presence. She did so, when "the same cry was uttered thrice in succession, with a degree of rapidity and shrillness terrible beyond expression." Poor Mlle. Clairon was persecuted in this manner at an hour before midnight for days at a stretch; until, at length, in lieu of a piercing cry, she heard every night, and always at eleven o'clock, the explosion of a gun. Fearing there might be some design upon her life, she communicated with the Lieutenant of Police, who, accompanied by proper officers, carefully examined the house next door, but without discovering any ground for suspicion. "The following day," says Clairon, "the street was narrowly watched; the officers of police had their eyes upon every house; but, notwithstanding all their vigilance, there occurred the same discharge, at the same hour, and against the same frame of glass for three whole months, though no one could ever discover from whence it proceeded." "This fact," she adds, "is attested by all the registers of police."
One day a lady called on Mlle. Clairon and made herself known as the best friend of the late Monsieur de S----, and the only person he had suffered to be with him during the last moments of his life.
"To condemn you," she said, "would be unjust ... but his passion for you overcame him, and your last refusal hastened his end. He counted every minute till half-past ten, when his servant positively informed him that you would not come to him. After a moment he took my hand in a paroxysm of despair which terrified me, and exclaimed, 'Cruel woman! but she shall gain nothing. I will pursue her as much after my death as I have during my life.' I endeavoured to calm him, but he was no more."
The words had a terrible effect on the unhappy Mlle. Clairon; and the cries and threats from her distressed lover gradually ceased to afflict her, and in time this excellent woman--who could scarcely be expected to love by order--became pacified.
The first building on the Boulevard des Capucines at the opposite corner of the Chauss�e d'Antin is the Vaudeville Theatre, built to replace the old playhouse on the Place de la Bourse, and opened to the public on the 1st of October, 1867. Anciently this theatre seemed to be placed beneath the auspices of Coll� des Augiers and Scribe, whose names mark different phases of the Vaudeville style, once exclusively cultivated by this theatre. Of later years, however, especially since the production of the younger Dumas' Dame aux Cam�lias, some forty years ago, it has often thrown gaiety on one side for the pathetic and dramatic. The Vaudeville, like all the Paris theatres, has frequently changed its habitation, though it has always retained its original name. Founded in 1792, when the Revolution was approaching the Terrorist period, at a building in the Rue de Chartres, between the Place du Carrousel and the Palais Royal (since pulled down), the Vaudeville was, after a life of half a century, driven from its first abode by the usual fire. In 1838, the year of the conflagration, it sought a temporary refuge on the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, to move in 1840 to the Place de la Bourse, where it took possession of the house previously occupied by the Op�ra Comique. Here, where it remained from 1840 to 1867, it changed its style, and instead of comedies and comediettas interspersed with songs, produced with immense success a series of dramas of the most moving kind, such as the already named Dame aux Cam�lias, Octave Feuillet's Dalila and Roman d'un jeune Homme pauvre, Barri�re's Filles de Marbre, Sardou's Nos Intimes and Maison neuve. It is not indeed at the Th��tre Fran�ais, but at the Vaudeville and the Gymnase, that in modern times the masterpieces of French dramatic literature have been produced. The first representation of La Dame aux Cam�lias forms a turning point in the history of the Vaudeville Theatre. The play--which was soon to become celebrated throughout France, and in its operatic form, set to music by Verdi, throughout Europe--was not produced without serious objections on the part of the censorship; and it was only through the intercession of the Duke de Morny, Napoleon III.'s unacknowledged brother and chief adviser, that permission to represent the piece was obtained. When the performance at last took place, the success of the drama, owing a good deal to the pathetic acting of Mme. Doche in the part of the heroine, was marvellous; and it was made the occasion of innumerable articles in all the French journals at this period, not only on the play and on the novel from the same pen whence the play was derived, but on the unhappy young woman whose life and death the author had more or less faithfully depicted in the leading character. To show that light-minded Frenchmen were not alone capable of being moved by the tragic end of the fascinating Marie Duplessis, it may be mentioned that our own Charles Dickens was as much touched by it as the numerous French writers, who, more or less perfectly, have put their feelings on the subject into literary form. "Not many days after I left," writes Mr. Forster, in his "Life of Dickens," under date of 1847, "all Paris was crowding to the sale of a lady of the demi-monde, Marie Duplessis, who had led the most brilliant and abandoned of lives, and left behind her the most exquisite furniture and the most voluptuous and sumptuous bijouterie. Dickens wished at one time to have pointed the moral of this life and death, of which there was great talk in Paris while we were together. The disease of satiety, which, only less often than hunger, passes for a broken heart, had killed her. 'What do you want?' asked the most famous of the Paris physicians, at a loss for her exact complaint. At last she answered, 'To see my mother.' She was sent for, and there came a simple Breton peasant woman, clad in the quaint garb of her province, who prayed by her bed until she died."
The Dame aux Cam�lias called into existence a whole series of pieces, produced either at the Vaudeville or at the Gymnase, in which the true character of women in certain difficult positions was treated controversially, with examples in support of arguments; and at this moment the last kind of play one would expect to see at the Vaudeville is precisely that to which the theatre owes its name. The situation of this theatre in the most fashionable, most frequented part of the boulevard renders it, apart from its own special attractions, the favourite resort of foreigners living at the excellent hotels in this neighbourhood. The house, with its 1,300 seats, is only of moderate size, but it is much more commodious than the old theatre of the Place de la Bourse.
The theatres of Paris, generally, are, indeed, far less commodious than those of London. The Parisians will go anywhere and submit to any discomfort in order to see good acting and a good play. In England we are much more particular; and the narrow ill-ventilated theatres of Paris would certainly be objected to by English audiences. The Paris theatres, however, are steadily improving, as one by one they get burnt down; and the new ones springing from the ashes of the old are often attractive without and convenient within. In the ancient days before the Great Revolution, the Parisians were as passionately fond of the theatre as they are now, but their playhouses, according to the author of "Le nouveau Paris," were abominable.
"I shall say nothing of the nastiness," he writes, "that distinguishes these places of general resort, because I would not wish to injure the property of the comedians; nor shall I inveigh against the insolence of the box-keepers, and other servants of our theatres, as it would give to the world a bad opinion of the proprietors themselves, to whom some censorious readers might apply the proverb, 'Like master like man,' and think it a truism. I intend to confine myself to those points that more materially concern the spectator when he has once got in and has the good fortune to procure a clean seat. First let us survey the pit. Here everybody stands. You will imagine that its inhabitants are the formidable umpires of taste and dramatic productions; this may or may not be, just as it suits the caprices of the police, or the Lords of the Bedchamber, who, from making the master's bed, have raised themselves by degrees to judge of things which they hardly understand. Hence an actress is palmed upon the public. Whether she is good or bad is not the question, but whether she has had the good fortune to please one or the whole of those gentlemen; and everyone knows what price she has paid for her admission. Not a play is represented here without a guard of thirty men with a few rounds each to quiet the spectators. This internal guard keeps the frequenters of the pit in a kind of passive condition; and whether you are tired, crowded, or bruised, beware of giving any sign of uneasiness or discontent. Yet the unfortunate public pays to take, not what they desire, but what is given them. Surrounded with armed men, they must neither laugh too loud at a comedy nor express their feelings at a tragedy in too pointed a manner. Hence the pit, except in some fits of a transient excitement, is mournfully dull. If you venture to give any sign of your existence, you are collared by one of the guards and carried pro form� before a Commissionaire. I say for form sake, because everyone in the play-house is really under martial law; the civil magistrate is only there to hear and approve the sentence passed upon the culprit by the officer of the guard; who upon the report, seldom exact, but often groundless, of the soldier, orders the accused party to prison; and the Commissionaire, without inquiring into the merit of the charge, or so much as daring to hint at the least objection, signs the mittimus."
[Illustration: Entrance to Rue du Quatre-Septembre.--Avenue de l'Op�ra.--Entrance to Rue de la Paix.
VIEW FROM THE BALCONY OF THE OPERA.]
The Boulevard des Capucines seems on both sides entirely new; its houses are white, bright, and in perfect condition. If the crowd one sees on the Boulevard Montmartre is a Parisian crowd, that which animates the Boulevard des Capucines is a cosmopolitan one. It touches what in the artistic, if not in the general, sense must be looked upon as the heart of Paris--the New Opera, that is to say, standing in the centre of the place which bears its name and the streets called after those operatic celebrities, Scribe, Auber, Hal�vy, and Meyerbeer; one librettist and three composers.
The Place de l'Op�ra is, indeed, the heart of Paris, communicating by great arteries with all the most important organs of Parisian life. The magnificent Avenue of the Opera leads straight to the Louvre; in another direction the Rue du Quatre-Septembre goes to the Place de la Bourse. Look along the Rue de la Paix; at the end you will see La Place Vend�me, with its column in memory of the Grand Army standing out in its dark bronze against the fresh green of the Tuileries Gardens. Here all that is most Parisian in Paris may be seen: the finest shops, the most brilliant equipages, with all the glitter of fashionable life. The expensive jeweller and the exorbitant milliner here have their establishments side by side with hotels, restaurants, caf�s, and clubs.
[Illustration: AVENUE DE L'OP�RA.]
The Opera in France had much to go through before it attained its present artistic development, or, as regards the French form of grand opera, found its present capacious and splendid home. It is the proud boast of Frenchmen that Le Nouvel Op�ra--as the existing Grand Op�ra in Paris has been called for the last sixteen years, and as it will probably be called for a long while to come--covers thirteen times as much ground as the Royal Opera House of Berlin. It is, indeed, superior by its commodiousness as well as its magnificence to every other opera house in Europe; though what above all distinguishes it is its admirable site, and the wide open space in which it stands. In many capitals the theatres, even the finest, are only portions of a street. At Moscow, it is true, the Great Theatre stands by itself in a vast square--a square which, compared with the Place de l'Op�ra, is a desert space. From its very origin the Opera in France has always been regarded as an institution of the first importance. It enjoyed special privileges from the Crown, it was managed like a department of the State, and an attack upon the Opera was punished like a treasonable offence.
"Before I tell you," wrote Rousseau towards the end of the eighteenth century, "what I think of this famous theatre, I will state what is said about it. The judgment of connoisseurs may correct mine if I am wrong. The Opera of Paris passes in the capital for the most pompous, the most voluptuous, the most admirable spectacle that human art has ever invented. Its admirers declare it to be the most superb monument of the magnificence of Louis XIV., and one is not so free as you may think to express an opinion on such an important subject. Here you may dispute about everything except music and the Opera; on these topics alone it is dangerous not to dissemble. French music is defended, too, by a very rigorous inquisition, and the first thing intimated as a warning to strangers who visit this country is that all foreigners admit there is nothing in this world so fine as the Opera of Paris. The fact is, discreet people hold their tongues, and dare only laugh in their sleeves."
Rousseau then, speaking in the person of St. Preuz, the hero of "La nouvelle H�loise," describes the performance as it took place at the Opera. "Imagine," he says, "an enclosure fifteen feet broad, and long in proportion; this enclosure is the theatre. On its two sides are placed at intervals screens, which are crudely painted with the objects which the scene is about to represent. At the back of the enclosure hangs a great curtain, painted in like manner and nearly always pierced and torn that it may represent at a little distance gulfs on the earth or holes in the sky. Everyone who passes behind this stage or touches the curtain produces a sort of earthquake which has a double effect. The sky is made of certain bluish rags suspended from poles or cords, as linen may be seen hung out to dry in any washerwoman's yard. The sun, which is here sometimes seen, is a lighted torch in a lantern. The cars of the gods and goddesses are composed of four rafters squared and hung on a thick rope in the form of a swing or see-saw; between the rafters is a cross plank on which the god sits down, and in front hangs a piece of coarse cloth, well dirtied, which acts the part of clouds for the magnificent car. One may see, towards the bottom of the machine, two or three stinking candles, badly snuffed, which, while the great personage dementedly presents himself swinging in his see-saw, fumigate him with an incense worthy of his dignity. The agitated sea is composed of long angular arrangements of cloth and blue pasteboard strung on parallel spits, which are turned by little blackguard boys. The thunder is a heavy cart rolled over an arch, and is not the least agreeable instrument one hears. The flashes of lightning are made of pinches of resin thrown on a flame; and the thunder is a cracker at the end of a fusee.
"The theatre is, moreover, furnished with little square traps, which, opening at need, announce that the demons are about to issue from their cave. When they have to rise into the air little imps of stuffed brown cloth are substituted for them, or sometimes real chimney sweeps, who swing about suspended on ropes till they are majestically lost in the rags of which I have spoken. The accidents, however, which not unfrequently happen are sometimes as tragic as farcical. When the ropes break, the infernal spirits and immortal gods fall together, and lame or occasionally kill one another. Add to all this the monsters which render some scenes very pathetic, such as dragons, lizards, tortoises, crocodiles, and large toads, who promenade the theatre with a menacing air, and display at the Opera all the temptations of St. Anthony. Each of these figures is animated by a lout of a Savoyard who has not even intelligence enough to play the beast.
"Such, my cousin, is the august machinery of the Opera, as I have observed it from the pit, with the aid of my glass, for you must not imagine that all this apparatus is hidden, and produces an imposing effect. I have only described what I have seen myself, and what any other spectator may see. I am assured, however, that there are a prodigious number of machines employed to put the whole spectacle in motion, and I have been invited several times to examine them; but I have never been curious to learn how little things are performed by great means."
When our musical historian, Dr. Burney, visited Paris and heard at the Opera the works of Rameau, successor to Lulli, under whose direction the French Opera was founded, he found the music monotonous in the extreme, and without either rhythm or expression. He could admire nothing at the French Opera except the dancing and the decorations; and these alone, he says, seemed to give pleasure to the audience. It was not, at that time, the custom in France to name the singers in the programme; and throughout the eighteenth century no singer in France attained such eminence as was reached by numbers in Italy, and by not a few in England, some of Italian, some of English birth. Naturally, then, in the eighteenth century French Opera singers were not well paid; and chroniclers relate that a Mlle. Aubry and a Mlle. Verdier, being engaged in the same line of stage business, had to live in the same room and sleep in the same bed. Apart from the obscurity naturally resulting from the suppression of the names, inconvenience was caused by the uncertainty in which the public found itself of knowing which singer, on any particular evening, would appear. Shortly before the establishment of the Republic, when, for the first time, the names of singers were printed in the bills, an habitu� rushed out of the theatre in a high state of indignation, and began to beat one of the money-takers in the lobby. The poor man at once understood the reason of his aggressor's wrath. "How was I to know," he exclaimed, "that they would let Le Ponthieu sing to-night!"
The initial step towards high melody at the French Opera was taken when, some fifteen years before the Revolution, first Gluck, then Piccini, were invited to Paris to produce adaptations of former successes, or original works, fitted in either case to French libretti. While praising the melody of the Italians as much as he condemns the solemnity of the French, Rousseau expresses the highest admiration for the genius of Gluck, the great reformer of the French operatic stage. After the arrival of Gluck in Paris Rousseau is said never to have missed a representation of Orph�e. He said, moreover, in reference to the gratification which that work had afforded him, that "after all there was something in life worth living for, since in two hours so much genuine pleasure could be obtained."
The next great assistance to the French Opera, and this a permanent one, was given by the Republic, through the establishment of a large music-school, known as the Conservatoire, where a course of gratuitous instruction is given to all comers capable at the stipulated age of passing the indispensable test examination. Before, however, the Conservatoire, destined to produce so many excellent vocalists, instrumentalists, and composers, had time to bear fruit, Napoleon had done much to encourage and develop French musical art. Napoleon, as a young man, was one of the first admirers of the afterwards famous Mme. St. Huberti; and when Mme. Mara refused an engagement pressed upon her at the time of the Empire, Napoleon would have arrested her and forced her to accept it had she not fled from Paris. Then, another cause of improvement at the French Opera was the frequent visits paid, early in this century, and especially since the Peace of 1815, by foreign artists to the capital which, in former days, had set its face both against vocalists and composers from abroad. Lulli, the founder of opera in France, was an Italian by birth, though after his naturalisation he got to be looked upon as a Frenchman. His successor, Rameau, was no doubt a Frenchman. But the French tradition was so completely broken by the advent of Gluck and Piccini that the French have never since exhibited any of their ancient prejudice against foreign composers; and it is to these that for the last seventy or eighty years the Grand Opera of Paris has owed most of its success, that is to say, to Spontini, Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi, and, above all, Meyerbeer.
[Illustration: ONE OF THE DOMES OF THE OPERA HOUSE.]
A highly interesting account of the rehearsals of Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable--one of the typical works of the modern repertoire of grand opera--is given, in his "M�moires d'un Bourgeois de Paris," by Dr. V�ron, for some time manager of the Opera House. "It was not," he tells us, "until after four months of orchestral and other rehearsals that the general rehearsals were reached. These latter," he continues, "caused great fatigue and great excitement to everyone; to the composer, the singers, the chiefs of department, and the manager. When a general rehearsal takes place, with choruses, principal singers, and full orchestra, but without scenery, without costumes, and without full light, the musical execution gains much and produces always a great effect. In the darkness and silence of the empty and more sonorous house, without any distraction for the other senses, one is, so to say, all ears; nothing is lost of the fine shades of expression in the singing, of the delicate embroideries of the orchestration. But at the first representation the disappointment is great. In the immense, splendidly lighted theatre, filled with an excited crowd, all the rich and elegant details of the score will be lost through the stuff of the women's dresses and the diminished sonority of a building crowded in pit, boxes, and gallery. Great musical ideas, grand orchestral effects, will now alone produce an impression. Thus it happened that at the first representation of Robert the Devil, the public, after applauding the first two acts, was only impressed and deeply moved by the chorus of demons."
[Illustration: EASTERN PAVILION, OPERA HOUSE.]
After describing the anxieties and perplexities which throughout the long series of rehearsals harass the unfortunate director, Dr. V�ron proceeds to tell us how this gentleman's last and worst experience was this inevitable final conference, held in his own private room, at which the author of the words and the composer of the music had to be prevailed upon to accept some necessary "cuts."
[Illustration: THE PUBLIC FOYER, OPERA HOUSE.]
"The librettist maintains that to take away one phrase, one word, is to render the work unintelligible, so cunningly is it constructed. The composer resists with no less obstinacy. His score, he says, cannot be broken up into fragments. It is all combined and prepared in such a manner as to form a perfect whole. One piece serves as indispensable contrast to another. A chorus which it has perhaps been suggested to leave out is essential for the effect of the succeeding air. The discussions on such points are interminable. I had ended by showing myself impassible in presence of the storms and tempests that were raging around me; and I devoted the time during which these quarrels lasted to a polite and engaging correspondence with all the newspaper editors. I was still labouring for the success of the work. At last a conclusion was arrived at, and a general understanding established. The chief copyist was making the necessary changes and suppressions in the score; and the public at least never found fault with the words and music that were now suppressed. But when a director has prepared, like a good general, everything necessary for the success of the work on the stage, his troubles begin with the front of the house. Everyone wants something from him on the occasion of a first representation; and that of Robert le Diable was exciting public interest to the highest degree. Everything and everyone must be thought of. It is necessary, in assigning places, to displease no one, and above all to avoid exciting jealousies, so as to have no irritated enemies in the house. Such and such a journalist will never pardon you for having given his fellow-journalist a better place than himself. The author and composer, the leading artists, the claqueurs must be satisfied. The care, the foresight, the conferences, the instructions, indispensable to secure the efficient working of the claque at each representation, and particularly on great critical occasions, will be dealt with elsewhere. One must remember, too, the number of the box that Madame---- would like to have, the number of the stall preferred by the friend of a minister or of the editor of some great journal. One must respect, moreover, the omnipotence of the unknown journalist, as of the journalist in vogue; and on the critical day the existence is revealed of a crowd of newspapers not previously heard of."
It was in the old theatre of the Rue Le Pelletier that Rossini's William Tell and Meyerbeer's great works were brought out. Gounod, Saint-Sa�ns, and Massenet, have all written for the New Opera, though it cannot be said that any of them has yet produced on its boards a work of the highest merit.
Opened under the Third Republic in 1875, the New Opera House must be acknowledged to owe its existence to the Emperor Napoleon III., whose Minister of Fine Arts opened a competition for architectural designs in view of a new lyrical theatre as long ago as 1860, thirteen years before the old Opera House was burnt down, and fifteen years before the new one was completed and thrown open to the public. The successful competitor is known to have been Charles Garnier, who was almost unheard of at the time when, with rare unanimity, his design was accepted by the Commission, and approved with enthusiasm by the Press. The building of the Opera cost, from first to last, some 36,000,000 francs (nearly a million and a half sterling), 675,295 work days having been furnished, during its construction, to masons, bricklayers, carpenters, etc. The manager of the Opera House receives from the State the free use of the building together with a subsidy of 800,000 francs (�32,000) voted annually by the Chamber. Employed at the Opera are some five hundred persons, among whom may, in particular, be mentioned twelve in the administration, in connection with the archives, the library, the secretarial department, and the treasury; three orchestral conductors, four directors of singing, two directors and one assistant-director of the chorus; forty-five vocalists; and one hundred orchestral musicians. There are about one hundred men and women in the chorus, and the same number in the various divisions of the ballet. Scene-painters, scene-shifters (or "carpenters," as they are technically called), dressers, call-boys, box-openers, and so on, form another hundred. The inauguration of the New Opera took place on the 5th of January, 1875, in the presence of Marshal Macmahon, Duke of Magenta, at that time President of the Republic. All the great officers of State were present, besides a number of foreign notabilities, among whom may be mentioned Queen Isabella of Spain and the young King of Spain, Alphonso II. It is remembered, too, with satisfaction, that the Lord Mayor of London, accompanied by his mace-bearers, trumpeters, and powdered footmen, gave dignity to the occasion.
One of the most interesting parts of the New Opera is the foyer, corresponding more or less to the refreshment room of our operatic theatres, but quite incomparable in the way of elegance and splendour. In the accompanying illustration the artist has made a point of introducing, amid well-dressed persons in evening clothes, an English lady in a morning gown and a sea-side hat, accompanied by two of her countrymen in shooting coats and pot hats. It is, indeed, a standing grievance with the Parisians that, whereas at our opera house no one is admitted to the boxes or stalls unless in evening dress, we ourselves, when we visit the Paris Opera, think any description of garment good enough to wear. One of the characteristic sights of Paris has, for nearly two centuries past, been the Masked Ball of the Opera, which, though it has doubtless lost much of its gaiety since the days when it inspired Gavarni with so many subjects for his witty pencil, is still worth seeing, simply as a picturesque display. No one any longer dances there unless paid to do so. It was, in fact, the introduction of hired dancers when the public were just beginning to show a disinclination to take an active part in the revels that put an end to spontaneous dancing altogether. The antics of some of the hired dancers may interest for a time; and the music of the large orchestra, conducted successively by Musard, Tolbecque, Strauss, M�tra, and Arban, has always merited a hearing. Throughout the Carnival--that is to say, from Christmas until Lent--a masked and fancy dress ball (the wearing both of masks and fancy dress being optional) is given every week at the Opera, where the great ball of the year takes place on the night of Shrove Tuesday, the day preceding Lent. One other ball of the same kind is given in the middle of Lent--la Mi-car�me as it is called--and thenceforward there is no dancing at the Opera until Christmas has once more come and gone.
The Opera Ball dates, like the Opera itself, from the reign of Louis XIV. But the license for musico-dramatic performances had been issued forty years before it occurred to the Chevalier de Bouillon to apply to the King for permission to give masked balls. The King hastened to grant the Chevalier's request; and was indeed so pleased with it that he assigned to him a pension of 6,000 livres (francs) for the idea, which had simply been borrowed. What is still more remarkable is the fact that an Augustine monk, Nicholas Bourgeois, invented the mechanism by which, in half an hour, the floor of the auditorium could be raised to the level of the stage boards. Although the privilege or patent was given to the Chevalier de Bouillon at the beginning of January, 1713, it was not until January, 1716, that the first opera ball took place. From that year until 1830 no masked or fancy dress ball could be given at any other theatre. On the accession, however, of Louis Philippe, the Opera lost its dancing monopoly, and there are now numbers of Paris theatres at which, during the Carnival, masked balls occur. The receipts at an Opera Ball are said to average 50,000 francs (�2,000).
Close to the Opera lie all the fashionable clubs of Paris, beginning with the Jockey Club at the corner of the Boulevard de La Madeleine. The English Jockey Club is known to be an association of horse-owners and others interested in racing, who frame regulations and decide cases in connection with the Turf. The Jockey Club of Paris, while founded on much the same basis as the English institution of the same name, is also a club in the ordinary sense of the word, and an exceedingly good one. The Jockey Club, which boasts of numbering on its books members of all the reigning families of Europe, is, by its formal title, a "Society of Encouragement for the Amelioration of Breeds of Horses in France." It was originated in 1833, under the auspices of the Duke of Orleans, eldest son of Louis Philippe, in order to popularise racing, regulate it, and obtain for it subsidies from the State and the Municipalities. A committee of thirteen members is exclusively entrusted with the organisation and superintendence of races. The code of the Jockey Club is adopted as a basis of regulations by nearly all the other racing societies of France. The Jockey Club itself directs the racing of only three courses, those of the Bois de Boulogne, Fontainebleau, and Chantilly. This club, first established at the corner of the Rue du Helder, and then transferred to the H�tel de Lange on the Boulevard Montmartre, moved in 1857 to the corner of the Rue de Grammont, where the Cercle des Deux Mondes now has its headquarters, and finally, in 1860, to its present abode, for which it pays an annual rental of 100,000 francs. Not one of the Paris clubs seems, like the principal London clubs, to possess its own house. As a rule the annual subscription to the Paris club is high, amounting in some cases to 500 francs. On the other hand, the large sums charged for entrance to the London clubs, ranging from 30 to 40 guineas, are unknown at the clubs of Paris, which consequently find themselves without much available capital.
Close to the Opera, on the Boulevard des Italiens, at the corner of the Rue de Grammont, is Le Cercle des Deux Mondes; at the corner of the Rue de la Michodi�re, the Railway Club, or Cercle des Chemins de Fer; on the Boulevard des Capucines, at the corner of the Rue Louis le Grand, the Yacht Club. Just opposite the Yacht Club "Le Cercle de la Presse," celebrated for its literary and artistic evenings, suggests in the first place that no like institution exists in England, where the newspaper world, though less sharply broken up by political and personal animosities than that of France, is bound together by no such esprit de corps as that which animates the authors and journalists of France. In England not only are we without a Press Club worthy of the name; we have no Soci�t� des Gens de Lettres, or Soci�t� des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques. Close to the Cercle de la Presse is the Sporting Club, with its English name. On the Place de l'Op�ra is the Franco-American Club called the Washington Club, or Cercle Washington, and at the other corner of the square, the Cercle des �claireurs, or Scouts' Club, a survival from the war of 1870. On the Place de l'Op�ra are the offices (as staring titles sufficiently proclaim) of the Daily Telegraph, the Daily News, and the New York Herald. The corner house, separating the Avenue of the Opera from the Rue de la Paix, has been occupied since 1886 by the Naval and Military Club, known as the Cercle des Arm�es de Terre et de Mer, and founded under the auspices of General Boulanger in the days when he was War Minister, with the eyes of all Europe upon him. Advancing towards the Madeleine, we come first to the Racing Club (Salon des Courses), then to the Union Club (Cercle de l'Union), the most artistic and most exclusive of all these institutions. Close by is the new Cercle de la Rue Royale, formerly known under the familiar name of "Cercle des Moutards;" whilst a little further on we find the Cercle des Mirlitons and Cercle Imp�rial, now combined, and the Cercle Artistique et Litt�raire.
[Illustration: WESTERN PAVILION, OPERA HOUSE.]
[Illustration: THE STAIRCASE OF THE OPERA HOUSE.]
More recently established than the best London clubs, the clubs of Paris possess some slight advantages over ours. There is but one London club at which a member can get shaved or have his hair cut, but at many of the fashionable Paris clubs the hair-cutter and barber play as important a part as at an American hotel. The best Paris clubs have private carriages always in readiness. At a London club members who have not their own private carriage content themselves with a hansom, or, if infirm, with a humble four-wheeler. The Paris clubs, moreover, are in constant communication with the theatres; and each club can command so many tickets for a first representation, which are distributed among the members according to the order of application. Some of the Paris clubs, too, have a box at the Opera or at the Com�die Fran�aise. One strange characteristic of the Paris clubs--strange at least to Englishmen--is that every member is supposed to know, more or less intimately, every other member. In Paris the newly-elected member of a club is formally introduced to the other members by his proposer and seconder. Nothing of the kind takes place in London; though a new member of a London club is allowed, if not expected, to invite his proposer and seconder with a few friends to dinner. Though there are still famous restaurants in Paris, dining-houses and caf�s have alike suffered by the introduction of clubs, which, though fewer as yet than in London, are yearly increasing their number.
The last of the boulevards on the western side is that of the Madeleine, with the Church of the Madeleine as its principal edifice. The Place de la Madeleine, in the centre of which stands the beautiful but most unecclesiastical church, becomes twice every week, on Tuesday and Friday, a large flower-market, the finest in Paris. Standing by itself in the place named after it, is the beautiful Greek temple, of which the first stone was laid, in one of his pious moods, by Louis XV. in 1764. But the building was not proceeded with until after a delay of some years. It was begun in its present form only twelve years before the Revolution; and when Napoleon became emperor it was still unfinished. Judging, no doubt, from the character of the architecture, that the edifice could scarcely have been intended for a place of Christian worship, Napoleon had it finished as a Temple of Glory under the direction of the celebrated architect Pierre Vignon. Like the Pantheon, however, which has sometimes been thus named, and at other times called the Church of Sainte-Genevi�ve, Napoleon's Temple of Glory was only for a time to be known in that character. Under the Restoration, in 1814, Louis XVIII. determined to restore the building to the Church; and, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene, it was duly consecrated. La Madeleine, as it is called, was, however, still uncompleted when, in 1830, Louis Philippe came to the throne; and it was under his reign that, in 1842, it was opened for public worship in the precise form and with the elaborate ornamentation now belonging to it. The architecture of the Madeleine is partly Roman, partly Greek; or rather it is Greek with Roman adaptations. It is surrounded by Corinthian columns, of which there are eighteen on each side. Sixteen, moreover, enclose the southern portion, and eight the northern. The building is without windows, and is entirely of stone. The niches in the colonnade are occupied by thirty-four statues representing the most venerated martyrs and saints. On the principal fa�ade will be remarked a high-relief of huge dimensions by Lemaire, representing our Lord as Judge of the world. The figure of the Saviour is seventeen feet high. On His right are the Angel of Salvation and the saved; on His left the Angel of Punishment and the condemned, with Mary Magdalene interceding on their behalf. The interior is brilliant with gold and colour. The sanctuary, with its vaulted roof, exhibits a vast fresco by Zugler, representing the history of Christianity. Mary Magdalene, receiving Christ's forgiveness, is surrounded by the Apostles and Evangelists; and among the illustrious men who in successive ages have protected the Christian Church may be recognised Constantine, Godefroi de Bouillon, Clovis, Joan of Arc, Dante, and Napoleon. The principal altar supports an enormous group in white marble, generally known as the Assumption, though the central figure is that of Mary Magdalene. The Assumption in this case is that of Mary Magdalene into Paradise, whither she is being borne by two angels. Under the organ is the Chapelle des Mariages, with a marble group by Pradier, representing the marriage of the Virgin; and the Chapelle des Fonts, with a group by Rude, the subject being the Baptism of Christ. To the right of the altar we see illustrated the spread of Christianity in the East during the early centuries and the Crusades; and again, in modern times, through the uprising of the Greeks against the Turks. As leading Crusaders, Richard Coeur-de-Lion and Godefroi de Bouillon occupy places. The personages exhibited as having greatly contributed towards the progress of Christianity in the West are the early martyrs, Charlemagne, Pope Alexander III., Joan of Arc, Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Dante. In the centre of the picture stands Henri IV., who, after uttering his celebrated exclamation, "Paris is well worth a mass," goes over to the dominant religion. Then come Louis XIII., Richelieu, and finally Napoleon I., who not only was crowned by Pope Pius VII. in Notre-Dame, but really deserves credit for having restored Christian worship in France.
In the first chapel, on the right as one enters the church, is a pillar bearing an inscription to the memory of the Abb� du Guerry, cur� of the Madeleine, a man of remarkable piety and benevolence, who, with other hostages taken by the Communists, was shot on the 24th of May, 1871, in retaliation for the execution of Communist prisoners by the troops of Versailles.
The Church of the Madeleine is famous for the eloquence of its preachers, the taste in dress of the fashionable ladies whom these preachers attract, and the excellence of the music. At the organ of the Madeleine a sound musician and a perfect player is always to be found.
Its History--Louis XV.--Fireworks--The Catastrophe in 1770--Place de la R�volution--Louis XVI.--The Directory.
The Rue Royale, a continuation of the Boulevard de la Madeleine, leading to the Place de la Concorde, was the scene of some of the most violent outrages on the part of the Communists in May, 1871. Here, as in the neighbouring Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honor�, a number of houses were deliberately set on fire, when some thirty persons perished in the flames. It was said, at the time, that the firemen employed to extinguish the conflagration were bribed by members of the Commune to replace the water in their pumps by petroleum.
The Place de la Concorde, the finest of the many fine squares and open spaces in Paris, covers an area of 400 yards in length, by 235 yards in width. It is bounded on the south by the Seine, on the west by the Champs �lys�es, on the north by the Rue de Rivoli (at right angles with the Rue Royale), and on the east by the Tuileries Gardens. From the centre of the Place may be seen the Madeleine at the further end of the Rue Royale; the Palace of the Chamber of Deputies just across the river, which is here traversed by the Pont de la Concorde; the Louvre on the one hand, and on the other, at the end of the Champs �lys�es, the Triumphal Arch (Arc de Triomphe de l'�toile).
At night the views from the Place de la Concorde are more striking even than by day; the Avenue of the Champs �lys�es, more than a mile in length, leading in a straight line from the Place de la Concorde to the Triumphal Arch, presenting, with its seemingly interminable rows of lamps, a fairy-like spectacle.
The history of the Place de la Concorde is quite modern. Its present name dates only from the Revolution; its creation from no further back than the year 1748.
Louis XV., called le bien-aim�, had fallen ill at Metz, and the people regarding him, after the ruinously extravagant reign of his predecessor, Louis XIV., as a merciful sovereign, hurried in crowds to the churches, imploring heaven for the King's recovery. "What have I done to be thus beloved?" asked the young monarch, with astonishment; and his eyes moistened with tears--"the only ones," says an apparently well-informed historian, "he ever let fall."
Louis XV. recovered and came back to Paris; and it was then that the Town Council voted with enthusiasm an equestrian statue to the sovereign whom it had pleased heaven to spare. The King, on his side, presented to the city a large open piece of ground at the end of the Tuileries Gardens, and in the centre of this plain the first stone was laid of the monument which was to celebrate the virtues of Louis the Well-beloved. This statue, according to the fashion of the time, represented the King in Roman costume with a crown of laurels on his head; and, among other devices, personifications of Strength, Wisdom, Justice, and Peace were made to figure at the corners of the pedestal, which gave rise to the following epigram:--
"Oh! la belle statue! oh! le beau pi�destal! Les vertus sont � pied, le vice est � cheval;"
which may be thus turned into English:--
"Fit statue, fitter pedestal! with laughter burst your sides, The virtues all below on foot, while vice triumphant rides!"
Another satirist wrote:--
"Il est ici comme � Versailles; Il est sans coeur et sans entrailles."
or, to give something like an equivalent in English:--
"Here have set up the builders with their trowels A King of brass who's neither heart nor bowels."
A philosopher who seems to have foreseen what he fancied was by no means apparent to Louis XV.--that the ancient r�gime was coming to an end--placed a bandage round the eyes of the statue with these words inscribed on it:--
"Have pity on a poor blind man!"
This, however, is inconsistent with the tradition which attributes to him the saying, more generally believed to have been Metternich's, "Apr�s moi le d�luge!"
[Illustration: THE MADELEINE.]
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE MADELEINE.]
The open space was now to be marked in by ornamental limits; and the architects were working at the railings and walls, when, on the night of the 30th of May, 1770, a frightful catastrophe took place. To celebrate the marriage of the Dauphin, afterwards Louis XVI., with the Archduchess Marie Antoinette of Austria, the town of Paris had prepared a magnificent f�te, of which the principal attraction was to be a display of fireworks under the direction of the famous Italian pyrotechnist, Ruggieri, perfecter of an art first introduced into France (like so many others) by his ingenious countrymen. Three centuries earlier, in 1465, it should be said, when fireworks were for the first time seen in France, much excitement and some accidents, though no fatal ones, were in like manner caused. After the battle of Montl�hry, when the troops of Louis XI. retired to Corbeil, and the great noblemen who had been leagued against him to �tampes, the Duke of Berri and the Comte de Charolais took their places at the window of a house in the last-named town and looked out together on the soldiers and the mob who filled the streets. Suddenly a dart of fire was seen flashing and curling in the air, which, taking the direction of the window where the prince and the count were seated, struck against it with a violent explosion. The two noblemen were filled with alarm, and the Comte de Charolais in his fright ordered the Seigneur Contay to call out all the troops of the household, the archers of his body-guard, and others. The Duke of Berri gave like orders to all the troops under his command; and in a few minutes two or three bodies of armed men, with a great number of archers, were seen in front of the residence, making every endeavour to find out whence the marvellous and terrible apparition of fire could have proceeded. It was regarded as a diabolical device magically directed against the persons of the Comte de Charolais and the Duke of Berri. After close investigation it was discovered that the author of the marvel productive of so much alarm was a Breton known as Jean Boute-Feu, otherwise Jean des Serpents, so called from his having invented the kind of firework which still bears the name of "serpent." Jean threw himself at the feet of the princes, confessed to them that he had indeed fired rockets into the air, but added that his intention had been to amuse, not injure, them. Then, to prove that his fireworks were harmless, he let off three or four of them in presence of the princes, which quite destroyed the suspicions formed against him. Everyone now began to laugh. Much trepidation had meanwhile been caused by a very trifling incident.
But let us return to the year 1770 and the f�te on the Place Louis XV. All was going well, when suddenly a gust of wind blew down among the crowd some rockets only partially exploded. Fireworks, like so many inventions of Italian origin, were still, to the mass of the French public, a comparative novelty; and this, together with the positive inconvenience and even danger of a fall of blazing missiles in the midst of thousands of excited and closely-packed spectators, was quite enough to account for the terrible confusion, resulting in many hundreds of fatal accidents, which now ensued.
There was, in the first place, a general rush towards the Rue Royale, far too narrow to receive such an invasion; and in the crush numbers of women fainted, fell, and were trampled to death. To make matters worse the stream of persons pressing into the Rue Royale was met by a counter-stream, advancing, in ignorance of what had taken place, to the Place de la Concorde. Even these, who were not in imminent peril, were now affected by a panic which soon became universal. In the midst of shrieks and groans some desperate men drew their swords and endeavoured to cut for themselves a passage through the dense mass by which they were surrounded. "I know many persons," says Mercier, in his "Tableau de Paris," "who thirty months after these frightful scenes still bore the marks of objects which had been crushed into them. Some lingered on for ten years and then died. I may say without exaggeration that in the general panic and crush more than twelve hundred unfortunate persons lost their lives. One entire family disappeared; and there was scarcely a household which had not to lament the death of a relative or friend." On the other hand the official returns put down the deaths at 133, already an immense number.
Seven years later, in 1777, the Place Louis XV. was the scene of a further mishap. Certain strolling players, jugglers, and other mountebanks had established in the open space an annual fair known as the Fair of St. Ovid, which became such a nuisance to the aristocratic residents in the neighbourhood that a petition was presented to the Government for its suppression; when suddenly one evening the booths and theatres took fire. The conflagration became general, and the Fair of St. Ovid perished in the flames.
The next incident of importance which took place on the great Place was important indeed. It was nothing less than the destruction of Louis XV.'s statue, which on the 11th of August, 1792, the day after the capture of the Tuileries, was removed by order of the Legislative Assembly, melted down, and converted into pieces of two sous. The statue of the king was replaced by a statue of Liberty, which, being made in terra-cotta, was called by the anti-Revolutionists the "Liberty of Mud." The Place was now named Place de la R�volution. Place de la Guillotine it might more fitly have been called, for it was here that the instrument of punishment, of vengeance, and often of simple hatred, was erected, to begin its horrid work, on the 21st of January, 1793, by the decapitation of Louis XVI.
The unhappy monarch had been brought along the whole line of boulevards from the prison of the Temple, close to the Place de la Bastille, at one extremity, to the Place de la R�volution at the other. These two opposite points mark in a certain way the beginning and the end of the Revolution. Its first heroic act was the taking of the Bastille; the cruel deeds which marked its close had for their scene the former Place Louis XV., which the Revolution had now named after itself.
The last moments of Louis XVI. have often been described, but never in so simple, touching, and direct a manner as by the Abb� Edgeworth, who accompanied the king to the scaffold, and at the fatal moment was by his side. He afterwards wrote in the French language an account of what he had witnessed, from which some of the most striking passages may here be reproduced.
"The fate of the king," he says, "was as yet undecided, when M. de Malesherbes, to whom I had not the honour of being personally known and who could neither ask me to his house nor come to mine, requested me to meet him at Mme. de Senosan's house, where I accordingly waited on him. There M. de Malesherbes delivered to me a message from the king signifying the wish of that unfortunate monarch that I should attend him in his last moments, if the atrocity of his subjects should be contented with nothing less than his death. This message was conveyed in terms which I should have thought it my duty to suppress if they did not demonstrate the excellence of the prince whose end I am going to relate. He carried the delicacy of his expressions so far as to ask as a favour the services he had a right to demand from me as a duty. He claimed them as the last proof of my attachment. He hoped that I would not refuse him. He added that if the danger to which I must be exposed should appear to me too great he would beg me to name another clergyman. This was not to be thought of, and on being admitted to the prison I fell at the king's feet without the power of utterance. The king was much moved, but soon began to answer my tears with his own."
A high official from whom the Abb� Edgeworth had requested permission to administer the Sacrament replied that he deemed the request of the Abb� and that of Louis Capet conformable to the law, which declared all forms of worship to be free. "Nevertheless," added the official, "there are two conditions. The first is that you draw up instantly an address containing your demand signed by yourself; the second, that your religious ceremonies be concluded by 7 o'clock to-morrow at latest, for at 8 precisely Louis Capet must set out for the place of execution."
"These last words," writes the Abb�, "were said, like all the rest, with a degree of cold-blooded indifference which characterised an atrocious mind. I put my request in writing and left it on the table. They re-conducted me to the King, who awaited with anxiety the conclusion of this affair. The summary account which I gave him, in which I suppressed all particulars, pleased him extremely. It was now past ten o'clock, and I remained with the King till the night was far advanced, when, perceiving he was fatigued, I requested him to take some repose. He replied with his accustomed kindness, and charged me to lie down also. I went, by his desire, into a little closet which Cl�ry occupied, and which was separated from the King's chamber only by a thin partition; and while I was occupied with the most overwhelming thoughts I heard the King tranquilly giving directions for the next day, after which he lay down on his bed. At five o'clock he rose and dressed as usual. Soon afterwards he sent for me, and I attended him for nearly an hour in the cabinet, where he had received me the evening before. I found an altar completely prepared in the King's apartment. The commissaries had executed to the letter everything that I had required of them. They had even done more than I had asked, I having only demanded what was indispensable. The King heard Mass. He knelt on the ground without cushion or desk. He then received the Sacrament, after which ceremony I left him for a short time at his prayers. He soon sent for me again, and I found him seated near his stove, where he could scarcely warm himself. 'My God,' said he, 'how happy I am in the possession of my religious principles! Without them what should I now be? But with them how sweet death appears to me! Yes, there dwells on high an uncorruptible Judge from Whom I shall receive the justice refused to me on earth!' The sacred offices I performed at this time prevent my relating more than a few sentences out of many interesting conversations which the King held with me during the last sixteen hours of his life; but by the little that I have told it may be seen how much might be added if it were consistent with my duty to say more. Day began to dawn, and the drums sounded in all the quarters of Paris. An extraordinary movement was heard in the tower--it seemed to freeze the blood in my veins. But the King, more calm than I was, after listening to it for a moment, said to me without emotion: 'It is probably the National Guard beginning to assemble.' In a short time detachments of cavalry entered the court of the Temple, and the voices of officers and the trampling of horses were distinctly heard. The King listened again and said to me with the same composure: 'They seem to be approaching.' On taking leave of the Queen the evening before he had promised to see her again next day, and he wished earnestly to keep his word; but I entreated him not to put the Queen to a trial under which she must sink. He hesitated a moment, and then, with an expression of profound grief, said: 'You are right, sir, it would kill her. I must deprive myself of this melancholy consolation and let her indulge in hope a few moments longer.' From seven o'clock till eight various persons came frequently, under different pretences, to knock at the door of the cabinet, and each time I trembled lest it should be the last. But the King, with more firmness, rose without emotion, went to the door and quietly answered the people who thus interrupted us. I do not know who these men were; but amongst them was one of the greatest monsters that the Revolution had produced. I heard him say to his King, in a tone of mockery, I know not on what subject: 'Oh, that was very well once, but you are not on the throne now.' His Majesty did not answer a word, but returned to me, contenting himself with saying, 'See how these people treat me. But I know how to endure everything.' Another time, after having answered one of the commissaries who came to interrupt us, he returned and said, with a smile, 'These people see poignards and poison everywhere; they fear that I shall destroy myself. Alas! they little know me. To kill myself would indeed be weakness. No, since it is necessary, I know how I ought to die!' We heard another knock at the door--destined to be the last. It was Santerre and his crew. The King opened the door as usual. They announced to him (I could not hear in what terms) that he must prepare for death. 'I am occupied,' said he, with an air of authority. 'Wait for me. In a few minutes I will return to you.' Then, having shut the door, he knelt at my feet. 'It is finished, sir,' he said. 'Give me your last benediction, and pray that it may please God to support me to the end.' He soon arose, and, leaving the cabinet, advanced towards the wretches who were in his bedchamber. Their countenances were embarrassed, yet their hats were not taken off. And the King, perceiving it, asked for his own. Whilst Cl�ry, bathed in tears, ran for it, the King said, 'Are there amongst you any members of the Commune? I charge them to take care of this paper.' It was his will. One of the party took it from the King. 'I recommend also to the Commune Cl�ry my valet. I can only congratulate myself on having had his services. Give him my watch and clothes, not only these I have here, but those that have been deposited at the Commune. I also desire that, in return for the attachment he has shown me, he may be allowed to enter into the Queen's--into my wife's service.' He used both expressions. The King then cried out in a firm tone: 'Let us proceed.' At these words they all moved on. The King crossed the first court, formerly the garden, on foot. He turned back once or twice towards the tower as if to bid adieu to all most dear to him on earth; and by his gestures it was plain that he was then trying to summon his utmost strength and firmness. At the entrance to the second court a carriage waited. Two gendarmes stood at the door. On the King's approach one of these men entered the carriage, and took up his position in front. The King followed and placed me by his side. Then the other gendarme jumped in and shut the door. It is said that one of these men was a priest in disguise. For the honour of religion I hope this may be false. It is also said that they had orders to assassinate the King on the smallest murmurs from the people. I do not know whether this might have been their design, but it seems to me that unless they possessed different arms than those that appeared it would have been difficult to accomplish their purpose, for their muskets only were visible, which it would have been impossible for them to have used. These apprehended murmurs were not imaginary. A great number of people devoted to the King had resolved on tearing him from the hands of his guards, or, at least, of making the attempt. Two of the principal actors, young men whose names are well known, found means to inform me, the night before, of their intentions; and though my hopes were not sanguine, I yet did not despair of rescue even at the foot of the scaffold. I have since heard that the orders for this dreadful morning had been planned with so much art, and executed with so much precision, that, of four or five hundred people thus devoted to their prince twenty-five only succeeded in reaching the appointed rendezvous. In consequence of the measures taken before daybreak in all the streets of Paris, none of the rest were able to get out of their houses. The King, finding himself seated in a carriage where he could neither speak to me nor be spoken to without witness, kept a profound silence. I presented him with my breviary, the only book I had with me, and he seemed to accept it with pleasure. He appeared anxious that I should point out to him the psalms that were best suited to his situation, and he recited them attentively with me. The gendarmes, without speaking, seemed astonished and confounded at the tranquil piety of their monarch, to whom, doubtless, they had never before approached so near. The procession lasted almost two hours. The streets were lined with citizens, all armed, some with pikes and some with guns, and the carriage was surrounded by a body of troops formed from the most desperate people of Paris. As another precaution, they had placed before the horses a great number of drums intended to drown any noise or murmurs in favour of the King. But how could such demonstrations be heard, since nobody appeared either at the doors or windows, and in the street nothing was to be seen but armed citizens--citizens all rushing to the commission of a crime which, perhaps, they detested in their hearts. The carriage proceeded thus in silence to the Place Louis XV., and stopped in a large space that had been left round the scaffold. This space was protected on all sides with cannon, and, beyond, an armed multitude extended as far as the eye could reach. As soon as the King perceived that the carriage was stopping, he turned and whispered to me: 'We have arrived, if I mistake not.' My silence answered that we had. One of the guards came to open the carriage door, and the gendarmes would have jumped out; but the King stopped them, and laying his hand on my knee, said to them in a tone of majesty: 'Gentlemen, I recommend to you this good man. Take care that after my death no insult be offered to him. I charge you to prevent it.' The two men answered not a word. The King was continuing in a louder tone, but one of them stopped him, saying: 'Yes, yes, we will see to it; leave him to us;' and I ought to add that these words were spoken in a tone which would have frozen me if at such a moment it had been possible for me to have thought of myself. As soon as the King had left the carriage, three guards surrounded him and would have taken off his garments, but he repelled them haughtily. He undressed himself, untied his neckcloth, opened his shirt and arranged it himself. The guards, whom the determined countenance of the King had for a moment disconcerted, seemed to recover their audacity. They surrounded him again, and would have seized his hands. 'What are you attempting?' said the King, drawing back his hands. 'To bind you,' answered the wretches. 'To bind me?' said the King with an indignant air. 'No, I shall never consent to that. Do what you have been ordered; but you shall never bind me.' The guards insisted; they raised their voices, and seemed to wish to call on others to aid them.
"Perhaps this was the most terrible moment of the direful morning; another instant and the best of kings would have received from his rebellious subjects indignities too horrid to mention--indignities that would have been to him more insupportable than death. Such was the feeling expressed on his countenance. Turning towards me, he looked at me steadily, as if to ask my advice. Alas! it was impossible for me to give any, and I only answered by silence; but as he continued this fixed look of inquiry I replied, 'Sir, in this new insult I only see another trait of resemblance between your Majesty and the Saviour who is about to recompense you.' At these words he raised his eyes to heaven with an expression that can never be described. 'You are right,' he said, 'nothing less than His example should make me submit to such a degradation.' Then, turning to the guards, he added: 'Do what you will. I will drink of the cup even to the dregs.' The path leading to the scaffold was extremely rough and difficult to pass. The king was obliged to lean on my arm, and from the slowness with which he proceeded I feared for a moment that his courage might fail; so that my astonishment was extreme when, arrived at the last step, he suddenly let go my arm and I saw him cross with a firm foot the breadth of the whole scaffold; silence, by his look alone, fifteen or twenty drums that were placed opposite to him; and in a voice so loud, that it must have been heard at the Pont Tournant, pronounce distinctly these memorable words: 'I die innocent of all the crimes laid to my charge; I pardon those who have occasioned my death; and I pray to God that the blood you are now going to shed may never be visited on France.' He was proceeding, when a man on horseback, in the national uniform, waved his sword, and with a ferocious cry ordered the drums to beat. Many voices were at the same time heard encouraging the executioners. They seemed to have re-animated themselves, and seizing with violence the most virtuous of kings, they dragged him under the axe of the guillotine, which with one stroke severed his head from his body. All this passed in a moment. The youngest of the guards, who seemed about eighteen, immediately seized the head and showed it to the people, as he walked round the scaffold. He accompanied this monstrous ceremony with the most atrocious and indecent gestures. At first an awful silence prevailed; at length some cries of 'Vive la R�publique!' were heard. By degrees the voices multiplied, and in less than ten minutes this cry, a thousand times repeated, became the universal shout of the multitude, and every hat was in the air."
"It is remarkable," writes Mr. Sneyd Edgeworth, the Abb�'s brother, "that in this account of the last moments of Louis XVI., the Abb� Edgeworth has omitted to relate that fine apostrophe, which everyone has heard, and which everyone believes that he addressed to his king at the moment of execution--
"'Fils de St. Louis, montez au ciel!'
"The Abb� Edgeworth has been asked if he recollected to have made this exclamation. He replied that he could neither deny nor affirm that he had spoken the words. It was possible, he added, that he might have pronounced them without afterwards recollecting the fact, for that he retained no memory of anything which happened relative to himself at that awful instant. His not recollecting or recording the words is perhaps the best proof that they were spoken from the impulse of the moment."
The Reign of Terror had now begun. Foreign armies were marching towards Paris in order to liberate the King from prison and replace him on his throne. The Republican Government replied by removing the head of the monarch whom it was prepared to restore.
During the Reign of Terror the Place de la Concorde, as it was afterwards to be called, might fitly have been named, not merely the Place of the Revolution, the title it bore, but the Place of Blood. In the terrible year of 1793 Charlotte Corday was guillotined on the 17th of July; Brissot, leader of the Girondists, with twenty-one of his followers, on the 2nd of October; Queen Marie Antoinette on the 16th of October; and Philippe �galit�, Duke of Orleans (father of Louis Philippe), on the 14th of November. Among the victims of the year 1794 may be mentioned Madame �lizabeth, sister of Louis XVI., who was guillotined on the 12th of May; H�bert and several of his most bloodthirsty associates, who, at the instigation of Robespierre and Danton, lost their heads on the 14th of March; Marat and members of his party, who followed a few days afterwards; Danton himself and a number of his adherents, with the heroic Camille Desmoulins among them, on the 8th of April; Chaumette and Anacharsis Cloots, together with the wives of some previous victims on April 16th; Robespierre, Saint-Just, and other members of the Committee of Public Safety, on July 28th; seventy members of the Commune who had acted under Robespierre's direction on July 29th; and twelve other members of the same body the day afterwards.
One of the most eminent figures in the Girondist party, Lasource, exclaimed to his sanguinary judges, on receiving his sentence: "I die at a moment when the people have lost their reason; you will die the day they regain it."
In reference to Saint-Just's arrogance, Camille Desmoulins had said: "He carries his head with as much veneration as though he were bearing the Church Sacrament on his shoulders;" to which Saint-Just playfully replied: "And I will make him carry his head as St. Denis carried his." St. Denis, the martyr, it will be remembered, is said, after decapitation, to have marched some distance with his head under his arm.
In the course of the two years over which the Reign of Terror extended (though its duration is variously estimated according to the political principles of the calculator) nearly 3,000 persons are declared to have perished on the Place de la R�volution; though this estimate would certainly be regarded by some as excessive, by others as inadequate.
In reference to the Reign of Terror, Victor Hugo calls upon the world "not to criticise too closely the bursting of the thunder-cloud which had been slowly gathering for eighteen centuries;" as though, from the earliest period, France had always been grossly misgoverned, to be suddenly governed in perfection from the time of the Revolution. It is the simple truth, however, that the Reign of Terror was the result, not of the natural development of the Revolutionary forces, but of threats from abroad, the presence, real and imaginary, of foreign agents in Paris, and the advance of the German armies with a view to the liberation of the king and the suppression of the Republic. It ought also in fairness to be remembered that if the Revolutionists made a free use of the guillotine, they abolished torture and the cruel methods of executions (such as beating to death with an iron bar) in use under the ancient monarchy until the moment of the outbreak. Nor can it be forgotten that at various periods of French history (the Massacre of St. Bartholomew is an instance) life has been sacrificed more copiously, more recklessly, and more wantonly, than during the worst excesses of the French Revolution. When many years afterwards it was proposed to erect a fountain on the spot where the scaffold of Louis XVI. had stood, Chateaubriand declared that all the water in the world would not suffice to remove the blood-stains which had sullied the Place.
Of those who suffered under the Revolution, many, such as Robespierre, Danton, and Marat, well deserved their fate, and none more so than the infamous Philippe �galit�, who, after playing the part of a democrat, and democratically voting for the death of his cousin the king, was himself, on democratic grounds, brought to the guillotine.
Writing in the Revue des Deux Mondes four years after Louis Philippe's election to the throne, Chateaubriand reproached the reigning king with being the son of a regicide. Arguing that since the execution of Louis XVI., and as a punishment for that crime, it had become impossible to establish monarchy in France, Chateaubriand added: "Napoleon saw the diadem fall from his brow in spite of his victories; Charles X. in spite of his piety. To discredit the crown finally in the eyes of the nations, it has been permitted to the son of the regicide to be for one moment in the blood-stained bed of the murderer." That Louis Philippe suffered this outburst to be published unchallenged has been regarded as a proof of his extreme tolerance in press matters.
Probably, however, he thought it prudent not to invite general attention to words which by a large portion of his subjects would have been accepted as true. It has been said by the defenders of the "regicide" that Philippe �galit� did his best not to be present at the sitting of the Convention when sentence had to be passed on the unfortunate king; and that he was threatened by his friends of the Left with assassination unless he voted with them for the "death of the tyrant." However that may be, he took his seat among the judges by whom the fate of his royal kinsman was to be decided; and when it came to his turn to deliver his opinion, he did so in these words: "Occupied solely with my duty, convinced that all those who have attacked or might afterwards attack the sovereignty of the people deserve death, I pronounce the death of Louis." Philippe �galit� had looked for general approval, and had voted in fear of that death which awaited him nevertheless, and which came to him in the very form in which a few months before it had been inflicted on the unhappy Louis. When his vote was made known, cries of indignation from all sides warned him that he had transgressed one of the great moral laws which are observed even by men who violate all others. A former soldier of the king's body-guard, hearing of Philippe �galit�'s unnatural offence, resolved to kill him; but not being able to find him, killed another less guilty "regicide" in his place.
Very different was the feeling excited by the conduct of Philippe �galit� in the breast of the king himself. "I don't know by what chance," says the Abb� Edgeworth in his "Relation sur les derniers Moments du Roi," "the conversation fell upon Philippe. The king seemed to be well acquainted with his intrigues, and with the horrid part he had taken at the Convention. But he spoke of him without any bitterness, and with pity rather than anger. 'What have I done to my cousin,' he exclaimed, 'that he should so persecute me? What object could he have? Oh, he is more to be pitied than I am. My lot is melancholy, no doubt, but his is much more so.'"
Under the Directory, when the worst period of the Revolution was at an end, and the Republic itself was disappearing, the Place de la R�volution was called Place de la Concorde, and this name was preserved under the Consulate and the Empire.
[Illustration: PLACE DE LA CONCORDE, FROM THE TERRACE OF THE TUILERIES.]
At the time of the Restoration, when endeavours were made to revive in every form the associations of the old French monarchy, the name of Place de la Concorde was set aside for the original one of Place Louis XV., which, however, in obvious reference to the execution of Louis XV's successor, was changed in 1826 to Place Louis XVI. It was at the same time decreed that a monument should be erected to the memory of the unfortunate monarch, but the decree was never acted upon.
Soon afterwards, in 1828, an order signed by Charles X. gave the place of many names to the town of Paris on condition that it should spend within five years, in completing the architectural and other decorations of the square, a sum of at least 2,230,000 francs.
After the Revolution of 1830 the name of Place de la Concorde was re-adopted; and the Municipality was proceeding as rapidly as possible with the works ordered under the previous reign, when the cholera broke out, causing to the town an expenditure which rendered it necessary to stop the completion of the improvements.
[Illustration: TRIAL OF LOUIS XVI.]
The sum to be applied to the purpose was afterwards reduced to 1,500,000 francs; and this sum was conscientiously spent, but without by any means finishing the design contemplated by the architects.
The fountains, with the Naiads and Tritons, and the eight statues representing in personification the principal sights of Paris, had been duly placed; and in 1836 the Obelisk of Luxor, a present from the Pasha of Egypt, was made the central ornament on the spot which had been successively occupied by the statue of Louis XVI. and the figure of Liberty.
It was not until 1852, under the Empire, that the objects which still on one side mark the limits of the Place were set up. A large number of bronze candelabra which were at the same time fixed in various parts of the square greatly increased at night its picturesqueness and its beauty. For the last forty years the Place de la Concorde has remained as it was under the Empire. The Republic of 1871 could scarcely think it necessary to return to the truly Republican name of Place de la R�volution, which had been preserved for some two or three years during the worst period of the Revolution; and to the embellishment of the Place there was nothing to add. It remains what our Trafalgar Square was once, with or without reason, declared to be--"the finest site in Europe;" less admirable, however, as a mere site, than for the admirable views of such varied kinds that it commands in every direction.
The history of the Place de la Concorde would not be complete without a record of the fact that it has been successively occupied by Russian and Prussian troops (1814); by English troops (1815); and again by Prussian troops (1871). It was the scene, too, in 1871 of a desperate struggle between the Communards and the troops advancing against them from Versailles.
The Column of Austerlitz--The Various Statues of Napoleon Taken Down--The Church of St.-Roch--Mlle. Raucourt--Joan of Arc.
At the point where the long line of boulevards, extending for three miles from the Place de la Bastille to the Madeleine, comes to an end the road bifurcates. The Rue Royale leads in one direction towards the Place de la Concorde, the Rue Castiglione in another towards the Place Vend�me, a square, or rather an octagon, in the middle of which stands the famous column at which the typical French patriot, Le Colonel Chauvin, used to gaze with such enthusiastic admiration.
[Illustration: TOP OF THE VEND�ME COLUMN.]
The Place was constructed by the celebrated architect Mansard. In 1686, on the proposition of Louis XIV.'s minister, Louvois, the formation of the Place in the Faubourg Saint-Honor� was decreed "alike for the decoration of Paris and for facilitating communications in this quarter." Louvois, in the first place, purchased the H�tel de Vend�me in the Rue Saint-Honor�, at the end of the Rue Castiglione, which, together with an adjacent convent, was pulled down. The open space thus obtained was for some time left unoccupied, the king's government being more concerned with works of war than of peace. It was originally intended to give the Place Vend�me the form of a square, with the king's library on one side, and various Government offices, together with mansions for the reception of special envoys, on the other. In carrying out his work Mansard made eight fa�ades instead of the four first contemplated, and in the middle of the octagon he placed an equestrian statue of Louis XIV., twenty-one feet high. The Grand Monarch was attired, according to the sculptural fashion of the time, in Roman costume; and on the pedestal of the statue, which was in white marble, might be read pompous inscriptions in honour of his Majesty's victories.
This statue remained on its pedestal for nearly a century. But on the 10th of August, 1792, when the Revolutionary fury was reaching its acute stage, the effigy was overturned by the people, and the name of Place Vend�me changed to Place des Piques. This eminently anarchical title was preserved until the establishment of the Empire, when Napoleon conceived the idea of the column to which the Place Vend�me now owes its chief importance.
The true name of the column in question is the Column of Austerlitz. So, at least, it was designated by Napoleon; though the French people have persisted in calling it after the place in which it stands. It is a reproduction, as regards form, of the Trajan Column, which, however, is in marble, whereas the Column of the Place Vend�me is in stone covered with bronze castings. The column astonishes by its height, and excites admiration by its harmonious proportions. Few, however, notice the perfection of its details. The stone, of which the monument substantially consists, is covered by 378 sheets of bronze, so perfectly adjusted that the column appears to be one mass of solid metal. On an interminable spiral of low reliefs, the soldiers of the Empire are represented with the uniforms they wore, and the arms they carried. The principal personages are portraits, and the scenes represented are all from the campaign of 1805. The scrolls of bronze on which figure the actors and incidents of the Austerlitz campaign would measure, in one continuous line, more than 260 metres. The column is surmounted by the statue of the man who, in his own honour, erected it, and the base of the statue bears an inscription in these terms:--
"MONUMENT RAISED TO THE GLORY OF THE GRAND ARMY BY NAPOLEON THE GREAT. BEGUN XXV AUGUST, MDCCCVI, FINISHED XV AUGUST, MDCCCX, UNDER THE DIRECTION OF D. V. DENON, DIRECTOR-GENERAL, MM. J. B. LEP�RE AND L. GONDOIN, ARCHITECTS."
The base of the column bears this legend:--
"NEAPOLIO IMP. AUG. MONUMENTUM BELLI GERMANICI ANNO MDCCCV. TRIMESTRI SPATIO DUCTU SUO PROFLIGATI EX �RE CAPTO GLORI� EXERCITUS MAXIMI DICAVAT."
which may be translated as follows:--
"Napoleon, august Emperor, dedicates to the glory of the Grand Army this monument made of bronze taken from the enemy, 1805, in the German War, terminated in three months under his command."
This other very different translation from the same obscure original was suggested by Alexandre Dumas the elder: "Nearchus Polion, General of Augustus, dedicated this war tomb of Germanicus to the glory of the Army of Maximus, in the year 1805, with the money stolen from the vanquished, thanks to his conduct, during the space of three months."
The sheets of bronze employed in the construction of the column would, it has been calculated, weigh 2,000,000 kilogrammes, about 4,000,000 pounds; and the metal was all obtained from the guns of the defeated armies. In 1814, the day after the entry of the allied troops into Paris, it was proposed to pull down the statue of Napoleon, costumed and crowned like a Roman emperor, from its proud position at the top of the Austerlitz Column; and with this view a cable was thrown round the Emperor's neck, the lower part of his legs having been previously sawn through so that he might fall with ease. The statue, however, stood firm. The angle at which the engineers were operating did not enable them to pull the statue sufficiently forward; and to tug at the cable was only to hold it faster to its base.
A zealous royalist now came forward in the person of M. de Montbadon, chief of staff to the Paris garrison. Empowered by MM. Polignac and Semall�, commissaries of the Count of Artois, to take whatever measures he might think necessary, M. de Montbadon applied to Launay, who had made the castings for the column and had cast the statue itself. He who had made could also unmake, argued M. de Montbadon. But he had reckoned without Launay himself, who refused indignantly to do the work required of him. Thereupon he was taken to the headquarters, where an order was served upon him in these terms: "We command the said M. Launay, under pain of military execution, to proceed at once to the operation in question, which must be terminated by midnight on Wednesday, April 6th." This order, according to the well-informed Larousse, is dated April 4th, and signed Rochechouard, colonel aide-de-camp of H.M. the Emperor of Russia commanding the garrison. M. Pasquier, Prefect of Police, wrote on the document, "to be executed immediately." The National Guard was at that time on duty around the monument. Whether from a feeling of shame or of mistrust, the French National Guards were replaced by Russian troops. Launay now raised the statue by means of wedges, and let it down with pulleys. No sooner had the bronze figure touched the ground than it was replaced on the summit of the column by the white flag of the old monarchy. "Then," says Launay in an account he has left of the affair, "cries were heard of 'Long live the King!' ' Long live Louis XVIII.!'" This was on April 8th, at six in the evening, the operation having lasted four days, at an expense to the nation of only 4,815 francs 46 centimes. Launay obtained permission to take away the statue and keep it in his workshop as security for the payment of 80,000 francs still due to him from the Government as founder of the column. On the return of Napoleon from Elba Launay was forced by the Imperial police to give up the statue; and when, after the Hundred Days, the monarchy was a second time restored, the statue, a masterpiece of Chaudet, was melted down, and the metal used by Lemot for a new equestrian statue of Henri IV.
Soon after the accession of Louis Philippe--a more popular sovereign than the legitimate King Charles X., whom, at the end of the Revolution of 1830, he succeeded--the Chambers passed a resolution for crowning the Vend�me Column once more with a statue of Napoleon. A competition was opened, and the model of a statue by M. Seurre was selected from a great number sent in. It was cast in bronze, and inaugurated with great show on the 28th of July, 1833, during the annual festivities in celebration of the Revolution of 1830. The Army and the National Guard were represented in force on this solemn occasion; and Louis Philippe, on horseback, in the midst of his staff, removed with his own hands the veil which concealed the statue from the eyes of the crowd. He then saluted, in this bronze effigy, the conqueror of Continental Europe; who, thanks in a great measure to the revived worship of Bonapartism, was in less than twenty years to be succeeded by a new emperor of the same dynasty.
The Napoleon who now took his place at the top of the column was more in harmony with the details of the structure representing French generals and French soldiers than the Roman Emperor so rudely dethroned in 1814 had been. The new Napoleon was the Napoleon of real life and of B�ranger's songs, the Petit Caporal wearing his redingote grise, and standing in a characteristic attitude, with one of his hands behind his back. Instead of the laurel wreath he wore on his head the traditional petit chapeau.
[Illustration: THE PLACE VEND�ME.]
It seemed, however, to Napoleon III. that his uncle's own design ought to be respected; and in 1864 the statue of Napoleon "in his habit as he lived" was replaced by a statue after the model of the original one, representing the conqueror of Austerlitz in the conventional garb of a Roman emperor. The more realistic statue was placed in the middle of the rond-point of Courbevoie.
Under the Commune the statue and the column itself were pulled down. The eminent painter, Courbet, had formed a project for replacing the column, which was only a monument of the victories gained by France at the expense of her plundered and humiliated neighbours, by one made out of French and German cannon in honour of the Federation of Nations and the Universal Republic. Courbet is said to have invited the Prussians to join him in carrying out this idea, which could not in any respect have suited their views. No period of French history, however, has been more diversely narrated than that of the Commune. One thing is certain; that the column fell, and in its descent went to pieces. The statue, too, suffered greatly by the fall. One of the legs was broken, and the head got separated from the body. A speech in honour of the Commune's mechanical triumph over the Imperial "idea" was pronounced by General Bergeret.
After the suppression of the Commune the Assembly of Versailles ordered the re-establishment of the Vend�me column, which was duly set up in 1875. The interior construction of stone was entirely new. So also, as regards form, was the bronze plating, the scrolls being recast from the moulds preserved since the time of the first Empire. It had been decreed that the column should be surmounted by a statue of France. But this idea was not carried out, and, in conformity with another decree, Dumont's statue, as set up by Napoleon III. in 1864, was, after being repaired, put back in its former position.
The pedestal at the top of the column has turn by turn been surmounted by the statue of Napoleon disguised as a Roman emperor; by the white flag of the ancient monarchy; by the statue of Napoleon in his ordinary military garb; by the statue of Napoleon once more costumed as a Roman Emperor; by the red flag of the Commune; and finally once again by the most recent statue in classic garb.
The French seem at last to understand as a nation that, apart from all question of politics, the Napoleonic period was one of the most glorious of their history.
At the corner of the Rue Castiglione stands the magnificent H�tel Continental; which, independently of its positive attractions, possesses interest as occupying the site on which once stood the Ministry of Finance--burnt to the ground under the Commune in obedience to the famous, or infamous, telegraphic order: "Flambez Finances."
On the west side of the Place Vend�me is the Ministry of Justice. The H�tel du Rhin on the south side was the residence of Napoleon III. when he was a member of the National Assembly in 1848, before his election to the post of President, followed by his self-appointment (1851) to the dignity, first of President for ten years and a year afterwards of Emperor. In one of his letters of the 1848 period, inviting a friend to dinner at the H�tel du Rhin, he apologised for proposing to entertain him at a "cabaret," a pleasantly contemptuous designation which the commodious and well-appointed H�tel du Rhin scarcely deserved.
The H�tel du Rhin played a certain strategic part towards the end of May, 1871, when on the 23rd the Versailles troops passed through the hotel, and, attacking the insurgents in the rear, captured one of their principal barricades. The proprietor of the hotel, M. Mar�chal, is said, on the occasion of the Vend�me column being threatened by the Communists, to have offered them 500,000 francs if they would spare it. "Give us a million and we will see!" was the answer; but the patriotic hotel-keeper, though he had the misfortune to see the column knocked down, lived to behold its restoration.
The Rue Castiglione, which on the other side of the Place Vend�me continues southward towards the Rue de Rivoli and the Tuileries Gardens under the name of Rue de la Paix, is crossed, at the point where it changes its title, by the Rue Saint-Honor�. Here, close to the Place Vend�me, stands the ancient and interesting Church of Saint-Roch.
The origin of this church was a chapel dedicated to the five wounds of Jesus, which, in 1577, was rebuilt on a much larger scale under the name of Saint-Roch, to be made, in 1633, the parochial church of the western part of Paris. The building in its present form dates from 1653, and it was not finished until 1736. Right and left of the principal entrance will be observed two statues, representing the two St. Rochs: one of them the pilgrim from Languedoc who cured the plague, accompanied by his legendary dog; the other the Bishop of Autun, mitre on head and staff in hand.
Saint-Roch has been described as "the first parish church in France." It contains a number of statues and pictures by famous artists, such as Falconnet, Pradier, and Constan; Vien, Doyen, Deveria, Boulanger, and Abel de Pujol; also many interesting tombs, including that of the great Corneille, who died on the 1st of October, 1684, in the Rue d'Argenteuil at a house which not long ago was pulled down.
On the 1st of October, 1884, the Cur� of Saint-Roch performed a funeral service to commemorate the two hundredth anniversary of the poet's death; to which were invited the managers and the whole company of the Com�die Fran�aise. What a change did this mark in the views and feelings of the French clergy since the time, scarcely more than fifty years distant, when the Cur� of Saint-Roch refused Christian burial to a celebrated actress who had relinquished her profession, and since her retirement had made abundant gifts through the clergy of Saint-Roch to the poor of the parish.
"Mlle. Raucourt," says a writer on this subject, "had a better opinion of the Restoration than had the Restoration of Mlle. Raucourt. The clergy of the restored dynasty had shown itself in many ways intolerant; and Mlle. Raucourt's funeral was the occasion of a riot which threatened at one time to become formidable. The Cur� of St.-Roch would not allow the body to be brought into his church, though he is said to have received again and again gifts from the actress, either for the church or for the poor of his parish. Only a few days beforehand, on the first day of the year, she had sent him an offering of five hundred francs. Representations were made to the clergy, but without avail. At last an indignant crowd broke open the church doors. Meanwhile, Louis XVIII., informed of what was taking place, had ordered one of his chaplains to go to Saint-Roch, and there, replacing the Cur�, perform the funeral service. The soldiers had been called out, but they were judiciously withdrawn: they were kept, that is to say, in an attitude only of observation, while a crowd that was constantly increasing followed the corpse of Mlle. Raucourt to the cemetery of P�re-la-Chaise." While the public excitement was at its height, one of the deceased actress's friends remarked: "If poor Raucourt could only see from her heavenly home what a scandal she is causing, how delighted she would be!"
Among the various illustrious persons buried at Saint-Roch may be mentioned Diderot, to whose interment in 1784, five years before the Revolution, the clergy seem to have made no objection. The statue of Mary Magdalene in the Calvary sculpture reproduces the features of the Countess de Feuqui�res, cut in white marble by Lemoine. This figure originally formed part of the tomb of the Countess's father, Mignard, the celebrated painter, whose bust by Desjardins is preserved at Saint-Roch. Here may also be seen medallions of Marshal d'Asfeld, of the Duke de Les Aigui�res and of Count d'Harcourt; the statue of the Duke de Cr�qui, and the monuments of Maupertuis, the philosopher, and of the benevolent Abb� de l'�p�e.
On the high ground, at some little distance from the Church of Saint-Roch, is the Butte Saint-Roch, already referred to as the camping-ground of the Maid of Orleans when the king's army was besieging Paris. Since Joan of Arc has been sung by great poets, impersonated by great actresses, and set to music by great composers, with Gounod and Verdi among them, all France has admired the warlike heroine; but while the Maid of Orleans was striving against the enemies of her country, the Parisians preferred the government of the English king to that of the lawful inheritor of the French Crown. Hating all the partisans of Charles VII., they detested Joan of Arc, who had restored the courage of his followers, and was in consequence looked upon in Paris as a doubtful sort of witch, whose prophecies were so many deceptions.
A Parisian writer quoted by Dulaure says, in relating the incidents of his time, that Joan of Arc was a vicious creature in the form of a woman; "called," he ironically adds, "a maid, as she doubtless was."
On the day of the Nativity of the Virgin, 1429, the Maid of Orleans and the king's troops lay siege to Paris. The assault commenced at eleven o'clock in the day, between the gate of Saint-Honor� and that of Saint-Denis. The Maid advanced, planted her standard on the edge of the moat, and addressed these words to the Parisians: "Surrender in the name of Jesus; for if you do not give in before night we will enter by force whether you like it or not, and you will all be put to death without mercy."
Insulting names were applied to her by one of the besieged, who at the same time fired an arrow which pierced her leg. Thereupon she took to flight, when her standard-bearer was also wounded in the leg. He stopped and raised the visor of his helmet in order to pull out the arrow. A second one was now shot at him, which struck him between the eyes and killed him. The prediction of the Maid was not fulfilled on this occasion, for Paris did not surrender.
Some time afterwards two women were arrested at Corbeil and thrown into prison at Paris. They were accused of believing and saying to everyone that the Maid of Orleans was sent from God; that Jesus often appeared to her, and that the last time she had seen Him He was clothed in a long white robe with a scarlet cloak above it. The elder of the two women refused to retract, and was consequently, on the 3rd of September, 1430, burnt alive.
Some time after the burning of the Maid herself at Rouen, an inquisitor of the Jacobin order, master in theology, preached at Paris in the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields; and his sermon was nothing less than a violent satire against the courageous girl. He said in the pulpit that from the age of fourteen she had been in the habit of wearing men's clothes; that her parents would have killed her had they not been afraid of wounding their conscience; that she quitted her family accompanied by the devil, and became a slayer of Christians; and that since that time she had committed an infinity of murders; that in prison she caused herself to be waited on like a lady, and the devils came to her in the form of St. Catherine, St. Marguerite, and St. Michael. He added that, having been frightened into quitting her man's apparel to dress like a woman, the devil made her resume her customary dress, though he did not come to her succour at her execution as she had expected.
This monk said moreover in this remarkable sermon that there were four Maids: namely, the two taken at Corbeil, one of whom was burnt at Paris; Jeanne d'Arc, burnt at Rouen; and the fourth, called Cath�rine de la Rochelle, who followed the army of Charles VII., and who had visions like Joan of Arc.
Ten years after the execution of Joan of Arc another Maid appeared, and the people firmly believed that this was the same one who had been burnt at Rouen, and who had miraculously risen from the dead. Another version was that someone had been executed in her place.
[Illustration: RUE CASTIGLIONE.]
"What appears strange," says Dulaure in the "Singularit�s Historiques," "and what perhaps suggested the idea put forth in our century that Joan of Arc was not burnt, and that she even left descendants, is that the inhabitants of Orleans who saw this Maid took her for Joan of Arc, and in consequence paid her much honour."
The University and the Parliament of Paris, who ten years before had condemned the veritable Maid, wished now to deceive the people. They brought the false Maid by force to Paris, exhibited her publicly in the principal court of the Palace of Justice, and made her stand up on the famous marble slab and there pronounce a biographical confession, in which she declared that she was not a Maid; that she had been married to a knight by whom she had had two sons; that in a moment of anger against one of her neighbours, instead of striking one of the women she quarrelled with she struck her mother who was holding her back; that she had also struck priests or clerks in defence of her own honour, and that to obtain absolution for her crime she had been to Rome, and in order to make the journey in safety had put on man's clothes; finally, that she had served as a soldier in the army of the Pope, and while so serving had committed two homicides. The speech and the ceremony being finished, the Maid left Paris and returned to the war.
[Illustration: A FIRST NIGHT AT THE COM�DIE FRAN�AISE.--THE FOYER.]
The Jacobins--Chateaubriand's Opinion of Them--Arthur Young's Descriptions--The New Club.
Between the Church of St. Roch and the Place Vend�me is the Rue du March� and the March�, or market, itself; chiefly interesting at the present day as occupying the ground on which stood the ancient Monastery of the Jacobins, where from 1791 to 1794--from before the beginning until the very end of the Reign of Terror--the meetings of the famous Jacobin Club were held.
[Illustration: MIRABEAU.]
The name of Jacobin soon became familiar in England, and, as in France itself when the fury of the Revolution was quite at an end, was often applied as a term of reproach to all persons of Liberal ideas. The word, however, is now chiefly known among us from the Anti-Jacobin of Canning and Frere, and latterly from the excellent, but short-lived, weekly newspaper of the same name edited by Mr. Frederick Greenwood.
Under the Restoration, everyone in France who was not an ardent supporter of the ancient monarchy was called a Jacobin. But though towards the end of the Revolution Jacobinism became something hateful indeed, the principles which first brought the Jacobins together were such as neither lovers of liberty nor lovers of order could object to.
In 1789 a number of popular associations were rapidly organised; this being the natural result of the reactionary feeling against a system which had subjected books, newspapers, and even conversation in public places (such as caf�s) to a rigid censorship supported by officials and by spies. A passion suddenly arose throughout France for public speaking, and in a thousand different assemblies orators were formed. The States-General had just met; and, not content with the formal sittings, the deputies loved to address in a direct manner the outside public. With this view, the deputies from Brittany established a club called the Breton Club, which was joined by other deputies, and which presently changed its title to "Society of the Friends of the Constitution." This association included men of all shades of politics, who were afterwards to make war upon one another. Among the most famous may be mentioned Siey�s, Volney, Barnave, P�tion, Barr�re, Lameth, Robespierre, the Duke of Orleans (Philippe �galit�), the Duke de La Rochefoucauld, Boissy d'Anglas, Talleyrand, La Fayette, and Mirabeau. The Society had its head-quarters at Versailles, in a building called Le Reposoir, which, later on, became a Protestant church.
After the days of October the Assembly followed the King to Paris; and the famous club was established, first in a large hall which served as library to the Dominican monks at the convent of the Rue Saint-Honor�, and afterwards, when this order had been dissolved, in the Convent Church. As the Dominicans were more generally spoken of as the Jacobins, the latter name was soon applied to the Friends of the Constitution, who willingly adopted it. The same thing, strangely enough, happened to the Cordeliers and the Feuillants; so that the principal Revolutionary parties got to be known throughout Europe by appellations formerly monastic.
What is still more curious is that the last of the Jacobin monks (in 1789 and 1790) took part in the meetings of which their convent was the scene, as, in like manner, did the last members of the Order of Cordeliers. The Jacobin Club possessed a large staff of officers, including a president, vice-president, four secretaries, twelve inspectors, four censors, eight commissaries, treasurer, and librarian, all appointed at quarterly elections. The privilege of membership was only granted under very strict conditions, and every newly-elected Jacobin had, before being formally admitted, to take the following oath:--
"I swear to live free or die; to remain faithful to the principles of the Constitution; to obey the laws; to cause them to be respected; to help with all my might to make them perfect; and to conform to the customs and regulations of the society."
The sittings were held, first three, then four times a week. Little by little, however, the usual course in such assemblies was drifted into. The leaders went to extremes, and soon the most extravagant of them obtained the largest following. Then the moderate members retired to form counter-associations, until in time the hostile organisations made war upon one another, with the guillotine as their final weapon.
"The Jacobins," says Michelet, "by their esprit de corps, which went on constantly increasing, by their hardened, uncompromising faith, by their harsh, inquisitorial ways, had something of a priestly character. They formed a sort of revolutionary clergy."
Another great admirer of the Revolution, and especially of Robespierre, in whom the principle of Jacobinism was incarnate, sums up the Jacobin spirit in the following words:--
"Hatred of the conventional inequalities of former times, of unalterable beliefs, a sort of methodical fanaticism, intolerance of all that interfered with the development of the most daring innovations, and, fundamentally, a passion for regular forms; these, whatever may be said on the subject, were the components of the Jacobin spirit. The true Jacobin had something about him at once powerful, original and sombre. He stood midway between the agitator and the statesman; between the Protestant and the Monk; between the inquisitor and the tribune. Hence that ferocious vigilance transformed into a virtue: that spy system raised to the rank of a patriotic organisation: and that mania for denunciation, which made people at first laugh, and at last tremble."
France, like England soon afterwards, had its Anti-Jacobin. Les Sabbats Jacobites was the title of the French publication, and the Jacobin "mania for denunciation" was thus satirised in its columns:--
Je d�nonce l'Allemagne, Le Portugal et l'Espagne, Le Mexique et la Champagne, La Sardaigne et le P�rou. Je d�nonce l'ltalie, L'Afrique et la Barbarie, L'Angleterre et la Russie Sans m�me excepter Moscou.
In spite of these attacks and a thousand others, the importance of the Jacobin Club went on constantly increasing; and at the funeral of Mirabeau, who died in the first year of the Revolution, the President of the Jacobin Club marched side by side with the President of the National Assembly, and had precedence of the Ministers. After the death of Mirabeau the influence of the Lameths, the Duports, the Barnaves, etc., gave way to that of Robespierre, in whom, says Louis Blanc, "Jacobinism in its extremest points was personified."
Chateaubriand, the Royalist, ought, however, to be heard on this subject as well as Louis Blanc, the Republican; and this is what the former writes in his "Essay on Revolutions," published in 1797:--
"Much has been said about the Jacobins, but few people have known them. Nearly everyone rushes into declamations, and publishes the crimes of this society without enlightening us as to the general principle which directed its views. This principle consisted in a system of perfection towards which the first step to take was to restore the laws of Lycurgus. If, moreover, it be considered that France is indebted to the Jacobins for its numerous armies, courageous and disciplined; that it was the Jacobins who found the means of paying them, and of victualling a country without resources and surrounded by enemies; that it was they who created a navy as if by miracle, and who, through intrigues and money, ensured the neutrality of some of the powers; that under their reign the greatest discoveries in natural history were made, and great generals formed; that, in a word, they gave vigour to a warlike body, and, so to say, organised anarchy; one must then of necessity admit that these monsters, escaped from hell, had infernal talents."
In 1791 the Jacobins were still Royalists, not from attachment to the Monarchy, but from a scrupulous regard for Constitutional legality. Nevertheless, after the flight to Varennes they departed from their former principles so far as to demand the abdication of the king. The next day, however, on the proposition of Robespierre, they returned to their customary prudence, pronounced against the Republic, and sent commissaries to the Champ de Mars to take back their demand.
In connection with most of the great revolutionary events their conduct was the same, though the aristocratic Jacobins of 1789 had now quitted the society, to be replaced by men of extreme views--journalists, orators, and members of the National Assembly, who desired to place themselves in direct contact with the outside world.
Among the questions put to candidates for election to the Jacobin Club were the following: "What were you in 1789? What have you done since? What was your fortune until 1789, and what is it now?" Every candidate was bound to answer all questions addressed to him, and he was to do this publicly in a loud voice. Anyone rejected by the Jacobin Club became at once an object of suspicion; and to be denounced by the Jacobin leaders was to receive a sentence of death. In this way perished the unfortunate Anacharsis Clootz, Fabre d'�glantine, and many others.
At the critical moment the Jacobins remained faithful to the fortune of their chief. On the news of his arrest they ordered permanent sittings and voted unanimously their approval of the insurrectionary attitude of the Paris Commune. They spoke of resistance. But, though men of action abounded in the Jacobin Club, the members, as a body, were pusillanimous and could do nothing.
Arthur Young in his "Travels in France" gives an interesting account of a meeting, which he attended, of the Jacobin Club at the time of the Revolution:--
"At night," he says, writing in diary form, "M. Decretot and M. Blin carried me to the revolutionary club of the Jacobins; the room where they assemble is that in which the famous league was signed. There were above one hundred deputies present, with a president in the chair; I was handed to him and announced as the author of the Arithm�tique Politique. The President, standing up, repeated my name to the company and demanded if there were any objections. None; and this was all the ceremony, not merely of an introduction, but election; for I was told that now I was free to be present when I pleased, being a foreigner. Ten or a dozen other elections were made. In this Club the business that is to be brought into the National Assembly is regularly debated; the motions are read that are intended to be made there, and rejected, or corrected and approved. When these have been fully agreed to, the whole party are engaged to support them. Plans of conduct are here determined; proper persons nominated to act on committees and as presidents of the Assembly named. And I may add that such is the majority of members that whatever passes in this Club is almost sure to pass in the Assembly."
Arthur Young also gives a description of a debate in the National Assembly on the subject of the conduct of the Chamber of Vacation in the Parliament of Rennes.
[Illustration: ROBESPIERRE.]
M. l'Abb� Maury, a zealous royalist, "made a long and eloquent speech, which he delivered with great fluency and precision and without any notes, in defence of the Parliament; he replied to what had been urged by the Count de Mirabeau on a former day, and strongly censured his unjustifiable call on the people of Bretagne to a redoutable d�nombrement. He said that it would better become the members of such an assembly to count their own principles and duties and the fruits of their attention to the privileges of the subject than to call for a d�nombrement that would fill a province with fire and bloodshed. He was interrupted by the noise and confusion of the Assembly and of the audience six several times, but it had no effect on him; he waited calmly till it subsided, and then proceeded as if no interruption had occurred. The speech was a very able one and much relished by the Royalists; but the enrag�s condemned it as good for nothing. No other person spoke without notes; the Count de Clermont read a speech that had some brilliant passages, but was by no means an answer to the Abb� Maury, as, indeed, it would have been wonderful if it were, being prepared before he heard the Abb�'s oration.... Disorder and every kind of confusion prevails now almost as much as when the Assembly sat at Versailles. The interruptions are frequent and long, and speakers who have no right by the rules to speak will attempt to hold forth. The Count de Mirabeau pressed to deliver his opinion after the Abb� Maury; the president put it to the vote whether he should be allowed to speak a second time, and the whole house rose up to negative it, so that the first orator of the Assembly has not the influence even to be heard to explain. We have no conception of such rules, and yet their great numbers must make this necessary. I forgot to observe that there is a gallery at each end of the saloon which is open to all the world, and side ones for admission of the friends of the members by tickets. The audience in these galleries are very noisy; they clap when anything pleases them, and they have been known to hiss, an indecorum which is utterly destructive of freedom of debate."
[Illustration: THE PALAIS ROYAL.]
With Robespierre the grand period of the Jacobins came to an end, and nearly a hundred and twenty of them perished on the scaffold. Their hall was now closed and the club forbidden to meet except as a "regenerated society." At last the Committees of Public Safety and of General Security issued a decree which put an end to the Society of Jacobins.
In the year 1796 a new Jacobin club was formed in the Riding School of the Tuileries, which soon afterwards moved to the church in the Rue du Bac, and boldly announced that it meant to revive the Jacobin traditions. "Jacobins of the Riding School" this society was called, and, after some ridicule (for the French public had grown sick of the Revolution), it was suppressed by an order from the Directory (1799).
The Jacobin Club, however, as Arthur Young knew and described it, not only dictated the proceedings of the National Assembly, using this body as a sort of tool or cat's-paw by which it practically governed France, but exerted such an influence on Parisian society that enthusiasm for Liberal ideas took possession even of the fair sex. "The present devotion to liberty," he writes, "is a sort of rage. It absorbs every other passion and permits no other object to remain in view than what promises to confirm it. Dine with a large party at the Duke de La Rochefoucauld's, ladies and gentlemen are all equally politicians." Young adds, however, that one effect of the Revolution was to lessen the enormous influence of the gentler sex. Previously they had "mixed themselves in everything in order to govern everything," and the men of the kingdom had been mere "puppets moved by their wives." But now, "instead of giving the ton to questions of national debate, they must receive it and be content to move in the political sphere of some celebrated leader." They were thus sinking into the position which, as Young considered, Nature had intended for them; and he maintained that the daughters of France would now become "more amiable and the nation better governed."
Richelieu's Palace--The Regent of Orleans--The Duke of Orleans--Dissipation in the Palais Royal--The Palais National--The Birthplace of Revolutions.
The whole history of Paris may be read along the line of the Boulevards, and the whole life of the capital observed there in concentrated form. The Palais Royal, however, with its theatres, its restaurants, its shops of all kinds, its galleries, and its gardens, is in scarcely a less degree an epitome of Paris. It was formerly known as the Palais Cardinal, in memory of Richelieu, by whom, in its original shape, it was constructed. Richelieu afterwards made such frequent additions to the building that it lost all symmetry. In one of the wings a theatre was constructed; though it was not here, but in a large drawing-room, that the Cardinal's tragedies, Eutrope and Mirame, were played. The palace, with its lateral developments, assumed at last the form of a quadrangle with a large garden in the interior. It suffered from the irremediable fault of not having been constructed from the first on a definite plan. But the garden, the fountain, the jewellers' shops, the booksellers' stalls, give the place a physiognomy of its own, and cause the beholder to overlook all architectural defects.
Having completed his palace, and convinced himself that he had constructed an edifice worthy the acceptance of his sovereign, Richelieu presented it to Louis XIII. (1636), afterwards confirming the gift in his will (1642). Corneille, the recipient now of favours, now of slights from the great Cardinal, wrote, in an admiring mood, of the Cardinal's palace the following lines:--
"Non, l'univers entier ne peut rien voir d'�gal Aux superbes dehors du Palais-Cardinal. Toute une ville enti�re, avec pompe b�tie, Semble d'un vieux foss� par miracle sortie, Et nous fait pr�sumer, � ses superbes toits, Que tous ses habitants sont des dieux ou des rois."[B]
[B] "No, the entire universe can behold nothing equal to the superb exterior of the Palais-Cardinal. The whole town, splendidly built, seems to have sprung by a miracle out of an old ditch, making one fancy from its magnificent roofs that all its inhabitants must be gods or kings."
In spite of Corneille's praise, Louis XIII. seems to have thought but little of his minister's gift. Nor could he in any case have turned it to much account, for he did not survive the astute counsellor for more than a year.
Louis XIV. passed some years of his childhood at the Palais-Cardinal, to which the name of Palais Royal was now given. Here the minister Mazarini, or Mazarin, resided during the troubles of the Fronde, and here it was that he heard the populace sing couplets about the Facchino Italiano. "They sing; they shall pay!" murmured the minister. But he was obliged all the same to take flight; and with the queen regent and the infant king he sought refuge at Saint-Germain. Never afterwards would the proud monarch inhabit the Palais Royal, which he assigned as a place of residence to Henrietta of France, Queen of England, and widow of Charles I. Afterwards, in 1692, Louis XIV. gave the Palais Royal as an absolute gift to his nephew, Philip of Orleans, Duke of Chartres, on the occasion of that prince's marriage. The Palace had now been increased by the addition of the H�tel Dauville in the adjacent Rue Richelieu, and of a gallery constructed by the celebrated architect Mansard.
The Regent of Orleans turned the theatre of Richelieu into an opera house, where he gave a number of masked balls which are remembered in history. Nor is the profligate life of which the Palais Royal now became the scene by any means forgotten. The theatre having been burnt down, the regent insisted on its being restored at the expense of the town; which was accordingly done. But the theatre was again destroyed by fire in 1781; and the Duke of Chartres, afterwards known during the Revolution as Philippe �galit�, the father of King Louis Philippe, instead of rebuilding it, constructed the three galleries surrounding the garden which still exist. The idea of three such galleries, communicating with the body of the palace, is said to have been entertained by Richelieu himself.
As prodigal as his grandfather, the regent, the Duke of Orleans, was obliged to have recourse to various expedients for replenishing his exhausted exchequer. It occurred to him to turn the galleries of the Palais Royal into long lines of shops. This involved the expenditure of a considerable sum of money, but the result was most remunerative. The new Palais Royal became a centre of attraction to all Paris. Around the garden the three galleries, together with the one still known as the Galerie d'Orl�ans, formed a sort of bazaar, where jewellery, fans, and ornaments of all kinds were offered for sale. The shops were varied by caf�s and restaurants. In the garden the Caf� de la R�gence was established, and the Richelieu Theatre being once more rebuilt, now formed the home of the Com�die Fran�aise. Towards the end of the Monarchical period the Palais Royal became a recognised place of dissipation. In contrast with the loose morality of the locality was the rigid exactitude with which, every day at noon, a cannon in the centre of the garden, fired by the rays of the sun through a powerful lens, announced the hour; and crowds of people used to assemble round it, watch in hand, towards twelve o'clock. Walking through the Palais Royal one day with the Duke of Orleans, the Abb� Delille was requested by the Prince to sum up in a few words his ideas of the place, and did so in the following quatrain:--
"Dans ce jardin tout se rencontre, Except� l'ombrage et les fleurs. Si l'on y d�r�gle ses moeurs, Du moins on y r�gle sa montre."[C]
[C] "In this garden one may meet with everything, except shade and flowers. In it, if one's morals go wrong, at least one's watch may be set right."
After the execution of the Duke of Orleans, who, having had the infamy to vote for the death of his blameless relative Louis XVI., was himself, by a mild retribution, to perish on the scaffold, the Palais Royal was appropriated by the State, and the place was now invaded by all the ruffians and reprobates of Paris. Let us on this subject hear Mercier in his "Tableau de Paris." "The Athenians," he writes, "raised temples to their Phrynes; curs find them in this enclosure already built. Speculators and their correlatives go three times a day to the Palais Royal, the centre of political and every other kind of debauchery. Some are occupied with the rise and fall of the funds. Gaming-tables are kept in every caf�, and it is a sight to see the sudden change in the expression of the players' faces as they lose or win. The Palais Royal is an elegant box of Pandora, beautifully carved, delicately worked, but containing what everyone knows it contains. All these followers of Sardanapalus or of Lucullus inhabit the Palais Royal, in apartments which the King of Assyria and the Roman Emperors would have envied." Under the Directory the number of gambling houses was limited, first to four, afterwards to eight; and it was not until the reign of Louis Philippe that they were finally suppressed. The gambling house at Number 113 figures in the "Peau de Chagrin" of Balzac; also in Dumas' "Femme au Collier de Velours."
As for the "Palace"--the mansion inhabited by Mazarin and the infant Louis XIV., afterwards by Henrietta of England, and then by various members of the Orleans family--Napoleon established public offices in it. During the Hundred Days the palace was occupied by Lucien Bonaparte, and on the restoration of the Monarchy the whole place was bought back from the Government by the then Duke of Orleans, afterwards Louis Philippe. Some changes were made in the direction of the galleries, the popularity of which remained as great as ever. Nor was this diminished by the foreign occupation, for the Palais Royal was thronged day and night by officers of the Allied Army. It was now that the Caf� Lemblin became the head-quarters of Bonapartist officers on half-pay, and the Caf� des Mille Colonnes that of the officers serving in the newly organised Royalist army; and between the two bodies of officers numerous duels were fought. An ingenious rhymed description of the Palais Royal in its best and worst days has been left by D�saugiers, the celebrated songwriter of the period before B�ranger, of which we may quote the concluding lines, telling how the resort, from being the scene of political storms, came to be the general rendez-vous of pleasure-seekers of every kind and every nationality, from the Fleming to the Turk, and from the genius to the fool:--
"Si de maint politique orage Le Palais Royal Devint le th��tre infernal, Du gai carnaval Il est aujourd'hui l'h�ritage: Jeu, spectacle, bal Y sont dans leur pays natal, Flamand, Proven�al, Turc, Africain, Chinois, sauvage, Au moindre signal Tout se trouve au Palais Royal. Bref, s�jour banal, Du grand, du sot, du fou, du sage, Le Palais Royal Est le rendez-vous g�n�ral."
[Illustration: GARDENS OF THE PALAIS ROYAL.]
Reformed in so many respects under the reign of Louis Philippe, the Palais Royal was destined at the same time to be overshadowed by the increasing importance of the Boulevards.
After the Revolution of 1848 the Palais Royal, now styled Palais National, was once more treated as State property. Under the Second Empire it became the residence of Prince Jerome, succeeded by his son, Prince Napoleon. On the ornamentation of the portico, some fleurs de lis dating from the time of Richelieu, which the Revolutionists of 1789 and of 1848 had forgotten to scrape off, were erased and replaced by Imperial eagles, themselves destined to disappear in the revolution of the 4th of September, 1871, when, at the same time, the Republican motto, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," was restored. Meanwhile, on the 23rd of May, 1871, while the expiring Commune was still struggling against the army of Versailles, the palace was invaded by the Communards and set in flames. The whole of the left wing, with part of the central pavilion, was burnt down. In the midst of the general incendiarism, the Th��tre Fran�ais, which may be regarded as an annexe of the Palais Royal, though it is entered from the Rue Richelieu, had itself a narrow escape from fire.
The Palais Royal was destined to be the birthplace of more than one revolution. It was here that the great movement of 1789, and the minor one of July, 1830, began. The revolution of July seems, in the first instance, to have been intended simply as a protest, an act of resistance against arbitrary measures--and in particular against the muzzling of the Press to such an extent as to render it impossible under modern conditions to publish a newspaper. The celebrated ordonnances had the immediate effect of throwing a multitude of journeyman printers out of work, and it was by these men that in one part of the city the insurrection was commenced. With them the question was not a political one in theory alone; it was a question whether they should get the hateful ordonnances repealed or remain without work: that is to say, starve.
[Illustration: THE PALAIS ROYAL AFTER THE SIEGE.]
The 26th of July passed off very calmly in Paris as a whole. At the Palais Royal, however, some young men were seen mounting chairs, as formerly Camille Desmoulins had done. "They read the Moniteur aloud," says a witness of the scene, "appealed to the people against the infraction of the charter, and endeavoured by violent gesticulation and inflammatory harangues to excite in their hearers and in themselves a vague appetite for agitation. But dancing was going on in the environs of the capital; the people were engaged in labour or amusement. The bourgeoisie alone gave evidence of consternation. The ordonnances had dealt it a twofold blow: they had struck at its political power in the persons of its legislators, and at its moral power in those of its writers."
At first there was nothing to be seen throughout the whole bourgeois portion of the population but one dull, uniform stupor. Bankers, traders, manufacturers, printers, lawyers, and journalists accosted each other with scared and astounded looks. There was in this sudden muzzling of the Press a sort of arrogant challenge that stunned men's faculties. So much daring inferred proportionate strength.
The most active section of the bourgeoisie went to work on the 27th, and nothing was left undone to stir up the people. The Gazette, the Quotidienne, and the Universel had submitted to the ordonnances from conviction or from party spirit; the Journal des D�bats and the Constitutionnel from fear and mercantile policy. The Globe, the National, and the Temps, which defiantly continued to appear, were profusely circulated. The police order of the preceding day, forbidding their publication, only served to stimulate curiosity. Copies were disposed of by hundreds in the caf�s, the reading-rooms, and the restaurants. Journalists hurried from manufactory to manufactory, and from shop to shop, to read the articles aloud and comment upon them. Individuals in the dress, and with the manners and appearance of men of fashion, were seen mounting on stone posts and holding forth as professors of insurrection; whilst students paraded the streets, armed with canes, waving their hats and crying "Vive la Charte!"
The ordinary demagogues, cast into the midst of a movement they could not comprehend, looked on with surprise at all these things; but, gradually yielding to the contagion of the hour, they imitated the bourgeoisie, and running about with bewildered countenances, shouted like others for the charter.
Begun in the Palais Royal, this revolution was continued and virtually concluded at the neighbouring Tuileries, where the Swiss Guard, fighting as faithfully for the restored monarchy as they had fought for the monarchy of Louis XVI., perished at the hands of the insurgents. The great Danish sculptor, Thorvaldsen, had already commemorated the heroism of Louis the Sixteenth's Swiss Guard in a magnificent figure of a wounded, expiring, but still undaunted lion, carved on a cliff or mountainside close to the town of Lucerne. The loyal mercenaries of Charles X. showed the same lionlike courage that those of Louis XVI. had displayed.
[Illustration: THE MONTPENSIER GALLERY, PALAIS ROYAL.]
There can be no doubt that the sight of the Swiss uniforms--scarlet, like that of the Household troops of most sovereigns--irritated greatly the people of Paris, who looked upon the revolution now taking place as a national movement under the tricolour flag against the monarchy, restored by foreign power after the defeat of Napoleon, with the white flag as its emblem. "The sight of those red uniforms," wrote an eye-witness of many of the scenes that took place during the three days of July, "redoubled the fury of the insurgents; fresh combatants rushed forth from every alley, and a barricade was manned and seized by the people. The Swiss sustained this attack with vigour; the guards advanced to support them, and the Parisians were beginning to give way, when a young man advanced to rally and cheer them on, waving a tricolour flag at the end of a lance, and shouting, 'I will show you how to die!' He fell, pierced with balls, within ten paces of the guards. This engagement was terrible; the Swiss left many of their numbers stretched on the pavement."
The fighting, all over Paris, abounded in scenes which were either fantastic, heroic, or lamentable. The Marquis d'Antichamp had taken up his post, seated on a chair under the colonnade of the Louvre, opposite Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois. Bent under the burden of his years, and hardly able to sustain his tottering frame, he encouraged the Swiss to the fight by his presence, and sat with folded arms gazing on the terrible spectacle before him with stoical insensibility. A band of insurgents attacked the powder magazine at Ivry on the Boulevard de l'H�pital, broke the gate in with hatchets and pole-axes, rushed into the courtyard, and obliged the people of the place to throw them packages of powder out of the windows. The insurgents, with all the hot-headed recklessness of the moment, continued with their pipes in their mouths to catch the packages as they fell, and carried them off in their arms. The debtors confined in Sainte-P�lagie, using a beam for a battering-ram, burst the gates, and then went and joined the guards on duty outside to prevent the escape of the criminal prisoners. A sanguinary encounter took place in the Rue de Prouvaires, and exhibited the spectacle, common enough in civil wars, of brothers fighting in opposite ranks. Throughout the whole city a sort of moral intoxication beyond all description had seized upon the inhabitants. Amidst the noise of musketry, the rolling of the drums, the cries and groans of the combatants, a thousand strange reports prevailed and added to the universal bewilderment. A hat and feathers were carried about in some parts of the town, said to be those of the Duke of Ragusa, whose death was reported. The audacity of some of the combatants was incredible. A workman, seeing a company of the 5th regiment of the line advancing upon the Place de la Bourse, ran straight up to the captain and struck him a blow on the head with an iron bar. He reeled, and his face was bathed in blood; but he had still strength enough left to throw up his soldiers' bayonets with his sword as they were about to fire on the aggressor. The leaders of the people added the most perfect self-denial to their intrepidity; and they ranged themselves by preference under the orders of those combatants whose dress proclaimed that they belonged to the more favoured classes of society. Furthermore, the young men found at every step guides for their inexperience in the persons of old soldiers who had survived the battles of the Empire--a warlike generation whom the Bourbons had for ever incensed in 1815.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE COM�DIE FRAN�AISE.]
Its History--The Roman Comique--Under Louis XV.--During the Revolution--Hernani.
Let us now return to the Palais Royal, and to the theatre which adjoins it. The Com�die Fran�aise, or Th��tre Fran�ais, as it is also called, was never, as the first of these names might suggest, devoted exclusively to comedy. The word "comedy" was used in France in the early days of its stage to denote any kind of theatrical entertainment. The famous "Ballet Comique de la Reine," produced towards the end of the 16th century, was, in fact, a dramatic entertainment with singing and dancing, strongly resembling what would now be called an opera; and the author of the work explains, in his preface, that he calls it "ballet comique," instead of "ballet" alone, because it possesses a dramatic character. Volumes innumerable have been written on the origin of the French theatre, which had as humble a beginning as the theatre in all other European countries; with the exception, however, of opera, which in the earliest days of the musical drama enjoyed the special patronage of kings, princes, cardinals, and great noblemen.
In Italy, during the Renaissance period, the musical drama was invented by popes, cardinals, and other illustrious personages bent on restoring in modern form the ancient drama of the Greeks. The spoken drama of France, as of other European countries, had humbler beginnings, and the first regular troop of the Com�die Fran�aise had its origin in a combination of wandering companies.
At the end of the sixteenth, and during the early part of the seventeenth century, the English stage, with Marlowe, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and other dramatic poets of the Elizabethan period, was far superior to the stage of France, which scarcely indeed existed at the time. But towards the end of the seventeenth century the French theatre enjoyed the supreme advantage of possessing simultaneously the three greatest dramatists that France even to this day has produced: Corneille, Moli�re, and Racine.
[Illustration: THE PUBLIC FOYER, COM�DIE FRAN�AISE.]
It is a little more than two centuries ago, in the year 1689, that the theatre where "the comedians of the king" habitually performed received the title of Com�die Fran�aise; though its constitution dates from 1680, when, by order of Louis XIV., the company of the H�tel de Bourgogne was united to that of the Th��tre Gu�n�gaud in the Rue Mazarin. The history of the Com�die Fran�aise cannot well be separated from that of Corneille and of Moli�re, its greatest writers; though Moli�re, who died in 1673, and Corneille, who died in 1684, produced their works long before the Th��tre Fran�ais was officially constituted. Perhaps the most interesting account of the origin of the French theatre is to be found in the "Roman Comique" of Scarron, in which one of the leading personages is Madeleine B�jard, elder sister of the charming but unfaithful Armande B�jard, known to everyone as Moli�re's wife. Possibly, as in the case of the "Ballet Comique de la Reine," the adjective in the title of Scarron's work is used to signify, not "comic," but "dramatic," or "theatrical." Scarron in any case shows us how Moli�re (introduced under another name) joined a strolling company when he had just finished his studies as a law student. The incident might have been borrowed from Cervantes' "Gipsy of Madrid," wherein an infatuated young man throws in his lot with a troop of gipsies. But it is beyond doubt that the youth, "not brought up to the profession," who becomes a member of a wandering troop involved in the adventures and humours so graphically described by Scarron was no other than Moli�re himself, or Poquelin, to give him his proper family designation, as distinguished from his more euphonious theatrical name.
One of the most interesting members of this celebrated company was Mdlle. du Parc, for whom is claimed the unique honour of having been passionately beloved by the three greatest dramatists of France: Corneille, Moli�re, and Racine. Having to choose between three writers, of whom the first was old, the second middle-aged, and the third young, Mdlle. du Parc was eccentric enough to select the last; a preference which left Moli�re silent, but which provoked from Corneille some verses so admirable that one cannot but forgive the lady who, by her heartless conduct, called forth such lines. Corneille and Moli�re had at this time separate companies, and Mdlle. du Parc appears to have acted in both. Corneille in any case endeavoured to persuade Mdlle. du Parc to pass from Moli�re's company to his own, pointing out to her that the troop of his friend Moli�re "was very inferior in tragedy, so that she would always be sacrificed, since she excelled above all in the tragic style." Racine employed the same kind of argument as Corneille, and ultimately succeeded in taking away the much-admired actress from Moli�re's company in order to attach her to his theatre of the H�tel de Bourgogne, where tragedies from his pen were habitually produced. Mdlle. du Parc, who had previously caused an estrangement between Corneille and Moli�re, now brought about a complete rupture between Moli�re and Racine.
The story of Mdlle. du Parc, with the intrigues of which she was made the object, brings out clearly the fact that in the early days of the French stage there was not one theatre, but three; Corneille, Moli�re, and Racine having each his separate company. In the present day the Th��tre Fran�ais comprises in its repertory all the masterpieces of France's three greatest dramatists; and many imagine that for this famous establishment may be claimed the honour of having first produced them. But the finest tragedies and comedies that France possesses were written for theatres of little or no standing; and not, as just pointed out, for one, but for three different theatres. An actress celebrated in her time, Mdlle. Beaupr�, made some celebrated remarks on the subject of French dramatic literature, which give a good idea of the esteem in which the art of playwriting must have been held in France immediately before the advent of Moli�re. "M. de Corneille," she said, "has done the greatest harm to the dramatic profession. Before his time we had very good pieces which were written for us in a night for three crowns. Now M. de Corneille charges large sums for his plays and we earn scarcely anything."
Even in these early days Louis XIV. took the greatest interest in theatrical representations, especially those given by Moli�re's company. Perhaps the very best period of the French stage was between the years 1645, when Moli�re abandoned the law courts to join a troop of wandering players, and 1680, when the two most important companies of the day were combined; at which time Moli�re had been dead seven years, while Corneille was on the point of dying.
The Com�die Fran�aise was formed in the most arbitrary manner. It has been said that the company which had been in the habit of playing at the H�tel de Bourgogne was joined to that of the Th��tre Gu�n�gaud in the Rue Mazarin. But there was at that day a third theatre in Paris, the Th��tre du Marais; and in order that everything dramatic might be concentrated at the one establishment, this unhappy house was simply suppressed. By Royal decree the number of actors and actresses connected with the Com�die Fran�aise was fixed at twenty-seven. A year later the establishment received for the first time an annual subvention, to the amount of 12,000 livres or francs. At the same time the French comedians were authorised, in lieu of previous arrangements, to deduct the full expenses of the theatre before paying anything to the authors.
The company had scarcely taken possession of the Th��tre de Gu�n�gaud when they were obliged to leave it for another and more commodious building in the Rue des Foss�s, Saint-Germain-des-Pr�s; and it was here that the name of Com�die Fran�aise was first adopted. Hence the name of the Rue de l'Ancienne Com�die, in which street, newly baptised, the Com�die Fran�aise was for so many years installed.
The Com�die Fran�aise had everything to itself until the year 1699, when much alarm and indignation was caused in the ranks of the company by the establishment of an opposition theatre, the Com�die Italienne. The French comedians were ready to do anything in order to keep their monopoly. In a formal petition they represented to the king that they were twenty-six in number (the principal actress had died) and capable, if necessary, of amusing His Majesty at two different theatres. They thought it hard, however, that after quitting, by His Majesty's orders, first the H�tel de Bourgogne, then the Th��tre Gu�n�gaud, they should now be threatened in their new abode, which had cost them 200,000 francs to construct.
The king paid no attention to these representations, and the Com�die Italienne soon became the home of French comic opera, doing a flourishing business according to the tariff of those days, when a place in the pit cost five sous, and a seat in the boxes ten.
The Com�die Fran�aise did not in the long run suffer from the popularity of the opposition theatre, and perhaps profited by it. But soon the Com�die Fran�aise was to be subjected to a new inconvenience, and in the very year which had witnessed the invasion of the Com�die Italienne a tax was imposed on theatres generally for the benefit of the poor--"taxe des pauvres"--which exists even to the present day. The members of the Com�die Fran�aise endeavoured to meet the difficulty by raising the prices on the occasion of first representations.
After the death of Louis XIV. the Com�die Fran�aise remained, as before, under the supreme government of the king, his ministers, and the gentlemen of the chamber. The new sovereign showed himself as munificent in the matter of the subvention as his predecessor, and the theatre was once more guaranteed an annual grant of 12,000 francs. A custom was now for the first time introduced, which has since become universal--that of playing a first piece in one act before the principal play of the evening.
Under Louis XV. the Com�die Fran�aise was directed, in the matter of engagements and general administration, by the Duc de Richelieu, to whom were submitted the petitions intended for the king. The members of the Com�die Fran�aise kept a careful watch over the privileges conferred upon them, and we find them complaining whenever there are any signs of these privileges being interfered with by a rival establishment. Every booth opened at a temporary fair excited the suspicion of the comedians; and they at last succeeded in procuring an order by which the directors of the much-hated Com�die Italienne, now known as the Op�ra Comique, were prevented from playing comedies, especially those which had been written expressly for the Com�die Fran�aise.
In 1770 the famous company again changed their domicile, and, by the king's special permission, took possession of the theatre built in 1671 at the palace of the Tuileries. Here they remained twelve years, until 1782, when they left the palace of the kings of France and installed themselves in the house afterwards to become known as the Od�on, on the left bank of the Seine, close to the Luxemburg Palace. According to Fr�ron, the daring satirist who was in no way afraid to take even Voltaire for his mark, the dramatic literature of France had now fallen to a very low point, by reason of the worldly success of its authors. "The gay life of most of our authors helps," wrote Fr�ron, "to keep them within the bounds of mediocrity. Love of pleasure, the attractions of society that luxury which had so long kept them at a respectful distance, now enervate their souls. They are men of society, men of fashion, runners after women, and themselves much run after. They are at every party, every entertainment; no supper is complete without them; they are sumptuously dressed, and have luxuriously furnished rooms. It was not by supping out every night in society that the Corneilles, the Moli�res, the La Fontaines, and the Boileaus composed those masterpieces which will constitute for ever their glory and the glory of France. They were simply lodged and simply clothed; a large flat cap covered the sublime head of the great Corneille, but all the assembly rose before him when he made his appearance at the play." Since the days of Fr�ron the incomes and the luxury of French dramatic authors have greatly increased; a result mainly due to the exertions of Beaumarchais, whose Marriage of Figaro was produced at the Com�die Fran�aise two years after its installation at the Od�on in 1784. It was Beaumarchais who secured for French dramatic authors a fixed proportion of the receipts, and caused this equitable arrangement, previously unknown, to be perpetuated.
Under the Revolution, precisely five years after the production of The Marriage of Figaro, the spirit and tone of which seemed to the king himself prophetic of the approaching catastrophe, the Com�die Fran�aise assumed the title of "Th��tre de la Nation, Com�diens ordinaires du Roi," a compromise between loyalty to the old state of things and adhesion to the new of which the members of the company were afterwards bitterly to repent. Dissensions now sprang up between the different members of the company, some royalists, others republicans. On the whole, however, the actors and actresses showed a certain aptitude for placing themselves on good terms with the executive power of the moment. In 1792, on the eve of the Reign of Terror, the players were formally obliged to replace such words as "Seigneur" and "Monsieur" by "Citoyen," even when the piece was written in verse. In the classical tragedies of Racine the word "Seigneur" constantly occurs, as, for instance, where Agamemnon addresses Achilles, or Achilles Agamemnon. The heroes of the Iliad and of the history of Rome had now to be "Citoyens;" which, apart from the intrinsic absurdity of the thing, could not but spoil the metre.
[Illustration: THE GREEN ROOM OF THE TH��TRE FRAN�AIS.]
One effect of the Revolution was to deprive the Com�die Fran�aise of the privilege it had so long and so unjustly enjoyed of incorporating in its company any actor or actress whom it might choose to detach from some other troop, not only at Paris, but in any other part of France. It at the same time also lost its monopoly. A split having taken place in the company, a second Com�die Fran�aise was started in the Palais Royal with the celebrated Talma, and with Grandmesnil, Dugazon, and Mme. Vestris among its artists. Meanwhile, notwithstanding the loss of Talma, the Com�die Fran�aise kept up against all disadvantages. There was, however, too much sense of art, of dramatic propriety among the members to permit the replacement of the word "Seigneur" by "Citoyen," and as a punishment for neglecting the Governmental order on the subject the whole of the company of the Com�die Fran�aise was arrested one night and thrown into prison, with the exception only of Mol�, who was apparently looked upon as a good Republican, and some other actor who was away from the capital. The piece performed on the night of the arrest had been a dramatic version of Richardson's Pamela, or, Virtue Rewarded, which, according to the judgment of the Republican Censors, was "full of reactionary feeling." Possibly the nameless hero, Mr. B----, was addressed from time to time not as "Citoyen," but as "Monsieur."
(From the bust by Houdon in the Com�die Fran�aise)]
Not only were the actors and actresses of the Com�die Fran�aise imprisoned, but also the dramatists in the habit of writing for the theatre, with Alexander Duval, author of Les H�ritiers and other amusing comedies, and Laya, who had dramatised "Pamela," among them. One of the members of the Committee of Public Safety, the ferocious Collot d'Herbois, is reported to have said that "the head of the Com�die Fran�aise should be guillotined, and the rest sent out of the country." The famous actor, Fleury, sets forth in his "Memoirs" that on the margin of the depositions in the case of Mdlle. Raucourt, who had been arrested with the other members of the company, the said Collot d'Herbois had written with his own hand, in red, an enormous G. This was a death sentence without appeal, G standing for guillotine. "Arrested in 1793 with most of the principal actors and actresses, she was," says Fleury, "as a first step, imprisoned at Sainte-P�lagie; but already she was marked down for the scaffold. The Queen had protected her; she had received numerous benefits from the Royal Family; and she was suspected of gratitude for so many favours." In common with all her colleagues of the Com�die Fran�aise, who like herself had been arrested, Fleury among the number, Mdlle. Raucourt owed her life to the courage and ingenuity of a clerk in the employment of the Committee of Public Safety, who destroyed the Acts of Accusation drawn up by Collot d'Herbois for presentation to Fouquier-Tinville. Considerable delay was thus caused, during which the anger entertained against the theatrical troop gradually evaporated, though some of the players remained in prison until the fall of Robespierre. It was understood meanwhile that no such words as "king" or "queen," "lord" or "lady," were to be used on the stage, and the members of the Com�die Fran�aise had received a sufficiently severe lesson to render them disinclined for the future to set at naught the edict on the subject.
As soon as she had regained her liberty, Mdlle. Raucourt tried to form a company for herself, and, succeeding, took a theatre, which was soon, however, closed by order of the Government, some allusion to its severity having been discovered in one of the pieces represented. Mdlle. Raucourt thenceforward made no secret of her hostility to the Directory, which, now that the Reign of Terror was at an end, could be attacked, indirectly at least, without too much danger. Fleury tells us that Mdlle. Raucourt's costume was a constant protest against the existing order of things; which, from a feeling of gratitude towards the Royal Family, her constant patrons, and from painful feelings in connection with that guillotine beneath whose shadow she had passed, she could not but hate. "She wore on her spenser," says Fleury, "eighteen buttons in allusion to Louis XVIII., while her fan was one of those weeping-willow fans, the folds of which formed the face of Marie Antoinette." Fleury speaks, moreover, of a certain shawl worn by Mdlle. Raucourt, of which the pattern, once explained, traced to the eyes of the initiated the portraits of Louis, the Queen, and the Dauphin. One day he accompanied her to a fortune-teller who had been expected to predict the restoration of the monarchy, but who foretold instead the revival of the Com�die Fran�aise. "The woman," says Fleury, "had read the cards aright, for in 1799 an order from the First Consul re-assembled in a new association the remains of the company dispersed at the time of the Revolution." But now the theatre was burnt down; and though the Com�die Fran�aise existed as an institution, and received in 1802 a special subsidy of 100,000 francs, it was not until 1803 that, in conformity with an order from the First Consul, it took possession of the building in the Rue Richelieu, close to the Palais Royal, where it has ever since remained.
As under Louis XIV., so under Napoleon, the Com�die Fran�aise followed the sovereign to his palatial residence wherever it might be; to Saint-Cloud, to Fontainebleau, to Trianon, to Compi�gne, to Malmaison, and even to Erfurt and Dresden, where Talma is known to have performed before a "pit of kings." Nor did Napoleon forget the Com�die Fran�aise when he was at Moscow, during the temporary occupation and just before the fatal retreat; though it may well have been from a feeling of pride, and a desire to show how capable he was at such a critical moment of occupying himself with comparatively unimportant things, that he dated from the Kremlin his celebrated decree regulating the affairs of the principal theatre in France.
It has been the destiny of the Com�die Fran�aise during the past hundred years to salute a number of different governments and dynasties. That they conscientiously kicked against the Republic in its most aggravated form has already been shown. They had no reason for being dissatisfied with Napoleon; and after the destruction of the Imperial power it was perfectly natural that they should do homage to that house of Bourbon under which they had first been established, and which for so long a period had kept them beneath its peculiar patronage. They now resumed their ancient title of "Com�diens Ordinaires du Roi," and the direction of the establishment was handed over to the Intendant of the Royal Theatres.
The Com�die Fran�aise has often been charged with too strict an adherence to classical ideas. Yet it was at this theatre that a dramatic work by Victor Hugo, round which rallied the whole of the so-called romantic school, was first placed before the public.
The two most interesting events in the history of the Com�die Fran�aise are the first production of The Marriage of Figaro in 1784, of which an account has already been given in connection with Beaumarchais and his residence on the boulevard bearing his name, and the first production of Hernani forty-six years afterwards.
Hernani was the third play that Victor Hugo had written, but the first that was represented. There seems never to have been any intention of bringing out Cromwell, published in 1827, and known to this day chiefly by its preface. Marion Delorme, Victor Hugo's second dramatic work, was submitted to the Th��tre Fran�ais, but rejected, not by the management, but by the Censorship, and, indeed, by Charles X. himself, with whom Victor Hugo had a personal interview on the subject. "The picture of Louis XIII.'s reign," says a writer on this subject, "was not agreeable to his descendant; and the last of the Bourbon kings is said to have been particularly annoyed at the omnipotent part assigned in Victor Hugo's drama to the great Cardinal de Richelieu."
But Victor Hugo had the persistency of genius, and though both his first efforts had miscarried, he was ready soon after the rejection of Marion Delorme with another piece--that spirited, poetical work Hernani, which is usually regarded as his finest dramatic effort. Hernani, like Marion Delorme, was condemned by the Censorship; being objected to not on political, but on literary, moral, and general grounds. The report of the Committee of Censorship, scarcely less ironical than severe, concluded in these remarkable terms: "However much we might extend our analysis, it could only give an imperfect idea of Hernani, of the eccentricity of its conception, and the faults of its execution. It seems to us a tissue of extravagances to which the author has vainly endeavoured to give a character of elevation, but which are always trivial and often vulgar. The piece abounds in unbecoming thoughts of every kind. The king expresses himself like a bandit; the bandit treats the king like a brigand. The daughter of a grandee of Spain is a shameless woman without dignity or modesty. Nevertheless, in spite of so many capital faults, we are of opinion that not only would there be nothing injudicious in authorising the representation of the piece, but that it would be wise policy not to cut out a single word. It is well that the public should see what point of wildness the human mind may reach when it is freed from all rules of propriety."
When at last the play was produced there was such a scene in the Com�die Fran�aise as has never been witnessed before or since. At two o'clock, when the doors were opened, a band of romanticists entered the theatre and forthwith searched it in view of any hostile classicists who might be lying hid in dark corners, ready to rise and hiss as soon as the curtain should go up. No classicists, however, were discovered; the band of romanticists was under the direction of G�rard de Nerval, author of the delightful "Voyage en Orient," translator of "Faust" in the early days when he called himself simply G�rard, and Heine's collaborator in the French prose translation of the "Buch der Lieder." On the eve of the battle, G�rard de Nerval, as Th�ophile Gautier has told us in one of many accounts he wrote of the famous representation, visited the officers who were to act under him; their number, according to one account, including Balzac, first of French novelists, if not first novelist of the world; that Wagner of the past, Hector Berlioz; Auguste Maquet, the dramatist; and Joseph Bouchardy, the melodramatist, together with Alexander Dumas, historian (in his "Memoirs") of the rehearsals of Hernani, and Th�ophile Gautier, chronicler in more than one place of its first representation.
Victor Hugo had originally intended to call his play Three to One; which to the modern mind would have suggested a sporting drama. Castilian Honour--excellent title!--had also been suggested; but the general opinion of Victor Hugo's friends was in favour of Hernani, the musical and sonorous name of the hero; and under that title the piece was produced.
It has been said that the supporters of Victor Hugo took possession of a certain portion of the theatre as early as two in the afternoon. They had brought with them hams, tongues, and bottles of wine; and they had what the Americans call a "good time" during the interval that passed before the public was admitted--eating, drinking, singing songs, and discussing the beauties of the piece they had come to applaud. "As soon as the doors of the theatre were opened the band of romanticists," says Th�ophile Gautier, "turned their eyes towards the incomers, and if among them a pretty woman appeared her arrival was greeted with a burst of applause. These marks of approbation were not bestowed on rich toilettes and dazzling jewellery, they were reserved for beauty in its simplest manifestations. Thus no one was received with so much enthusiasm as Mdlle. Delphine Gay, afterwards Mme. de Girardin, who, in a white muslin dress relieved by a blue scarf, wore no ornaments whatever. Mdlle. Gay assured the Duke de Montmorency the morning after the representation, that she had not spent on her dress more than twenty-eight francs."
[Illustration: CORNEILLE.
(From the bust in the Com�die Fran�aise)]
The Hugoites did not form a compact body, but occupied different parts of the pit and stalls in groups. They are said to have been easily recognisable by their sometimes picturesque, sometimes grotesque costumes, and by their defiant air. The combatants on either side applauded and counter-applauded, cried "Bravo!" and hissed without much reference to the merits of the piece, and often in attack or defence of supposed words which the piece did not contain. Thus (to quote once more from Th�ophile Gautier) in the scene where Ruy Gomez, on the point of marrying Do�a Sol, entrusts her to Don Carlos, Hernani exclaims to the former, "Vieillard stupide! il l'aime." M. Parseval de Grandmaison, a rigid classicist, but rather hard of hearing, thought Hernani had said, "Vieil as de pique! il l'aime." "This is too much," groaned M. Parseval de Grandmaison. "What do you say?" replied Lassailly, who was sitting next him in the stalls, and who had only heard his neighbour's interruption. "I say, sir, that it is not permissible to call a venerable old man like Ruy Gomez de Silva 'old ace of spades.'" "He has a perfect right to do so," replied Lassailly. "Cards were invented under Charles VI. Bravo for 'Vieil as de pique!' Bravo, Hugo!"
Th�ophile Gautier declares that Mdlle. Mars could only lend to the proud and passionate Do�a Sol a "sober and refined talent," as she was pre-occupied with considerations of propriety more suited to comedy than to drama. Victor Hugo himself was, on the other hand, delighted with the performance of the principal actress; and one cannot but accept him as the best judge in the case. It would be impossible, in Victor Hugo's own words, without having seen her, to form an idea of the effect produced by the great actress in the part of Do�a Sol, to which she gave "an immense development," going in a few minutes through the whole gamut of her talent, from the graceful to the pathetic, and from the pathetic to the sublime.
The success of Hernani corresponded closely enough with the triumph of the Revolution of July, which brought Louis Philippe to the throne; and under the new and more liberal form of monarchy it seemed as though the rising poet and dramatist, who was soon to establish an undisputed supremacy, would have his own way at the Com�die Fran�aise as elsewhere. But his next work, Le Roi s'amuse, found no more favour in the eyes of M. Thiers than Marion Delorme had done in those of Charles X.'s ministers, and of Charles himself. Le Roi s'amuse (of which the subject is better known in England by Verdi's opera of Rigoletto than by the drama on which Rigoletto is based) was played but once, and was not revived until some forty years afterwards, when it was produced under the Government of the Third Republic without much success. Victor Hugo's dramas have not, except to the reading public, displaced the tragedies of Corneille and Racine. Rachel as Chim�ne, Sarah Bernhardt as Ph�dre are to this day better remembered by the old habitu�s of the Com�die Fran�aise than any actors in any of Victor Hugo's parts. That Victor Hugo is one of the greatest poets of the century can scarcely be denied; but his genius is more lyrical than dramatic.
[Illustration: VOLTAIRE.
(From the statue by Houdon in the Com�die Fran�aise.)]
To show by yet another example that the Com�die Fran�aise has not been so much opposed as is often asserted to novelty in the dramatic art, it may be mentioned that at this theatre the wildly melodramatic and strikingly original Antony of Alexander Dumas was first produced. This work, written, not, like Victor Hugo's plays, in verse, but in vigorous prose, has been no more fortunate than other masterpieces of the romantic drama in keeping the stage. The great success it met with at the time of its first production was due in a great measure to the powerful acting of Mme. Dorval. The basis of Antony, and, as Alexander Dumas tells us himself in his "Memoirs," its very germ, is a deeply compromising situation in which the hero finds himself with the heroine. They are on the point of being discovered when, to save the honour of his mistress, Antony (without consulting her on the subject) takes her life. Having stabbed her he exclaims to the persons who now enter the room, "That woman was resisting me; I have assassinated her." This outrageous piece had the same fate as Victor Hugo's admirably written and truly dramatic play, Le Roi s'amuse, in so far that it was, after a very few representations, forbidden by the Censorship.
In the year 1833 a private person was for the first time named Director of the Com�die Fran�aise. Jouslin de La Salle was his name, and he was succeeded, first by M. Vedel, in 1837, and afterwards by M. Buloz, Director of the Revue des Deux Mondes. In 1852 the affairs of the theatre were entrusted to a committee of six members of the Com�die Fran�aise under the direction of an "administrator"; the first administrator being M. Ars�ne Houssaye, the well-known author and journalist. M. Houssaye was replaced in 1856 by M. Empis, and M. Empis in 1860 by M. �douard Thierry, a dramatist. The present director is M. Perrin. The subvention paid by the Government to the Com�die Fran�aise was fixed definitively in 1856 at 240,000 francs a year. Among the actors and actresses who have appeared at this famous establishment, often pleasantly described as La Maison de Moli�re (though Moli�re, as already seen, never set foot in it), may be mentioned Adrienne Lecouvreur, Mdlle. Mars, Mdlle. Clairon, Mdlle. Contat, Mdlle. Raucourt, Talma, Rachel, Sarah Bernhardt, not to name many excellent comedians who in the present day are almost as well known in London as in Paris.
In the immediate neighbourhood of the Com�die Fran�aise was born Adrienne Lecouvreur. Less perhaps from the influence of the genius loci than from a desire to imitate the actors and actresses whom, from day to day, she must have seen passing her door, little Adrienne accustomed herself at an early age to act plays and scenes from plays with her young companions. Adrienne's talent was soon noticed by an inferior actor named Legrand, who, after teaching her some of the tricks of his trade, procured an engagement for her somewhere in Alsace. It was in the provinces that she formed her style; and for so long a time did she wander about from theatre to theatre that she was already twenty-seven years of age when an engagement was offered her at the Com�die Fran�aise. Here she was equally successful in tragedy and in comedy, though in the latter line her impersonations seem to have been chiefly confined to high comedy. Thus one of her best parts was that of C�lim�ne in the Misanthrope. Adrienne was well acquainted with Voltaire when Count Maurice de Saxe, one of the innumerable natural children of Augustus II., King of Poland--Carlyle's Augustus the Strong--came to try his fortune in Paris. This was in the year 1720. In the first instance he met with no luck; and he had to wait a considerable time before he could get a simple regiment together. "Although he was scarcely twenty-four years of age," says a remarkable writer of the time, "Maurice had already made eleven campaigns and repudiated one wife. He joined," continues this unconscious humourist, "to the strength of his father the uncultured youth and fiery disposition of a sort of nomad, somewhat like our Du Guesclin, whom ladies used to call the wild boar. Under the guise of a Sarmatian, Adrienne discovered the hero, and undertook to polish the soldier. She was then thirty years of age, and had gained the experience and the passion which render a woman alike skilful to please and prompt to love."
Adrienne Lecouvreur was carried off, after a short and somewhat mysterious illness, on the 20th of March, 1730. So sudden was her death that the public, who adored her, would not believe that it arose from natural causes; and the Duchess de Bouillon, known to be her rival and her implacable enemy, was declared by everyone to be her murderess. According to the story current at the time she owed her death to a box of poisoned sweetmeats, treacherously presented to her, though Scribe and Legouv�, in their well-known play, make her die from the effect of a poisoned bouquet given to her by the duchess, in feigned admiration of her genius. All that is really known on the subject is to be found in the "Memoirs" of the Abb� Annillon, the "Letters" of Mdlle. A�ss�, and a note appended to one of these letters by Voltaire himself.
The popular version of the incidents of Adrienne's death was as follows. One night, when she was playing the part of Ph�dre, she saw in a box close to the stage the Duchess de Bouillon, who, she knew, was endeavouring to replace her in the affections of Count de Saxe; and the sight of this woman made her deliver with exceptional energy these indignant lines:--
"Je sais mes perfidies, OEnone, et ne suis pas de ces femmes hardies Qui, go�tant dans le crime une tranquille paix, Ont su se faire un front qui ne rougit jamais."
As the Duchess de Bouillon, according to Mdlle. A�ss�, was capricious, violent, impulsive, and much addicted to love affairs, she might well be considered one of those "brazen women who, finding an untroubled calm in crime, succeed in acquiring a brow that knows no blush." It may readily be believed, too, that Adrienne made every point tell, so that the duchess, brazen-faced as she might be, would feel wounded to the quick. So appropriate were the verses and so clear was the intention of the much-loved actress in applying them, that the audience, in full sympathy with her, applauded to the point of wild enthusiasm.
Voltaire, on the other hand, wrote in a manuscript note appended to Mdlle. A�ss�'s narrative: "She died in my arms of inflammation of the bowels, and it was I who caused the body to be opened. All that Mdlle. A�ss� says on the subject is mere popular rumour without any foundation."
If the French clergy objected usually to bury actors and actresses with religious rites, they were scarcely likely to make an exception in favour of an actress who had died in the arms of Voltaire. Her body, then, was thrown "� la voirie," as the author of Candide puts it, or, to be exact, was buried somewhere on the banks of the Seine, in the neighbourhood of a wharf, the interment being made secretly and at midnight, as though poor Adrienne had been a criminal. The Abb� Languet, Cur� of Saint-Sulpice, the parish to which Adrienne Lecouvreur belonged, after taking the orders of the Archbishop, had refused to admit her body to the cemetery, and all hope of a Christian burial was then abandoned. The intolerance of the archbishop and of the priest provoked from Voltaire some indignant verses, beginning as follows:--
"Ah, verrai-je toujours ma faible nation, Incertaine en ses voeux, fl�trir ce qu'elle admire; Nos moeurs avec nos lois toujours se contredire; Et le Fran�ais volage endormi sous l'empire De la superstition?"[D]
[D] Voltaire's lines do not lend themselves easily to translation:--"Ah, must I ever see my weakly nation, inconstant in its loves, degrade that which it admires;--our morals ever at variance with our laws;--the quick-witted Frenchman drugged by superstition?"
Voltaire, in writing the poem from which the above stanza is quoted, had simply obeyed his own natural impulse. His verses were not intended for publication, for he knew that if they were seen by the clergy they might get him into trouble. He simply sent a copy of the poem to his friend Thi�riot, and perhaps to others, with a strong recommendation to keep it secret. The first thing, however, that Thi�riot seems to have done was to take Voltaire's verses with him into society, where he was always received in the character of "Voltaire's friend." The poet had probably exaggerated the danger. The clergy could have no wish to re-awaken the scandal caused by the circumstances of Adrienne Lecouvreur's burial, and though Voltaire left Paris when he found that his poem on the death of Adrienne was being circulated everywhere in manuscript, there does not seem to have been any necessity for this species of flight. The place of Adrienne's burial, which long remained unknown, was discovered years afterwards, during some work of excavation and demolition. Voltaire and Maurice de Saxe were both dead; but an old friend of hers, named D'Argental, was still living, and he hastened to mark the spot by a tablet to her memory.
The Com�die Fran�aise, beneath whose shadow Adrienne Lecouvreur was brought up, is not the only theatre connected with the Palais Royal. The Th��tre du Palais Royal forms part of the spacious construction from which it derives its name, and is entered from the Palais Royal itself. Standing at the northern extremity of the Galerie de Beaujolais, it was constructed in 1783 by Louis, architect to the Duke of Orleans. Its original name was Th��tre Beaujolais, and its original occupant the manager of a company of marionettes. The marionettes were replaced by children playing exclusively in pantomimes. But in 1790 Mdlle. Montansier, who had formerly directed the Royal Theatre of Versailles, and who had followed the king and queen, took possession of the little theatre in the Palais Royal, and opened it under the title of Th��tre des Vari�t�s. Every kind of play was presented, and it was here that the directress brought out as a child the afterwards famous Mdlle. Mars. In time, under the Empire, the company of the Palais Royal left it to take possession of the theatre on the Boulevard Montmartre, to which the name of Th��tre des Vari�t�s was thereupon transferred. The Palais Royal Theatre now passed into the hands of a succession of managers, who relied, one on tight-rope dancers, another on marionettes, and a third on learned dogs. "These animals," says Brazier in his "Petits Th��tres de Paris," "played their parts with an intelligence not often met with among bipeds. The company was completed with its light and low comedian, its walking gentleman, its heavy father, its chambermaid, its leading actor and actress, and so on. For the four-footed artists was arranged a melodrama which was scarcely worse than many others I have seen. Many private persons took their dogs to this theatre to act as 'supers.' Nothing droller can be imagined than these performances."
From 1814 to 1818 the theatre was changed into a caf�-concert, inappropriately entitled Caf� de la Paix. This establishment became famous during the Hundred Days. Men of different periods met there as on some appointed fighting-ground; and as a result of many violent scenes the house had to be closed.
After the Revolution of 1830 the theatre, still associated with the name of Mdlle. Montansier, was restored to its original purpose. Entirely reconstructed, it was opened to the public in June, 1831, under the title of Th��tre du Palais Royal. A company of excellent comedians had been engaged, many of whom, such as Alcide, Tousez, Achard, Levassor (who loved to impersonate eccentric Englishmen), Grassot, Ravel, and the fascinating Virginie D�jazet, were to attain European fame. Here were produced a number of highly diverting pieces, several of which have become known in translated or adapted form at our London theatres; for example, Indiana et Charlemagne (Antony and Cleopatra); Le Chapeau de Paille d'Italie (A Wedding March); La Chambre aux deux Lits (The Double-Bedded Room); Grassot emb�t� par Ravel (Seeing Wright); Un Gar�on de chez V�ry (Whitebait at Greenwich); with many others.
The liveliest and most risky pieces of the French stage have for the most part seen the light at the Palais Royal Theatre. These productions were, not without reason, considered in a general way unfit for the ears of young girls; and it became one of the recognised privileges of the married woman to be able in her new state to witness a Palais Royal farce. Even wives, however, in many cases thought it as well, while seeing, not to be seen at the Palais Royal; and for the benefit of such ladies were provided an extra number of loges grill�es--those loges grill�es, otherwise petites loges, one of which a certain abb� wished to have for the first performance of The Marriage of Figaro, when the author declined, declaring with indignant satire that he had "no sympathy with those who wished to unite the honours of virtue with the pleasures of vice."
The petite loge of France, like the private box of England, is comparatively a modern invention. In neither country were such things known till the end of the last century; and it is probable that, like most other theatrical novelties, they were imported, not from England into France, but from France into England. Even thirty or forty years ago private boxes were much less numerous at our English theatres than they have since become. They have increased in proportion as the pit has diminished, and, in some theatres, entirely disappeared. On their first introduction they were unpopular in both countries.
"This is a modern refinement," writes Mercier, just before the Revolution of 1789, "or rather a public and very indecent nuisance introduced to please the humour of a few hundreds of our women of fashion. These boxes are held by subscription from year to year; nay, from mother to daughter, as part of her inheritance. Nothing could ever be devised better calculated to favour the impertinent pride and idleness of a first-rate actor, who, being paid handsomely by his share of the subscription, even before the beginning of the season, takes no trouble about getting up new parts, but solicits, under some pretence or another, leave of absence, and receives annually some 18,000 livres from the inhabitants of the capital, whilst he is holding forth at Brussels. Another objection against these hired boxes is that the comedians have constantly refused to admit the authors of new plays to a share in the subscription money; and they are so sensible to this advantage that they are daily improving it by throwing part of the pit into this kind of boxes. Whilst the public complain loudly of such encroachments on the liberty of the playhouses, hear the apology set up by our belles: 'What! will you, then, to oblige the canaille, compel me to hear out a whole play, when I am rich enough to see only the last scene? This is a downright tyranny! I protest! There is no police in France nowadays. Since I cannot have the comedians come to my own house, I will have the liberty to come in my plain deshabille, enjoy my arm-chair, receive the homage of my humble suitors, and leave the place before I am tired. It would be monstrous to deprive me of all these indulgences, and positively encroach upon the prerogatives of wealth and bon ton.' A lady therefore, to be in fashion, must have her petite loge, her lap-dog, etc.; but above all, a man-puppy who stands, glass in hand, to tell her ladyship who comes in and goes out, name the actors and so forth, whilst the lady herself displays a fan, which, by a modern contrivance, answers all the purpose of an opera-glass, with this advantage, that she may see without being seen. Meanwhile the honest citizen, who, like a tasteless plebeian, imagines that play-houses are opened for entertainment, cannot get in for his money, because part of the house is let by the year, though empty for the best part of it, so that he is obliged to put up, instead of rational amusement, with the low, indecent farces acted on the booth of the boulevards."
[Illustration: THE COMMITTEE ROOM OF THE COM�DIE FRAN�AISE: ALEXANDRE DUMAS (THE YOUNGER) READING A PLAY.
(From the painting of Laissement in the Com�die Fran�aise.)]
[Illustration: BEHIND THE SCENES: COM�DIE FRAN�AISE.]
The "King's Library"--Francis I. and the Censorship--The Imperial Library--The Bourse.
The most interesting edifice in the Rue Richelieu is the Library, called, according to the existing form of Government, Royal, National, or Imperial. Its original title was King's Library (Biblioth�que du Roi), and it has been suggested that, to avoid the frequent changes of name to which the instability of things in France seems to expose this valuable institution, it should be called, once for all, Biblioth�que de France. The nucleus of the National Library, with its innumerable volumes, was formed by Charles V., and received considerable additions, considerable at least for the time, when books were scarce, from Louis XI. Under the reign of the latter sovereign so much value was attached to books of a rare character that, to obtain the loan of a certain volume written by the Arabian physician Rhazes, the king had to furnish security, and bind himself by the most solemn obligations to return it. According to Dulaure, this pious monarch had but a poor reputation for returning books, combined with an eagerness for getting them into his possession. "In 1472," says the author of "The History of Paris" and of the "Singularit�s Historiques," "Hermann Von Stathoen came from Mayence to Paris entrusted by the famous printers Scheffer and Hanequis to sell a certain number of printed books. While at Paris he was attacked by fever and died. In virtue of the droit d'aubain the king's officers took possession of the books and money of the defunct, sending the latter to the king's exchequer and the former to the king's library. This proceeding was by no means to the taste of Scheffer and Hanequis, who complained to the emperor, and obtained from him letters addressed to Louis XI. in which the French king was invited to restore both books and money. Louis XI. admitted the justice of the claim, and on the twenty-first of April, 1475, issued Letters Patent in these terms: 'Desiring to treat favourably the subjects (Scheffer and Hanequis) of the Archbishop of Mayence, and having regard to the trouble and labour which the persons in question have had in connection with the art and craft of printing, and to the profit and utility derived from it, both for the public good and for the increase of learning; and considering that the value and estimation of the said books and other property which have come to our knowledge do not amount to more than 2,425 crowns and three sous, at which the claimants have valued them, we have for the above considerations and others liberally condescended to cause the said sum of 2,425 crowns and three sous to be restored to the said Conrad Hanequis.'" Dulaure, after citing this letter, adds that the restitution was made in such a manner that the printers received every year from the King's Treasury a mere driblet of 800 livres, or francs, until the entire sum had been repaid.
Louis XII. had formed a library of his own at Blois, to which he added those collected by his predecessors. Francis I., called the Father of Letters, honoured writers, and had a particular taste for manuscripts; but he detested printed books, and, like the reactionists of the period, deplored the invention of printing, which the previous occupants of his throne had looked upon as of the greatest benefit to mankind. On the 13th of June, 1535, he ordered all the printing offices in the kingdom to be closed, and prohibited, under the severest penalties, the printing of any fresh books. Some have supposed that the king's sole object was, by preventing the reproduction of books, to keep up the value of the manuscripts which he so much prized. Against this view, however, must be placed the fact that when, in reply to remonstrances from various deputations, he rescinded his order against the printing offices a month after its issue, he at the same time limited the number of printing offices to twelve, which were only allowed to print books approved beforehand and deemed absolutely necessary. Thus Francis I. must be regarded as the inventor of that nefarious institution, the Censorship, which followed the invention of printing as shadow follows light. After the lapse of a century or two, the Censorship was destined to do harm to France, even in a commercial sense; for numbers of books which the Censor would never have allowed to be brought out in France were printed and sold in England, Holland, and Germany.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE NATIONAL LIBRARY IN THE RUE DES PETITS CHAMPS.]
"Whoever opposes the freedom of the Press," wrote Mercier on this subject two centuries and a half after Francis I.'s institution of the Censorship, "is a professed foe to improvement, and, of course, to mankind. But the very obstacles which are laid in an author's way are an inducement to break through all restrictions. 'It is in man's nature,' observes Juvenal, 'to wish for those things which are prohibited merely because they are so.' Were we permitted to enjoy even a moderate freedom authors would seldom fall into licentiousness. It may be set down as an axiom that the civil liberty of any nation may be estimated by the liberty of its Press. If so, we daily take new strides towards slavery, since the ministers are every day forging new fetters for the Press. What is the consequence of this unnatural restraint? All books published here on the history, political interests, and even manners of foreign nations are the most incomplete and despicable productions that ever disgraced a country. If despotism could, as it were, murder our thoughts in their impenetrable sanctuary, it would do so; but as it is beyond its power to pluck out the tongue of the true philosopher, or deprive him of the use of his instructive hand, other means are employed--a State inquisition is set on foot, and the boundaries of literature and all its avenues are blocked up by a world of satellites who endeavour to interrupt the slightest correspondence between truth and mankind. Fruitless endeavours! So preposterous an attempt against our natural and civil rights serves only to expose to public hatred the wretches who dare thus far to encroach on man's first privilege, that of thinking for himself. Reason daily gets ground, its powerful light shines to every eye, and all the witchcraft of tyranny cannot plunge it into utter darkness. In vain will despotism dread or persecute men of genius; all its efforts cannot put out the light of truth; and the sentence it awards against the injustice of men in power shall be confirmed by indignant posterity. You brave inhabitants of Great Britain! ye are strangers to our shameful slavery. Never, ah, never give up the freedom of the Press; it is the pledge of your liberty. It may be truly said that you are the only representatives of mankind. You alone have hitherto supported its dignity, and human reason, expelled from the Continent, has found a safer asylum in your fortunate island, whence it spreads its rays all over the world. We are so insignificant when compared with you, that you could hardly comprehend the excess of our humiliation." After this apostrophe, Mercier continues:--"If we next weigh the restraint laid on the Press in the scale of commercial interest, we shall find it greatly preponderate against the trade of this metropolis. The graphomania is not without its absurdities and disadvantages, but it is the chief support of different tradesmen. The Montagne Sainte-Genevi�ve is peopled by hawkers, bookbinders, etc., who must starve if not permitted to carry on the only business to which they were brought up. Meanwhile, as the desire of publishing their thoughts is common to all men, the money which would be laid out amongst our own countrymen is paid to the printers of Holland, Flanders, and Germany."
[Illustration: THE BOURSE.]
While discouraging the multiplication of printed books, Francis I. formed a valuable collection of manuscripts, many of which were copies made by his orders in Italy. He brought together some 450 manuscripts of various kinds, part of them original, the rest transcribed from the Greek (the king's favourite language), or from Eastern and other tongues. French literature was represented in the library of Francis I. by the works of Louise de Savoie and her sister Marguerite.
Simple as was his collection of manuscripts and printed books, Francis I. found it necessary to place them in the charge of an official bearing the title of Master of the King's Library.
The library of Francis was at Fontainebleau, whence Henri IV. removed it to the College of Clermont at Paris. Catherine de Medicis formed a collection of books, including eight hundred Greek and Latin manuscripts, which she added to those already preserved at the College of Clermont, the former habitation of the Jesuits, which, after their expulsion, was taken possession of by the Crown. When the Jesuits returned the books had to be removed, and they found a new abode in the house of the Cordeliers, on the site at present occupied by the School of Medicine. Under Louis XIII. the books were placed by the Cordeliers in the house belonging to the Order, but not occupied by it, in the Rue de la Harpe, and from the Rue de la Harpe they were, at the direction of the Minister Colbert, carried across the river to a house in the Rue Vivienne. The private library of the Count de B�thune, containing numerous works on the history of France, was next added to the Royal collection; and after the death of Cardinal Mazarin, his library was purchased from the heirs by Louis XV. and joined to the king's library, now of considerable value and importance. It has been seen that the library, justly called royal, was founded and constantly increased by the kings of France; and during the long and glorious reign of Louis XIV. the number of books on its shelves was raised from five thousand to seventy thousand.
A decree of Henri II. had ordered all booksellers to send copies of whatever works they produced to the king's library; and this was renewed and made thoroughly effective by the Great Monarch.
In 1697 the Mission of Father Bouvet brought back from China sixty-two volumes in the Chinese language and presented them to the Royal library. These books formed the nucleus of a collection which since that time has gone on constantly augmenting. In 1700 the Archbishop of Rheims presented to the Royal library five hundred Hebrew, Greek, and Latin manuscripts; and it received in the same year two manuscripts from Spanvenfeld, master of the ceremonies at the Court of Stockholm. In this year, too, a number of Latin manuscripts, including the works of Catullus, Propertius, and Tibullus, were bought at Rome for the French library.
In 1706 an ingenious theft was committed at this library by an apostate priest named Aymon. Wishing, as he said, to consult certain works in order to demonstrate the errors of heretics, he asked for a number of manuscripts, and, carrying them off, sold them at large prices in Holland.
After the Revolution, the Republican Government threw open to all comers a library which had previously been reserved for the use of a privileged few; and for many years the libraries of the French capital (for others in addition to the library founded by the French kings had now been formed) were the only ones in Europe which could be entered by the public at large. This fact scarcely harmonises with the assertion made by many writers, and insisted upon by M. Castil Blaze, that the Grand Op�ra was installed by the Republican Government in a house just opposite the famous library in order that when the Opera House met with the usual fate of theatres the library facing it might at the same time be burnt. A few members of the Commune of Paris may have been wild enough to declaim against all literature produced before the Revolution, on the supposition that it must of necessity be impregnated with feudal, monarchical, and generally anti-Liberal ideas. But the Republic as a whole proved in many ways its love of enlightenment. It was the Republic which established all over France colleges and gymnasiums at fees of a few shillings a month; which called, free of cost, to the lectures of the College of France or la Sorbonne all who wished to hear them, and fixed at a nominal sum the examination fee for students desiring to receive degrees in arts or sciences from the University of Paris.
During the Napoleonic period the Imperial Library, as it was now called, was enriched with numerous acquisitions from the countries invaded and conquered by the French army; and indignation is expressed even now by French writers at the spoils of war having been given back by the Allies, in their turn victorious, to the rightful owners. "The foreign powers," writes on this subject an eminent French publicist, "profited by their position after the fall of the Empire to claim all that had been carried away from their libraries at the time of our victories, now as trophies, now in virtue of formal stipulations in the treaties of peace. Austria was the first to demand restitution, and all that was taken from Vienna in 1809 had been given back when the return of Napoleon from Elba put an end to any further dealings in such matters. In 1815, after the Waterloo Campaign, Austria demanded for the Italian provinces annexed to her empire, and for Italy generally, all the works of literature and art that our armies had taken from the Italians; and on the 4th of October, 1815, we were deprived of a magnificent artistic monument acquired through the bravery of our soldiers."
Mention has already been made of a theft of manuscripts--not a wholesale robbery of works of art such as the Allies, in restoring certain statues to their rightful owners, were accused of committing; and on various occasions, manuscripts, books, and models have been purloined by visitors to the library of the Rue Richelieu. The last misdeed of this kind occurred in 1848, when a member of the Institute, M. Libri, was charged with stealing a book. Not caring to meet the accusation, he quitted the country, and in his absence was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment.
If anyone, Frenchman or foreigner, enters a public library in Paris to look at any particular book he cannot, as at the British Museum Library, consult the catalogue himself; one of the librarians will do this for him, and do it in effect as well as such a thing can be done. But the reader must know beforehand what book, or, at least, what kind of book he wants. However learned and however attentive a librarian may be, he is not likely to make his researches with the same assiduity and care as the earnest student occupied with one sole object. On the other hand, the librarian, as a man of learning, will know the literature of any one subject better than the ordinary student, and much better than the casual reader.
Besides the National Library of the Rue Richelieu, Paris possesses the Mazarin Library, the Library of the Arsenal, of Sainte-Genevi�ve, of the Institute, of the Town, of the Louvre, of the National Assembly, of the Senate, and of a number of museums and learned societies.
As for the readers, they are as varied in character and often as original as those of our own British Museum. In the French, as in the English, reading-room one sees, side by side with writers of distinction, unhappy scribblers, who, in London, when the Museum closes at night, look at the thermometer and weathercock to see if Hyde Park or the casual ward be the wiser dormitory. It is merely to avoid ennui that many readers resort alike to the Biblioth�que Nationale and to our own Museum. Men of private means, at once with and without resources, can there escape from their own society, and, whatever their taste in literature, find relief in some book. Noise is carefully prevented, and there are even readers who volunteer active aid in maintaining silence. If anyone, for instance, speaks above a whisper, they hiss at him like serpents, or, wheeling round in their chairs, fold their arms and glare at him until he desists and leaves them once more to their sepulchral pursuits.
Both in France and in England the public libraries have two other classes of readers. First, there is the somnolent reader, who stares for a few minutes vacantly at a book, drops, nods, and finally collapses with a snore. The music of the nose, however, is against the rules, and promptly brings down an "attendant." On the other hand--though, fortunately, as a rare specimen--we find the particularly wakeful reader, who in his neighbour's absence makes a clean sweep of that gentleman's property, and who is apt to attire himself in the wrong hat and overcoat, and to walk off with an innocent and even injured air.
The most important edifice in the Rue Vivienne--or, rather, in the open space which a portion of the Rue Vivienne faces--is the Bourse, or Exchange, of which the architecture so closely resembles that of the Madeleine. Yet there is nothing in the Bourse to suggest a house of prayer. At the entrance of the St. Petersburg Bourse stands a chapel, in which the operator for the rise or for the fall may invoke the protection of Heaven for the success of his own particular speculation. The noise of the dealers crying out prices and shouting offers and acceptances is far less suggestive of the "House of God" than of a "den of thieves," to which, it must be feared, it presents in many respects a considerable likeness.
The origin of the word "Bourse," which has been adopted by almost every country in Europe, with the striking exception of England, seems evident enough, though it would be a mistake to suppose that it is derived from bourse, a purse. According to the best etymologist, the name of Bourse comes from the Exchange established in the sixteenth century at Bruges in the house of one Van der Bourse, who, in the well-known punning spirit of heraldry, had adopted for his arms three bourses or purses.
The most ancient Bourse in France is said to be that of Lyons; and the next ancient that of Toulouse, which dates from 1549. The Bourse of Rouen was established a few years later, while that of Paris was not legally constituted until 1724.
Paris, nevertheless, has possessed since the sixteenth century several places of exchange: now on the Pont au Change, now in the courtyard of the Palais de Justice, and then for a considerable time at the H�tel de Soissons, in the Rue Quincampoix, which was the scene of the wild speculations in connection with Law's Mississipi scheme. In 1720 the H�tel de Soissons was closed by the Government, and the formation of an institution to be called the Bourse was at the same time decreed.
The Bourse was at first installed in the H�tel de Nevers, in the Rue Richelieu, where the National Library is now established. After the Revolution, the Bourse was for a time closed by the Convention. But it was soon re-opened, and under the Directory was located in the Church of the Petits P�res. Under the Consulate and the Empire the Bourse was held in the Palais Royal. The Restoration moved it to the Rue Feydau, and it there remained until in 1826 it was definitively fixed in the palatial abode which it now occupies.
The cost of building the Bourse as it now exists was defrayed by a subscription among the merchants of Paris, assisted by a grant from the State and from the city. Until Napoleon's time, or, at least, from the period of the Revolution to that of the Empire, the occupation of stockbroker or agent de change was free to all who chose to take out a licence. Napoleon, however, limited the number of agents de change, or, as it turned out, the number of their firms, for it soon became the practice for several persons to club together in order to buy the necessary licence and to deposit the caution money.
The Bourse, in marked opposition to the rigid rule observed at our own Stock Exchange, was open to everyone until 1856, when the price of admission was fixed at one franc to the financial, and half a franc to the commercial department. An annual ticket of admission could be obtained for 150 francs to the financial side, and seventy-eight francs to the commercial. This species of tax was imposed with the view of restraining the passion for speculation which had sprung up among the lower classes, but it was abolished by M. Achille Fould, Napoleon III.'s able Finance Minister, in 1862.
The hours of the Bourse, as fixed by law, not being sufficiently long for the tastes or necessities of speculators, supplementary bourses under the name of Petite Bourse, have from time to time been held in the Passage de l'Op�ra and on the Boulevard des Italiens. These informal assemblies are sometimes tolerated, sometimes repressed, by the Government.
Ponsard, in one of his versified comedies, describes the Paris Bourse as (to translate the poet freely)--
"A market where all merchandise is keenly bought and sold; A genuine field of battle where instead of blood flows gold."
[Illustration: THE APOLLO GALLERY, THE LOUVRE.]
[Illustration: THE LOUVRE, FROM THE PLACE CARROUSEL.]
The Louvre--Origin of the Name--The Castle--Francis I.--Catherine de Medicis--The Queen's Apartments--Louis XIV. and the Louvre--The "Museum of the Louvre"--The Picture Galleries--The Tuileries--The National Assembly--Marie Antoinette--The Palace of Napoleon III.--Petite Provence.
The origin of the Louvre is remote and the etymology of the word obscure. In the absence of any more probable derivation, philologists have fixed upon that of lupus, or rather in the Latin of the lower empire, lupara. According to this view, the ancient palace of the French kings was originally looked upon as a wolf's den, or it may be as a hunting-box from which to chase the wolf. The word "louvre" is said at one time to have been used as the equivalent of a royal palace or castle, and in support of this view the following lines are quoted from La Fontaine's fable of "The Lion, the King of Beasts," in which the monarch of the forest is represented as inviting the other animals to his "louvre."
This, however, only proves that the name of a French palace which had existed since the beginning of the thirteenth century could be used in La Fontaine's time as a name for the palace of any king. "According to some," says M. Vitet, "the Louvre was founded by Childebert; according to others, by Louis Le Gros. It was either a place from which to hunt the wolf, a 'louveterie' (lupara), or, according to another view, a fortress commanding the river in front of the city. It seems probable that before the time of Philip Augustus there was a fortified castle where now stands the Louvre, and that this king simply altered it, and indeed reconstructed it, but was not its founder. The historians of the time speak frequently of the great tower built in 1204 by this prince, to which the name of New Tower was given; an evident sign of the existence of some other more ancient tower. It was not in any case until 1204 that, for the first time, the name of Louvre was officially pronounced. Until then the field is open to conjectures."
It appears certain that the ground on which the palace stands was called Louvre before anything was built upon it. A chart of the year 1215, referred to by Sanval, shows that Henri, Archbishop of Rheims, built a chapel at Paris in a place called the Louvre. Whence the name? it may once more be asked. One facetious historian declares that the castle of the Louvre was one of the finest edifices that France possessed, and that Philip Augustus "called it, in the language of the time, Louvre, that is to say, l'oeuvre in the sense of chef-d'oeuvre." According to another far-fetched derivation the word "Louvre" comes from rouvre, which is traced to robur, an oak, because the Louvre stood in the midst of a forest, which may have been a forest of oaks!
Whatever meaning was attached to the word, it is certain that when in 1204 Philip Augustus built or reconstructed the Louvre he gave it the form, the defences, and the armament of a fortress. It was the strong point in the line of fortifications with which this monarch surrounded Paris.
The first existing document in which the Louvre is mentioned by name is an account of the year 1205 for provisions and wine consumed by citizens who in the Louvre had done military duty.
The castle was at that time in the form of a large square, in the midst of which was a big tower, with its own independent system of defence. The tower was 144 feet in circumference, and 96 feet in height. Its walls were 13 feet thick near the basement, and 12 feet in the upper part. A gallery at the top put it in communication with the buildings of the first enclosure, and it served at once as treasury and as prison. Here Ferrand, Count of Flanders, was confined by Philip Augustus in 1214, after the victory of Bouvines. John IV., Duke of Brittany, Charles II., King of Navarre, and John II., Duke of Alen�on, were among many other illustrious prisoners shut up in the Big Tower or donjon of the ancient Louvre.
Louis IX. arranged in the west wing of the Louvre a large hall, which was long known as the Chamber of St. Louis. Charles V. enlarged and embellished the Louvre. He added to it another storey, and did all in his power to change what had hitherto been a purely military building into a convenient and agreeable place of abode. The architecture of the building, originally constructed for use, not show, was in many respects improved, and the gates were surmounted with ornaments and pieces of sculpture. The reception rooms were away from the river, and looked out upon a street long since disappeared, called La Rue Froidmanteaux. The apartments of the king and queen looked out upon the river.
Each of the towers was designated by a particular name, according to its history, or the purpose it was intended to serve. The Big Tower was also called the Ferrand Tower, from the Count of Flanders having been confined in it; and there were also the Library Tower, where Charles V. had brought together 959 volumes, which formed the nucleus of the National Library; the Clock Tower, the Horseshoe Tower, the Artillery Tower, the Sluice Tower, the Falcon Tower, the Hatchet Tower, the tower of the Great Chapel, the tower of the Little Chapel, the Tournament Tower (where the king took up his position to see tournaments and jousts), besides others. Charles V. added to the Louvre a number of buildings for tradespeople and domestics, whose services had to be dispensed with when the Louvre was purely a military building. Such names as pantry, pastry, saucery, butlery, were given to the different buildings and departments by the bakers, the pastry-cooks, the makers of sauces, and the keepers of the wine.
The gardens of the Louvre, though not very extensive, were greatly admired. Here were to be seen aviaries, a menagerie of wild beasts, and lists for different kinds of sports and combats. Charles VI., who lived by preference at the H�tel St. Pol, increased the fortifications of the Louvre, and sacrificed to that end the gardens of the king and queen on the side of the river. The succeeding kings until the time of Francis I. occupied themselves very little with the Louvre, and scarcely ever resided there.
During this first period of its history, from Philip Augustus until Francis I., the Louvre was the scene of numerous historical events. In 1358, during the captivity of King John in England, the citizens of Paris, in support of the deputies of the communes in the States-General, besieged and took the Louvre, driving away the governor, and carrying off to the H�tel de Ville all the arms and ammunition they could find in the arsenal of the fortress. Soon afterwards the governor, Pierre Gaillard, was decapitated by order of the Dauphin Regent for making so poor a defence. It was at the Louvre, moreover, in 1377, that the Emperor of Germany, Charles IV., allied himself with Charles V. of France, to make war upon England.
Under the reign of Charles VI., in 1382, while the king was engaged in suppressing an insurrection in Flanders, the Parisians, in their turn, revolted, and proposed to destroy alike the fortress of the Louvre, and that other fortress, destined five centuries later to fall beneath the first blows of the Revolution. They were counselled, however, by one of their leaders to spare both prison and palace; and the advice was sound, for after quieting the turbulent Flemings, the king returned to Paris more powerful than ever.
In 1399, Andronicus, and in 1400, Manuel Pal�ologus, both Emperors of Constantinople, were entertained at the Louvre, as were also, in 1415, Sigismund, Emperor of Germany, and, in 1422, the King and Queen of England.
When Francis I. ascended the throne, the Louvre regained all its importance as a royal residence. The king began by pulling down the Big Tower, constructed by Philip Augustus, which cast its shadow over the whole of the palace, and gave it the look of a prison. Twelve years later (1539), when the Emperor Charles V. visited Paris, Francis I. determined to receive him, not in the H�tel des Tournelles, where he was living at the time, but in the old palace of the French kings. He undertook various repairs, and covered the crumbling walls with paintings and tapestry. Everything, too, was regilt, "even," says a chronicler, "to the weather-cocks." Finally the space comprised between the river and the moat of the castle was laid out in lists for tournaments.
[Illustration: THE OLD LOUVRE (PIERRE LESCOT'S FA�ADE).]
After spending large sums of money in repairing the Louvre, Francis I. decided to reconstruct it on a new plan, so as to get rid altogether of the irregularity of the old buildings, with their Gothic architecture. The work of reconstructing the Louvre was entrusted to the Italian architect Serlio. But his plan was laid aside in favour of one presented by Pierre Lescot, who, in spite of his French name, was, like Serlio, of Italian origin. He belonged to the Alessi family; and Serlio was so pleased with his designs that he at once pressed the king to accept them. Lescot associated with himself the graceful, ingenious sculptor Jean Goujon, who, like every French artist of the time, had formed his style in Italy; and the Italian sculptor Trebatti, a pupil of Michel Angelo, who possessed more force than belonged to Jean Goujon. To these illustrious men is due the admirable fa�ade of the west in the courtyard of the Louvre.
Great progress was made with the reconstruction of the Louvre under the reign of Henri II., who, while the works were going on at the ancient palace, lived at the H�tel des Tournelles. It was to this residence that he was carried home to die after being mortally wounded by Montgomery, of the Scottish guard, in the fatal tournament of the Place Royale. Henri's successor, Francis II., would not live in a place associated with such a tragic incident, and took up his residence at the Louvre.
The power of Catherine de M�dicis was now beginning to assert itself, and she had the bad taste to interrupt the plans of Pierre Lescot, and to order new constructions of her own designing to be carried out by her own Italian architects. The Louvre was carried forward to the bank of the river; and the Italian painter Romanelli was employed to decorate a new suite of rooms, which became known as the apartments of the queen. The new work, while possessing a beauty of its own, was quite out of harmony with the severer style followed by Pierre Lescot in connection with the old Louvre. At the southern extremity of the wing built by Catherine de M�dicis looks out upon the Seine a window of noble construction, from which, according to popular tradition, Charles IX. amused himself during the massacre of St. Bartholomew by firing on the unhappy Huguenots who were swimming to the other side of the river. Modern historians have, of course, discovered that the window in question did not exist at the time; also that Charles IX. on the day of the massacre was not at the Louvre, but at the H�tel de Bourbon close by. It was possibly from one of the windows of the H�tel de Bourbon that he fired. Henri IV. inhabited the Louvre; and it was there that he expired, mortally wounded by the dagger of Ravaillac. This sovereign had added a new gallery to the wing built by Catherine de M�dicis, and had filled it with paintings by the most celebrated artists of the time. It perished, however, in a fire; and it was to replace it that Louis XIV. constructed what is now known as the Apollo Gallery. Henri IV. was the first moreover to connect the Tuileries with the Louvre, or, at least, to prolong the Tuileries along the Seine in the direction of the Louvre without completing the junction. The son of Henri IV., Louis XIII., continued the work left unfinished by Pierre Lescot; though, as happens with so many architectural continuations, he departed greatly from the original plan.
[Illustration: THE COLONNADE OF THE LOUVRE.]
The "queen's apartments," constructed by Catherine de M�dicis, were successively occupied by Marie de M�dicis and Anne of Austria; and under each reign new decorations and new pictures were added. Particularly admirable was a series of portraits of Queens of France ending with Marie de M�dicis, whose likeness by Porbus was said to be a masterpiece.
Nothing, according to an historian of the time, was spared to make the work perfect; and "although blue was then exceedingly dear, the painter nevertheless spread it over his canvas with so much prodigality that the cost of the colour came to six twenty-crown pieces." In front of the "apartments of the queen," which were furnished with every luxury, was a tastefully laid-out garden which, completely transformed, exists to this day. The "Garden of the Infanta" it is called, in memory of the poor little Infanta of Spain brought to France at the age of four to become the wife of Louis XV. Restricted for some years to the garden in question and the apartments adjoining it, she was afterwards sent back to Spain with a doll worth 20,000 francs, given to her by her late fianc�. The apartments of the queen consisted, according to Sanval, of a guard-room, a large ante-chamber, a sitting-room communicating with two galleries, a reception-room, and a boudoir.
[Illustration: PORTION OF THE FA�ADE OF HENRI IV.'S GALLERY, LOUVRE.]
While occupying himself chiefly with Versailles, his own personal creation, Louis XIV. did not forget Paris and the Louvre. It has been said that he reconstructed the gallery built by Henri IV., which, after the death of that monarch, was destroyed in a fire. The work of reconstruction was entrusted to Louis XIV.'s favourite painter, Lebrun; and the Apollo Gallery, which owes its name to the principal subject of the painter's art, is perhaps the most complete, most perfect monument of the style which prevailed under the "Grand Monarque"; a style which may be wanting in purity of taste, but which, in a decorative point of view, is magnificent.
Colbert, appointed superintendent of royal buildings, was now ordered to complete the Louvre. The first thing to do was to add a fa�ade on the east; by an idea which has since become commonplace, but which was strikingly original at the time, the Minister opened a competition for the best design. The one most admired was the work not of an architect, but of a doctor, Claude Perrault by name. Colbert was delighted with it, but before coming to a decision about a matter of so much importance, he sent to Nicolas Poussin, then at Rome, the designs of all the competitors except Perrault. Poussin sent back all the drawings with severe criticisms, and submitted a plan of his own, which satisfied neither Colbert nor the king. Things had reached this point, and Colbert was about to take upon himself the responsibility of adopting Perrault's design, when he was urged by the Abb� Benedetti and Cardinal Chigi, afterwards Pope Alexander VII., to have recourse to the services of the celebrated Bernini, whose reputation was at that time universal. Thus pressed, Colbert addressed himself to the Duke de Cr�quy, French ambassador at the Pontifical Court, and begged him to see Bernini on the subject. Louis XIV., moreover, wrote himself to Bernini a letter, which made him resolve to visit France.
On his arrival at Paris, Bernini submitted to the king a project which is said to have been "full of grandeur," but which was not put into execution. He was now in delicate health, and the annoyance caused to him by the jealousy of the French artists, vexed at seeing the plans of a foreigner preferred to their own, made him solicit the king's permission to go back to Rome. Louis XIV. gave his consent, and at the same time granted Bernini a pension. Bernini having left Paris, Colbert hesitated no longer. He summoned Claude Perrault and ordered him to begin work at once. The first stone was laid by Louis XIV. with great ceremony, October 17, 1665; and, thanks to the activity of Colbert, the new fa�ade was finished by 1670. This fa�ade, known as the Colonnade of the Louvre, is upwards of 170 metres long, and more than 27 metres high. It may at once be objected to the new fa�ade that, with all its magnificence, it is quite out of harmony with the style adopted in the four fa�ades which form the admirable quadrangle of the Louvre. But whatever may be said against it, Perrault's colonnade is one of the most remarkable conceptions of modern architecture. When first erected, it was looked upon as an unapproachable masterpiece; and it exercised on architecture abroad, as well as at home, a considerable influence which still lasts.
After finishing his colonnade, Perrault tried to bring it into harmony with the earlier portions of the building. But from the year 1680 Louis XIV. occupied himself no more with the Louvre. He thought of nothing but Versailles, which absorbed all, and more than all, the money he had to spare for building purposes. In 1688 Perrault died, and the Louvre was now not only neglected, but forgotten. Then it was remembered only to be turned to base uses. Stables were established in the ancient palace; though, by way of compensation, it must be added that a number of artists and men of learning had lodgings assigned to them in apartments formerly regarded as royal.
Among Louis XIV.'s favourite lodgers may be mentioned the sculptors Girardon, Couston, Stoltz, and Legros; Cornu and Renaudin, famous for their marble vases; the medallist, Du Vivier; the painters Rigaud, Desportes, Coypel, and Claudine Stella; the two Baileys, father and son, keepers of the king's pictures; Bain, celebrated painter in enamel; the engraver Sylvestre, the decorators Lemoine and Meissonnier, who made nearly all the drawings for the festivals and ceremonies of the court; B�rin, celebrated for his theatrical costumes and scenes; the geographer Sanson, the engineer d'Hermand, goldsmiths Balin, Germain, Benier, and Mellin; the clockmakers Turet and Martinot, the gunmakers Renier and Piraube, the metal-worker Revoir, and finally (without mentioning many other men of science, art, and art work) Boule, the world-famed maker of the inlaid furniture invented by him.
This furniture, known in France as meubles de Boule, has, by the way, in some inexplicable manner, got to be known in England as "buhl," and even "b�hl" furniture, though Boule was born at Paris in 1642, and died there in 1732, without apparently having ever lived in Germany. In assigning to Boule a set of apartments in the Louvre, Louis XIV. at the same time appointed him engraver in ordinary of the royal seals. Boule, moreover, was honoured on this occasion with a diploma which gave him the titles of "architect, painter, sculptor in mosaic, artist in furniture, carver, decorator, and inventor of cyphers." In his furniture, Boule employed with great effect woods of different colours, while for his inlaid work he used mother-of-pearl, ivory, gold, brass, bronze, and mosaic. He imitated on his furniture all kinds of animals, flowers, and fruits. He even represented landscapes, hunting scenes, battles, and historical subjects. Besides furniture, Boule applied his art to clocks, casquets, inkstands, and all kinds of arms. He worked much for Versailles and the other royal residences, and received frequent orders from foreign sovereigns.
The meaning, however, of Louis XIV.'s apparent liberality was, from a Versailles point of view, that the Louvre was not worth living in. To provide furnished apartments for the recipients of the king's bounty, it was unfortunately necessary to put up partitions so as to divide and sub-divide the majestic halls of the palace into little sitting-rooms and bed-rooms. The Louvre was now an hotel, or rather a caravanserai, in which everyone made his bed as best pleased him. Worse still, traders were allowed to erect shops and booths in front of the palace, these improvised constructions resting, indeed, on the palace walls. In 1754, under the reign of Louis XV., Marigny, superintendent of fine arts, undertook to remedy this state of things. He succeeded in interesting the king, who not only ordered the space in front of the Louvre to be cleared, but empowered the architect, Gabriel, to complete the edifice. Gabriel continued the unfinished fa�ade, but had made but little progress when Louis XV. died.
When Louis XVI. ascended the throne in 1774 the Louvre was far from being finished; and the first step taken by the new monarch in connection with the old palace was to have the interior quadrangle cleared of the heaps of sand and dust which had accumulated there, some of these heaps forming little mountains which reached the first floor of the building. Louis XVI., after the first years of his reign, had more pressing matters to attend to than the completion of the ancient palace of the Kings of France. His own throne was menaced, and the history of the Louvre as a royal residence was now at an end.
More than one sovereign has left his mark on the walls of the Louvre. The western wing bears the monogram of Louis XIII. and Anne of Austria; also of Louis XIV. and Marie Th�r�se. In the north wing, the letters L. B. are to be seen, signifying Louis de Bourbon, an extremely rare form of the name of Louis XIV. On the south wing, several K's are to be seen, standing for "Karolous," or Charles IX. Look to the east, and the Napoleonic empire is symbolised by several eagles.
The Louvre, as we know it, with its magnificent gallery of pictures open to the whole world, dates only from the Revolution. There were from the time of Francis I. pictures in the old palace, and the collection was constantly increased under his successors. But the galleries were private. They were reserved for the delectation of the sovereign and his court. At the very beginning, however, of the Revolution, the Louvre was literally invaded, and some of the unfinished portions were finished in an unexpected manner by being converted into private dwelling houses. But the Republican Government soon put an end to this; and it was under the Convention that the picture gallery of the Louvre, increased by works of art from other palaces, was for the first time thrown open to the public.
To speak only of the building, it was continued by the Republic, and all but completed by Napoleon, who, after appointing a committee of artists, and receiving from them a report in favour of Pierre Lescot's design, determined, on his own responsibility, to finish the Louvre according to the later design of Claude Perrault.
Napoleon wished, moreover, to join the Louvre to the Tuileries, so as to make of the two palaces one immense palace. Two architects, Percier and Fontaine, were ordered to put this project into form, and they presented their plans to the Minister of Fine Arts in 1813. But the Imperial Government was now near its fall, and it was not during the calamitous retreat from Moscow that architectural projects of any kind could be entertained.
Under the reigns of Louis XVIII. and Charles X. the halls of the Louvre were redecorated. When Louis Philippe came to the throne, M. Thiers, his Minister, laid before the Chambers a proposition for joining the Louvre to the Tuileries at a cost of fourteen million francs. But the Bill was thrown out, and a similar one presented to the Chamber ten years later, in 1843, met with the same fate.
Liberal and even prodigal as the kings of France have often shown themselves in connection with art, they have never given it such effective encouragement as it has received from France's Republican Governments. After the Revolution of 1848, the Provisional Government had not been more than four days in power when, February 28th, it issued a decree ordering the completion of the Louvre under the name of "The People's Palace." A Bill was afterwards passed, on the proposition of the President, General Cavaignac, for restoring the two principal halls of the Louvre, together with the Apollo Gallery. A design from the hand of M. Visconti, in conformity with the decree of February 28th, was now adopted, and this was the one ultimately carried out. But the Assembly hesitated for a time before the expenditure which the execution of the plan would necessarily entail; and its deliberations were put an end to by the coup d'�tat of 1851. Then came the Empire; and in 1854 Napoleon III. ordered the completion of the Louvre, and its junction with the Tuileries. The plan of M. Visconti, adopted by the Republican Government in 1848, was now carried out, and the palace begun by Francis I. was at last, after three centuries, completed by Napoleon III.
[Illustration: TOP OF THE MARSAN PAVILION, LOUVRE.]
Apart from certain incongruities between the different styles adopted, far less apparent to the general public than to the critical architectural eye, and from which no ancient building that has ever been repaired is entirely free, a magnificent line of palaces and gardens now extended for some three-quarters of a mile along the course of the Seine from St. Germain l'Auxerrois to the Place de la Concorde. But the Louvre and the Tuileries now, after so many ineffectual attempts, joined together, were not destined to remain together very long. The Emperor Napoleon was, after the catastrophe of Sedan, to be replaced by the Republican Government of the 4th of September, which was soon to give way to the Commune, under whose abominable rule so many fine buildings, with the Palace of the Tuileries among them, were wantonly sacrificed, and in a spirit of blind hatred burnt down. The conflagration lighted by the Communists had left standing and comparatively uninjured the outer walls, and therefore the general outline of the palace. But these were calmly pulled down by the "moderate" Republicans, less through considerations of art than from political prejudice.
The Louvre subsists in its entirety, and in virtue of its magnificent collection of pictures, constantly enriched through sums voted during the last hundred years by National Assemblies, it has come to be looked upon as public property. The Tuileries, however, was a palace to the last; and the destruction of this palace, which the communards had only partially accomplished, was effectually completed by the "moderate" Republic established on the ruins of its immediate predecessor.
Interesting as the Louvre may be by its ancient history, the old palace is above all famous in the present day for its admirable picture gallery, first thrown open to the public in the darkest, most sanguinary days of the French Revolution. The modern collection was formed by Francis I., who, during his Italian campaigns, had acquired a taste for Italian art, and who not only invited celebrated Italian artists to his court, but gave princely orders to those who, like Raphael and Michel Angelo, were unable to visit France in person. He collected not only pictures, but art works, and especially antiquities of all kinds--statues, bronzes, medals, cameos, vases, and cups. Primatice alone brought to him from Italy 124 ancient statues and a large number of busts. These treasures were collected at Fontainebleau, and a description of them was published long afterwards by Father Dan, who, in his "Wonders of Fontainebleau" (1692), names forty-seven pictures by the greatest masters, nearly all of which had been acquired by Francis I. It was not, indeed, until the reign of Louis XIII. that any important additions were made to Francis I.'s original collection. Among the pictures cited by Father Dan may in particular be mentioned two by Andrea del Sarto, one by Fra Bartolommeo, one by Bordone, four by Leonardo da Vinci, one by Michel Angelo (the Leda, afterwards destroyed), three by Perugino, two by Primatice, four by Raphael, three by Sebastian del Piombo, and one by Titian.
[Illustration: THE MARSAN AND FLORA PAVILIONS, LOUVRE, FROM THE PONT ROYAL.]
The royal gallery was considerably augmented under the reign of Louis XIV. At his accession it included only 200 pictures. At his death the number had been increased to 2,000. Most of the new acquisitions were due to the Minister Colbert, who spared neither money nor pains to enrich the royal gallery, the direction and preservation of which was entrusted to the painter Lebrun.
A banker, Jabach of Cologne, resident at Paris, had purchased a large portion of art treasures collected by King Charles I., and brought them over to Paris. He had bought many pictures, moreover, in various parts of the Continent. Ruined at last by his passion for the fine arts, he sold a portion of his collection to Cardinal Mazarin, and another portion, composed chiefly of drawings, to the king. On Mazarin's death, Colbert bought for Louis XIV. all the works of art left by that Minister, including 546 original pictures, 92 copies, 130 statues, and 196 busts. Louis XIV. placed his collection in the Louvre, and his first visit to the palace after the installation of the pictures is thus described in Le Mercure Galant of December, 1681:--
"On Friday, the 5th day of the month, the king came to the Louvre to see his collection of pictures, which have been placed in a new series of rooms by the side of the superb gallery known as the Apollo Gallery. The gold which glitters on all sides is the least brilliant of its adornments. What is called 'the cabinet of his Majesty's pictures' occupies seven large and lofty halls, some of which are more than 50 feet long. There are, moreover, four additional rooms for the collection in the old H�tel de Grammont adjoining the Louvre. So many pictures in so many rooms make the entire number appear almost infinite. The walls of the highest rooms are covered with pictures up to the ceiling. The following will give some idea of the number of pictures, by the greatest masters, contained in the eleven rooms:--There are sixteen by Raphael, six by Correggio, five by Giulio Romano, ten by Leonardo da Vinci, eight by Giorgione, twenty-three by Titian, sixteen by Carraccio, eight by Domenichino, twelve by Guido, six by Tintoretto, eighteen by Paul Veronese, fourteen by Van Dyck, seventeen by Poussin, and six by M. Lebrun, among whose works there are some (the battles of Alexander) which are 40 feet long. Besides these pictures there are a quantity of others by Rubens, Albano, Antonio Moro, and other masters of equal renown. Apart from the pictures, there are in the old H�tel de Grammont many groups of figures and low reliefs in bronze and ivory."
The royal visit, as described by the writer in La Mercure Galant, was followed by the dispersion of the collection. Louis XIV. was so pleased by the wonderful sight that he ordered a number of the pictures to be removed to Versailles, where, according to the Mercure, there were already twenty-six pictures by the first masters; and so long as Versailles was the royal residence the greater part of the king's collection was lost to the public, and served only to furnish the rooms, except, indeed, when the pictures had fallen to the ground and lay there covered with dust. Under the reign of Louis XIV. a critic whose name is worth preserving, Lafont de St. Yenne, complained that so many beautiful works were allowed to lie heaped up together and buried in "the obscure prison of Versailles," and demanded that all these treasures, "immense but unknown," should be "arranged in becoming order and preserved in the best condition" in a gallery built expressly for their reception in the Louvre, where they would be "exhibited to the admiration and joy of the French or the curiosity of foreigners, or finally to the study and emulation of our young scholars."
The author of these judicious suggestions got into trouble as a pamphleteer; but four years afterwards, in 1750, Louis XIV. allowed the masterpieces previously stowed away in the apartments of the household at Versailles to be taken to Paris and submitted to the admiration of painters and lovers of painting. The Marquis de Marigny, Director of Royal Buildings, ordered Bailly, keeper of the king's pictures, to arrange the collection in the apartments which had been occupied at the Luxembourg by the Queen of Spain. The "cabinet," composed of 110 pictures, was opened for the first time October 14th, 1750, and the public was admitted twice every week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The pictures dedicated by Rubens to Marie de M�dicis were on view the same days, and during the same hours.
Until the reign of Louis XVI. the royal pictures, the number of which had been increased by the purchase of many examples of the Flemish school, continued to be divided into two principal sections, one placed in the Luxembourg, and visible twice a week to the public, the other kept out of sight in the palace of Versailles. The Louvre contained the "king's cabinet of drawings," to the number of about 10,000. The Apollo Gallery, which served as studio to six students patronised by the king, contained "The Battles of Alexander," and some other pictures by Lebrun, Mignard, and Rigaud.
In 1775, under Louis XVI., Count d'Angiviller succeeded the Marquis de Marigny, and going a step beyond him, formed the project of collecting everything of value that the Crown possessed in the way of painting and sculpture. Contemporary writers applauded this idea, which was attributed by some to M. de la Condamine. All, however, that came of the new proposal was that instead of pictures being brought from Versailles to Paris, the Louvre collection was transferred to Versailles.
"It was necessary," writes M. Viardot, "that a new sovereign--the nation--should come into power for all these immortal works rescued from the royal catacombs to be restored to daylight and to life. Who could believe, without authentic proofs, without official documents, at what epoch this great sanctuary, this pantheon, this universal temple consecrated to all the gods of art, was thrown open to the public? It was in the middle of one of the crises of the Revolution in that dreadful year 1793, so full of agitation, suffering, and horror, when France was struggling with the last energy of despair against her enemies within and without; it was at this supreme moment that the National Convention, founding on the ruins of the country a new and rejuvenated land, ordered the formation of a national art collection."
A step in this direction had already been taken in 1791, when it was decreed that the artistic treasures of the nation should be brought together at the Louvre. The year following, August 14th, 1792, the Legislative Assembly appointed a commission for collecting the statues and pictures distributed among the various royal residences; and on the 18th of October in the same year, Roland, Minister of the Interior, wrote to the celebrated painter David, who was a member of the Convention, to communicate to him the plan of the new establishment. Finally, a decree of July 27th, 1793, ordered the opening of the "Museum of the Republic," and at the same time set forth that the "marble statues, vases, and valuable pieces of furniture placed in the houses formerly known as royal, shall be transported to the Louvre, and that the sum of 100,000 francs shall be placed annually at the disposition of the Minister of the Interior to purchase at private sales such pictures and statues as it becomes the Republic not to let pass into foreign hands, and which will be placed in the Museum of the Louvre." It should not be forgotten that France was then at war with all the German Powers, and threatened by all the Powers of Europe. Crushed by military expenditure, the Republic had yet money to spare for the purchase of works of art.
The French Museum, as the Louvre collection was first called, received afterwards the name of Central Museum of the Arts; and it was first opened to the public on the 8th of November, 1793. The next decree in connection with the fine arts ordered that a number of pictures and statues formerly belonging to the palace of Versailles, and which the inhabitants of Versailles were detaining as their property, should be placed in the Louvre. The old palace was still inhabited by a number of artists and their families. David had his studio there, and most of the painters who had made for themselves a tolerable reputation had apartments in the Louvre. It was reserved for Napoleon to turn them all out, and to give to the Louvre the character which it has since preserved--that of a national palace of art treasures.
The galleries of the Louvre profited greatly by the Napoleonic wars. All continental Europe was laid under contribution by the victorious French armies, but especially Italy and Spain.
The stolen pictures formed the best part of what was now called the Mus�e Napol�on. Though not surreptitiously obtained they had been acquired in virtue of conventions imposed on a conquered people. Thus pictures from the galleries of Parma, Piacenza, Milan, Cremona, Modena, and Bologna, were made over to France by the armistices of Parma, Bologna, and Tolentino. The public was admitted to view the conquered treasures on the 6th of February, 1798. Some months afterwards masterpieces from Verona, Mantua, Pesaro, Loretto, and Rome were added to the marvellous collections; which on the 19th of March, 1800, was further augmented by drafts of pictures from Florence and Turin. In 1807 France received the artistic spoils of Germany and Holland.
Among the famous works of art which France at this time possessed, and which were all on exhibition at the Louvre, may be mentioned "The Belvedere Apollo," "The Laocoon," "The Medicean Venus," "The Wrestlers," "The Transformation" and "The Spasimo"; Domenichino's "Communion of St. Jerome," Tintoretto's "Miracle of St. Mark," Paul Veronese's four "Last Suppers," and Titian's "Assumption"; Correggio's "St. Jerome" and Guercino's "St. Petronilla"; "The Lances" of Velasquez, and the "St. Elizabeth" of Murillo; Rubens' "Descent from the Cross," and Rembrandt's "Night Patrol."
The French say with some justice that many of these works by being sent to the Louvre were saved from destruction. Many of them, too, though falling into decay, were restored with the greatest care; and some were transferred with success from worm-eaten panels to canvas, thus receiving new brilliancy and a new life. When Paris was occupied by the allies in 1814, the art treasures of which so many European countries had been despoiled were left in the possession of the French, who may be said on this occasion to have been magnanimously treated. The object, indeed, of the allies was not to weaken nor to humiliate France as a nation, but simply to restore Louis XVIII. to the throne of his ancestors.
In 1815, after the return from Elba and the Waterloo campaign, it was determined to treat France with a certain severity. She was deprived of the Rhine provinces for the benefit of Prussia, while Milan and Venice were placed in the hands of Austria, so that both from the Italian and from the German side France might be held in check. The artistic plunder which France had collected from so many quarters was at the same time given back to the countries from which it had been taken.
French statesmen protested that the pictures and statues brought to Paris from so many foreign picture galleries belonged to France in virtue of formal treaties and conventions; Louis XVIII. himself declined to sanction the restoration of the captured pictures and statues. Denon, Director-General of Museums, resisted even when threatened with imprisonment in a Prussian fortress; and he made the foreign commissaries sign a declaration to the effect that in giving up the works claimed he yielded only to force.
The so-called spoliation of the Louvre was at last effected. The pictures and statues, that is to say, which had been seized by victorious France, were from vanquished France taken back and replaced in the museums to which they had originally belonged.
Since the fall of the First Empire the Louvre has acquired but few masterpieces from abroad. Italy now guards her art treasures with a jealous hand; and there are few countries where the masterpieces of antiquity can be purchased except when some private gallery is broken up through the bankruptcy or death of the owner. Under the new monarchy the beautiful though armless Venus of Milo was brought to France; and under the Second Empire "The Conception" of Murillo was purchased for 615,000 francs. The Third Republic, under the presidency of M. Thiers, spite of its difficulties in connection with the crushing war indemnity, paid 206,000 francs for a fresco by Raphael. The regular annual allowance to the Minister of Fine Arts for the purchase of pictures is now 100,000 francs a year. Meanwhile, the Louvre collection has been constantly augmented by pictures transferred to the more classical museum from the gallery of pictures by living artists in the Luxembourg.
The pictures exhibited at the Louvre are arranged on a system which leaves nothing to be desired. The supreme masterpieces of the collection are all together, without reference to school, nationality, or period, in a large square room known as the Salon Carr�. In the other rooms the pictures are arranged historically.
The principal entrance to the picture galleries of the Louvre is in the Pavilion Moli�re, opposite the square of the Carrousel. After passing a spacious vestibule, where mouldings of Trajan's Column and a fine collection of antique busts may be seen, the visitor ascends a staircase adorned with Etruscan works in terra-cotta and reaches the round hall or cupola of the magnificent Apollo Gallery, decorated with wall paintings and painted ceilings by the courtly Lebrun of Louis XIV.'s time and the vigorous imaginative Eug�ne Delacroix of our own. What can be more admirable than Delacroix's "Nymph," at whose feet crouches a panther? "Behold this work," writes Th�ophile Gautier, "and you will see that for colour France has no longer any reason for envying Italy, Flanders, or Spain. Delacroix, in this great page, in which the energy of his talent is freely displayed, shows a knowledge of decorative art which has never been surpassed. Impossible while never departing from his own genius to be more in harmony with the style of the gallery and of the epoch. One might here call him a florid romantic Lebrun."
The Apollo Gallery leads to the before-mentioned Salon Carr�, where Paul Veronese's "Marriage of Cana" at once attracts attention, not only by its immense proportions, but also and above all by the richness of the colouring and the beauty of the composition. Here, too, is the portrait by Leonardo da Vinci, known in France as "La Joconde"; "a miracle of painting," says Gautier, who has made it the subject of one of his most remarkable criticisms. "'La Joconde,' sphinx of beauty," he exclaims, "smiling so mysteriously in the frame of Leonardo da Vinci, and apparently proposing to the admiration of centuries an enigma which they have not yet solved, an invincible attraction still brings me back towards you. Who, indeed, has not remained for long hours before that head, bathed in the half-tones of twilight, enveloped in transparency; whose features, melodiously drowned in a violet vapour, seem the creation of some dream through the black gauze of sleep? From what planet has fallen in the midst of an azure landscape this strange being whose gaze promises unheard-of delights, whose experience is so divinely ironical? Leonardo impresses on his faces such a stamp of superiority that one feels troubled in their presence. The partial shadow of their deep eyes hides secrets forbidden to the profane; and the inflexions of their mocking lips are worthy of gods who know everything and calmly despise the vulgarities of man. What disturbing fixity, what superhuman sardonicism in these sombre pupils, in these lips undulating like the bow of Love after he has shot his dart. La Joconde would seem to be the Isis of some cryptic religion, who, thinking herself alone, draws aside the folds of her veil, even though the imprudent man who might surprise her should go mad and die. Never did feminine ideal clothe itself in more irresistibly seductive forms. Be sure that if Don Juan had met Monna Lisa he would have spared himself the trouble of writing in his catalogue the names of 3,000 women. He would have embraced one, and the wings of his desire would have refused to carry him further. They would have melted and lost their feathers beneath the black sun of these eyes."
[Illustration: THE RICHELIEU PAVILION.]
Leonardo da Vinci is said to have been four years painting this portrait, which he could not make up his mind to leave and which he never looked upon as finished. During the sittings musicians played choice pieces in order to entertain the beautiful model, and to prevent her charming features from assuming an expression of wearisomeness or fatigue.
Raphael is represented in the Salon Carr� by "St. Michael and the Demon," painted on a panel framed in ebony. This admirable work is signed not in the corner of the picture, but on the edge of the archangel's dress. "Rapha�l Urbinas pingebat, M.D. XVIII." runs the inscription, which Raphael seems to have wished to make inseparable from the work. Among the other pictures of Raphael chosen for places of honour in the Square Room are "The Holy Family," which originally belonged to Francis I., and the virgin known as "La Belle Jardini�re. Among the other masterpieces contained in the Salon Carr� may be mentioned Correggio's "Antiope," Titian's "Christ in the Tomb," Giorgione's "Country Concert," Guido's "Rape of Dejanira," Rembrandt's "Carpenter's Family," Van Ostade's "Schoolmaster," Gerard Douw's "Dropsical Woman," Rubens' Portrait of his Wife, a "Charles I." by Van Dyck, and Murillo's "Conception of the Virgin." This last-named work, as already mentioned, was purchased under the Second Empire for upwards of 600,000 francs. It formed part of a valuable collection of Spanish pictures belonging to Marshal Soult, and had been acquired by that commander under peculiar circumstances during the Peninsular War. A certain monk had been sentenced to death as a spy. Two monks from the same monastery waited upon the marshal to solicit their brother's forgiveness. Soult was obdurate, until at last Murillo's wonderful picture was placed before him. The picture was forwarded to France, and the too patriotic monk set free. Among the selected works by Italian, Dutch, Flemish, and Spanish painters are to be found a few by French artists--for example, the "Diogenes" of Poussin and the "Richelieu" of Philippe de Champagne; but not one work by an English hand. Nor in the famous Salon Carr� of the Louvre is a single landscape to be found.
The Tuileries, before incendiarism under the Commune rendered it a very imperfect building, had as a palace led a very imperfect life. Catherine de M�dicis had ordered the destruction of the Palais des Tournelles, where, by a fatal accident Montgomery had pierced the eye and brain of Henri II. in the celebrated tournament, and had gone to live with her children at the Louvre. These children were Francis II., the husband of Marie Stuart; Charles IX., whose memory, like that of his mother, is indelibly associated with the massacre of St. Bartholomew; Henri III., who for his sins was elected King of Poland; and Francis d'Anjou, who gained the famous battle of Jarnac, and who on his death was succeeded by Henri IV., first King of France and of Navarre. The ancient fortress of the Louvre was not suited to the pomp of a M�dicis, and Catherine ordered a new palace to be built for her own special convenience in the Tuileries, or tile yards, where the mother of Francis I. had bought a country house, but where Francis I. would never reside, preferring to his Parisian residence the castles of Fontainebleau, Amboise, and Chambord.
According to the plan of Philibert Delorme, the new Palace of the Tuileries was to be a true palace of the French kings, with a royal fa�ade, the most beautiful gardens, and the most magnificent courtyards. Philibert Delorme never got beyond the fa�ade, which, however, was enough to stamp him as an architect of the first order. Henri IV.--or rather Androuet Ducerceaux acting upon his orders--continued the work of Philibert Delorme. Ducerceaux made many changes, and among others constructed a dome where Philibert Delorme had meant only to build a cupola.
Who, meanwhile, was to live at the Tuileries? It was a royal palace, but not the palace of the French kings. Valois did not live there, Catherine de M�dicis gave magnificent entertainments at the Tuileries, but held her Court at the Louvre. Nor did Henri IV. reside at the Tuileries. His private apartments, decorated by the genius of Pierre Lescot, were at the Louvre, from which Paris could be better observed. Henri's widow, Marie de M�dicis, mourned for her generally excellent though not too faithful husband in the Luxembourg Palace. When Richelieu came to power and worked out the problem of the unity of France, he built the Palais Cardinal, but took no thought of the Tuileries. His eyes were fixed on the Louvre, where Louis XIII. was domiciled. Louis XIV. passed no more time at the Tuileries than any of his predecessors. His mother, Anne of Austria, established her regency at the Palais Cardinal, soon to become the Palais Royal; and all idea of completing the Tuileries seemed to have been given up, when in 1660, under Louis XIV., then twenty-two years of age, the architects Levan and Dorbay were ordered to resume the work of Philibert Delorme and Ducerceaux--the work begun by Catherine, continued by Louis XIV.'s grandfather, Henri IV., and abandoned by his father, Louis XIII. The Palace of the Tuileries having at last been completed, it became the residence simply of Mlle. de Montpensier. From time to time Louis XIV. visited the place, but only to make it the scene of some occasional entertainment. His favourite abode was always Versailles.
While the Regent was at the Palais Royal, the youthful Louis XV. lived at the Tuileries. But as soon as he could walk alone, Louis le bien aim�, as he was afterwards to be called, hastened to Versailles; and the Tuileries Palace of strange destinies was now occupied by the French Opera Company. It became the Paris Opera House, the Acad�mie Royale de Musique--to give the establishment its official title--whose theatre at the Palais Royal had been burnt down. In 1720 the Opera was replaced at the Tuileries by the Com�die Fran�aise. To Lulli succeeded Corneille and to Rameau Voltaire.
One of the most interesting celebrations ever witnessed at the Tuileries was the crowning of Voltaire on the 30th of March, 1778, after a representation of his tragedy Ir�ne. "Never," wrote Grimm, the chronicler, in reference to this performance, "was a piece worse acted, more applauded, and less listened to. The entire audience was absorbed in the contemplation of Voltaire, the representative man of the eighteenth century; philosopher of the people, who could justly say, 'J'ai fait plus dans mon temps que Luther et Calvin.'" Voltaire had but recently left Ferney to return to France, which he had not seen for twenty-seven years. Deputations from the Academy and from the Th��tre Fran�ais were sent to receive him, and on his arrival he was waited upon by men and women of the highest distinction, whether by birth or by talent. After the performance of Ir�ne, he was carried home in triumph.
"You are smothering me with roses," cried the old poet, intoxicated with his own glory. The emotion, the fatigue, caused by the interesting ceremony, had indeed an injurious effect upon his health, and hastened his death, concerning which so many contradictory stories have been told. That he begged the cur� of St. Sulpice to let him "die in peace" is beyond doubt; and that he died unreconciled to the Church, whose bigotry and persecution he had so persistently attacked, is sufficiently shown by the fact that, equally with Moli�re (though the great comedy writer had in his last moments demanded and received religious consolation), he was refused Christian burial. His nephew, the Abb� Mignot, had the corpse carried to his abbey of Scelli�res, where it remained until, under the Revolution, it was borne in triumph to the Panth�on.
Eleven years after the crowning of Voltaire at the Tuileries, Louis XVI. arrived there from Versailles, where he had fraternised with the people, only to find that he was no longer a king. On the 19th of October, 1789, three months after the taking of the Bastille, the National Assembly had waited in a body upon the king and queen, when the president, still loyal, said to Marie Antoinette: "The National Assembly, madame, would feel genuine satisfaction could it see for one moment in your arms the illustrious child whom the inhabitants of the capital will henceforth regard as their fellow-citizen, the offshoot of so many princes tenderly beloved by their people, the heir of Louis IX., of Henri IV., and of him whose virtues constitute the hope of France." The queen replied, "Here is my son;" and Marie Antoinette, taking the young Louis in her arms, carried him into the room occupied by the Assembly.
On the 26th of May, 1791, Barr�re said to this same Assembly: "The first things to be reserved for the king are the Louvre and the Tuileries, monuments of grandeur and of indigence, whose plan, whose fa�ades, are due to the genius of art, but whose completion has been neglected or rather forgotten by the wasteful carelessness of a few kings. Each generation expected to see this monument, worthy of Athens and of Rome, at last finished; but our kings, fearing the gaze of the people, went far from the capital to surround themselves with luxury, courtiers, and soldiers. It is characteristic of despotism to shut itself up in the midst of Asiatic luxury, as formerly divinities were placed in the depths of temples and of forests, in order to strike more surely the imagination of men. A great revolution was needed to bring back the people to liberty, and kings to the midst of their people. This revolution has been accomplished, and the King of the French will henceforth have his constant abode in the capital of the empire. This is our project. The Tuileries and the Louvre shall together form the National Palace destined for the habitation of the king."
Thereupon the Assembly decreed: "The Louvre and the Tuileries joined together shall be the National Palace destined for the habitation of the king, and for the collection of all our monuments of science and art, and for the principal establishments of public instruction."
[Illustration: THE TUILERIES IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.]
[Illustration: THE TERRACE, TUILERIES GARDENS.]
[Illustration: THE TUILERIES GARDENS.]
The position of the king at this time is well described by Arthur Young:--
"After breakfast," he writes in diary form, "walk in the gardens of the Tuileries, where there is the most extraordinary sight that either French or English eyes could ever behold at Paris. The king, walking with six Grenadiers of the milice bourgeoise, with an officer or two of his household, and a page. The doors of the gardens are kept shut in respect to him in order to exclude everybody but deputies or those who have admission tickets. When he entered the palace, the doors of the gardens were thrown open for all without distinction, though the queen was still walking with a lady of her court. She also was attended so closely by the gardes bourgeoises that she could not speak but in a low voice without being heard by them. A mob followed her, talking very loud, and paying no other apparent respect than that of taking off their hats whenever she passed, which was, indeed, more than I expected. Her Majesty does not appear to be in health; she seems to be much affected and shows it in her face; but the king is as plump as ease can render him. By his orders there is a little garden railed off for the Dauphin to amuse himself in and a small room is built in it to retire to in case of rain; here he was at work with his little hoe and rake, but not without a guard of two Grenadiers. He is a very pretty, good-natured looking boy, five or six years old, with an agreeable countenance; wherever he goes all hats are taken off to him, which I was glad to observe. All the family being thus kept close prisoners (for such they are in effect) afford at first view a shocking spectacle, and is really so if the act were not absolutely necessary to effect the revolution. This I conceive to be impossible; but if it were necessary no one can blame the people for taking every measure possible to secure that liberty they had seized in the violence of a revolution. At such a moment nothing is to be condemned but what endangers the national freedom. I must, however, freely own that I have my doubts whether this treatment of the royal family can be justly esteemed any security to liberty; or on the contrary, whether it was not a very dangerous step that exposes to hazard whatever had been gained. I have spoken with several persons to-day and started objections to the present system, stronger even than they appear to me, in order to learn their sentiments, and it is evident they are at the present moment under an apprehension of an attempt toward a counter revolution. The danger of it very much, if not absolutely, results from the violence which has been used towards the royal family. The National Assembly was before that period answerable only for the permanent constitutional laws passed for the future; since that moment it is equally answerable for the whole conduct of the government of the State, executive as well as legislative. This critical situation has made a constant spirit of exertion necessary amongst the Paris militia. The great object of M. La Fayette and the other military leaders is to improve their discipline and to bring them into such a form as to allow a rational dependence on them in case of their being wanted in the field; but such is the spirit of freedom that even in the military, there is so little subordination that a man is an officer to-day and in the ranks to-morrow; a mode of proceeding that makes it the more difficult to bring them to the point their leaders see necessary. Eight thousand men in Paris may be called the standing army, paid every day 15 fr. a man; in which number is included the corps of the French Guards from Versailles that deserted to the people; they have also 800 horses at an expense each of 1,500 livres a year, and the officers have double the pay of those in the army."
If the people and the popular leaders were in constant fear of a counter revolution, the king on his side had had enough of royalty, and on the first opportunity fled from his subjects. The flight of the royal family, as is plainly shown by the correspondence of Marie Antoinette and by other authentic documents, had been concerted beforehand with the foreign Powers. This course was dictated by the most obvious considerations of personal safety. But all idea of an understanding with the "foreigner" was repudiated in the most solemn manner by the king. What the revolutionary Government resented was less the king's desire to escape from a country where he had not only ceased to rule, but where his position was getting from day to day more precarious, than his apparent intention of making himself as soon as he had crossed the frontier the centre and support of a counter revolution.
As the moment of departure approached, the king and queen renewed with increased energy protestations of their adhesion to the Constitution. At the same time the queen was writing to her brother Leopold, May 22nd, 1791: "We are to start for Montm�dy. M. de Bouill� will see to the ammunition and troops which are to be collected at this place, but he earnestly desires that you will order a body of troops of from 8,000 to 10,000 to be ready at Luxembourg and at our orders (it being quite understood that they will not be wanted until we are in a position of safety) to enter France both to serve as example to our troops and if necessary to restrain them."
On the 1st of June, after reiterating her demand for 8,000 or 10,000 troops at Luxembourg, close to the French frontier, she added: "The king as soon as he is safe and free will see with gratitude and joy the union of the Powers to assert the justice of his cause." The plan, concerted with the Austrian ambassador at Paris, who had been the queen's adviser, was first to place the royal family in safety beyond the French frontier, and then to act against France with an army of invasion aided within the country by a Royalist insurrection.
It was at the same time understood that the Austrian Emperor and the German princes were not to give their aid gratuitously. They were to be recompensed by a "rectification" of the northern and eastern frontiers of France to their advantage. Troops were promised to Marie Antoinette by her brother Leopold, not only from Austria and various German States but also from Sardinia, Switzerland, and even Prussia.
It was the popular belief at the time that Queen Marie Antoinette had determined to do some dreadful injury to Paris and other French cities; to blow them up, for instance, with gunpowder or by some secret means. At a village near Clermont in the Puy de D�me, Arthur Young wished to see some famous springs; and the guide he had engaged being unable to render him useful assistance he took a woman to conduct him, when she was arrested by the garde bourgeoise for having without permission become the guide of a stranger.
"She was conducted," writes Young, "to a heap of stones they call the Ch�teau. They told me they had nothing to do with me; but as to the woman, she should be taught more prudence for the future. As the poor devil was in jeopardy on my account, I determined at once to accompany them for the chance of getting her cleared by attesting her innocence. We were followed by a mob of all the village with the woman's children crying bitterly for fear their mother should be imprisoned. At the castle we waited some time, and we were then shown into another apartment, where the town committee was assembled; the accusation was heard, and it was wisely remarked by all that in such dangerous times as these, when all the world knew that so great and powerful a person as the queen was conspiring against France in the most alarming manner, for a woman to become the conductor of a stranger, and of a stranger who had been making so many suspicious inquiries as I had, was a high offence. It was immediately agreed that she ought to be imprisoned. I assured them she was perfectly innocent; for it was impossible that any guilty motive should be her inducement. Finding me curious to see the springs, having viewed the lower ones, and wanting a guide for seeing those higher in the mountains, she offered herself; that she certainly had no other than the industrious view of getting a few sous for her poor family. They then turned their inquiries against myself--that, if I wanted to see springs only, what induced me to ask a multitude of questions concerning the price, value, and product of the land? What had such inquiries to do with springs and volcanoes? I told them that cultivating some land in England rendered such things interesting to me personally; and lastly, that if they would send to Clermont they might know from several respectable persons the truth of all I asserted; and, therefore, I hoped, as it was the woman's first indiscretion, for I could not call it offence, they would dismiss her. This was refused at first, and assented to at last, on my declaring that if they imprisoned her they should do the same by me and answer it as they could. They consented to let her go with a reprimand, and I started--not marvelling, for I have done with that--at their ignorance in imagining that the queen should conspire so dangerously against their rocks and mountains. I found my guide in the midst of the mob, who had been very busy in putting so many questions about me as I had done about their crops."
Such indeed was the general feeling against the king and queen, that, apart from other powerful motives, they had soon no alternative but to seek safety in flight. One of the principal agents in their escape was Count de Fersen, formerly colonel of the regiment of Royal Su�dois. He was to drive the coach containing the king and queen. Marie Antoinette was to play the part of a governess, Mme. Rochet, in the service of an imaginary Russian lady, Baroness de Korff, impersonated by Mme. de Tourzel, actually governess to Marie Antoinette's children. As for the king, disguised in livery, he was to pass as the Russian lady's valet. The royal family was at this time confined more or less strictly to the Tuileries; and La Fayette, under whose command the troops on guard at the palace had been placed, had probably eyed with suspicion certain preparations made by the queen as if in view of a speedy departure.
[Illustration: LION IN THE TUILERIES GARDENS.
(By Cain.)]
M. de Bouill�, who commanded at Metz, had orders to occupy the high road with detachments of troops as far as Ch�lons. During the night of the 20th of June, 1791, the royal family escaped from the Tuileries, reached La Villette, where Colonel de Fersen with a travelling carriage awaited them, and drove off towards Bondy, whence they were to make first for Ch�lons, and then for Montm�dy, a frontier town. The next morning Paris woke up without a king. La Fayette, who had been wanting in vigilance, defended himself as best he could. An alarm gun was fired from the Pont Neuf to warn the citizens that the country was in the greatest danger, for it was quite understood that the passage of the frontier by the king and queen would be the signal for a foreign invasion. The National Assembly met, and at once took into its hands the supreme direction of affairs.
"This is our king!" said the Republicans; and Louis, by his flight, had in fact ceased to reign. Before leaving the Tuileries Louis XVI. had placed in the hands of La Porte, intendant of the civil list, a protest against the manner in which he had been treated, which was duly laid before the Assembly. Meanwhile, he had arrived at St. M�n�hould without accident, where he found himself protected by a detachment of dragoons which had arrived the night before. Here, however, his misfortunes began, for he was at once recognised by Drouet, a retired soldier now acting as postmaster. Called upon for horses, the young man could have no doubt but that the royal personages who required them were bound for the frontier, and he resolved to prevent their escape from France. With the dragoons in occupation of the village he could not refuse to supply horses; and the carriage which bore Louis and his fortunes, now approaching the end of its critical journey, went off in an easterly direction. Scarcely had the post chaise departed when Drouet, aided by a friend named Guillaume, also a retired soldier, called out by beat of drum the local national guard, and ordered it to prevent the dragoons from leaving the village. He then, together with Guillaume, galloped after the royal carriage, followed by a sub-officer of dragoons named Lagache, who, escaping from St. M�n�hould, had resolved to catch them up, and, if possible, kill them. Riding along, Drouet learned that the carriage had taken the road to Varennes, a town which has twice played an important part in the history of France, for it was here, seventy-nine years later, that the King of Prussia established his head-quarters on the eve of the battle of Sedan.
[Illustration: THE CHESTNUTS OF THE TUILERIES.]
By crossing a wood Drouet and Guillaume succeeded in getting to Varennes a trifle sooner than the royal carriage. Passing, at no great pace, the lumbering vehicle just as it was approaching the town, they at once made for the bridge on the other side of Varennes, which, as old soldiers, they saw the necessity of blocking, for beyond it, on the other side of the river Aire, they had discovered the presence of a detachment of cavalry under the command of a German officer, who, losing his head, took to flight. The energetic Drouet had already waked up the town, and, in particular, the principal officials, such as the Mayor, the Procureur of the Commune, &c. The population answered to Drouet's call, and soon a small body of armed men was on foot.
[Illustration: LOUIS XVI. STOPPED AT VARENNES BY DROUET.]
The fugitives were bound for the H�tel du Grand Monarque. At this hotel a tradition is preserved which was communicated to the present writer by the proprietress, Mme. Gauthier, just before the battle of Sedan. Dinner was prepared there for Louis XVI. eight days running; from which it would appear that he was trying to escape from the Tuileries for eight days before he at last succeeded in getting away unobserved. The eighth, like all the preceding dinners cooked for the unfortunate king at the H�tel du Grand Monarque, was destined to remain uneaten. It was now late at night, and when the royal carriage entered the town, it was surrounded in the darkness by a number of armed men, who asked for passports, and showed by their attitude that they had no intention of allowing the occupants of the vehicle to proceed any further. Emissaries from Varennes had been despatched in all haste to the surrounding villages and nearest towns to call out the national guard. The son of M. de Bouill� had meantime quitted the cavalry outside Varennes, and ridden towards Metz to inform the governor, his father, of the arrival of the fugitives. But when the commandant arrived outside Varennes with an entire regiment of cavalry, the town was occupied by 10,000 infantry, and all the approaches guarded in such a manner that it was impossible for de Bouill�'s regiment to act.
The Procureur, to whose house the royal family had been taken, informed the king in the early morning that he was recognised. A crowd, which had gathered before the house, called for him by name, and when Louis showed himself at the window he understood from the attitude of the mob that though he was saluted here and there with cries of "Vive le Roi!" there was an end to his project of reaching the frontier. At six o'clock couriers arrived from Paris with a decree from the Assembly ordering the king's arrest; and at eight o'clock on the morning of the 22nd of June, 1791, the royal family started under escort for the capital. They were surrounded at the moment of departure by an immense mob, a portion of which followed them for some distance along the road. At Epernay the commissaries appointed by the Assembly, MM. P�tion and Barnave, were waiting to take the direction of the cortege. On being questioned the king declared that he had never intended to leave the kingdom, and that his object in retiring to Montm�dy had been to study the new Constitution at his ease, so that, with a clear conscience, he might be able to accept it. Barnave and P�tion got into the royal carriage as if to prevent all possibility of escape. Louis was treated with all the respect due to a royal captive, but his position was that of a prisoner. Reaching Paris three days after his departure from Varennes, he was received by the people with the greatest coldness. On the walls of the streets through which he passed, these words had been inscribed: "Whoever applauds Louis XVI. will be beaten; whoever insults him will be hanged." To avoid the popular thoroughfares, the Tuileries was approached by way of the Champs �lys�es, and once more Louis took up his abode in the ancient palace of the French kings.
Differences between Louis XVI. and the Assembly, which, from "Constituent" had become "Legislative," now suddenly occurred; and at the beginning of 1792 the Jacobin Rhul complained from the tribune that the king had treated with disrespect certain commissaries of the Assembly who had waited upon him. On the 25th of July of the same year the king was accused in the Chamber of collecting arms at the Tuileries. National guards, it was said, went in armed and came out unarmed; and it was declared to be unsafe for the National Assembly to have an arsenal of this kind in its immediate neighbourhood. Accordingly, the Assembly decreed that the terrace of the Tuileries gardens must be regarded as its property, and be placed beneath the care of the Assembly's own police. The king objected, naturally enough, to the gardens of his palace being thus interfered with. "The nation," said one of the deputies, "lodges the king at the Palace of the Tuileries, but I read nowhere that it has given him the exclusive enjoyment of the gardens." Some days afterwards the same deputy, Kersaint by name, said from the tribune: "The Assembly having thrown open one of the terraces of the Tuileries gardens, the king, who does not think fit to render the rest of the gardens accessible to the public, has lined the terrace with a hedge of grenadiers."
Chabot called the garden of the Tuileries "a second Coblentz," in reference to the German fortified town where the allied sovereigns, who were plotting against the Revolution, had their head-quarters. On the 19th of August a journeyman painter named Bougneux sent word to the Assembly that there had recently been constructed in the Palace of the Tuileries several masked cupboards. Three months afterwards Roland brought to the Convention the papers of the famous iron cupboard. "They were concealed," he said, "in such a place, in such a manner, that unless the only person in Paris who knew the secret had given information it would have been impossible to discover them. They were behind a panel," he continued, "let into the wall and closed in by an iron door." The members of the Mountain, as the extreme party occupying the highest seats in the legislative chamber were called, accused Roland of having opened the metallic cupboard in order to make away with the papers of a compromising character for his friends the Girondists. In revolutionary times a good action may be as compromising as a bad one. Brissot proposed about this time that the meetings of the Convention should be held at the Tuileries. Vergniaud had preferred the Madeleine. "Not," he said, "in either case, that liberty has need of luxury. Sparta will live as long as Athens in the memory of nations; the tennis court as long as the palaces of Versailles and of the Tuileries. The external architecture of the Madeleine is most imposing. It may be looked upon as a monument worthy of liberty, and of the French nation." It need scarcely be explained that at the jeu de paume, or tennis court, the first revolutionary meetings were held.
"At the Tuileries," said Brussonnet, "there is a finer hall; and the greater the questions which the National Assembly will have to treat the greater must be the number of hearers and spectators." It was at last decreed that the Minister of the Interior should order the preparation at the Tuileries of a suitable hall for the debates of the National Convention; and with that object a sum of 300,000 francs was voted.
On the 4th of September, 1793, Chaumette, in the name of the Paris commune, appeared at the bar of the Convention, then presided over by Robespierre, and spoke as follows: "We demand that all the public gardens be cultivated in a useful manner. We beg you to look for a moment at the immense garden of the Tuileries. The eyes of republicans will rest with more pleasure on this former domain of the crown when it is turned to some good account. Would it not be better to grow plants in view of the hospitals, than to let the grounds be filled with statues, fleurs de lis, and other objects which serve no purpose but to minister to the luxury and the pride of kings?" Dussaulx added with a smile: "I demand that the Champs �lys�es be given up at the same time as the gardens of the Tuileries to useful cultivation." It was at the Tuileries that the Committee of Public Safety held its meetings: that irresponsible body which struck so many and such sanguinary blows at the accomplices, real or imaginary, of invasion from abroad, and of insurrection at home. In the Tuileries gardens took place the festival of the Supreme Being, when proclamation was solemnly made, under the authority of Robespierre, that the French people believed in God and the immortality of the soul. "People of France," cried Robespierre, between two executions, "let us to-day give ourselves up to the transports of pure unmingled joy. To-morrow we must return to our progress against tyranny and crime." To Robespierre's passionate declamation succeeded solemn music, composed by M�hul. Soon afterwards Tallien, inspired to an act of daring by the news that the woman he loved and afterwards married had been condemned to death, denounced Robespierre; and it was at the Tuileries that the Reign of Terror, like so many other reigns, came to an end.
On the 1st of February, 1800, Bonaparte took possession of the Tuileries, with his wife Jos�phine. In 1814 he quitted the ancient palace with Marie Louise. The Tuileries was now on the point of being occupied by foreigners. "When I returned to Paris," writes Mme. de Sta�l, "Germans, Russians, Cossacks, Baskirs, were to be seen on all sides. Was I in Germany or in Russia? Had Paris been destroyed and something like it raised up with a new population? I was all confusion. In spite of the pain I felt I was grateful to the foreigners for having shaken off our yoke. But to see them in possession of Paris! to see them occupying the Tuileries!"
Louis XVIII. and Charles X. both reigned at the Tuileries. But in July, 1830, the Revolution once more took possession of the palace; and in 1848, after the flight of Louis Philippe, the mob again ruled for a time in the home of the French kings. In 1848 the Provisional Government converted the Tuileries into an asylum for civilians. But the conversion was made only on paper, and in 1852 the Tuileries became for the second time an imperial palace--the palace of Napoleon III. The fate of the historical structure was, as everyone knows, to be burnt by the Communards. It was on the 24th of May, 1871, when the Versailles troops were already in the Champs �lys�es, that the central dome of the palace, the wings, the whole building in short, was seen to be in flames. The new portions of the palace alone refused to burn. Then, in their rage, the incendiaries had recourse to gunpowder, and during the night a formidable explosion was heard. The troops of the Commune, commanded by the well-known General Bergeret, had retired some hours before. Bergeret, however, was not responsible for the incendiarism; and the person afterwards tried for it and condemned to hard labour for life (in commutation of the death punishment to which he was first sentenced) was a certain Benoit, formerly a private in the line, then, during the siege, a lieutenant in the National Guard, and finally colonel under the Commune.
[Illustration: THE ROYAL FAMILY AT VARENNES.]
The gardens of the Tuileries are now more than ever open to the reproach brought against them by the men of the Revolution, who objected to statues adorning its terraces and walls, and wished its works of art to be replaced by lettuces and cabbages. All the greatest sculptors of France are represented in the Tuileries gardens, which also contain many admirable reproductions of ancient statues and groups.
There is one interesting walk in the Tuileries gardens which is the favourite resort of children. Here it was, in the so-called petite Provence, that the children's stamp exchange was established, against which the authorities found it necessary to take severe steps. The young people have since contented themselves with balls, balloons, and other innocent amusements. There is a Th��tre Guignol, moreover, a sort of Punch and Judy, in the middle of the old gardens; and from the beginning of April to the middle of October a military band plays every day. It is impossible to leave the Tuileries gardens without mentioning its famous chestnut tree--the chestnut tree, as it is called, "of the 20th of March," because in 1814 it blossomed on that very day as if to celebrate Napoleon's return from Elba. But the old chestnut tree had a reputation of its own long before the imperial era. More than a hundred years ago the painter Vien, at that time pupil of the French School, was accused of having assassinated a rival who had competed with him for a prize. He was about to be arrested when he proved that at the very hour when the crime must have been committed he was tranquilly seated beneath the future "chestnut tree of the 20th of March," which was distinguished just then from all the other trees in the garden by being alone in flower. This picturesque alibi saved his life.
[Illustration: MONUMENT TO GAMBETTA, PLACE DU CARROUSEL.]
Outside the remains of the Tuileries was erected, on the Place du Carrousel, in 1888, a monument to Gambetta. The design as a whole has been unfavourably criticised, but the figure of the orator himself, represented in the act of declamation, is bold and striking, and full of character.
The Champs �lys�es--The �lys�e Palace--Longchamp--The Bois de Boulogne--The Ch�teau de Madrid--The Ch�teau de la Muette--The Place de l'�toile.
Before entering the Champs �lys�es, the greatest pleasure thoroughfare in Paris, next to, if not before, the line of boulevards, a brief examination of the frontiers, as approached from the Place de la Concorde, may be advisable. This region of the capital was for a long time one of those marshes by which ancient Paris, the Lutetia of the Romans, was enclosed like a fortress. Then it became cultivable land and passed into the hands of market gardeners, who grew their vegetables in fields by no means "elysian," until the latter part of the reign of Louis XV.
The ancient marsh was bounded on one side by the Seine, on the other by the Faubourg St. Honor�, which in the eighteenth century was already a favourite locality for mansions of the nobility. The market gardens, more fertile, perhaps, by reason of their marshy origin, were traversed by the Chemin du Roule--so named from the slope called rotulus, in the days of Lutetia, of which the culminating point is now marked by the Triumphal Arch.
At the entrance to the Champs �lys�es stands the celebrated marble group known as the Horses of Marly; and close to the entrance is the garden of the �lys�e Palace (�lys�e Bourbon, to call it by its historical name), whose principal gates open into the Rue du Faubourg St. Honor�. Built in 1718 by the architect Mollet on a portion of the St. Honor� marshes which had been given by the Regent to Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, Count of Evreux, the �lys�e Palace passed in 1745 from the count's heirs to Madame de Pompadour. Her brother, the Marquis de Marigny, inherited it from her, and, holding the appointment of Inspector and Director of Royal Buildings, he embellished the palace and made great improvements in that portion of the neighbourhood known to-day as the Champs �lys�es. It was now only that the mansion, called successively H�tel d'Evreux, H�tel de Pompadour, and H�tel de Marigny, received the name of �lys�e.
Towards the period of the Revolution, in 1786, the �lys�e Palace was purchased by the king, and, according to the terms of a royal decree, was to be reserved for the use of princes and princesses visiting the French capital as well as ambassadors charged with special missions. Almost immediately afterwards, however, the structure was bought by the Duchess of Bourbon, when �lys�e Bourbon became its recognised name.
This very appellation was enough to condemn it in the days of the Revolution; and the Duchess of Bourbon having migrated, her property was seized and confiscated. Sold by auction, it was acquired by Mlle. Hovyn, who seven years later ceded it to Murat; and Murat, on leaving Paris to assume the crown of Naples, presented it to the emperor.
Napoleon accepted the gift and took a fancy to his new edifice. He often resided there; and after the defeat of Waterloo it was at the �lys�e that he signed his abdication in favour of his son.
In 1814 and 1815 the �lys�e was temporarily occupied by Alexander I. of Russia. At the Restoration, the Duchess of Bourbon, returning to France, claimed her property. Her rights were recognised, but she was prevailed upon to accept, in lieu of the �lys�e, the H�tel de Monaco in the Rue de Varennes, which she left by will to the Princess Adelaide of Orleans, sister of Louis Philippe.
Under the Restoration, it was at the �lys�e, now called once more �lys�e Bourbon, that the Duke and Duchess of Berry resided until 1820, when, after the assassination of the duke, the duchess felt unable to live there any longer.
The duke and duchess were the last permanent tenants of the �lys�e, which under the reign of Louis Philippe was utilised, in accordance with the intentions of Louis XVI., as a resting-place for royal guests, or guests of the first importance. In its new character it received Mahomet Ali Pasha of Egypt, and Queen Christina of Spain.
After the 10th of December, 1848, Prince Louis Napoleon, elected President of the Republic, had the �lys�e assigned to him as his official place of residence. It was here that the coup d'�tat of the 2nd of December, 1851, was planned and plotted by the Prince-President, and the Count de Morny, his minister, confidant, and guide, General St. Arnaud, and other accomplices. On proclaiming himself Emperor, Napoleon III. gave up possession of the �lys�e, and removed to the more regal, more imperial palace of the Tuileries; the �lys�e, being now once more set apart for foreign potentates and other grandees visiting Paris. Under the Second Empire Queen Victoria, the Sultan Abdul Aziz, and the Emperor Alexander II. of Russia, were successively received there.
Since the establishment of the Third Republic the �lys�e has been made the official residence of the President; and it has been inhabited, one after the other, by M. Thiers, Marshal MacMahon, M. Gr�vy, and M. Carnot.
It has been said that the �lys�e Palace stands between the Rue du Faubourg St. Honor� and the Champs �lys�es, with its principal entrance in the street. Between these two thoroughfares stood the ancient Village du Roule, which possessed, as far back as the thirteenth century, an asylum for lepers with a chapel attached to it. This chapel was in 1699 elevated to the rank of parish church, under the invocation of St. Philip. Being now too small it was pulled down; and in place of it was built the present church of St. Philippe du Roule, which underwent a partial transformation in 1845 and 1846.
The principal avenue of the Champs �lys�es was planted with trees in 1723; but it was not until the reign of Louis XVI. that the Champs �lys�es, or rather that portion of the avenue known as Longchamp, became a haunt of fashion.
The so-called promenade of Longchamp was, towards the end of the eighteenth century, frequented by the most aristocratic society. Gradually after the Revolution it got to be a more miscellaneous resort, to become ultimately, in modern times, a sort of show ground for fashionable milliners and dressmakers, hatters and tailors. The Abbey of Longchamp, whence the promenade derived its name, was founded as a convent in the thirteenth century by Isabelle of France, sister of Louis IX., and pulled down at the time of the Revolution. It was situated close to the Bois de Boulogne, near the village of that name.
"I wish to ensure my salvation," wrote the Princess Isabelle to H�meric, Chancellor of the university, "by some pious foundation. King Louis IX., my brother, grants me 30,000 Paris livres, and the question is, shall I found a convent or a hospital?" The Chancellor's advice was to establish an asylum for the nuns of the order of St. Clara.
In 1260 Isabelle built the church, the dormitories, and the cluster of the Humility of Our Lady; and according to Agnes d'Harcourt, who has written her life, the whole of the 30,000 livres was consumed. The year afterwards, on the 23rd of June, the nuns of the rule of St. Francis took possession of the abbey in presence of Louis IX. and all the Court. The king gave considerable property to the nuns, whom he often visited, and, by his will, dated February, 1269, this sovereign, on the point of undertaking his last expedition to Palestine, left a legacy to the Abbey of Our Lady. Isabelle in this very year ended her days within its walls.
The royal origin and associations of the house which the princess had founded ensured for it the patronage of successive French sovereigns--Marguerite and Jeanne de Brabant, Blanche de France, Jeanne de Navarre, and twelve other princesses, taking the veil there; and it is recorded that Philippe le Long died in it with his daughter Blanche by his side on the 2nd of December, 1321, of complicated dysentery and quartan fever. When he was approaching his end the abb� and monks of St. Denis came in procession to his aid, bringing with them a piece of the True Cross, a nail that had been used at the Crucifixion, and one of the arms of St. Simon. The exhibition and application of these pious relics gained for the king enough time to make his will, after which he expired.
Longchamp had no fewer than forty nuns in residence. Its proximity to Paris, its illustrious origin, its not less illustrious visitors, its aristocratic inhabitants, its vicissitudes during the sanguinary civil wars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, its decline, and, ultimately, its ruin, invested it with extraordinary interest. As regards the history of the abbey, it must be mentioned that, as with all other convents, its discipline gradually became relaxed until at last purity gave way to licence. Henri IV. took from Longchamp one of his mistresses, Catherine de Verdun, a young nun of twenty-two, to whom he gave the priory of St. Louis de Vernon, and whose brother, Nicholas de Verdun, became first President of the Parliament of Paris.
"It is certain," wrote St. Vincent de Paul, on the 25th of October, 1652, to Cardinal Mazarin, "that for the last 200 years this convent has been gradually getting demoralised until now there is less discipline there than depravity. Its reception rooms are open to anyone who comes, even to young men without relations at the convent. The order of friars (Cordeliers) under whose direction it is placed, do nothing to stop the evil. The nuns wear immodest garments and carry gold watches. When, war compelled them to take refuge in the town the majority of them gave themselves up to all kinds of scandals, going alone and in secret to the men they desired to visit."
It is evident from this letter that there were intimate relations between the Abbey of Longchamp and Paris. It had been the custom, moreover, since the fifteenth century, to go to Longchamp to hear the friars of the order of Cordeliers preach during Lent.
"In 1420," says the journal of Charles VII., "Brother Richard, a Cordelier, lately returned from Jerusalem, preached such a fine sermon that the people from Paris who had been to hear it made more than one hundred fires on their return--the men burning tables, cards, billiard-tables, billiard-balls, and bowls; while the women sacrificed head-dresses, and all kinds of body ornaments, with pieces of leather and pieces of whalebone, their horns and their tails."
A great many miracles were said to take place through invocations addressed to the Princess Isabelle, whom Pope Leo X., by a bull dated January 3, 1521, had canonised; while he, at the same time, granted to the nuns of Longchamp the privilege of celebrating annually, in her honour, a solemn service on the last day of August. From the early days of the reign of Louis XV. date those regular pilgrimages to Longchamp during Holy Week, which were soon to degenerate into mundane promenades.
[Illustration: THE HORSES OF MARLY, CHAMPS �LYS�ES.]
At one time the singing of the nuns had been found attractive. In 1729 a vocalist from the Opera, Mlle. Lemaure, sang with the choir, and "all Paris" went to hear her. The nuns profiting by her lessons, and studying her style, sang the "Tenebr�" during Holy Week with so much success that in order to make the choir perfect the abbess applied to the Opera for some additional voices. The abbey was now more than ever besieged. People crowded round the walls, filled the churchyard, and, according to one writer, stood on the tombstones. If the chorus-singers from the Opera were not converted to piety by the nuns, the nuns underwent the influence of the professional vocalists. At last, one Wednesday in Holy Week, a brilliant gathering of fashionable people arrived at the church of Longchamp only to find it closed. The Archbishop of Paris had ordered the doors to be locked.
[Illustration: ST. PHILIPPE DU ROULE.]
The original object of the Longchamp promenade was now at an end. But the promenade continued all the same; and it was at Longchamp every Holy Week that the first spring fashions were to be seen. This lasted for many years, until at last, as already set forth, the Longchamp Promenade became a medium for the exhibition of such articles of dress as the leading dressmakers, milliners, and tailors wished to see adopted during the approaching season.
[Illustration: THE �LYS�E.]
Meanwhile, at the time of the Revolution, the old convent of Longchamp was brought to the hammer, and not only knocked down but pulled down. The tombs in the church were broken up, and the ashes of the pious founder, Jeanne de Bourgogne, wife of Philippe le Long, of Jean de Navarre, and of Jean II., Count of Dreux, were dispersed. Of Longchamp nothing remained but the name.
To many the Champs �lys�es are chiefly interesting as leading to the Bois de Boulogne with its picturesque scenery and its romantic lake, suggestive, in a small way, of the beautiful Loch Katrine. The Bois de Boulogne owes its name to the church of Notre Dame de Boulogne, built in the year 1319, under Philip, surnamed the Long. He gave permission to the citizens of his good town of Paris who had been on a pilgrimage to visit the Church of Nostre Dame de Boulogne-sur-le-mer, to build and construct a church, and there to institute a religious community. The new church became itself an object of pilgrimage, like the original church of Notre Dame at Boulogne-sur-mer, founded, according to the legend, in memory of the landing on the coast of the Holy Virgin accompanied by two angels.
Up to the time of the Revolution the Bois de Boulogne was little more than a wilderness. Napoleon I. cut walks and avenues through it, and caused trees to be planted, so that it was already one of the most agreeable places in the neighbourhood, when, in 1815, after the Waterloo campaign, the soldiers of the Duke of Wellington and of the Emperor Alexander I. encamped beneath its groves; which they are said to have mutilated and ravaged.
The Bois de Boulogne was considerably diminished when, in 1840, the fortifications of Paris were being constructed, the wood being traversed by the lines of brickwork. Soon afterwards, in 1852, under the Second Empire, it was made over to the town of Paris, and converted by the municipality into a park after the English model, with all the agreeable delightful features it now possesses.
The first improvement introduced was the river with its picturesque islands and the lake with its wooded banks and its Swiss cottages. The waterfalls or "cascades" give their name to the celebrated restaurant and caf� constructed by their side; and for the last thirty or forty years the Bois de Boulogne has possessed spacious avenues, with grass borders and endless rows of lamps. The grass plots in every direction, and here and there wide lawns, give a softness to the general picture which has not its equal in any European capital.
In the Bois de Boulogne stood formerly the Ch�teau de Madrid, said to have been erected by King Francis I. in memory and on the pattern of the one where, after the defeat of Pavia, Charles V. had held him captive. In spite of the recollections which it must have evoked, and which it is said to have been intended to evoke, Francis I. often visited his castle in the wood. It was turned to questionable use by various kings of France, and Henry III. varied the diversions of which it was so often the scene by introducing combats between wild beasts and bulls. One night, however, this depraved and sanguinary monarch dreamt that his animals wished to devour him, and the next morning he gave orders that they should all be killed and replaced by packs of little dogs. What remains of the ancient ch�teau is now a fashionable restaurant. Close by is the delightful Bagatelle, built in sixty-four days by the Count of Artois, and called at one time Folie d'Artois. Above the principal entrance the Count (afterwards Charles X.) had inscribed the words, Parva sed apta. Under the Revolution this "small but suitable" structure was used for public festivals; and it was here, at the time of the Restoration, that the Duke of Bordeaux, posthumous son of the Duke of Berry, was brought up.
The Duke of Bordeaux (who afterwards took the title of Count of Chambord) was the last representative of the elder branch of the Bourbons, a house which is said to have produced since the fourteenth century some six hundred remarkable men, chiefly soldiers, and which, apart from their feats of war, founded thrones in all the Latin countries of Europe--in France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy. It has been said that the duke was brought up as a child at Bagatelle in the Bois de Boulogne; and many were the speculations and suspicions of which he was at that time the subject. When, indeed, after the Revolution of 1830 Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, assumed the crown, and was thereupon accused by the partisans of the dethroned Charles X. of violating his promise to act as Regent until the majority of the Duke of Bordeaux, a paper was issued, apparently by the Orleanists, denying that the Duke of Bordeaux was the legitimate son of the assassinated Duke of Berry, eldest son of Charles X. The Courrier Fran�ais, a journal devoted to the new dynasty, now published a letter which had first appeared ten years before in the Morning Chronicle of London, asserting the illegitimacy of the Count of Chambord.
"The proposals," said the Courrier Fran�ais, "which the Duke of Mortemart has just made to the Chamber of Peers in favour of the Duke of Bordeaux will naturally recall attention to a subject which at last may be freely examined and discussed. We shall confine ourselves to publishing a document inserted in the English papers of the time, and which has never appeared in France. Its publication is perfectly opportune; it completes the parallel that has been drawn until now between the Stuart and the Capet families." The Courrier Fran�ais then reproduced a document entitled "Protest of the Duke of Orleans," which ran as follows: "His Royal Highness declares by these presents that he protests formally against the proc�s-verbal dated 29th September last, which document professes to establish the fact that the child named Charles Ferdinand Dieudonn� is the legitimate son of Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Berry. The Duke of Orleans will produce in fit time and place witnesses who will make known the origin of the child and of its mother, and he will point out the authors of the machination of which that very weak princess has been the instrument."
The Morning Chronicle, in publishing the document about six weeks after the Count's birth, denied its authenticity, adding, however, that it was being industriously circulated in every part of France, and that a copy of it had been addressed to the ambassador of every Power represented at Paris. It was not, of course, under Charles X. published in any Paris newspaper; and when at last, in Louis Philippe's reign, it found its way into the columns of the Courrier Fran�ais it was impossible not to notice that the journal which first printed it was one devoted to the interests of the new king.
[Illustration: THE GREAT LAKE, BOIS DE BOULOGNE.]
The Ch�teau de la Muette, another of the remarkable edifices in the Bois de Boulogne, was originally a hunting-box where Charles IX., the hero of the St. Bartholomew Massacre, used to shoot stags and boars from a box before giving himself the royal pleasure of shooting Huguenots from the balcony of the Louvre.
The Avenue Marigny has a greater number of frequenters among the Parisian public than the more distant Bois de Boulogne.
It dates from the reign of Louis XV., until which time it formed part of the historic marsh, and it owes its name to its designer. After the cession of the Champs �lys�es to the town of Paris in 1828, the Avenue Marigny became the scene of the f�tes given every year in honour of the successor of the monarch who made the cession. On the 27th, 28th, and 29th of July, the anniversaries of the Revolutionary days of 1830, two theatres were put up in the Avenue Marigny, on whose boards military spectacles were represented, while their orchestras played dance music for the exhilaration and physical recreation of the general public. Booths for acrobats and tight-rope dancers were also established; wild beasts were shown, and wrestling matches took place. One of the first acts of the Emperor Napoleon III. in 1852 was to change all this. The town of Paris gave back to the State, by a perpetual lease, the whole of the Champs �lys�es, where it had been determined to construct an edifice which should serve for national exhibitions, and other civil and military festivals, the building to be after the model of the English Crystal Palace. In two years the Palace of Industry was finished; and in 1855 it became the scene of a universal exhibition opened in the course of the Crimean War, and honoured by the visit of Queen Victoria. The second and third universal exhibitions at Paris were held in a larger building constructed for the purpose, and the fourth (1889) in a larger building still. The Palais de l'Industrie of 1855 is now used for annual exhibitions of agriculture, horticulture, horses and fat cattle; also for the annual exhibition of painting, sculpture, and engraving.
The Champs �lys�es form a pleasure resort for all classes of the Parisian population; and the number of lightly constructed booths for the sale of cakes and toys show that among the frequenters of the Avenue Marigny there are a good number of children, many of whom may be seen driving about in little goat-chaises.
The Avenue Marigny, with its interminable files, at every hour of the day, of horsemen, horse-women, and carriages, leads directly to the Triumphal Arch, known as the Arc de Triomphe de l'�toile, from which a magnificent view may be obtained of the whole line of the Champs �lys�es from its commencement as marked by the Obelisk of the Place de la Concorde.
[Illustration: AVENUE DU BOIS DE BOULOGNE.]
The Place de l'�toile, in which stands the arch of the same name, is so called from the star of avenues of which it forms the centre. The idea of a monument on this spot dates from the reign of Louis XV., when it was proposed to place on the present site of the arch a colossal elephant. The animal in question found for a time a resting place not on the Place de l'�toile but on that of the Bastille. At last, in 1806, Napoleon determined to erect on the spot once threatened with an elephant the triumphal arch in commemoration of victories gained under his command, of which the first stone was laid on the 15th of August, the Emperor's birthday.
By the year 1810 the cornice of the first storey had been reached. Then Chalgrin, the original architect of the construction, died, to be replaced by his inspector, Goust; and the work was continued until 1814, when, Napoleon having been defeated and sent to Elba, all question of completing a monument in honour of his victories was at an end.
[Illustration: ARC DE TRIOMPHE.]
Under the Restoration, when endeavours were being made by official historians to suppress the Napoleonic period, or, at least, to represent it as a natural link of connection between the old monarchy and the monarchy now re-established, the Triumphal Arch was gone on with and dedicated to the glory of the Duke of Angoul�me, who had intervened at the head of a large army in the affairs of Spain. Finally King Louis Philippe, who claimed to represent, not only the ancient monarchy, but also in some measure the Revolution and the Empire, restored the arch to its original purpose. The works were hurried to completion, and on the 29th of July, 1836, it was formally inaugurated. The dimensions of the arch, twice as large as those of the Porte St. Denis, may be called colossal. The frieze around the four sides (which are themselves arched) represents the departure and the return of the French armies. Comparatively small as the figures in the frieze appear, they are scarcely less than six feet high. On either side of the different arches the capture of Aboukir, the funeral of Marceau, the battle of Austerlitz, the capture of Alexandria, the bridge of Arcola, and the battle of Jemappes, are shown in low relief. The names of French victories are engraved all over the interior surfaces of the large and small arches, these inscriptions being completed and illustrated by allegorical figures. Nothing, however, is finer in the ornamentation of the arch than the four immense groups on the external sides of the two great fa�ades. On the eastern side, looking towards Paris, one sees to the right the departure of the troops in 1792 beneath the Genius of War, which, with outstretched wings and open mouth, seems to protect and inspire them. On the left side, looking towards the south, is the apotheosis of the Emperor, in which Napoleon, attired in a chlamys, is being crowned by Victory, while Renown proclaims his lofty exploits, and History engraves them on her tablets.
[Illustration: AVENUE DES CHAMPS �LYS�ES.]
The two groups towards the west represent, on the right, Resistance to Invasion, and, on the left, Peace crowned by the figure of Minerva. Broad staircases lead to a higher platform which commands a magnificent view of central Paris.
In 1854, two years after the proclamation of the Second Empire, a "place" was designed around the arch, which now forms the centre of twelve avenues, darting out from the Arc de l'�toile like the rays of a star.
The open-air entertainments of which the Champs �lys�es and Bois de Boulogne are the scene possess as much importance as the entertainments taking place within the walls of the innumerable Paris theatres. Of the races which find so much favour in France the most celebrated is that of the Grand Prix, run on the course of Longchamp early in June, just after the English Derby, and the second Sunday after the so-called Derby of Chantilly. It was founded only in 1863 (until 1856 the racing ground of the Parisians had, for twenty-five years previously, been the Champ de Mars) though it has long been regarded as one of the national institutions of the country.
The prize is of the value of 100,000 francs, of which half is furnished by the Town of Paris and half by the five great railway companies of the North, the West, Lyons, Orleans, and the South. The sight, as one approaches the course, suggests Ascot and Goodwood rather than Epsom; and the great majority of the sightseers seem to take more interest in the carriages and the costumes than in the racing, or even the betting, though the betting plague has settled upon Paris, where it replaces the lotteries and the gambling-houses suppressed by law. In a publicly organised form, betting is illegal, but the evil is a difficult one to deal with, and it is now tolerated in France, if not formally permitted. Every now and then an example is made of some unhappy offender; but these rare instances serve simply to excite the spirit of betting already so wide-spread amongst the community at large.
The amusements of the Champs �lys�es, although of a much more trifling kind than that royal one of racing reserved for the Bois de Boulogne, have from the earliest times been as remarkable for their variety as for their originality. The Parisians were always great lovers of public amusements, even from the days of Charles V. and Charles VI., when tight-rope dancers, whom it would be difficult to equal in the present day, walked down a rope stretched from the towers of Notre Dame to the Palais de Justice. One acrobat who excelled in performing this feat was so agile and so rapid that he seemed to fly, and was called the "flying man." One day he stretched a rope from the summit of one of the towers of Notre Dame to a house on the Exchange Bridge, danced as he came down it, holding, meanwhile, in one hand a flaming torch, and in the other a wreath, which, just as Queen Isabeau de Bavi�re passed across the bridge, in making her entry into Paris, he placed on her head, and immediately afterwards re-ascended to the point whence he had started.
Another tight-rope dancer, named Georges Menustre, performed similar feats under the reign of Louis XII.
The most popular entertainments of those days were representations of mysteries. These religious dramas were played when the king entered Paris, and on other joyful occasions. Some of the subjects were taken from the Old, some from the New Testament, others from the Lives of the Saints. They were treated either in prose, in verse, or even occasionally in pantomime.
In the year 1425 the game of climbing the greasy pole is said to have been for the first time introduced. On St. Giles's Day inhabitants of the parish under the invocation of that saint invented "a new diversion." They planted a long pole perpendicularly in the Rue aux Ours opposite the Rue Quincampoix. They fastened to the top of the pole a basket containing a fat goose and six small coins. Then they oiled the pole, and promised goose, money, basket, and pole itself, to anyone skilful enough to climb to the top. But the most vigorous were unable to complete so slippery an ascent; and at last, after a succession of ludicrous failures, the goose was given to the one who had got the highest; though he received neither the pole, the money, nor the basket. The same year the Parisians invented a still more remarkable entertainment. They formed at the H�tel d'Armagnac in the Rue St. Honor� an enclosure into which they introduced a pig and four blind men, each of them armed with a stick. The pig was promised to whichever of the four could beat it to death. The enclosure was surrounded by numerous spectators impatient to see the conclusion of this "comedy," as Dulaure calls it, though the pig might have described it by a different name. The blind men all rushed towards the spot where the animal, by its cries, proclaimed itself to be, and then struck away with their sticks, hitting, as a rule, one another, and not the pig; which, says a contemporary writer, caused infinite mirth to the assembly. They renewed the attack again and again, but never with any success; and although they were covered with armour from head to foot, they exchanged amongst themselves blows so severe that, despairing at last of the pig, they retired from a game which was pleasant only to the spectators.
In the early days of Paris the churches were at Christmas-time made the scene of ceremonies and diversions recalling the Saturnalia of the Romans, from whom such civilisation as the French then possessed was for the most part inherited. Clerks and members of the inferior clergy took the place in churches and cathedrals of high ecclesiastical dignitaries when services were performed in which, with religious ceremonies, acts of buffoonery and even indecency were mingled. The Festival of the Fools, the Festival of the Ass, the Festival of the Innocents and of the Sub-deacons, were some of the names of these burlesque celebrations. At Paris, in the church of Notre Dame, the Festival of the Sub-deacons was also called the Festival of the Drunken Deacons. Begun on Christmas Day, it was kept up until Twelfth Day, the chief celebration being reserved for New Year's Day.
[Illustration: AVENUE MARIGNY, CHAMPS �LYS�ES.]
In the first place, from among the sub-deacons of the cathedral a bishop, archbishop, and sometimes a pope was elected. The mitre, the crook, and the cross, were carried before the mock pontiff, and he was then required to give his solemn blessing to the people. The entry of the pope, archbishop, or bishop into the church was announced by the ringing of the bells. Then the sham prelate was placed in the episcopal chair, and mass was begun. All the clergy who took part in the mass had their faces painted black, or wore hideous and ridiculous masks. They were dressed as acrobats or as women, danced in the middle of the choir, and sang improper songs. Then the deacons and sub-deacons advanced to the altar and ate black puddings and sausages before the celebrant. They played at cards or at dice, and placed in the incense box pieces of old shoes, the odour of which was by no means agreeable. When the mass was at an end the sub-deacons, in their madness or their intoxication, profaned the church still more, running, dancing, and leaping like lunatics, exciting one another to new extravagances, singing the most dissolute songs, and sometimes stripping themselves of their clothes.
The Church as a body was far from approving these shameful practices, and it condemned them in several Councils; but for a considerable time the spirit of insubordination, together with the dissolute tendencies of a section of the priesthood, rendered all such condemnations nugatory. The clerical Saturnalia were continued up to the middle of the fifteenth century. Forbidden by the Pope's Legate at Paris, and by the Archbishop of Paris, they remained popular until 1445, in which year a letter was addressed by the Theological Faculty of Paris to all the prelates and chapters exhorting them to abolish customs so unworthy of religion. Sixteen years afterwards, in 1460, these burlesque celebrations were still spoken of at the Council of Sens as an abuse which must be destroyed. So difficult are popular customs to extirpate!
[Illustration: FOUNTAIN IN THE CHAMPS �LYS�ES.]
The Royal Military School of Louis XV.--The National Assembly--The Patriotic Altar--The Festival of the Supreme Being--Other Festivals--Industrial Exhibitions--The Eiffel Tower--The Trocad�ro.
A whole chapter might be devoted to the caf� concerts, the swings, the merry-go-rounds, and other entertainments of a constantly varying kind, which are to be witnessed and, according to taste, enjoyed from morning to night in the Champs �lys�es. But against the frivolity of these popular diversions may well be placed the great international exhibitions of which the Champs �lys�es have from time to time during the last thirty-six years been the scene.
[Illustration: THE CHAMP DE MARS, 1889.]
With each of the exhibitions of 1867, 1878, and 1889 the Champ de Mars has been connected; and its permanent association with these peaceful celebrations is now marked by the famous Eiffel Tower, which stands in the warlike field.
Although it lies on the south side of the river, the Champ de Mars is so closely connected with the Champs �lys�es that it may almost be regarded as belonging thereto.
If the universal exhibitions of Paris were held in the Elysian Fields, they have, on each of the last three occasions, had an annex in the field of Mars. It is by the way of the Champs �lys�es, moreover, that the troops march when the army of Paris is exercised and inspected in the great review-ground.
The Champ de Mars was originally a simple field of exercise for the pupils of the Royal Military School. Established by Louis XV. in 1751 for five hundred sons of officers, this school came into existence half a century before the Polytechnic School and the School of St. Cyr, and formed, during the last years of the Monarchy, a great number of excellent officers, the most celebrated of all being Napoleon Bonaparte, who on the 22nd of October, 1784, entered the company of gentlemen cadets. On the 1st of the following September, having come out brilliantly in an examination, he was appointed second lieutenant in the artillery regiment of La Fayette. He had then passed by only fourteen days his sixteenth birthday. The School of Gentlemen Cadets, the military cradle of the future Emperor, was not precisely the school which Louis XV. had founded. His grandson had perceived that to admit, as a matter of right, children from eight to thirteen years of age would fill the military school with youths who had no fitness for the military career. He solved the problem by establishing in various country towns twelve colleges, where those qualified for admission could study up to the age of fifteen, after which a selection was made with a view to the Military School of Paris. One of these colleges was at Brienne, where the young Napoleon studied before being passed for the Military School.
Until 1789 no one was admitted to the Military School but sons of officers and noblemen. In the first year of the Revolution the Constitutional Ministers of Louis XVI. procured a decree from the Council which abolished the qualification of nobility. This was not so great an innovation as it may appear, since Louis XV. had by a decree of the year 1750 granted privileges of nobility to officers; the children, therefore, of all officers were admissible to the Military School. The institution was all the same of doubtful origin; and not knowing what else to do with it the Convention abolished it in June, 1793, took possession of its funds, and changed the building into a flour magazine and a cavalry dep�t.
Soon afterwards, with a mutability characteristic of the time, the Revolutionary Government came to the conclusion that a Royal Military School, however detestable as of royal origin, would become admirable if the title of Republican were applied to it. It was accordingly decided in June, 1794, that each district of the Republic should send to Paris "six young citizens under the name of pupils of the School of Mars, aged from sixteen to seventeen years, in order to receive a Revolutionary education with all the knowledge, sentiments, and ideas of a Republican soldier." The project was voted for on a report of Bar�re, who had drawn a droll parallel between the students of the Royal Military School (descended from "some feudal brigand, some privileged rogue, some ridiculous marquis, some modern baron, or some court flunkey") and what the students of the School of Mars would be--"the offspring of Republican families, of parents of restricted means, or of useful inhabitants of the country. What," Bar�re went on to say, "has ever come out of the Military School? What has this brilliant college produced? No able officer, not a general, not an administrator, not one celebrated warrior."
It had produced, all the same, General Bonaparte, who was even then preparing the plans of his Italian campaign. The very next year the young cadet of the Royal Military School reentered the �cole Militaire to establish his headquarters there as general commanding in chief the army of Paris. When he became emperor he inscribed on the portico of the school these words: "Napoleon's headquarters"; which only disappeared in 1815, when a regiment of the Imperial Guard was replaced in the building by the Royal Guard.
Since it has ceased to be a school the so-called �cole Militaire has been used as a cavalry and artillery barrack.
The Champ de Mars, in front of the �cole Militaire, has a very varied history. Here in the ninth century the Normans were defeated by Eudes, son of Robert the Strong, Count of Paris; who called the scene of his exploit, not Champ de Mars, but more explicitly, Champ de la Victoire. Then for many centuries the Field of Victory, or of Mars, seems to have witnessed nothing in particular until, at last, under the reign of Louis XV., it became the scene of a grand review in which the students of the Royal Military School took part. While the review was going on a young officer, nephew of Orry, controller of finance, who had suffered from the persecution of the king's favourite, was brought before a court-martial on an accusation of treason, suggested by the defeat of the French army in Germany. He was about to be condemned, when the king was informed by express, that not only was young Orry no traitor, but that the whole army, compromised by a serious mistake on the part of its commander, Marshal Maillebois, owed its safety to Orry's presence of mind, and to a vigorous charge of cavalry directed by him. Louis XV. gave the young man a new commission, thus marking the opening of the Champ de Mars by an act of justice.
During the early days of the Revolution the Champ de Mars played an important part; and through the course of the Revolution it was the scene of all the most important national celebrations. Nor under the Empire did it lose the character it had thus acquired. In July, 1790, the year after the taking of the Bastille, the general federation of the nation was celebrated; and a quarter of a century later, after Napoleon's return from Elba, and immediately before the Waterloo campaign, the emperor assembled in the Champ de Mars the authorities and representative bodies of the country in order to swear fidelity to the new Constitution which he had just promulgated, even as Louis XVI. had sworn fidelity to the Constitution adopted by the National Assembly.
On the 5th of June all military and naval bodies, national or foreign, were invited to send a number of delegates, according to the forces represented, to an assembly which was to be held in the Champ de Mars on the 14th of the month following. The details of the celebration were regulated by special decree; and artists of all kinds were invited to make suggestions towards the arrangement and decoration of the plain. It was determined in the first instance to convert this plain into a sort of basin or amphitheatre with sloping sides and a hollow in the middle. Many thousands of labourers were employed in this work, and they were ultimately joined by the whole population of Paris, just as two years afterwards all classes and conditions of people took part in the preparations for the festival of the Altar to the Country.
On the day appointed deputations arrived from all parts of France, the visitors being hospitably entertained by private citizens, or received by innkeepers at reduced charges. Special seats were reserved for them at the meeting of the National Assembly; and they, in their turn, were full of enthusiasm for the Assembly, for the people of Paris, but above all for King Louis XVI. On the 13th, the day before the festival, the king reviewed the troops, the deputations, and a good portion of the Paris National Guard, on the Place Louis XV., and in the Champs �lys�es.
At five o'clock in the morning the National Guard and the entire population were on foot. Many had passed the night in the Champs �lys�es, and several regiments of National Guards had marched there at midnight in order to be in good time for the approaching celebration. The deputies from the provinces assembled at the Bastille, where eighty-three white flags bearing the names of their respective departments were distributed among them. At seven o'clock the march began, headed by a body of cavalry belonging to the National Guard of Paris, which was followed by a body of infantry, the electors of Paris, the Paris Commune, and the National Assembly, preceded by a regiment of children, and followed by a regiment of old men with the flags of the sixty battalions of Paris around them. Then came the representatives of the federated departments, preceded by two marshals of France with a numerous staff, and followed by a number of officers of various corps, including the King's Body Guard. The procession passed through the town amid the acclamations of the people and to the sound of artillery, approaching the Champ de Mars by way of the Champs �lys�es, and crossing the river by a bridge of boats constructed the night before just opposite the village of Chaillot.
At the entrance to the Champ de Mars, now transformed into a vast circus, had been raised a triumphal arch bearing a number of inscriptions, among which may be cited the following:--
The rights of man were ignored for centuries; they have been re-established for the whole of humanity.
You love that liberty which you now possess; prove your gratitude by preserving it.
In the Champ de Mars 300,000 persons had assembled, men, women, and children, on the slopes of the newly-made amphitheatre, all wearing the national colours. The hillsides of Chaillot and of Passy were equally filled; as further on were the amphitheatres of Meudon and St. Cloud, of Mont Val�rien and Montmartre. In front of the Military School were ascending rows of seats, covered with blue and gold drapery, for the king, the court, the National Assembly, the various constituted bodies and the most distinguished guests. In the centre of the Champ de Mars, on a raised piece of ground, was a monumental altar to the country with four immense staircases on the four sides. This altar was itself two years later made the object of a festival.
The king had for this day only been named Chief of the National Guards of France. He appointed La Fayette to perform the duties of the post.
Pending the commencement of the ceremony, 1,200 musicians played various pieces of music, including the national dances of Brittany, Auvergne, and Provence. French music of this period was, with the notable exceptions of the "Marseillaise" and of the "Chant du D�part," by no means impressive in itself, though hymns that are sung by thousands of voices can scarcely fail, from the volume of sound and the unanimity of feeling, to produce a certain effect. Patriotic hymns were in any case sung, and they excited general enthusiasm.
At half-past three a salvo of artillery announced the beginning of the festival. The king was seated in his tribune, having on his right the President of the National Assembly at the same level as himself. La Fayette came forward to take the king's orders, and the ceremony commenced with a solemn mass, celebrated, according to general tradition, by Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun, afterwards to be known under every kind of government in France, including the Empire, the Restoration, and the Monarchy of Louis Philippe, as Talleyrand the Minister. According, however, to credible accounts, it was not Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun, but Montmorency, Grand Almoner of France, who performed mass on this solemn occasion. The prelate was in any case assisted by two hundred priests, who, wearing tricolour sashes, surrounded the altar; then the oriflamme symbol of the federation was blessed, together with the banners given to the deputations from the provinces. Finally La Fayette ascended the staircase, radiant, but full of emotion, and placing the point of his sword on the Altar of the Country, pronounced in a loud firm voice this sacred oath: "We swear to be for ever faithful to the nation, to the law, and to the king; to maintain with all our power the Constitution decreed by the National Assembly and accepted by the king; to protect the persons and property of all, and to remain united to all Frenchmen by the indissoluble bonds of fraternity."
[Illustration: THE MILITARY SCHOOL, CHAMP DE MARS.]
The general excitement seemed now to have reached its highest pitch. But it was raised still higher when the king in his turn swore fidelity to the Constitution. Many, however, complained at the time that he took the oath, not from the altar, but from the tribune, where he was sitting; and this was generally looked upon as of bad augury. From that time, throughout the Revolution, the Champ de Mars was known as the Champ de la F�d�ration, and the anniversary of the 14th of July was celebrated until the time of the Consulate.
Some two years later the altar on which the Mass of the Federation had been celebrated was itself to be made the object of a festival. Enlarged and newly decorated, it became the Altar of Patriotism or autel � la patrie, and once more the whole population took part in the preparations, when, to judge by a letter on the subject left by an actress of the Th��tre Fran�ais, the work of the day was varied by a certain amount of pleasantry. "Every gentleman," says the actress, "chose a lady to whom he offered a very light spade decorated with ribands; then, headed by a band, the lovers of liberty hastened to the general rendezvous."
In the centre of the Champ de Mars was at last constructed a colossal altar, at which the deputies from the National Guards of France and from the various army corps assembled, and swore allegiance to the Republic. Patriotic altars or autels � la patrie had already been raised in various parts of France, when, by a decree of July, 1792, it was ordered that in every commune a patriotic altar should be erected, to which children should be brought, where young people should get married, and on which should be registered births, marriages, and deaths. Above all it was thought necessary that round the altars solemn deliberations should be held concerning the fate of the country, which was threatened by the whole continent of Europe.
[Illustration: GENERAL LA FAYETTE.]
After the flight of the king a petition was laid on the patriotic altar of the Champ de Mars demanding the monarch's formal dethronement. At the Jacobin Club the question of the fall of the monarchy had been boldly put forward; and after a long debate the petition just referred to was drawn up and forwarded for general acceptation to the patriotic altar of the Champ de Mars. The document set forth that the nation would no more acknowledge Louis XVI. or any other king. That very evening, however, the Jacobins were themselves alarmed by the revolutionary turn of affairs, and withdrew their petition, declaring it to be illegal in form.
General La Fayette, at the head of the army and the National Guards, was meanwhile determined under all circumstances to keep order, and it soon became necessary for his troops to act. Two wretched men had concealed themselves beneath the staircase of the patriotic altar; and some insults said to have been addressed by them to women ascending the stairs led to their being attacked--trivial origin of a sanguinary massacre--by a number of washerwomen from the neighbourhood. The practical jokers in hiding beneath the staircase had with them a barrel of water, which popular indignation converted into a barrel of gunpowder intended to blow up the altar, together with the faithful assembled on its steps. The patriotic altar was at that time an object of religious veneration, and the conduct of the two men beneath the staircase was looked upon as nothing less than sacrilegious. Some fanatics fell upon them and put them to death; and the incident, commented upon from the most different points of view, was in the end represented as an onslaught by reactionists on the sworn friends of liberty.
Meanwhile the crowd in the Champ de Mars was constantly increasing; and soon it was summoned by beat of drum, and with all the usual formalities, to disperse. Nothing came of this demand except a shower of stones hurled at the National Guard. The regular troops, composed principally of Royal Guards, replied by firing wildly at all around them. The patriotic altar was soon covered with blood and surrounded by corpses.
The crowd fled as rapidly as its numbers would permit, but it was now charged by cavalry, and afterwards fired into by artillery. To stop the carnage La Fayette rode up to the guns, himself exposed to their shots. The number of persons killed has, of course, been differently--very differently--estimated; but according to a moderate computation, at least 1,500 persons were slain.
General La Fayette, and Bailly, Mayor of Paris, had given a general order to repel force by force, and the responsibility of the massacre was accepted by Bailly. It was for this reason, indeed, that in November, 1793, he was sentenced to death, his execution taking place on the very scene of the massacre.
When armies were being hastily formed for repelling the invasion of the German sovereigns the recruiting office was in the Champ de Mars, where amphitheatres were erected with flags bearing this inscription, "Our country is in danger." On a table, supported by two drums, the officers of the Municipality inscribed the names of those who wished to enlist, and the enthusiasm, now wide-spreading, gave to France fourteen armies, which, untrained as bodies, (though they contained numbers of trained men disbanded from the royal army) proved themselves valiant, and indeed invincible, in the field.
The next great festival which was held in the Champ de Mars was that of the Supreme Being. All that was done during the Revolution against religion was aimed particularly at the clergy and the monks, the Inquisition and the stake. The celebration of the Festival of the Supreme Being had been fixed, according to the Revolutionary calendar, for the 20th Prairial, and the famous painter David had been charged with the elaboration of the programme. The day which Robespierre had chosen for the celebration coincided precisely this year with one of the great Catholic festivals--that of Whitsuntide.
Robespierre had been elected President of the Assembly. At eight o'clock in the morning the beginning of the Festival was announced by a discharge of artillery from the Tuileries. Flowers had been brought to Paris from thirty miles round, and every house in the City had its garland, while all the women carried bouquets and all the men branches of oak. A vast amphitheatre constructed in the National Garden (the garden of the Tuileries, that is to say) held the members of the Convention, each of whom carried in his hand a bouquet of flowers and of ears of corn.
Robespierre, detained by his duties at the Revolutionary Tribunal, arrived late, at which there was some amusement. Dressed in the blue coat worn by the representatives of the people, and holding in his hand a bouquet of flowers and wheat, he exclaimed: "O Nature, how delightful, how sublime is thy power! How tyrants must tremble and grow pale at the idea of such a Festival!"
After the founder of the new religion had, in accordance with the programme, delivered his discourse, whence a few words have been cited, he walked down from the amphitheatre in company with his fellow-members of the Convention. At the entrance to the Palace had been erected a pyramid consisting of dolls representing atheism, ambition, egotism, and false simplicity; then came the rags of misery, through which could be seen the decorations and splendour of the slaves of Royalty. Robespierre went forward with a torch and set fire to these impostures. When wretchedness and vice had been consumed, the statue of Wisdom was discovered unfortunately a little scorched by the flames in which its opposites had perished.
The whole procession next moved towards the Champ de la R�union, as the Champ de Mars was now called. The Convention marched in a body surrounded by a tricolour ribbon, which was carried by children, young men, middle-aged men, and old men, all crowned with oak and myrtle. No arms were worn, but every deputy exhibited in token of his mission a tricolour sash, and carried a feather in his hat. In the centre of the procession eight oxen with gilded horns drew an antique car bearing, as tributes, instruments of art. When the Convention established itself on a symbolical mountain, it was surrounded by the fathers and mothers sent officially by the sections; also by their young daughters, crowned with roses, and older children adorned with violets. Everyone, moreover, in the procession wore national colours.
Then there was a fresh discourse from Robespierre, after which hymns by Ch�nier and D�sorgues, with music by Gaveaux, were sung. The music of the hymns, from one or two specimens preserved, seems to have been poor, but given forth by thousands of voices it was doubtless impressive. After an invocation to the Eternal, the young girls strewed their flowers on the ground, mothers raised their children in their arms, and old men stretched out their hands to bless the young ones, who swore to die for their country and their liberty. Revolutionary in its origin, the Festival of the Supreme Being, celebrated throughout France, helped everywhere to raise the Catholic party; which was not precisely what its founders had aimed at.
Another solemn festival was held in the Champ de Mars, to celebrate the capture of Toulon from the English, as brought about by a young artillery officer named Bonaparte, whose name was being repeated from mouth to mouth by admirers as yet unable to foresee that the object of their admiration would before many years be the ruler of France; for, "born of the Republic," he was, in the energetic words of Chateaubriand, "to kill his own mother."
On the 3rd of December, 1804, the day after the coronation of the Emperor at Notre-Dame, the Champ de Mars was to be the scene of yet another festival--the distribution of eagles among the different regiments of the French Army.
It was in the Champ de Mars that Napoleon, after his return from Elba, gave a banquet to some 15,000 soldiers and National Guards; and again in the Champ de Mars that he assembled deputations from all the army-corps and all the State bodies convoked to hear the promulgation of the "additional Act" which gave new character to the old Napoleonic Constitution. This was the assembly known as that of the Champ de Mai, so called from the month in which it was held.
Under the Restoration the Champ de Mars became the scene of a military representation in which the Duke of Angoul�me, at the head of the army which had fought, or rather had executed a military promenade, in Spain, attacked some battalions playing the part of the Spanish army, which at the proper moment retreated. Then the high ground since known as the Trocad�ro was stormed, as the Trocad�ro of Spain had been stormed in the war just terminated; and it was now that the idea was conceived of treating the Arc de Triomphe as a triumphal arch erected to the glory of the army of Louis XVIII.
Under the reign of Louis Philippe, the military representation of which under Louis XVIII.'s reign the Trocad�ro had been made the scene was repeated, with the replacement of the Trocad�ro by Antwerp. This display, on a very grand scale, was attended with a crush, a panic, and almost as many accidents as were caused by the celebrated fireworks on the Place Louis XV., on the occasion of Marie Antoinette's marriage.
It was under the Restoration that the Champ de Mars was used as a course for the first races, or at least the first races of a popular character, established in France. They were, after some years, as already mentioned, transferred to Longchamps. Under the Second Empire, or rather when the Second Empire was about to be proclaimed, the Champ de Mars witnessed a magnificent review and distribution of eagles--the prelude, in fact, to the establishment of the imperial form of government. "Take back these eagles," said the prince president on this occasion, "not as a symbol of threats against the foreigner, but as a recollection of an heroic epoch, as a sign of nobility for each regiment in the service. Take back these eagles which so often led your fathers to victory, and swear, if necessary, to die in their defence." This was the last of the many political scenes of which the Champ de Mars has been the theatre. In 1867 it furnished a site for the annex or supplementary building where, in connection with the Universal Exhibition of that year, the machinery was displayed.
If the Champs �lys�es became during the first half of the century a portion of Paris, this was also to happen during the second half to the more distant Bois de Boulogne; and as Paris is still constantly growing the time may come when S�vres and Saint-Cloud, whither the Bois de Boulogne leads, will no longer be regarded as suburbs, but as integral parts of the French metropolis, from which they are now distant (counting from the Place de la Concorde) some six miles.
No account, whether of the Champs �lys�es or of the Champ de Mars, would be complete without some mention of the Universal Exhibitions of which the Elysian Fields and the Field of Mars have both been the scene. The first Universal Exhibition was held in England during the summer of 1851, but the first Industrial Exhibition on a large scale, without assistance or competition from the foreigner, took place in France immediately after the Revolution, of which it was one of the natural consequences.
[Illustration: THE PALAIS DE L'INDUSTRIE, CHAMPS �LYS�ES.]
Before 1789 the industrial system of France, as of other countries, was made up of corporations and guilds rigidly bound by rules and traditions; and many industrial processes were so many secrets into which apprentices, duly articled, were initiated, but which were jealously guarded from the knowledge of the outer world. A general exhibition of arts, manufactures, and machinery would, under the ancient r�gime, have been in direct opposition to the spirit of the time; it would have been impossible, that is to say.
When, however, guilds and corporations were broken up and labour was throughout the country rendered free, the desirability soon became apparent of familiarising workmen with the best methods of work; and manufacturers of all kinds were brought together and invited to send specimens of their handicraft to a great Exhibition, of which Paris was to be the scene. The idea was conceived under the Directory, six years after the Revolution; and with a rapidity characteristic of the period it was at once carried out. Of some hundred exhibitors, nearly all belonged to Paris. But at a second exhibition held three years afterwards, thirty-eight departments, including some of the most distant ones, sent examples of their industry. These exhibitions were to be triennial; though their recurrence at fixed intervals was sometimes interfered with by political or military events.
The Industrial Exhibitions of France, however, increased in importance until, under the reign of Louis Philippe, they took a prodigious development. After the Revolution of 1848 workmen as well as manufacturers were for the first time encouraged to exhibit, and many of them gained prizes. Now, too, an exhibition was held at which agriculture as well as industry was represented, and among the products and manufactures were a good number sent from the newly-acquired Algeria. Then came the English Universal Exhibition of 1851, held in Hyde Park; adorned for the occasion with a building of new architecture, to which Douglas Jerrold, writing in Punch, gave the name of "Crystal Palace."
In 1855 France, not to be outshone by England, opened in her turn a Universal Exhibition in the Champs �lys�es, imitated in part from the glass structure designed by Sir Joseph Paxton, but less fairylike though, it may be, more substantial. Sixty years have passed since the opening of France's first Industrial Exhibition; held at a time when, before the introduction of steamboats and railways, it would have been difficult, even if it had been thought desirable, for foreign manufacturers to compete with the manufacturers of France. The French Exhibition was held at the very height of the Crimean war; a sad reply to those who in the Universal Exhibition of 1851 saw a promise, if not a guarantee, of perpetual peace. Once more in 1867 the illusory nature of the belief that international commerce must put an end to international war was at least indicated by the important part played in the midst of the steel manufactures by Herr Krupp's breech-loading cannons, which were seen to do such dreadful work in the campaign of 1870. Even while the Exhibition was being held the Luxemburg difficulty seemed on the point of bringing France and Prussia into the field.
The building erected for the first of France's International Exhibitions having been found too small, the second and third, in 1867 and 1878, took new territory in the Champ de Mars; and in addition to the principal building a number of so-called annexes or supplementary buildings were established, chiefly for the display of machinery; while, besides the Champ de Mars, the fourth, held in 1889, took in the Avenue Suffren, the Quai d'Orsay, the terrace of the Invalides, the banks of the Seine, and the Garden of the Trocad�ro.
[Illustration: VIEW SHOWING EXHIBITION OF 1889.]
The Champ de Mars in its old character had now entirely disappeared. The Minister of War had strongly objected to its utilisation for peace purposes when it was first proposed that a temporary building for machinery in connection with the Exhibition of 1867 should be erected on a plain which had hitherto been reserved for military exercises and manoeuvres. Once invaded, the Champ de Mars was soon to be fully occupied, and the last and greatest of the Paris Universal Exhibitions swallowed up the Champ de Mars without even finding its vast space sufficient. The desert of former days had become the most frequented place in the world. More than that, it was now a spot where the whole world was represented--Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Australasia, with their different human types, their animals, their plants, their minerals, their natural products, their industries, their sciences, and their fine arts. An immense number of buildings in every form, in every style, and of every period had been erected. Domes, steeples, towers, cupolas, minarets, and factory chimneys stood out against the clear sky of Paris; and in the midst of this confused architecture were seen the large green masses of the winter gardens.
The whole, beheld from afar in a bird's-eye view, formed an enormous ellipsis, with the marvellous Eiffel Tower in the centre. M. Eiffel, a French engineer, whose name would seem to denote a German origin, proposed the tower with which his name is now for ever associated five years before the date fixed for the Universal Exhibition. He was already known by some important works, such as the great iron bridge at Bordeaux, and several other bridges in the south of France; also by the Douro Viaduct, and by the bridge over the Szegedin Road, in Hungary. He had been employed in connection with the Universal Exhibition of 1867, where he had charge of the machinery annex.
The Americans had proposed to commemorate the Philadelphia Exhibition of 1875 by a tower one thousand feet in height, equal to about 305 French metres. But they abandoned the project, which was to be realised by M. Eiffel, whose tower is within five metres of the height contemplated by the architects and engineers of Philadelphia. The calculations for the Eiffel Tower, formed entirely of iron trellis work, had been so carefully made that when the component parts, prepared separately, were brought to the workshops of the Champ de Mars to be verified and adjusted, they fitted to the greatest perfection. To give an idea of the dimensions of the Eiffel Tower it may be mentioned that the towers of Notre-Dame rise to a height of sixty-six metres above the level of the soil, while the Cathedral of Cologne, the loftiest in the world, does not exceed 159 metres. To go back to the remotest antiquity, the Eiffel Tower is half as high again as the notorious Tower of Babel, of which the altitude was 625 feet, otherwise 208 metres and a few centimetres. At its base the tower measures, on each of its four sides, 100 metres, and it slopes up to a platform at the summit which measures, on each side, ten metres.
The first platform, with immense rooms for different purposes, is sixty-six metres above the level of the soil; just eight metres less than the towers of Notre-Dame, and it presents a surface of 5,000 square metres. It may be reached either by a staircase of 350 steps, or by a lift. The second platform stands 115 metres above the level of the soil, and measures thirty metres on each side, the area of the floor being 1,400 square metres. Here the Paris Figaro established a printing office, whence issued the special edition of the Eiffel Figaro, in which were printed the names of all the visitors. The third platform, 276 metres in height, can only be reached by lift. It is surmounted by a campanile, or bell tower, in the Italian style, twenty-four metres in height, which is divided into apartments for scientific experiments, and which includes M. Eiffel's reception rooms. At the very top of the structure is a light, of the power employed in the great French lighthouses. The view from the Eiffel Tower becomes naturally more and more vast as one ascends; and M. Eiffel has had maps drawn showing the points visible from the third, or highest platform, to the ordinary sight. This map is exhibited on the third platform.
On the north may be distinguished two villages in the department of the Somme, seventy kilometres from Paris (four kilometres = two-and-a-half miles); on the north-east the forest of Hallatte, at the back of Cenlis, distant seventy-five kilometres; on the east two hills in the direction of Ch�teau Thierry, eighty-two kilometres; on the south-east the environs of La Fert�-Bernard, in the department of the Marne, eighty-two kilometres; on the south, the other side of �tampes, sixty-two kilometres; on the south-west the Cathedral of Chartres and a hill at the back, eighty-three kilometres; on the west the Ch�teau of Versailles, the chapel of Dreux, and the environs of Dourdan, at a distance of fifty kilometres; and finally on the north-west the forest of Lyons, ninety kilometres.
Telescopic distances have not been published. It can be seen, however, that this loftiest of observatories would be of immense use to Paris in case of her being again approached by invading armies.
The Eiffel Tower was one of the greatest attractions of the Exhibition of 1889; and it remains a lasting memorial of that greatest of great exhibitions, which, on certain Sundays and holidays, attracted as many as 400,000 visitors. It has been calculated that it received altogether twenty-five million visitors--or, what is not quite the same thing, twenty-five million visits--which gives an average of 139,000 daily. Apart from the rich and varied interest belonging to the manufactures, the works of art, the products of all kinds, natural and artificial, that were on view, the Exhibition possessed a high significance in a political sense. It showed to Europe and to the world that France had more than recovered from the calamities of the war, and that she was once more in the very foremost rank of civilised powers. As in all exhibitions, the scientific departments attracted less attention, and were less frequented than the restaurants and the refreshment rooms; though here, also, there were opportunities for study, especially for those interested in ethnology.
Universal exhibitions have been compared to small towns, but they bear a greater resemblance to small worlds; and this was particularly the case with the Paris Exhibition of 1889, which was a microcosm on rather a large scale. There was no part of the world unrepresented in its varied departments, especially in the departments consecrated to eating and drinking, where national dishes and beverages were served by attendants in national costume. Here, side by side with an Algerian or Turkish coffee-house, where Mocha of guaranteed authenticity was provided, with narghilis, chiboucks, and Oriental cigarettes as appropriate accompaniments, stood a Dutch tavern purveying genuine cura�oa, or a Bavarian beerhouse. Vienna was in evidence by its so-called "cutlets" of chopped meat, and Austria generally, together with Hungary, by rare and characteristic wines. The Spanish Caf� was as remarkable for the black mantillas, with eyes to match, of the waitresses, as for its Malaga and its Xeres. The Danish Caf� was distinguished by its k�mmel, and the Swedish Caf� by its punch, made in the Swedish style, and handed to the customer (also in the Swedish fashion) by fair-haired, fresh-complexioned Swedish maidens. The Russian traktir, taken in connection with specimens of Russian village huts, formed a compendium of Russian popular life, in a country where the popular and the aristocratic, often strangely opposed, are sometimes strangely intermingled. The wooden isbas, with their high roofs, curiously surmounted by semblances of horses' heads, which have not only a picturesque, but a mystical significance--true examples of Russian rural architecture--showed such artistic carving above the portico, and at other points, that many a dull cynic declined to regard them as authentic, and held them to be mere fabrications, intended to astonish and delude the foreigner, even as Catherine II. is supposed to have been deluded by the village panoramas got up for her benefit in desert tracts by the ingenious Potemkin.
In England and other countries which are supposed to have attained the highest point of civilisation, the humbler classes know nothing of art work in connection with their daily life. But the Russian peasant, poor and uneducated, tasting meat once, perhaps, in a month, and living principally on black bread, salt cucumbers, dried mushrooms, and porridge, wears a costume full of colour, a red shirt, or a blue kaftan with a scarlet sash; and he adorns in his own rough but picturesque fashion the house he lives in, and every article of its modest furniture. The Russian peasant, like the peasant in other countries, makes none too frequent a use of the towel; but every towel that he possesses is ornamented with an embroidered fringe, worked by women who have never studied in any sort of art school, but who have acquired certain arts by tradition, and possibly through inherited aptitude. The Russian peasantry are still, for the most part, ignorant of reading and writing. But when the whole population of the Russian Empire is sent to school its native artistic faculties will, it is to be feared, disappear. At present the brain of the poor moujik must somehow occupy itself during his periods of leisure; and it works for the most part--and exclusively when he happens to be quite unlettered--through eye and hand.
At the Russian restaurant, or traktir, such national delicacies as caviar, dried salmon, pickled cucumbers, salt mushrooms, the ordinary components of the Russian zakouska or pr�prandium, were tasted by the visitor to the great Exhibition with less avidity than curiosity. These excellent comestibles (only one has got to know them first) were, if the Russian mode was followed, washed down with a glass of vodka; not, it must be admitted, the ordinary vodka of the Russian rural districts, but vodka of a more refined description, as swallowed (at least by the men) at the simple preparatory lunches given immediately before dinner at the houses of the great.
[Illustration: VIEW FROM THE FIRST PLATFORM OF THE EIFFEL TOWER.]
Those were wrong who, at the Russian restaurants of the Exhibition, confined themselves to making the acquaintance of the strange preparations offered at every well-ordered zakouska; for Russia has a cuisine of her own well worthy of practical study--a cuisine which, like Russian civilisation, consists partly of what is truly Russian, but largely of what has been adapted or simply borrowed from various foreign nations. The stchee, or cabbage soup, the borsch, or beetroot soup, the oukha, or fish soup, and the batvinia, or iced soup of Russia, are thoroughly national, and, except that the Poles have also an iced soup called cholodiec, are not to be found in any other country. The Russians have many solid dishes, too (such as boiled sucking-pig with horse-radish sauce) which are quite peculiar to Russia; but, on the other hand, they have adopted all kinds of entr�es from the French, together with various dishes of German and of Viennese origin; while they have likewise, in the art of cookery, taken lessons from their eastern neighbours.
Roumania, Servia, and what remains of Turkey were represented by dishes, drinks, and graceful female figures, all intensely national. Even such unpicturesque countries as England and America had their characteristic refreshment places. The English bars, served by much admired English barmaids, practised in the wiles and stratagems of casual flirtation, had many frequenters; while the American bars, typical of a country where women and liquor are becomingly kept apart, attracted amateurs of all classes and from all countries. Nor must Italy be forgotten; the land which gave to France not only its music and its drama, but also its ices and its pastry. It is believed that in some of the caf�s whose appearance was most strikingly foreign, France was secretly represented; for numbers of young women attired in garments of Oriental make, while perfectly ignorant of Eastern languages, talked fluently, and often very agreeably, in French.
[Illustration: THE TROCAD�RO.]
"Trocad�ro" is the name of one of the forts which the army of the Duke of Angoul�me, operating in Spain, found it necessary to take before advancing upon Cadiz. The stronghold in question was constructed on an island of the same name, which, apart from walls, bastions, and batteries, was defended against assailants by a broad canal, in which, even at low tide, the water was four feet deep. The French approached the Trocad�ro by regular siege works, and, after completing their second parallel, prepared to take the place by assault. The attack was made on the 15th of August, 1823, at three o'clock in the morning, just before daybreak, that is to say, when the Spanish garrison, trusting overmuch to the supposed efficiency of the water defences, were by no means on the alert. The French troops passed the water without firing a shot, scaled the walls, turned the guns and wall-pieces against the Spaniards, and, acting with great rapidity, were soon in possession of the fort.
The H�tel de Ville--Its History--In 1848--The Communards.
If the Place de la Concorde, with the line of the Champs �lys�es leading from it in one direction, and that of the Rue Royale and the line of boulevards in another, may be regarded as one of the most central points of Paris, the administrative centre is to be found in the H�tel de Ville on the east side of that Place de l'H�tel de Ville which was the heart of ancient Paris, or at least of so much of ancient Paris as stood on the right bank of the Seine.
The H�tel de Ville, burnt by the Communards in 1871 as part of their general plan of incendiarism, was historically, as well as architecturally, one of the most interesting buildings in Paris. In spite of the modifications and restorations which it had undergone during the last two centuries of its existence, it never lost its original character. The H�tel de Ville was the palace of the burgesses and merchants of the city, and there was a certain significance in its situation, just opposite the palace of the kings, with whom the representatives of the city were often, so far as they dared, in conflict. It had witnessed, moreover, many interesting scenes. It was always the head-quarters of insurrection so long as the struggle took place only between the monarchy and the middle classes. It perished in a struggle between the middle classes and the working men.
The first important part played by the H�tel de Ville in its communal character dates from the time of �tienne Marcel--most ambitious of Paris mayors--in the fourteenth century. Long, however, before the pretensions of �tienne Marcel, under the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius, privileged corporations existed in Paris under the name of Naut� Parisiaci, who did a nautical business on the banks of the Seine. The Maison aux Piliers, where �tienne Marcel presided over the Municipality of the period, stood on the site afterwards occupied by the H�tel de Ville, of which the first stone was laid by Francis I. on the 15th of July, 1533. "While the stone was being laid," says the annalist Du Breuil, "fifes, drums, trumpets, and clarions were sounded, together with artillery and fifty sack-butts of the town of Paris. At the same time were rung the chimes of Saint-Jean-en-Gr�ve, of Saint-Esprit, and of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie. In the middle of the Gr�ve wine was running, and tables were furnished with bread and wine for all comers, while cries were uttered in a loud voice by the common people: 'Vive le Roy et messieurs de la ville!'" An account of the before-mentioned ceremony has been left by Boccadoro.
In spite of the pompous proceedings by which the laying of the foundation-stone was accompanied, the building of the H�tel de Ville was proceeded with very slowly, and during various foreign and civil wars interrupted altogether. The south wing had been erected under Henri II. The north wing was not completed until the reign of Louis XIII. The building was finished during the reign of Henri IV., whose equestrian statue by Pierre Biard marked, until the Revolution, the principal entrance. After suffering various injuries during the wars of the Fronde, the figure of the once popular king was, in 1793, overturned and destroyed, to be afterwards replaced by a statue in bronze.
Early in the eighteenth century the H�tel de Ville had been found too small; and in 1749 it was proposed to reconstruct it on the other side of the Seine, on the site of the H�tel Conti, where now stands the Mint. This project, however, met with a lively opposition on the part of Parisians generally; and in 1770 it was decided to enlarge the existing structure. Funds, however, were not forthcoming; and when, nineteen years afterwards, the Revolution broke out, the Hospital, or rather Hospice of the Holy Ghost, and the Church of Saint-Jean, suppressed as religious establishments, were, as buildings, annexed to the H�tel de Ville, which they adjoined.
After the H�tel de Ville had been destroyed in 1871 by the incendiaries of the Commune, the statues of Charlemagne, of Francis I., and of Louis XIV. were found in the ashes. They had shared the fate of the equestrian figure of Henri IV. at the time of the Revolution; and they were afterwards replaced by groups of sculpture which have no sort of connection with the building.
The H�tel de Ville has an interesting history of its own. In 1411 Charles VI. restored to the Paris municipality, in acknowledgment of the courage shown by the Parisians against the English, several privileges which had been abolished or had fallen into abeyance. Then, during the troubles of the Armagnacs and the Burgundians, the Paris Municipality broke into two hostile factions; but at length, from hatred of the Armagnac party, the municipality accepted the English domination. After the return, however, of Charles VII. and during the whole of the second half of the fifteenth century the magistrates of the capital showed themselves thoroughly loyal and absolutely devoted to the interests of the monarchy.
Louis XII. and Francis I. respected and even augmented the privileges of the H�tel de Ville. But during the religious wars the municipality again split up into two factions. It took part, as a whole, in the massacre of St. Bartholomew, believing that it was thus helping to suppress conspiracy directed against the life of the king; but it made every effort to stop bloodshed when it understood the true character of the infamous attack upon the Huguenots. Towards the end of the sixteenth century the municipal officers were chosen from among the most determined supporters of the Catholic League; in spite of which the H�tel de Ville made every effort to bring Henri IV. to Paris. In his gratitude, this monarch made lavish promises to the burgesses; and he kept them. In 1589 Henri III. had revoked all the privileges granted by his predecessors to the burgesses of Paris. The day after his entry into the capital Henri IV. re-established the municipal body, and gave back to it the whole of its ancient liberties. Then it was that the municipality resolved to place the king's statue before the principal gate of the H�tel de Ville.
During the reign of Louis XIII. Richelieu abolished the principle of election which constituted the very basis of the municipal authority of Paris. Various important offices, instead of being elective, were now made permanent appointments under the control of the king; and from this epoch dates the decline of the Paris municipal body. Under the ancient r�gime Louis XIV. deprived the Town Council of all power; and communal liberty had disappeared in Paris when the great Revolution broke out. Then, however, the H�tel de Ville became once more a centre of political activity; and it was at the H�tel de Ville, on the eve of the taking of the Bastille, that the discussions were held which led immediately to the attack on the fortress-prison. The so-called "electors" of Paris, themselves chosen the moment before from among the Paris population, had assembled under the presidency of M. de Flesselles, provost of the merchants, when a report was spread that he had concealed several barrels of gunpowder in the cellars of the H�tel de Ville. This was looked upon as a reactionary measure intended to prevent the meditated attack on the hated stronghold; and people rushed to the H�tel de Ville to distribute the powder at once and with their own hands. The Bastille had scarcely been taken when the captors, returning to the H�tel de Ville, called out, "Down with De Flesselles," who, attacked in the Hall of Assembly, escaped by a convenient door. He had scarcely, however, got outside when he was recognised and shot dead. With the death of the Provost de Flesselles the ancient corporation of the burgesses of Paris, with their privileges of holding courts, commercial, civil, and even criminal, came to an end. On its ruins was raised the Commune of Paris, which played so terrible a part in the Revolution, and especially during the Reign of Terror. The H�tel de Ville has been called the "palace of revolution," and during the last hundred years, ever since the era of revolutions set in, it has well deserved its name. The H�tel de Ville served as headquarters to the Commune of Paris, and to the Committee of Public Safety. The registers of the Commune are still preserved in the Archives, and furnish the only authentic materials relating to the history of the most sanguinary period of the French Revolution. Under the Consulate and the Empire the municipal power, like the legislative power, was abolished; and the H�tel de Ville was now only known as the scene from time to time of public entertainments. Crowds were in the habit of assembling before the H�tel de Ville to hear the victories of Napoleon proclaimed. On the occasion of the Emperor's marriage to Marie Louise the City of Paris revived the entertainments which it had been in the habit of giving to the ancient kings. Napoleon expressed a desire to present his wife to the burgesses of Paris assembled in the rooms of the H�tel de Ville, which from this time, as long as the Empire lasted, gave an annual ball on the 15th of August.
The Restoration did nothing for the H�tel de Ville. In 1830, during the Revolution which placed Louis Philippe on the throne in lieu of Charles X., the H�tel de Ville was the chief object of contention between the two parties; and it was in the Place de Gr�ve, or Place de l'H�tel de Ville, as it was afterwards to be called, that the most terrible conflict of the "three days" occurred. Taken and re-taken, the H�tel de Ville at last remained in the power of the insurgents; and the tricolour flag, which for the previous fifteen years had been looked upon as an emblem of sedition, now floated once more above its walls. The provisional government, established there under the inspiration of La Fayette, offered a crown to Louis Philippe. "A throne surrounded by Republican institutions," such, in a few words, was the celebrated "programme of the H�tel de Ville." The throne remained, but the Republican institutions disappeared; and Louis Philippe made no step towards re-establishing the very institution--the Municipal Council--which had made him king.
[Illustration: H�TEL DE VILLE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
(From an Engraving by Rigaud.)]
Eighteen years later another revolution was to take place; and after the flight of Louis Philippe a provisional government was again proclaimed--proclaimed itself, that is to say. Lamartine was at the head of it, and without showing any aptitude for exercising power, the celebrated writer, whose popularity had been much increased by his recently published "History of the Girondists," delivered a number of remarkable speeches at the H�tel de Ville. Hating all government, a portion of the populace forced its way into the passages and approached the room where Lamartine was engaged with laws and proclamations, when the hero of the hour laid down his pen, rushed towards the invading crowd and called upon it to retire. No less than seven times did he repeat his adjurations to the mob, till, at last, some "man of the people," foreseeing that the republic about to be established would not be of the "red" hue desired by the extreme Revolutionists, called him a traitor and demanded his head.
[Illustration: ATTACK ON THE H�TEL DE VILLE, 1830.]
"My head!" replied Lamartine. "Would to heaven that every one of you had it on his shoulders. You would then be calmer and more reasonable, and the Revolution would be accomplished with less difficulty." The day had been won, but the battle was to begin again on the morrow; and now once more Lamartine stilled the troubled waters by a few eloquent phrases. The question had been raised whether the tricolour flag, or the red flag of the Reign of Terror, should be adopted. Lamartine traced the history of both; and the crowd, carried away by the warmth of his oratory, decided with acclamation that the flag of the new republic must be the flag of the early days of the great Revolution, the flag under which the great battles of the Consulate and the Empire had been gained. It will be remembered that when, in 1789, a leaf torn from a tree of the Palais Royal by Camille Desmoulins was made a sign of recognition, green was on the point of being adopted for the new national flag. It was rejected, however, when someone pointed out that green was the colour of the Artois family; and thereupon blue and red, the colours of the town of Paris, were assumed, to which, out of compliment to the monarchy, favourable in the first instance to the claims of the people, white, the colour of the French kings, was added. Thus the tricolour flag became the flag of the Revolution, as, during successive changes of government, it was equally the flag of the Consulate and the Empire. At the Restoration the Monarchy committed the grave fault of re-introducing the white flag of the ancient r�gime, which Louis Philippe had the good sense to replace by the Republican and Imperial tricolour.
[Illustration: STATUE OF �TIENNE MARCEL ON THE QUAI H�TEL DE VILLE.]
When in June, 1848, the insurrection of unemployed workmen broke out, demanding, in the words of certain insurgents at Lyons, "bread or bullets," the H�tel de Ville became once more an object of contest between the opposing forces; but the supporters of the Democratic and Socialistic Republic were to be defeated, and the H�tel de Ville did not, during the terrible days of June, change hands. As long as the Republic lasted--less than four years--the municipal institutions showed signs of vitality, which, however, were to disappear on the coup d'�tat of December 2nd, 1851; and throughout the second Empire the H�tel de Ville was occupied, in lieu of an independent Municipal Council, by a sort of consultative commission without mandate and without authority, attached to the Prefect in order to verify his accounts with closed eyes. By way of compensation, however, the H�tel de Ville was encouraged to give balls, to which the chief of the State accorded his gracious patronage. It was at the H�tel de Ville that the Prefect of the Seine, M. Berger, entertained Queen Victoria, and that his successor, Baron Haussman, received in like manner the Emperor of Russia, while proposing to extend his hospitality to the Sultan. The reception of the Emperor Alexander II. did not pass off without an incident which caused a very painful impression at the time, and which the French would, now more than ever, gladly forget; for as the Tsar was about to enter the H�tel de Ville he was saluted with cries of "Vive la Pologne!"
If the ball given in honour of the Emperor Alexander was marred by a mere exclamation, the one which it had been proposed to offer to the Sultan of Turkey was stopped by a tragic event. News had suddenly arrived of the execution of the Emperor Maximilian. Thus was marked the failure of the Emperor Napoleon's Mexican policy; and thus disappeared for ever his fantastic dreams of a confederation of Latin, or Latinised, or Latin-influenced nations, under the patronage of France. Up to this time Napoleon III. had been marching from one success to another. The turning point in his career had been reached, and the failure in Mexico was to be followed by failures in every direction. The ball in honour of the Sultan having been abandoned, it was nevertheless thought necessary to give him some idea of what it would have been had it really taken place. Accordingly the H�tel de Ville was lighted up, and the Commander of the Faithful was escorted through the deserted ball-rooms and saloons, the officer appointed to accompany him explaining, as he passed from one apartment to another, "Here you would have seen the high functionaries of State in their uniforms with full decorations; here most of the dancing would have taken place, and you would have been enraptured by the sight of beautiful women in the most charming dresses; here would have been the orchestra, the best in Paris, and probably in the whole world." This strange jest must have reminded the Sultan of one of the most famous books in the Mahometan world, that "Thousand and One Nights," with its tale of an honoured guest to whom a dinner without viands was offered.
Some months later the H�tel de Ville was the scene of a grand dinner given in honour of the Emperor of Austria, brother of the unfortunate Maximilian. Here, for the first time in modern history, privileged guests were admitted by invitation cards to galleries, from which the spectacle of two sovereigns dining together could be enjoyed. Burton, in his "Anatomy of Melancholy," recommends the sight of two kings engaged in single combat as a cure for atrabiliousness. It was probably as an improvement on Burton's remedy, so difficult to procure, that a private view of two Emperors sitting together at table was offered to a favoured few.
After the breakdown of the Second Empire and the flight of the Empress from Paris, the Government of National Defence, consisting of all the Paris Deputies, had its head-quarters at the H�tel de Ville; and here, when the so-called government had given place to the Central Committee, and the Central Committee to the Commune, the last-named body held its deliberations. In 1875 the H�tel de Ville was reconstructed, with certain modifications and amplifications, on the lines of the ancient one, burned down by the Communards. The new edifice contains either in niches, or on external pinnacles, rather more than 100 statues, reproducing the features of all kinds of celebrities, the whole of them belonging to France, with the single exception of Cortone, born in Italy. The collection includes the architects of the original building, some of the most famous merchant-provosts, mayors of Paris, prefects of the Seine, and municipal councillors, among whom may be mentioned Michel Lallier, who delivered Paris from the English, Fran�ois Miron, and Pierre Viole. Literature, the stage, and music are largely represented in the effigies of Beaumarchais, B�ranger, Boileau, F. Hal�vy, H�rold, Marivaux, Moli�re, Picard, Alfred de Musset, Charles Perrault, Quinault, Regnard, George Sand, Scribe, etc.; nor have architecture, sculpture, painting, and the industrial arts been forgotten in this spacious Walhalla, where are found the statues of Boucher, Boulle (known among Englishmen, in connection with various kinds of inlaid work, as "B�hl,") Chardin, Corot, Daubigny, Louis David, Eug�ne Delacroix, Decamps, Firmin Didot, the well-known printer, Jean Goujon, Gros, Lancret, Le Brun, Le N�tre, Pierre Lescot, Lesueur, Mansard, Germain Pilon, Henri Regnault, Th�odore Rousseau, Horace Vernet, etc. Mingled with the writers, composers, painters, sculptors, and architects, are statesmen and historians such as Cardinal de Richelieu, the Marquis d'Argenson, the Duke de Saint-Simon, De Thou, Pierre de l'Estoile, and Michelet. Two illustrious tragedians figure in this chosen company, Lekain and Talma.
The new H�tel de Ville has been furnished with magnificence and good taste. The staircases are very fine, but the essentially modern character of the internal arrangements is sufficiently shown by the lifts which work between the basement and the upper storeys.
[Illustration: THE MUNICIPAL COUNCIL CHAMBER, H�TEL DE VILLE.]
On the side of the H�tel de Ville looking towards the river are the private apartments of the Prefect of the Seine, who performs the functions of Mayor of Paris. In the left wing sit the clerks, engaged in duties as complicated as those of a Ministerial bureau, and here also is the hall in which the sittings of the Municipal Council are held. The prefectorial functions are divided between two prefects: the Prefect of the Seine, whose duties are exclusively administrative; and the Prefect of Police, who attends not only to the Police of Paris, but, in a general way, to Police matters throughout the country. The finances of the city or town of Paris ("ville de Paris" is its traditional, historic name) are regulated, under the authority of the Prefect of the Seine, by a Municipal Council composed of eighty members elected on universal suffrage, four members for each arrondissement, or one for each quartier. These eighty councillors form the Council-General of the Seine, whose principal duty it is to prepare the budget of the department. They are forbidden to occupy themselves in any manner with politics. Though the prefects of the various departments are not supposed in France to exercise political functions, they are really political officers--that is to say, they are appointed by the Central Government, and frequently, though in many cases secretly, do the work of political agents. During the invasion of 1870 they were regarded as political officers, and everywhere retired as the invaders advanced; the mayors meanwhile, as municipal officers, everywhere remaining. It has been said that the duties of the Prefecture of Paris are shared by the Prefect of the Seine and the Prefect of Police, and that the former conducts his business at the H�tel de Ville. His associate, though connected with the H�tel de Ville, has his establishment, with its various bureaux, at the Palais de Justice in the "Cit�."
The island of the Cit�, the ancient Lutetia, the cradle of modern Paris, has possessed from time immemorial, and certainly from the first years of the Roman conquest, a religious edifice, first a Pagan temple and afterwards a Christian church, on the western extremity of the Parisian island; while the eastern extremity has been always occupied by a palace reserved for the Government, and for the administration of justice.
[Illustration: �LE ST. LOUIS.]
The Palais de Justice--Its Historical Associations--Disturbances in Paris--Successive Fires--During the Revolution--The Administration of Justice--The Sainte-Chapelle.
Next to Notre-Dame the most interesting edifice in the island of the City, at the corner of the Quai de l'Horloge, is the Palais de Justice, which dates from the time of the Romans. So much at least has been inferred, apart from the tradition on the subject, from the fact that when some years ago the building was reconstructed, Roman remains were discovered in the foundations. All, however, that can be affirmed with historical certainty as to the origin of the Palace is that towards the end of the ninth century it existed in the form of a fortress, and was the residence of the Frankish kings of the second race. It played an important part in the defence of Paris against the Normans invading the city by water from Rouen and the lower Seine. At the Palais de Justice lived the Counts of Paris, and afterwards the kings of the line which came to an end with the unfortunate "Louis Capet" (as in Revolutionary parlance he was called) who lost his head beneath the guillotine.
Louis le Gros, the protector of the Communes, died at the Palace in 1137. Philip Augustus, while undertaking the entire reconstruction of the Ch�teau du Louvre, made the Palace his habitual residence, and it was there that he married Ingelburga, sister of Canute, King of Denmark. Under the reign of this monarch, the court or tribunal of the King received for the first time the name of Parliament, its functions being to discuss and decide questions submitted to it by the Sovereign, and to pronounce on the illegality or legality of certain acts. In these days the royal residence was not luxuriously furnished, hay doing duty for carpet during the winter, and a matting of weeds during the summer. These primitive coverings of the palatial floors were given by Philip Augustus to the hospital known as the H�tel-Dieu whenever the Court left Paris.
The King's Palace was called the Palace of Justice from the fact that here the Sovereign held Court, and decided the cases submitted to him by his subjects, sometimes with, sometimes without, the assistance of the before-mentioned Parliament. Here, too, St. Louis formed in a hall adjoining the Holy Chapel a library, in which he collected copies of all valuable manuscripts placed at his disposal. This library was open to learned and studious men, with whom the king loved to converse.
Philip the Fair enlarged the Palace; and under his reign the Parliament, formerly styled "ambulatory," became sedentary: it no longer, that is to say, followed the king in his journeys from one residence to another. The members of Parliament had lodgings assigned to them in that part of the building now occupied by the prison of the Conciergerie. Under the reign of Charles V. the first great clock that had ever been seen in France was placed in a square tower on the quay; whence the name "Quai de l'Horloge."
It was in the Palais de Justice that Charles VI. received the Greek Emperor, Manuel Pal�ologus, and the Emperor Sigismund, King of Hungary. A strange incident happened in connection with the visit of the latter sovereign. He had expressed a desire to witness the pleading of a case before the Parliament, and at the beginning of the process astonished everyone by taking the seat reserved for the King of France. One of the parties to the suit was about to lose his action on the ground that he was not a nobleman, whereupon, in a spirit of equity and chivalry, not appreciated by the assembly, Sigismund rose from his seat, and calling to him the pleader, who, from no fault of his own, was getting defeated, made him a knight; which completely changed the aspect of affairs, and enabled the man who was in the right to gain his case.
It was at the Palace of Justice that the marriage of Henry V. of England with Catherine of France, daughter of Charles VI., was celebrated. Here, too, Henry VI., King of England, resided at the time of his coronation as King of France. Under the reign of Charles VII. certain clerks, "les clercs de la basoche," obtained permission to represent "farces and moralities" in the great banqueting hall, an immense marble table at one of the extremities of the hall serving as stage. According to a writer of the time, this table was "so long, so broad, and so thick, that no sheet of marble so thick, so broad, and so long was ever known elsewhere." The morality of the so-called "moralities" seems to have been more than doubtful; for after a time they were stopped by reason of their alleged impropriety. This was in 1476.
Soon, however, the clerks attached to the Palace of Justice reappeared on the marble table; when they again got themselves into trouble by satirising the Government of Charles VIII., and even Charles himself. Several of the authors and actors concerned in the piece were imprisoned, and were only liberated at the instance of the Bishop of Paris, who claimed for them "benefit of clergy."
The clerks of the tribunals and the students of the university were, in those days, troublesome folk. The students have always formed an exceptional class in Paris. Unlike the university students in England, they live in the capital, are exposed to its temptations, and take part in its struggles.
During the present century in commotions and insurrections they have always been on the popular side. In former times, however, they formed a party in themselves; and the students of Paris would engage with the citizens in formidable contests, which, with exaggerated features, resembled the "town and gown" rows of which our own universities have so often been the scene.
"In the year 1200," says the author of "Singularit�s Historiques," "a German gentleman studying at Paris sent his servant to a tavern to buy some wine. The servant was maltreated, whereupon the German students came to the aid of their fellow-countryman, and served the wine-dealer so roughly that they left him nearly dead. The townspeople now came to avenge the tavern-keeper; and, taking up arms, attacked the house of the German gentleman and his fellow-countrymen. There was great excitement throughout the town. The German gentleman and five students of his nation were killed. The Provost of Paris, Thomas by name, had been at the head of the Parisians in this onslaught; and the heads of the schools made a complaint on the subject to King Philip, who, without waiting for any further information, arrested the provost and several of his adherents, demolished their houses, tore up their vines and their fruit-trees, and fearing lest all the foreign students should desert Paris, issued a decree for the protection of the schools and those who frequented them. Thomas, for having incited instead of preventing disorder, was condemned to perpetual imprisonment."
In 1221 the students of the university, encouraged by the privileges granted to them by Philip Augustus, gave themselves up to all kinds of excesses, carrying away women and committing outrages, thefts, and murders; whereupon Bishop Guillaume pronounced excommunication against all who went about by night or day with arms. As the decree of excommunication produced little effect, the bishop caused the most seditious to be put in prison, and drove the others out of the town, thus re-establishing tranquillity.
In 1223 a violent quarrel and disturbance broke out between the scholars and the inhabitants. Three hundred and twenty students were killed and thrown into the Seine. Several professors went to the Pope to complain of so cruel a persecution; and some of them withdrew, with their students, from the capital. Paris was interdicted; and its schools, so superior to those of the other towns of France, remained without professors or scholars, and were closed.
During the thirteenth century there was as much credulity and fanaticism as there was anarchy in Paris. This was fully shown when a new sect, composed entirely of priests, declared itself. Its members denied the Real Presence, looked upon most of the ceremonies of the Church as useless, and ridiculed the worship of saints and relics. They addressed themselves particularly to women, persuading them that nothing they did was sinful so long as it was done from charity.
An ecclesiastic named Amaury, the chief of this sect, set forth his doctrine to the Pope, who condemned it. Amaury, it is said, died of grief, and was buried in the cemetery of St. Nicholas-in-the-Fields. The disciples he left behind him were nearly all ecclesiastics, or professors of the University of Paris. There was, however, one goldsmith among them, who, we are assured, uttered prophecies.
To discover the members of this sect a stratagem was employed. Raoul de Nemours and another priest pretended to share the opinions of the heretics, that they might afterwards denounce them. The offenders were then arrested and taken to the Place des Champeaux, when three bishops and doctors in theology deprived them of their degrees, and condemned them to be burnt alive. Fourteen of the unhappy men underwent this frightful punishment and supported it with courage. Four were excepted and condemned to perpetual imprisonment. The execution took place on the 21st of October, 1210.
[Illustration: THE QUAI DE L'HORLOGE.]
The bishops and doctors, assembled in council to pronounce judgment, condemned at the same time two books of Aristotle on metaphysics; and after delivering them over to the flames forbade all persons to transcribe them, read them, or "retain the contents in their memory" under pain of excommunication.
Under Louis XII. the irrepressible clerks of the Basoche ridiculed the sovereign as the personification of Avarice. The king was urged to treat the presumptuous young men as his predecessors had often done. "Let them play in all freedom," he replied. "Let them speak as they will of me and my Court. If they notice abuses why should they not point them out, when so many persons, reputed sage, are unwilling to do so?"
After the death of Louis XII. the representations of the clerks were subjected to a more and more severe censorship; and towards the end of the sixteenth century the Theatre of the Marble Table was given up altogether.
To pass to the reign of Francis I., it was at the Palais de Justice that this monarch received the challenge from the Emperor Charles V. His successors took up their residence in the Louvre, abandoning altogether the ancient palace, which was now occupied exclusively by the Law Courts. In 1618 a great portion of the building was destroyed by fire; and it was only by incurring great personal risk that the Registrar succeeded in saving the records of the Parliament. The fire was generally attributed to accomplices, real or supposed, of Ravaillac, the assassin of Henri IV. Although Ravaillac had declared himself solely responsible for the murder, and had received absolution only on condition of his swearing solemnly to the truth of his declaration, the police seemed resolved to implicate a number of other persons; and when a certain amount of evidence had been collected against them the suspected ones thought it judicious (so the story ran) to destroy all that had been written down against them. All the most characteristic, the most picturesque part of the building was destroyed, including the large hall lighted solely through windows of coloured glass, in which stood the statues of the Kings of France. Charles VII. had cut, with a chisel, the English King's face; and it was only by these mutilations that the statue of Henry VI. was recognised among the ruins. The famous marble table at the western extremity of the hall had been damaged beyond remedy by the flames. At the eastern extremity, the Chapel of Louis XI., in which that devout but treacherous monarch was represented kneeling to the Virgin, had been entirely destroyed.
[Illustration: PONT AU CHANGE AND PALAIS DE JUSTICE.]
Nearly all that remained of the ancient palace was the prison or "conciergerie," where Montgomery, who by mishap had slain his king in a tournament, and, at a later period, Damiens of the Four Horses had been confined. The tower of the conciergerie was for a long time called the Montgomery Tower.
Besides the conciergerie, the hall known as the Salle des Pas Perdus and the so-called "Kitchen of Saint-Louis," with an immense chimney-piece in each of the four corners, formed part of the ancient building.
In 1776 the Palais de Justice again took fire, and again was in great part reconstructed. In 1835, under Louis Philippe, the Town of Paris decided to enlarge it, and the plan by M. Huyot, the architect, was adopted by the Municipal Council in 1840. The royal sanction was then obtained; but Louis Philippe did not remain long enough on the throne to see the work of construction terminated. The Republican Government of 1848 stopped the building; and it was only under the Second Empire in 1854 that it was resumed, to be completed in 1868. More important by far than the re-alterations, additions, and reconstructions of which the Palais de Justice has in successive centuries been made the subject have been the changes in the French law, and in various matters connected with its administration. Up to the time of the Revolution citizens were arrested in the most arbitrary manner on mere suspicion, and imprisoned for an indefinite time without being able to demand justice in any form. Some half a dozen years before the uprising of 1789 the king had decreed that no one should be arrested except on a definite accusation; but the order was habitually set at nought.
The Palais de Justice of the present day occupies about one third of the total surface of the Cit�. Enclosed on the east by the Boulevard du Palais, on the west by the Rue de Harlay, on the north by the Quai de l'Horloge, and on the south by the Quai des Orf�vres, it forms a quadrilateral mass in which all styles are opposed and confused, from the feudal towers of the Quai de l'Horloge to the new buildings begun in Napoleon III.'s reign, but never completed. To the left of this strange agglomeration the air is pierced by the graceful spire of the Sainte-Chapelle, admirable monument of the piety and of the art of the middle ages.
Some portions of the ancient Palace of Justice are preserved in the modern edifice, but only the substructures, as, for instance, in the northern buildings facing the Seine. The principal gate, and the central pavilion with its admirable fa�ade at the bottom of the courtyard opening on to the Boulevard du Palais, were constructed under the reign of Louis XVI. The northern portion, from the clock tower, at the corner of the quay, to the third tower behind, has been restored or rebuilt in the course of the last thirty years. All the rest of the building is absolutely new.
The clock tower, a fine specimen of the military architecture of the fourteenth century, was furnished in 1370 by order of Charles V. with the first large clock that had been seen in Paris, the work of a German, called in France Henri de Vic. To this clock the northern quay owes its name of "Quai de l'Horloge du Palais" or "Quai de l'Horloge." The bell suspended in the upper part of the tower is said to have sounded the signal for the massacre of the Protestants on the eve of St. Bartholomew's Day, August 24, 1572; a doubtful honour, which is also claimed for the bell of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois.
The Palais de Justice, as it now exists, possesses a threefold character--legal, administrative, and punitive. Here cases are tried, here the Prefect of Police performs the multifarious duties of his office, and here criminals are imprisoned. Of the various law courts the Palais de Justice contains five: the Court of Cassation, in which appeal cases are finally heard on questions of form, but of form only; the Court of Appeal, the Court of Assizes, the Tribunal of First Instance, and the Tribunal of Police. These fill the halls of the immense building.
The Court of Cassation, divided into three chambers, counts forty-eight counsellors, a first president, three presidents of chamber, a procurator-general, six advocates-general, a registrar-in-chief, four ordinary registrars, three secretaries of the court, a librarian, eight ushers, and a receiver of registrations and fines; altogether seventy-seven persons. The Court of Appeal, divided into seven chambers, is composed of a first president, seven presidents of chamber, sixty-four counsellors, a procurator-general, seven advocates-general, eleven substitutes attached to the court, a registrar-in-chief, and fourteen ordinary registrars; altogether 106 persons. The number of officials and clerks employed in the Tribunal of First Instance is still greater. Divided into eleven chambers, the tribunal comprises one president, eleven vice-presidents, sixty-two judges, and fifteen supplementary judges, a public prosecutor, twenty-six substitutes, a registrar-in-chief, and forty-five clerks of registration. As for the Police Court, it is presided over in turn by each of the twenty magistrates of Paris, two Commissaries of Police doing duty as assessors. With the addition of two registrars and a secretary the entire establishment consists of six persons. The entire number of judges, magistrates, registrars, and secretaries employed at the Palais de Justice amounts to 351; without counting a floating body of some hundreds of barristers, solicitors, ushers, and clerks, thronging like a swarm of black ants a labyrinth of staircases, corridors, and passages. Yet the Palais de Justice, constantly growing, is still insufficient for the multiplicity of demands made upon it.
The history of the Palais de Justice is marked by the fires in which it has from time to time been burned down. The first of these broke out on the night of the 5th of March, 1618, when the principal hall and most of the buildings adjoining it were destroyed. The second, which took place on the 27th of October, 1737, consumed the buildings forming the Chamber of Accounts, situated at the bottom of the courtyard of the Sainte-Chapelle--an edifice of surpassing beauty, constructed in the fifteenth century by Jean Joconde, a monk of the Order of Saint Dominic.
The third fire declared itself during the night of January 10, 1776, in the hall known as the Prisoners' Gallery, from which it spread to all the central buildings. In this conflagration perished the old Montgomery Tower. The last of the fires in which so many portions of the Palais de Justice have turn by turn succumbed, was lighted by order of the insurgent Commune on the 24th of May, 1871, when the troops from Versailles were entering Paris. The principal hall, the prison, the old towers with all the civil and criminal archives (in the destruction of the latter the insurgents may have been specially interested) were all consumed.
These repeated catastrophes, together with numerous restorations, have left standing but very little of the ancient Palais de Justice. The central pavilion, reconstructed under Louis XVI. in accordance with the plans of the architect Desmaisons, is connected with two galleries of historical interest, on one side with the Galerie Merci�re, on the other with the Galerie Marchande. The names of "Merci�re" and "Marchande" recall the time when the galleries so named, as well as the principal hall and the outer walls of the palace, were occupied by stalls and booths in which young and pretty shop-girls sold all sorts of fashionable and frivolous trifles, such as ribbons, bows, and embroideries. Here, too, new books were offered for sale. Here Claude Barbin and his rivals sold to the patrons and patronesses of the stage the latest works of Corneille, Moli�re, and Racine. Here appointments of various kinds were made, but especially of one kind.
The Palace Gallery, or Galerie du Palais, was the great meeting-place for the fashionable world until only a few years before the great Revolution, when it was deserted for the Palais Royal. Some of its little shops continued to live a meagre life until the reign of Louis Philippe. Now everything of the kind has disappeared, with the exception of two privileged establishments where "toques" and togas--in plain English, caps and gowns--can be bought, or even hired, by barristers attending the "palace."
The entrance to the central building is from the Galerie Merci�re, through a portico supported by Ionic columns, and surmounted by the arms of France. The visitor reaches a broad, well-lighted staircase, where, half-way up, stands in a niche an impressive statue of Law, the work of Gois, bearing in one hand a sceptre, and in the other the Book of the Law, inscribed with the legend "In legibus salus."
[Illustration: THE CLOCK OF THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE.]
The grand staircase of the Palais leads through a waiting-room, which serves also as a library, to the three first chambers of the Court of Appeal. The rooms are of a becomingly severe aspect. The walls are painted a greenish grey, of one uniform tint. The tribunal is sometimes oblong, sometimes in horse-shoe form. On the right sits the assessor representing the Minister of Justice, on the left the registrar on duty. In the "parquet," or enclosure beneath the tribunal, is the table of the usher, who calls the next case, executes the president's behests, and maintains order in the court, exclaiming "Silence, gentlemen," with the traditional voice and accent.
The "parquet" is shut in by a balustrade technically known as the bar, on which lean the advocates as they deliver their speeches. The space furnished with benches which is reserved for them, and where plaintiff and defendant may also sit, is enclosed by a second bar, designed to keep off the public properly so-called, and prevent it from pressing too closely upon the court. There is no witness-box in a French court. The witness stands in the middle of the court and recites, often in a speech that has evidently been prepared beforehand, all he knows about the case under trial.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE COURT OF ASSIZE.]
Such is the general disposition of all the assize chambers in the Palais de Justice. Some, however, present features of their own. The first chamber, for instance, contains a magnificent Calvary, by Van Eyck; one of the rare objects of art which survive from the ancient ornamentation of the palace. On the centre of the picture, rising like a dome between two side panels, is the Saviour on the Cross. On His right is the Virgin supported by two holy women, by Saint John the Baptist and by Saint Louis, graced with the exact features of King Charles VII., under whose reign this masterpiece was executed. On the left are Saint John the Evangelist, Saint Denis, and Saint Charlemagne. Above the head of our Lord are the Holy Ghost and the Eternal Father surrounded by angels, while the background is occupied by a landscape less real than curious; for it represents the City of Jerusalem, the Tower of Nesle, the Louvre, and the Gothic buildings of the Palais de Justice. This work, by the great painter of Bruges, executed in the early part of the fifteenth century, was formerly in the Principal Hall of the Parliament, beneath the portrait of Louis XII., which the people (whose "father" he claimed to be) destroyed in 1793. The portion of the building which contains the three first chambers of the court--behind the portico opening on to the Galerie Merci�re--escaped the fire of 1776. Its lateral and southern fa�ade, turned towards the courtyard of the Sainte-Chapelle, is pierced with lofty windows, sculptured in the Renaissance style. It must have been constructed under the Valois, or under the reign of Henri IV. But it is difficult to ascertain its early history, for but few writers have given much attention to the subject.
[Illustration: THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE.]
[Illustration: THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE AND SAINTE-CHAPELLE.]
The fifth, sixth, and seventh chambers of the Court of Appeal are all entered from the Galerie Marchande; while the fourth chamber stands in the north-east corner of the said gallery. On the left of the Galerie Merci�re is the famous Salle des Pas Perdus, seventy-four metres long and twenty-eight broad. This is the great entrance hall to the courts generally. Why it should be called "Salle des Pas Perdus" is not evident, though the name may be due either to the "lost steps" of litigants bringing or defending actions without result, or, more probably, to the "lost steps" of those who walk wearily to and fro for an indefinite time, vainly expecting their case to be called on. Whatever the derivation of its name, the Salle des Pas Perdus is considered one of the finest halls in Europe. Twice has it been destroyed by fire and twice rebuilt. The first large hall of the palace, as it was at that time called, was built under Philip the Fair and finished towards 1313. It was adorned successively with the statues of the kings of France from Pharamond to Francis I.; the successful ones being represented with their hands raised to heaven in token of thanksgiving, the unfortunate ones with head and hands lowered towards the ground. The most celebrated ornament of the large hall was the immense marble table of which ample mention has already been made.
After the fire of 1618 (in which the table split into several pieces, still preserved in the vaults of the palace) a new hall on the same site, and of the same dimensions as the old one, was built by Jacques Desbrosses, which was burnt in 1871 by the Commune, to be promptly rebuilt by MM. Duc Dommey and Daumet.
The seven civil chambers of the tribunal are entered through the Salle des Pas Perdus, either from the ground floor or from the upper storey, which is reached by two staircases. This portion of the palace was partly reconstructed in 1853 under the reign of Napoleon III., Baron Haussmann being Prefect of the Seine. The fact is recorded on a marble slab let into one of the walls. In the middle of the south part of the Salle des Pas Perdus, a marble monument was raised in 1821 to Malesherbes, the courageous advocate who defended Louis XVI. at the bar of the Convention. The monument comprises the statue of Malesherbes with figures of France and Fidelity by his side. On the pedestal are low reliefs, representing the different phases of the memorable trial. The statues are by Cortot, the illustrative details by Bosio. The Latin inscription engraved on the pedestal was composed by Louis XVIII., in whose reign the monument was executed and placed in its present position. This king, who translated Horace and otherwise distinguished himself as a Latinist, is the author of more than one historical inscription in the Latin language, and he commemorated by this means, not only the heroism of Malesherbes, who defended Louis XVI. at the trial, but also the piety of the Abb� Edgeworth, who accompanied him to the scaffold.
Towards the end of the hall, on the other side, is the statue of Berryer, which, according to M. Vitu, is "the homage paid to eloquence considered as the auxiliary of justice." In the north-east corner of the Hall of Lost Steps, to the left of Berryer's monument, is the entrance to the first chamber, once the bed-chamber of Saint Louis, and which, reconstructed with great magnificence by Louis XII. for his marriage with Mary of England, daughter of King Henry VII., took the name of the Golden Room. It afterwards played an important part in the annals of the Parliament of Paris. Here Marshal de Biron was condemned to death on the 28th of July, 1602. Here a like sentence was pronounced against Marshal d'Ancre on the 8th of July, 1617. Here the kings of France held their Bed of Justice, solidly built up at the bottom of the hall in the right corner, and composed of a lofty pile of cushions, covered with blue velvet, in which golden fleurs de lis were worked. Here, finally, on the 3rd of May, 1788, the Marquis d'Agoult, commanding three detachments of French Guards, Swiss Guards, Sappers, and Cavalry, entered to arrest Counsellors d'�pr�m�nil and Goislard, when the president, surrounded by 150 magistrates and seventeen peers of France, every one wearing the insignia of his dignity, called upon him to point out the two inculpated members, and exclaimed: "We are all d'�pr�m�nil and Goislard! What crime have they committed?"
A resolution had been obtained from the Parliament declaring that the nation alone had the right to impose taxes through the States-General. This resolution and the scene which followed were the prelude to the French Revolution. Four years later there was no longer either monarch or parliament, French Guards or Swiss Guards. The great chamber of the palace had become the "Hall of Equality," where, on the 17th of April, 1792, was established the first Revolutionary Tribunal, to be replaced on the 10th of May, 1793, by the criminal tribunal extraordinary; which was reorganised on the 26th of September by a decree which contained this phrase, still more extraordinary than the tribunal itself: "A defender is granted by law to calumniated patriots, but refused to conspirators." Here were arraigned--one cannot say tried--that same d'�pr�m�nil who had proclaimed the rights of the nation, and Barnave, the Girondists, the Queen of France, Mme. �lizabeth, Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Chaumette, H�bert, and Fabre d'�glantine; then, one after the other, the Robespierres, with Couthon, Collot d'Herbois, Saint-Just, Henriot, and Fouquier-Tinville--altogether 2,742 victims, whose 2,742 heads fell into the red basket either on the former Place Louis XV., which had become the Place de la R�volution and was afterwards to be known as the Place de la Concorde, or on the Place du Tr�ne. The numbered list, which used to be sent out, like a newspaper, to subscribers, has been preserved. It began with the slaughter of the 26th of August, 1792, in which La Porte, intendant of the civil list, the journalist Durozoi, and the venerable Jacques Cazotte, author of "Le Diable Amoureux," lost their heads.
Cazotte had kept up a long correspondence with Ponteaux, secretary of the civil list, and had sent him several plans for the escape of the Royal Family, together with suggestions, from his point of view invaluable, for crushing the revolution. The letters were seized at the house of the intendant of the civil list, the before-mentioned La Porte; and thereupon Cazotte was arrested. His daughter Elizabeth followed him to prison; and they were both at the Abbaye during the atrocious massacres of September. The unhappy young girl had been separated from her father since the beginning of the executions, and she now thought only of rejoining him either to save his life or to die with him. Suddenly she heard him call out, and then hurried down a staircase in the midst of a jingle of arms. Before there was time to arrest him she rushed towards him, reached him, threw her arms around him, and so moved the terrible judges by her daughterly affection that they were completely disarmed. Not only was the old man spared, but he and his heroic daughter were sent back with a guard of honour to their home. Soon afterwards, however, the father was again arrested, and brought before the revolutionary tribunal. On the advice of the counsel defending him, he denied the competence of the court on the plea of autrefois acquit. It was ruled, however, that the court was dealing with new facts, and the judges had indeed simply to apply the decree pronounced against those who had taken part in preparing the repression of the 10th of August. The evidence against Cazotte was only too clear, and he was condemned to death; which suggested the epigram that "Judges struck where executioners had spared."
But these very judges, bound by inflexible laws, could not refuse the expression of their pity and esteem to the unhappy old man. While condemning him to death they rendered homage to his honesty and his courage. "Why," exclaimed the public accuser, "after a virtuous life of seventy-two years, must you now be declared guilty? Because it is not sufficient to be a good husband and a good father; because one must also be a good citizen." The President of the Court, in pronouncing sentence, said with gravity and emotion: "Old man, regard the approach of death without fear. It has no power to alarm you. It can have no terrors for such a man as you."
Cazotte ascended with fortitude the steps of the scaffold, and exclaimed, before lowering his head: "I die as I have lived, faithful to my God and to my king." The last victim of the 2,472 was Coffinhal, vice-president of the Revolutionary Tribunal, and member of the Council-General of the Paris Commune.
No show of equity, no imitation even of judicial forms, gave colour to these bloody sacrifices. Most of the victims, condemned beforehand, were brought to the prison of the Conciergerie at eight in the morning, led before the tribunal at two, and executed at four. A printing office established in a room adjoining the court was connected with the latter by an opening in the wall, through which notes and documents relating to the case before the tribunal were passed; and often the sentence was composed, printed, and hawked for sale in the streets before being read to the victims.
"You disgrace the guillotine!" said Robespierre one day to Fouquier-Tinville, the public accuser.
Of this historic hall nothing now remains but the four walls. Still, however, may be seen the little door of the staircase which Marie Antoinette ascended to appear before the revolutionary jury, and which she afterwards descended on the way to her dungeon.
The Galerie Saint-Louis is the name given to the ancient gallery connected with the Galerie Marchande, its name being justified by the various forms in which incidents from the life of Saint Louis are represented on its walls. Here, in sculptured and coloured wood, is the effigy of Saint Louis, close to the open space where, when centuries ago it was a garden, the pious king was wont to imitate, and sometimes to render, justice beneath the spreading trees. One of the bureaux in the Palais de Justice contains an alphabetical list of all the sentences passed, by no matter what court, against any person born in one of the districts of Paris or of the department of the Seine. This record, contemplated by Napoleon I., was established in 1851 by M. Rouher, at that time Minister of Justice. The list is kept strictly secret; nor is any extract permitted except on the requisition of a magistrate, or on the application of one of the persons sentenced, requiring it in his own interest.
[Illustration: THE FA�ADE OF THE OLD PALAIS DE JUSTICE.]
The Bureau of "Judicial Assistance," dating from 1851, enables any indigent person to plead in form� pauperis, whether as plaintiff or defendant. Nor is he obliged to plead in person. Not only stamped paper, but solicitors, barristers, and every legal luxury are supplied to him gratuitously. It is at the expense of the lawyers that the pauper litigant is relieved.
Two curious bureaux connected with the Palais de Justice are those in which are kept, sealed up and divided into series indicated by different colours, objects of special value taken from persons brought before the court, or voluntarily deposited by them; together with sums of money which, in like manner, have passed into the hands of legal authorities. Still more curious is the collection of articles of all kinds stored in a sort of museum, which presents the aspect at once of a bazaar and of a pawnbroker's shop. Here, in striking confusion, are seen boots and shoes, clothes, wigs, rags, and a variety of things seized and condemned as fraudulent imitations; likewise instruments of fraud, such as false scales. Here, too, in abundance are murderous arms--knives, daggers, and revolvers. Singularly interesting is the collection of burglarious instruments of the most different patterns, from the enormous lump of iron, which might be used as a battering ram, to the most delicately-made skeleton key, feeble enough in appearance, but sufficiently strong to force the lock of an iron safe. There is now scarcely room for the constantly increasing collection of objects at the service of fraud and crime.
Beneath this strange exhibition, rendered still more sinister by the method and order with which it is arranged, are disposed in two storeys the four chambers which together constitute the civil tribunal. Connected with the criminal tribunal, their duty is to try offences punishable by a scale of sentences, with five years' imprisonment as the maximum. According to one of the last legislative enactments of the Second Empire, persons brought before a police-court remained provisionally at liberty except under grave circumstances. Cases, moreover, in which the offender has been taken in flagrante delicto are decided in three days. "This is a sign of progress," says M. Vitu; "but Paris still needs an institution of which London is justly proud, that of district magistrates, something like our juges de paix, deciding police cases forthwith. The principal merit of this institution is that it prevents arbitrary detention and serious mistakes such as unfortunately are only too frequent with us. Instances have occurred, and will occur again, in which an inoffensive man, arrested by mistake, in virtue of a regular warrant intended for another of the same name, is sent straight to the criminal prison of Mazas. It will then take him a week to get set at liberty. In London he would have been taken at once to the magistrate of the district, who would have proceeded without delay to the verification of his identity. It would have been the affair of two hours at most, thanks to the service of constables at the disposal, day and night, of the English magistrate."
[Illustration: THE SALLE DES PAS PERDUS.]
The police-courts have sometimes to deal with remarkable cases, but as a rule their duties are of a somewhat trivial character. Adventurers of a low order, swindlers on a petty scale, and street thieves who have been caught with their hands in the pocket of a gentleman or the muff of a lady, are the sort of persons they usually deal with. To these may be added vendors of pretended theatrical admissions, hawkers of forbidden books, and a few drunkards. From morning till night the police are constantly bringing in poor wretches of both sexes; the men for the most part in blouses, the women in rags. They arrive in "cellular" carriages, vulgarly called "salad baskets"; and leaving the vehicle they are kept together by a long cord attached to the wrist of each prisoner. The place of confinement where they remain pending the trial is called the "mouse-trap": two rows, placed one above the other, each of twenty-five cells, containing one prisoner apiece. Every cell is closed in front by an iron grating, in the centre of which is a small aperture--a little square window looking into the corridor. Through this window, which can be opened and shut, but which is almost invariably kept open, the prisoner sees all that takes place in the passage, and the occasional arrival of privileged visitors helps to break the monotony of his day. The wire cages in which the prisoners are detained suggest those of the Zoological Gardens; and the character of the wild beast is too often imprinted on the vicious criminal features of the incarcerated ones.
Disputes with cab-drivers and hackney coachmen generally are, as a rule, settled by the commissary of the district or the quartier. But serious complaints have now and then to be brought before the Tribunal of Police. In former times the hackney coaches of Paris were at once the disgrace and the terror of the town. "Nothing," writes Mercier, "can more offend the eye of a stranger than the shabby appearance of these vehicles, especially if he has ever seen the hackney coaches of London and Brussels. Yet the aspect of the drivers is still more shocking than that of the carriages, or of the skinny hacks that drag those frightful machines. Some have but half a coat on, others none at all; they are uniform in one point only, that is extreme wretchedness and insolence. You may observe the following gradation in the conduct of these brutes in human shape. Before breakfast they are pretty tractable, they grow restive towards noon, but in the evening they are not to be borne. The commissaries or justices of the peace are the only umpires between the driver and the drivee; and, right or wrong, their award is in favour of the former, who are generally taken from the honourable body of police greyhounds, and are of course allied to the formidable phalanx of justices of the peace. However, if you would roll on at a reasonable pace, be sure you take a hackney coachman half-seas-over. Nothing is more common than to see the traces giving way, or the wheels flying off at a tangent. You find yourself with a broken shin or a bloody nose; but then, for your comfort, you have nothing to pay for the fare. Some years ago a report prevailed that some alterations were to take place in the regulation of hackney coaches; the Parisian phaetons took the alarm and drove to Choisy, where the King was at that time. The least appearance of a commotion strikes terror to the heart of a despot. The sight of 1,800 empty coaches frightened the monarch; but his apprehensions were soon removed by the vigilance of his guard and courtiers. Four representatives of the phaetonic body were clapped into prison and the speaker sent to Bic�tre, to deliver his harangue before the motley inhabitants of that dreary mansion. The safety of the inhabitants doubtless requires the attention of the Government, in providing carriages hung on better springs and generally more cleanly; but the scarcity of hay and straw, not to mention the heavy impost of twenty sols per day for the privilege of rattling over the pavement of Paris, when for the value of an English shilling you may go from one end of the town to the other, prevents the introduction of so desirable a reformation."
In another part of his always interesting "Picture of Paris," Mercier becomes quite tragic on the subject of Paris coaches and Paris coachmen. "Look to the right," he says, "and see the end of all public rejoicings in Paris; see that score of unfortunate men, some of them with broken legs and arms, some already dead or expiring. Most of them are parents of families, who by this catastrophe must be reduced to the most horrible misery. I had foretold this accident as the consequence of that file of coaches which passed us before. The police take so little notice of these chance medleys that it is simply a wonder such accidents, already too frequent, are not still more numerous. The threatening wheel which runs along with such rapidity carries an obdurate man in power, who has not leisure, or indeed cares not, to observe that the blood of his fellow-subjects is yet fresh on the stones over which his magnificent chariot rattles so swiftly. They talk of a reformation, but when is it to take place? All those who have any share in the administration keep carriages, and what care they for the pedestrian traveller? Jean Jacques Rousseau, in the year 1776, on the road to Mesnil-Montant, was knocked down by a large Lapland dog and remained on the spot, whilst the master, secure in his berline, passed him by with that stoic indifference which amounts to savage barbarity. Rousseau, lame and bruised, was taken up and conducted to his house by some charitable peasants. The gentleman, or rather savage, learning the identity of the person whom the dog had knocked down, sent a servant to know what he could do for him. 'Tell him,' said Rousseau, 'to keep his dog chained,' and dismissed the messenger. When a coachman has crushed or crippled a passenger, he may be carried before a commissaire, who gravely inquires whether the accident was occasioned by the fore wheels or the hind wheels. If one should die under the latter, no pecuniary damage can be recovered by the heirs-at-law, because the coachman is answerable only for the former; and even in this case there is a police standard by which he is merely judged at so much an arm and so much a leg! After this we boast of being a civilised nation!"
In addition to the place of detention already described, the Palais de Justice contains a permanent prison known historically as the Conciergerie, and, by its official name, as the House of Justice. Here are received, on the one hand, prisoners about to be tried before the Assize Court or the Appeal Court of Police; on the other, certain prisoners who are the object of special favour and who consider themselves fortunate to be confined in this rather than any other prison. The list of celebrated persons who have been detained in the Conciergerie would be a long one, from the Constable of Armagnac (1440) to Prince Napoleon (1883). Here may still be seen the dungeons of Damiens, of Ravaillac, of Lacenaire the murderer, of Andr� Chenier the poet, of Mme. Roland, and of Robespierre. The name whose memory, in connection with this fatal place, extinguishes all others is that of the unhappy Marie Antoinette. After a captivity of nearly a year in the Temple the queen was conducted on the 5th of August, 1792, to the Conciergerie, and there shut up in a dark narrow cell called the Council Hall, lighted from the courtyard by a little window crossed with iron bars. This Council Hall was previously divided into two by a partition, which had now been removed; and in place of it a screen was fixed which, during her sleep, shut the queen off from the two gendarmes ordered to watch her day and night. The daughter of the C�sars left her dungeon on the 15th of October, 1793, dressed in black, to appear before the Revolutionary Tribunal, and the next day, dressed in white, to step into the cart which conveyed her to the guillotine erected on the Place Louis XV.
[Illustration: POLICE CARRIAGES.]
This historical dungeon, which, says M. Vitu, could not contain the tears which it has caused to be shed, and ought to have been walled up in order to bury the memory of a crime unworthy of the French nation, was transformed into a chapel by order of Louis XVIII. in 1816. The altar bears a Latin inscription which, like others previously referred to, was composed by the king himself.
Close to the queen's dungeon is the so-called Hall of the Girondists (formerly a chapel), in which the most enlightened and the most heroic of the Revolutionists are said, by a not too trustworthy legend, to have passed their last night.
Locally and even architecturally connected with the Palace of Justice is the Holy Chapel, one of the most perfect sacred buildings that Paris possesses. The courtyard of the Holy Chapel, mentioned more than once in connection with the Palace of Justice, stands at the south-east corner of the principal building, and is shut in by the Tribunal of Police and a portion of the Court of Appeal. It can be entered from five different points: from the Boulevard of the Palace of Justice; by two different openings from the Police Tribunal; from the so-called dep�t of the Prefecture of Police; and from the Cour du Mai on the north-east. No more admirable specimen of the religious architecture of the middle ages is to be found; nor is any church or chapel more venerable by its origin and its antiquity. Founded by Robert I. in 921, the year of his accession to the throne, it replaced, in the royal palace of which it had formed part, a chapel dedicated to Saint Bartholomew, which dated from the kings of the first dynasty.
[Illustration: THE CONCIERGERIE, PALAIS DE JUSTICE.]
The royal palace contained, moreover, several private oratories, including in particular one dedicated to the Holy Virgin. In 1237 Baudouin II., Emperor of Constantinople, exhausted by the wars he had been sustaining against the Greeks, came to France to beg assistance from King Saint Louis. Baudouin was of the House of Flanders, and in consideration of a large sum of money, he pledged to the French king his county of Namur, and allowed him to redeem certain holy relics--the crown of thorns, the sponge which had wiped away the blood and sweat of the Saviour, and the lance with which his side had been pierced--on which the Venetians, the Genoese, the Abbess of Perceul, Pietro Cornaro, and Peter Zauni had lent 13,000 gold pieces. The relics arrived in France the year afterwards, and crossed the country in the midst of pious demonstrations from the whole population. The king himself, and the Count of Artois, went to receive them at Sens and bore on their shoulders the case containing the crown of thorns. Thus, in formal procession, they passed through the streets of Sens and of Paris; and the holy king deposited the relics in the oratory of the Virgin until a building should be erected specially for their reception. This was the Holy Chapel, of which the first stone was laid in 1245. The work had been entrusted to the architect Pierre de Montreuil or de Montereau. In three years it was finished, the chapel being inaugurated on the 25th of April, 1248. "Only three years for the construction of such an edifice," exclaims a French writer, "when the nineteenth century cannot manage to restore it in thirty years!"
[Illustration: THE SAINTE-CHAPELLE.]
The Holy Chapel is composed of two chapels one above the other, having a single nave without transept, each chapel possessing a separate entrance. The upper chapel, approached through the Galerie Merci�re, was reserved for the king and his family, who, from the royal palace, entered it on foot. The lower chapel, intended for the inferior officers attached to the court, became later on, in virtue of a papal bull, the parish church of all who lives in the immediate neighbourhood of the palace. If the Holy Chapel is admirable by its design and proportions, it is a marvel of construction from a technical point of view. It rests on slender columns, which seem incapable of supporting it. The roof, in pointed vaulting, is very lofty; and for the last six centuries it has resisted every cause of destruction, including the fire which, in 1630, threatened the entire building.
No more beautiful specimens of stained glass are to be seen than in the Holy Chapel, with its immense windows resplendent in rich and varied colours. A remarkable statue of the Virgin bowing her head as if in token of assent, now at the H�tel Cluny, belonged originally to the Holy Chapel. According to a pious legend, the figure bent forward to show approval of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception as formulated by Duns Scotus, who was teaching theology at Paris in 1304, and from the time of the miracle until now maintains the same gesture of inclination.
More than one medi�val tradition makes statues, and especially statues of the Virgin, perform similar actions. There is, for example, in the Contes D�vots a story of a statue of the Virgin to which a certain bourgeois qui aimait une dame prayed that she would either make the lady return his love or cause that love to cease. Some time previously a Hebrew magician had offered to secure the lady's affections for the infatuated bourgeois provided he would renounce God, the saints, and especially the Blessed Virgin; to which the despondent lover replied that though, in his grief and despair, he might abandon everything else, yet nothing could make him relinquish his allegiance and devotion to the Blessed Virgin. This fidelity, under all temptations, gave him some right, he hoped, to implore the influence of the merciful Virgin towards softening the heart of the woman he so passionately loved; and the statue of the Virgin, before which he prostrated himself, showed by a gentle inclination of the head that his prayer was heard. Fortunately, the lady whose cold demeanour had so vexed the heart of her lover was in the church at the very moment of the miracle, and, seeing the Virgin bow her head to the unhappy bourgeois, felt convinced that he must be an excellent man. Thereupon she went up to him, asked him why he looked so sad, reproached him gently with not having visited her of late, and ended by assuring him that if he still loved her she fully returned his affection. Somewhat analogous to this legend, though in a different order of ideas, is that of the Commander whose statue Don Juan invited to supper, with consequences too familiar to be worth repeating.
The ancient statue of the Virgin, once in the Holy Chapel, venerated now in the H�tel Cluny, regarded simply as a curiosity, has been replaced by a modern statue. The sacred relics which the Holy Chapel at one time possessed are still preserved at Notre Dame. The gold case which enclosed them was, at the beginning of the Revolution, sent to the Mint to be converted into coin.
The spire which now surmounts the Holy Chapel is the fourth since the erection of the building. The first one, by Pierre de Montreuil, was crumbling away from age under the reign of Charles V., who thereupon had it restored by a master-carpenter, Robert Foucher. Burnt in the great fire of 1630, this second spire was re-constructed by order of Louis XIII., and destroyed during the Revolution. The fourth edition of it, which still exists, was built by M. Lassus in the florid style of the first years of the fifteenth century.
The one thing which strikes the visitor to the Holy Chapel above everything else, and which cannot but make a lasting impression on him, is the wonderful beauty of the stained glass windows already referred to. They date, for the most part, from the reign of Saint Louis, and were put in on the day the building was consecrated in 1248. In their present condition and form, however, they take us back only to the year 1837. During forty-six years (1791 to 1837) the Holy Chapel was given up to all kinds of uses. First it was a club-house, then a flour magazine, and finally a bureau for official documents. This last was the least injurious of the purposes to which it was turned. Nevertheless the incomparable stained glass windows were interfered with by the construction of various boxes and cupboards along the sides of the building, no less than three metres of the lower part of each window being thus sacrificed. Certain glaziers, moreover, employed to take down the windows, clean them, and put them back, had made serious mistakes, restoring portions of windows to the wrong frames. The subjects of the stained art-work are all from the Holy Scriptures, and on a thousand glass panels figure a thousand different personages.
The restoration of the windows had been entrusted, after a public competition, to M. Henri G�rante, a French artist who, more than any other, has contributed to the resurrection of the seemingly lost art of painting on glass. But, unhappily, M. G�rante died before beginning his work, which, thereupon, was divided between M. Steintheil, for the drawing and painting, and M. Lusson for the material preparation. Their labours were crowned with the most complete success. Entering the Holy Chapel one is literally dazzled by the bright rich colours from the windows on all sides, blending together in the most harmonious manner.
[Illustration: THE LOWER CHAPEL OF THE SAINTE-CHAPELLE.]
Right and left of the nave the place is shown where Saint Louis and Blanche de Castille were accustomed to sit opposite one another to hear mass and other religious services. A corner, moreover, is pointed out, with an iron network before it, where, according to a doubtful tradition, the suspicious Louis XI. used to retire in order to hear mass without being seen; perhaps also to watch the faithful at their prayers. In many an old French church corners and passages may be met with, protected by a network or simply by rails, which served, it is said, to shut off lepers from the general congregation.
Closely associated with the Palais de Justice is the Tribunal of Commerce, which has its own code, its own judges and functionaries. Three centuries ago the necessity was recognised in France of leaving commercial and industrial cases to the decision of men competent, from their occupation, to deal with such matters. Paris owes its Tribunal of Commerce to King Charles IX.; but the code under which issues are now decided dates only from September, 1807--from the First Empire, that is to say. The commercial judges are named for two years by the merchants and tradesmen domiciled in the department of the Seine. Formerly the Tribunal of Commerce, or Consular Tribunal, held its sittings at the back of the Church of Saint-M�ry in the H�tel des Consuls, the gate of which used to support a statue of Louis XIV., by Simon Guilain.
[Illustration: THE UPPER CHAPEL OF THE SAINTE-CHAPELLE.]
This mercantile court consists of five merchants, the first bearing the title of judge, and the four others that of consuls. The Tribunal of Commerce was removed from the old house in the Rue Saint-M�ry in 1826, to be installed on the first storey of the newly constructed Bourse. Soon, however, the place assigned to it became inadequate for the constantly increasing number of cases brought before the court; and a special edifice was erected for the Tribunal of Commerce in the immediate vicinity of the Palais de Justice. This structure, quadrilateral in form, is bounded on the north by the Quai aux Fleurs, on the east by the Rue Aub�, on the south by the Rue de Lut�ce, and on the west by the Boulevard du Palais. To build a new Palais de Justice it was necessary to destroy all that existed of the ancient Cit�. One curious building, which, after undergoing every kind of modification, ultimately, in order to make room for the Court of Commerce, disappeared altogether, was the ancient Church of Saint Bartholomew. This sacred edifice during the early days of the Revolution, when churches had gone very much out of fashion, became the Th��tre Henri IV., to be afterwards called Palais Vari�t�, Th��tre de la Cit�, Cit� Vari�t�, and Th��tre Mozart. Here was represented, in 1795, "The Interior of the Revolutionary Committees," the most cutting satire ever directed against the tyranny of the Jacobins; and, in another style, "The Perilous Forest, or the Brigands of Calabria," a true type of the ancient melodrama. Suppressed in 1807, this theatre underwent a number of transformations, to serve at last as a dancing saloon, known to everyone and beloved by students under the title of The Prado.
[Illustration: THE TRIBUNAL OF COMMERCE.]
The cupola of the Tribunal of Commerce is a reproduction, as to form, of the cupola of a little church which attracted the attention of Napoleon III. on the borders of the Lake of Garda while he was awaiting the result of the attack on the Solferino Tower. The Audience Chamber of the Tribunal is adorned with paintings by Robert Fleury, representing incidents in the commercial history of France from Charles IX. to Napoleon III.
The Sapeurs-pompiers--The Prefect of Police--The Garde R�publicaine--The Spy System.
The Tribunal of Commerce, standing north of the Rue de Lut�ce, has for pendant on its south side (that is to say, between the Rue de Lut�ce and the quay) the barrack of the Republican Guard and two houses adjoining it, one of which is the private residence of the Prefect of Police: where, moreover, he has his private office; while the second contains the station of the firemen of the town of Paris.
The Fire Brigade, or corps of Sapeurs-pompiers, is partly under the direction of the Prefect of Police, partly under that of the Minister of War, who takes charge of its organisation, its recruitment, and its internal administration. Much was said at the time of the terrible fire at the Op�ra Comique in 1887 of the evils of this dual system; the chief of the corps, an officer appointed by the War Minister, being often an experienced soldier, but never before his appointment a skilled fireman. There is a reason, however, for placing the Sapeurs-pompiers under the orders of the Minister of War. During the campaign of 1870 and 1871 the Germans refused to recognise the military character of corps not holding their commission from this minister. Thus the National Guards, as a purely civic body, were not looked upon as soldiers, and were threatened with the penalties inflicted on persons taking up arms without authority from the central military power. In the next war against Germany the French propose to call out the whole of their available forces; and to be recognised as regular troops the Sapeurs-pompiers must have a military organisation and act under military chiefs formally appointed and responsible to a superior officer. All this, however, could surely be accomplished without rendering the corps unfit for the special duties assigned to it.
The Sapeurs-pompiers are organised in twelve companies, forming two battalions, and are distributed among the 150 barracks, stations, and watch-houses comprised in the twenty districts, or arrondissements, of Paris.
The Magistracy of the Prefect of Police was created under the Consulate of the 1st of July, 1800, when the Central Power took over the general police duties entrusted under the Monarchy to the Lieutenant-General of Police, and which had been transferred by the Revolution to the Commune of Paris. The Prefect is specially empowered to take, personally, every step necessary for the discovery and repression of crime and for the punishment of criminals. He is charged, moreover, under the authority of the Minister of the Interior, with all that relates to the administrative and economic government of the prisons and houses of detention and correction, not only in Paris, but throughout the department of the Seine, as well as in the communes of Saint-Cloud, S�vres, Meudon, and Enghien, suburbs of Paris belonging to the department of Seine-et-Oise.
The Prefect of Police has beneath his orders all the police of the capital, or rather of the department to which the capital belongs. This service is divided into two special organisations: Municipal Police and Agents of Security. The "Security" force consists of three hundred agents with the title of inspector, commanded by five chief inspectors, ten brigadiers, and twenty sub-brigadiers. These agents are employed in arresting malefactors, and are viewed with intense hatred by the criminal class generally. The Municipal Police counts an effective of about 8,000 men, commanded by 38 peace officers, 25 chief inspectors, 100 brigadiers, and 700 sub-brigadiers. The entire expenditure of the Prefecture of the Police Service amounts to twenty-five million francs a year, of which eleven millions are put down for pay and the remainder for uniforms, office expenses, and all kinds of extras.
"If," says a French writer who knows London as well as Paris, "our police is not always so clear-sighted and so clever as it might be, it is, at any rate, more tolerant than vexatious. Our 'keepers of the peace' do not impose on the Paris population all the respect that the English people feels for its policemen; nor have they the same rigid bearing or the same herculean aspect. But, on the other hand, they are without their brutality--quite incredible to anyone who has not lived in London. Nearly all have been in the army, and they preserve the familiar aspect of the French soldier; while of the rules laid down by the Prefecture, the one they least observe is that which forbids them to talk in the street with servant maids and cooks. But they are intelligent, ingenious, possessed of a certain tact, and brave to the point of self-sacrifice. They are at present more appreciated and more popular, with their tunic, their military cap, their high boots, and their little cloak, which give them the look of troops on a campaign, than were the Sergents de Ville whose swallow-tail coat and black cocked hat were so much feared by rioters under the reign of Louis Philippe."
The Barracks of the Prefecture are occupied by the Garde R�publicaine, which succeeds the Garde de Paris, the latter having itself succeeded the Garde Municipale, which was simply the Gendarmerie Royale of the Town of Paris, created under the Restoration. After the Revolution of 1848 the name of the Garde Municipale was changed, as after the Revolution of 1830 the title of Gendarmerie Royale was abolished. Notwithstanding alterations of name and certain slight modifications of uniform, the Republican Guard is a legion of gendarmerie like the different corps that preceded it. Commanded by a colonel, the Republican Guard is divided into two detachments or brigades, each under a lieutenant-colonel; the first consisting of three battalions of infantry, the second of three squadrons of cavalry. The whole force comprises 118 officers, with 2,800 men beneath their orders--2,200 infantry, and 600 cavalry.
The Republican Guard, one of the finest corps that can be seen, belongs to the cadres of the regular army; and it served brilliantly in the war of 1870 and 1871. Its special duties, however, are to keep order in the City of Paris; though, in consideration of its mixed character, the pay assigned to it is furnished, half by the State, half by the Town of Paris. Among other merits it possesses an admirable band, in which may be found some of the finest orchestral players in a capital possessing an abundance of fine orchestras. The evidence of a Garde R�publicaine, or gendarme, is accepted at the police courts as unimpeachable. The written statement drawn up by a gendarme may be denied by the accused, but it cannot be set aside.
"As a matter of fact," says M. Auguste Vitu, in his work on "Paris," "very few evil results are caused by this rule; for the gendarme is honest. But he may make a mistake. In London, the magistrate, having generally to deal only with policemen of his own district, knows them personally, can judge of their intelligence and disposition, and is able in certain cases to see whether they are obscuring or altering the truth. He exercises over them, in case of negligence or error, accidental or intentional, the right of reprimanding and of suspending them. In Paris the 'judges of correction,' before whom, at one time or another, every one of the 'keepers of the peace' or of the Republican Guards (altogether about 10,000 men) may appear, can only accept their evidence. It is doubtless sincere, but there is no way of testing it."
Of the spy system in connection with police administration it is difficult to speak with accurate knowledge, for the simple reason that it is not until long afterwards that secret arrangements of this kind are divulged. But in principle the system described by Mercier more than a hundred years ago still exists.
"This," writes that faithful chronicler, "may be termed the second part of Parisian grievances. Yet, like even the most poisonous reptile, these bloodhounds are of some service to the community: they form a mass of corruption which the police distil, as it were, with equal art and judgment, and, by mixing it with a few salutary ingredients, soften its baneful nature, and turn it to public advantage. The dregs that remain at the bottom of the still are the spies of whom I have just spoken; for these also belong to the police. The distilled matter itself consists of the thief-catchers, etc. They, like other spies, have persons to watch over them; each is foremost to impeach the other, and a base lucre is the bone of contention amongst those wretches, who are, of all evils, the most necessary. Such are the admirable regulations of the Paris police that a man, if suspected, is so closely watched that the most minute transaction in which he is concerned is treasured up till it is fit time to arrest him. The police does not confine its care to the capital only. Droves of its runners are sent to the principal towns and cities in this kingdom, where, by mixing with those whose character is suspicious, they insinuate themselves into their confidence, and by pretending to join in their mischievous schemes, get sufficient information to prevent their being carried into execution. The mere narrative of the following fact, which happened when M. de Sartine was at the head of this department, will give the reader an idea of the watchfulness of the police. A gentleman travelling from Bordeaux to Paris with only one servant in his company was stopped at the turnpike by the Custom House officer, who, having inquired his name, told him he must go directly to M. de Sartine. The traveller was both astonished and frightened at this peremptory command, which, however, it would have been imprudent to disobey. He went, and his fears soon subsided at the civil reception he met with; but his surprise was greatly increased when the magistrate, whom, to his knowledge, he had never seen before, calling him by his name, gave him an account of every transaction that had taken place previous to the gentleman's departure from Bordeaux, and even minutely described the full contents of his portmanteau. 'Now, sir,' continued the Lieutenant de Police, 'to show that I am well informed I have a trifle more to disclose to you. You are going to such and such an hotel, and a scheme is laid by your servant to murder you by ten o'clock.' 'Then, my lord, I must shift my quarters to defeat his wicked intention.' 'By no means, sir; you must not even take notice of what I have said. Retire to bed at your usual hour, and leave the rest to me.' The gentleman followed the advice of the magistrate and went to the hotel. About an hour after he had lain down, when, no doubt, he was but little inclined to compose himself to rest, the servant, armed with a clasp-knife, entered the room on tip-toe, drew near the bed, and was about to fulfil his murderous intention. Then four men, rushing from behind the hangings, seized the wretch, who confessed all, and soon afterwards paid to the injured laws of humanity the forfeit of his life."
[Illustration: A POMPIER.]
Since the Revolution the number of spies employed in France has doubtless diminished. But they have existed in that country, as in others, from time immemorial. A French writer, dealing with this subject, traces the history of espionage to the remotest antiquity; the first spies being, according to his view, the brothers of Joseph, who were for that reason detained when they visited him in Egypt as Pharaoh's minister. The Romans employed spies in their armies, and both Nero and Caligula had an immense number of secret agents. Alfred the Great was a spy of the chivalrous, self-sacrificing kind; for, risking his life on behalf of his own people he would assuredly, had he been recognised in the Danish camp, have been put to death. The spy system was first established in France on a large, widely organised scale by Richelieu, under whose orders the notorious Father Joseph became the director of a network of spies which included not only all the religious orders of France, but many persons belonging to the nobility and middle classes. This sort of conspiracy had, moreover, its correspondents abroad.
The Police, strongly organised under Louis XIV., included a numerous body of spies. But all that had before been known in the way of espionage was eclipsed in Louis XV.'s reign, when the too famous De Sartine, Lieutenant of Police, gave to his spy system a prodigious extension. Under the administration of De Sartine spies were employed to follow the Court; and the Minister of Foreign Affairs maintained a subdivision of spies to watch the doings of all foreigners arriving in Paris, and to ascertain, in particular, the object of their visit. This course of action is followed to the present day in Russia, not only secretly, but in the first instance openly. Thus the chief of a bureau connected with the Foreign Office questions the stranger in the politest manner as to his motive in coming to Russia, the friends, if any, that he has there, his occupation, and his pecuniary resources.
A report is attributed to the above-named Lieutenant of Police in which it is set forth that to watch thoroughly a family of twenty persons forty spies would be necessary. This, however, was an ideal calculation, for, in reality, the cost of the spy system under Louis XV., as set down in the official registers of the police, did not amount annually to more than 20,000 francs. The Government had, however, at its disposal much larger sums received for licences from the gambling houses, and as fines and ransoms from evil-doers of all kinds. Berryer, the successor of De Sartine--bearer of a name which, in the nineteenth century, was to be rendered honourable--conceived the idea, inspired, perhaps, by a familiar proverb, of employing as spies criminals of various kinds, principally thieves who had escaped from prison or from the pursuit of the police. These wretches, banded together in a secret army of observation, were only too zealous in the performance of the work assigned to them; for, on the slightest negligence or prevarication, they were sent back to the hulks or to gaol, where a hot reception awaited them from their former comrades in crime. Hackney-coachmen, innkeepers, and lodging-house keepers were also engaged as spies, not to speak of domestic servants, who, through secret agencies, were sometimes supplied to householders by the police themselves. Many a person was sent to the Bastille in virtue of a lettre de cachet issued on the representation of some valet before whom his master had uttered an imprudent word.
[Illustration: A GUARDIAN OF THE PEACE.]
Mercier's picture of the spy system in Paris a few years before the Revolution is, to judge from other contemporary accounts, in no way exaggerated. The Revolution did not think even of suppressing espionage, but it endeavoured to moralise this essentially immoral, if sometimes necessary, institution. In a report on this subject dated November 30, 1789, only a few months after the taking of the Bastille, the following significant passage occurs:--"We have been deprived of a sufficient number of observers, a sort of army operating under the orders of the old police, which made considerable use of it. If all the districts were well organised, if their committees were wisely chosen and not too numerous, we should apparently have no reason to regret the suppression of that odious institution which our oppressors employed so long against us." The writer of the report was, in fact, recommending, without being apparently aware of it, a system of open denunciation necessitating previously that secret espionage which he found so hateful; for before denouncing it would be necessary to observe and watch. Nevertheless, the Police of the Revolution employed no regular spies, registered, organised, and paid, until 1793; though this did not prevent wholesale denunciation on the part of officious volunteers. Robespierre, however, maintained a spy system more or less on the ancient pattern; and when the Empire was established, Napoleon's famous Prefect of Police, Fouch�, made of espionage a perfect science. Fouch� had at his service spies of all classes and kinds; and the ingenious Mme. de Bawr has, in one of her best tales, imagined the case of a poor cur�, who, after the suppression of churches and religious services, calls upon Fouch�, an old schoolfellow of his, to ask for some employment; when the crafty police minister assigns a certain salary to his simple-minded friend and tells him not to do any serious work for the present, but to go about Paris amusing himself in various caf�s and places of entertainment, after which he can look in from time to time and say what has chiefly struck him in the persons he has seen and the conversations he has heard. At last the innocent cur� finds that he has been doing the work of a spy. Fortunately, when he discovers to what a base purpose he has been turned, Napoleon has just restored public worship; whereupon, by way of amends, Fouch� uses his influence with the Emperor to get the poor man re-appointed to his old parish.
[Illustration: AN ORDERLY OF THE GARDE DE PARIS.]
Under the Restoration the spy system was maintained as under the Empire, but with additional intricacies. Fouch� had been replaced by Vidocq, who, among other strange devices for getting at the thoughts of the public, obtained from the Government permission to establish a public bowling alley, which collected crowds of people, whose conversations were listened to and reported by agents employed for the purpose. The bowling alley brought in some 4,000 to 5,000 francs a year, which was spent on additional spies. The Prefect Delavau, with Vidocq as his lieutenant, went back to the system of Berryer under the ancient r�gime, taking into the State service escaped criminals, who for the slightest fault were sent back to gaol. An attempt was made by the same Delavau, in humble imitation of Berryer, to get into his service all the domestics of Paris; and in this way he renewed an old regulation by which each servant was to keep a book and bring it to the Prefecture of Police on entering or leaving a situation. To their credit, be it recorded, most of the servants abstained from obeying this discreditable order. Finding that his plan for watching private families through their servants did not answer, Delavau multiplied the number of agents charged with attending places of public entertainment.
"The Police," writes M. Peuchet in his "M�moires tir�s des Archives de la Police," "will never learn to respect an order so long as its superintendents are taken from the hulks and feel that they have their revenge to take on the society which has punished them." The justice of this remark has since been recognised. The first care of Delavau's successor, the honourable and much regretted M. de Belleyme, was to dismiss, and even to send back to their prisons, the army of cut-throat spies employed by the Prefect he replaced. At present, though his occupation stands no higher in public opinion than of old, the spy is not the outcast that he formerly was. Without being an honest man in the full sense of the word, he is not literally and legally a criminal. It is even asserted that the French spy of our own time is a man of some character; by which is probably meant that he has never been convicted of any offence, that he does not drink, that he has no depraved tastes, and that in a general way he can be depended upon. "Espionage," says Montesquieu, "is never tolerable. Otherwise the trade would be exercised by honourable men. From the necessary infamy of the person must be inferred the infamy of the thing." This, in effect, is just what the Minister d'Argenson said when he was reproached with engaging none but rogues and knaves as spies. "Find me," he replied, "decent men to do such work!" The decent men have now, it appears, been found. So much the better.
As, however, there is said to be honour among thieves, so there is sometimes honesty among spies. Witness the case of the Abb� Lenglet-Dufresnoy, simultaneously employed by Louis XIV. to keep watch over Prince Eug�ne, and by Prince Eug�ne to report all that was done by Louis XIV., and who is said to have given the most exact information to both his employers.
The Place du Parvis--The Parvis of Notre Dame--The H�tel-Dieu--Mercier's Criticisms.
In the matter of police administration and of civic government generally; the H�tel de Ville is to the whole of Paris what the Mansion House and the Guildhall are to that part of London known specially as the City. The H�tel de Ville has charge, moreover, of all the Paris hospitals and benevolent institutions. The general administration of the hospitals is entrusted to a Director, under the surveillance of a Consultative Committee.
The most ancient and most celebrated of all the Paris hospitals is the H�tel-Dieu, occupying a space which is bounded on the north by the Quai aux Fleurs, on the south by the Place du Parvis, on the west by the Rue de la Cit�, and on the east by the Rue d'Arcole.
The Place du Parvis deserves a word of mention to itself. The word "Parvis" has several derivations, the most popular of which is from the Latin paradisus. The ancient form of the French word was para�s or paravis, contracted into parvis; and it was applied to the open space in front of a church because, in the days of the "mysteries," it was here that the paradise of the play was located. According to another derivation, the "parvis" is the ground outside a church which "pare" or "guards" the principal door--huis in the ancient French. In this sense the word is used to denote, in the Jewish Temple, the space around the tabernacle. Parvis c�leste is a phrase employed by French poets to signify heaven or the firmament; which does not at all prove--indeed seems to disprove--that parvis means, or ever did mean, the same thing as paradisus. The parvis of the old churches was, in any case, used as a place of penance for those who had scandalised the town by some offence against good morals; and it was there that on certain occasions holy relics were brought for exhibition to the people. The temples of Greece and Rome were surrounded by enclosures, as if to separate them from the public thoroughfare; and the first Christian churches had enclosures in front of the principal entrance, where tombs, crosses, statues, and sometimes fountains were to be seen. After the twelfth century the parvis ceased to be enclosed; though so late as the sixteenth century the Parvis of Notre Dame appears, by exception, to have been shut in by a wall not more than three feet high, through which there were three different gateways.
The Parvis of Notre Dame served in ancient days the most varied purposes. Here, before the establishment of the University of Paris, public schools were held. It was a place of punishment, moreover; and it was on a scaffold erected in the Parvis of Notre Dame that Jacques de Molay and the Templars heard the sentence read which was afterwards executed upon them (March 18, 1314) in the �le aux Vaches, as the little island was anciently called where now stands the statue of Henri IV. Here, too, under Francis I., Huguenots were given to the flames.
Jacques de Molay, the last grand master of the Templars, was born in Burgundy, and entered the order in 1265. He distinguished himself in Palestine, in the wars against the Mussulmans. Elected grand master in 1298, he was preparing to avenge the defeats which the Christian arms had recently sustained, when in 1305 he was recalled to France by Pope Clement V. The pretext for this summons was a projected union of the order of Templars with that of the Hospitallers. But the true object of Philip the Fair, for whom the Pope had acted only as instrument, was the destruction of the order, whose immense wealth had excited the monarch's covetousness. On the 13th of October, 1307, all the Templars were arrested at the same hour throughout France; and a process was instituted against them in which every form of justice was violated. Thirty-six knights expired under torture, and several owned to the crimes and the shameful immorality of which they were falsely accused. Molay himself, in the agony of torture, allowed some words to escape him; but before dying nearly all the victims retracted the utterances wrung from them by pain. The Pope, throughout this tragic affair, followed the directions of the French king, to whom he owed his tiara.
To go back from history to legend, it was in the open space afterwards to become the Parvis of Notre Dame that in 464 Artus, King of Great Britain, son of Uther, surnamed Pendragon pitched his camp when invading Gaul and ravaging the country. Gaul was at that time governed for the Emperor Leo by the Tribune Flollo, who retired to Paris and there fortified himself. Artus now defied Flollo to single combat. The Tribune accepted, and the duel took place on the eastern point of the �le de la Cit�, with lance and hatchet. Blinded by the blood which flowed from a wound he had received in the head, Artus invoked the Virgin Mary, who, it is said, appeared to him in presence of everyone, and covered him with her cloak, which was "lined with ermine." Dazzled at this miracle, Flollo lost his sight, and Artus had now no trouble in despatching him. In memory of the Virgin's interposition, Artus adopted ermine for his coat-of-arms; which for a long time afterwards was retained by the kings and princes of Britain. He wished at the same time to consecrate the memory of his triumph, and accordingly erected on the very ground where the combat had taken place a chapel in honour of the Virgin, which at last became the cathedral church of Paris. Then Artus (or Arthur) returned to his British island, and there founded the Order of the Knights of that Round Table which is still preserved in Winchester Cathedral.
[Illustration: A GENDARME.]
Until the Revolution the Parvis of Notre Dame was shut in north and south by populous districts through which ran narrow, ill-built streets, and which contained several buildings of importance. Since then a clean sweep has been made of all the tumble-down buildings in the ancient Cit�, between the two banks of the Seine north and south, between the Cathedral on the east and the barracks of the Republican Guard on the west. The southern part of the Parvis has been transformed into a sort of English garden, in the centre of which stands an equestrian statue of Charlemagne by the sculptor Rochet.
In old French, the second of two substantives joined together did duty as genitive; so that H�tel-Dieu signified the hotel (or house) of God, just as in some ancient French towns M�re-Dieu, as the sign of an hotel, meant not, as is sometimes ignorantly supposed, "God the Mother," but "The Mother of God." The H�tel-Dieu or H�tel de Dieu (a house, that is to say, in which the poor and suffering were received and attended in the name of God and under His auspices) was founded about 660, in the time of Clovis II., son of Dagobert, by Saint Landri, twenty-eighth bishop of Paris. Here he was accustomed to receive, at his own expense, not only sick people, but also beggars and pilgrims. Medicus et Hospes, such was the motto of the bishop, who might justly claim the double title of physician and host. In the course of centuries the good work begun by Saint Landri was continued on a large scale by the French kings, with Philip Augustus, Saint Louis, and Henri IV. prominent among them. Among the benefactors of the H�tel-Dieu must also be mentioned the Chancellor du Prat, and the first President, Pomponne de Belli�vre.
The old H�tel-Dieu, after undergoing all kinds of repairs, was at last condemned as too small and too ill-ventilated. In 1868 a new hospital was begun just opposite the old one; and the building as it now stands, large, airy, and in every respect commodious, was finished in 1878. With abundance of space at their command, the architects of the modern H�tel-Dieu made it their sole aim to secure for the patients every possible advantage, and their first care was to provide spacious wards replete with light and air. One result has been that in a larger edifice the number of the beds has, in accordance with the best hygienic principles, been greatly diminished.
In the time of Saint Louis the old H�tel-Dieu received 900 patients. This number was increased under Henri IV. to 1,300, and under Louis XIV. to 1,900. At times, however, the sick or wounded persons admitted were far more numerous; and in 1709 the number of patients in the H�tel-Dieu is said to have reached 9,000. Not, however, the number of beds; for in the same bed several patients, at the risk of infection, contagion, and frightful mortality, were placed together. The new H�tel-Dieu, on the other hand, contains only 514 beds: 329 medical beds, 169 surgical beds, and sixteen cradles. The building having cost fifty million francs, it follows that each particular bed has cost nearly one hundred thousand francs; and philanthropists point out that at 6,000 francs per bed, "the ordinary figure in England and other countries," more than 8,000 patients might have been provided for in lieu of 500. It must be remembered, on the other hand, that the H�tel-Dieu contains, besides its hospital service properly so called, an administrative department: including amphitheatres of practical surgery, laboratories of pharmacy, chemistry, etc., which alone cost fourteen millions of francs. According, moreover, to the original plan as approved by the principal professors and physicians of the H�tel-Dieu, there was to have been an additional storey containing 260 beds, to which the patients below were to have been transferred on certain days for change of air and to allow the lower rooms to be thoroughly ventilated and cleaned. This additional storey cost four millions of francs, and it had already been completed, when, for reasons unexplained, but which, according to M. Vitu, were political, it was pulled down.
The general plan of the H�tel-Dieu as it now stands comprises two masses of parallel buildings: one beside the Parvis of Notre Dame, the other alongside the Quai Napol�on; the two fa�ades, anterior and posterior, of the edifice being connected laterally by galleries at right angles to the Seine. The administrative department of the H�tel-Dieu is in that part of the building which faces the Parvis. On the ground floor, to the left, is the Central Bureau of Hospitals; the head-quarters of the hospital service, not only of Paris, but generally of the Department of the Seine. The staff consists of twenty physicians, fifteen surgeons, and three accoucheurs chosen by competition; and from this body are selected the physicians and surgeons of the various Paris hospitals. Formerly patients were admitted on mere application; but at present they are carefully examined by the physicians of the Central Bureau, who give out tickets of admission and assign beds so long as there is room. If the H�tel-Dieu is full the applicants for medical care are sent to other hospitals. Adjoining the Central Bureau are the rooms where out-door patients receive gratuitous advice.
The wards occupied by the patients are lighted by two rows of windows, north and south, and they look out upon the interior courtyards, which are planted with trees. This arrangement allows air to enter the well-kept apartments, and the rays of the sun to light up the curtains and white beds of a model hospital, where everything possible has been done to relieve the suffering and depression of its unhappy inmates. In the ophthalmic wards curtains of a particular kind are so arranged as only to admit the degree of light which the patients can bear.
Visitors to the H�tel-Dieu, as to other hospitals in Paris, cannot fail to observe that the air is less pure in the men's than in the women's wards. This is to be explained by the men being allowed the only solace possible under the circumstances, that of tobacco. Nor are their grey dressing-gowns by any means so becoming as the white frocks and white caps worn by the female patients.
Many of the wards contain only from two to eight beds. There is a sitting-room, moreover, with lounges, chairs, and sofas for the convalescent, not to speak of an open gallery above the portico, where patients who are well enough may, in fine weather, stretch their limbs. The upper storey of that part of the building which faces the Quai aux Fleurs used to be occupied by the community of Dames Augustines, who from time immemorial had had no other abode and no other head-quarters. But after the civil government had withdrawn from the Dames Augustines the hospital service of La Piti� and La Charit�, they all assembled at the H�tel-Dieu, where additional sleeping rooms were prepared for them beneath the roof. Subscriptions were solicited for them in a pastoral letter from the Archbishop of Paris, dated December 2, 1888; and a new retreat was then found for them in the Hospital of Notre Dame de Bon Secours. One duty imposed upon them, in the days when the H�tel-Dieu was composed of two large buildings on the banks of the Seine, was to wash, one day every month, whatever might be the temperature, 500 sheets. The sisters, equally with novices, were obliged to take part in these laundry operations. An ancient print, preserved in the National Library, gives a faithful representation of the washing of the 500 sheets.
Admirable as has been the work accomplished in recent times by the H�tel-Dieu, the place seems to have been little better than a pest-house at the period when Mercier wielded his conscientious pen. "A man meets there," he wrote, "with a death a thousand times more dreadful than that which awaits the indigent under his humble roof, abandoned though he be to himself and nature alone. And we dare call that the House of God!--where the contempt shown to humanity adds to the suffering of those who go there for relief! The physician and servant are paid--granted; the drugs cost nothing to the patient--true again; but he will be put to bed between a dying man and a dead corpse; he will breathe an air corrupted by pestiferous exhalations; he will be subject to chirurgical despotism; neither his cries, his complaints, nor his expostulations will be attended to; he will have nobody by to soothe and comfort him; pity itself will be blind and barbarous, having lost that sympathising compassion, and those tears of sensibility, which constitute its very being. In this abode of human misery every aspect is cruel and disgusting; and this is called the House of God! Who would not fly from the bloody, detested spot? Who will venture within a house where the bed of mercy is far more dreadful than the naked board on which lies the poorest wretch? This hospital, miscalled H�tel-Dieu, was founded by Saint Landri and Comte Archambaud in the year 660 for the reception of sick persons of either sex. Jews, Turks, and infidels have an equal right to admission. There are 1,200 beds, and constantly between five and six thousand patients. What a disproportion! Yet the revenues of the hospital are immense. It was expected that the last fire which happened in this edifice would have been improved to the advantage of the patients, by the construction, on a healthier spot, of a new and more extensive structure. But no; everything remains on the same footing; though it is but too well proved that the H�tel-Dieu has every requisite to create and increase a multitude of disorders on account of the dampness and confinement of the atmosphere. Wounds soon turn to a mortification; whilst the scurvy makes the greatest havoc amongst those who, from the nature of their maladies, are forced to remain there for some time. Thus, the most simple distempers soon grow into complicated diseases, sometimes fatal, by the contagion of that ambient air. Both the experience and observation of the naturalist concur to prove that a hospital which contains above one hundred beds is of itself a plague. It may be added that as often as two patients are laid up in the same room they will evidently hurt each other, and that such a practice is necessarily injurious to the laws of humanity. It is almost incredible, yet not the less true, that one-fifth of the patients are annually carried off. This is known and heard of with the most indifferent composure!"
[Illustration: PRINCIPAL COURT OF THE H�TEL-DIEU.]
Nor does Mercier stop here. "Clamart," he continues, "is the gulf that swallows up the remains of those hapless men who have paid the last debt to nature in the H�tel-Dieu. It is an extensive burying-ground, or rather a voracious monster whose maw is ever craving for new food, though most plentifully supplied. The bodies are there interred without a coffin and only sewed up in the coarsest linen cloth. At the least appearance of death the body is hurried away, and there are many instances of people having recovered under the hasty hand that wrapped them up; whilst others have been heard to cry "mercy" when already piled up in the cart that carried them to an untimely grave. The cart is drawn by twelve men. A priest, covered with filth and mud, carrying a hand-bell and cross, are all the funeral pomp reserved for these unfortunate victims. But at that hour all is one! Every morning at four o'clock the dismal cart sets off from the H�tel-Dieu, and, as it rolls along, strikes terror into the neighbourhood, who are awoke by the awful sound of that bell. A man must be lost to all feeling who hears it unmoved. In certain seasons, when mortality was most rife, this cart has been seen to go backwards and forwards four times in four-and-twenty hours. It contains about fifty corpses, besides children, who are crammed between their legs. The bodies are cast into a deep pit, and are next covered with unslackened lime. This crucible, which is never shut up, seems to tell the affrighted looker-on that it could easily devour all the inhabitants that Paris contains. Such is the obedience paid to the laws, that the decree of the Parliament prohibiting all buryings within the walls of this city has at no time been carried into execution. The populace never fail on the day of All Souls to visit that cemetery, where they foresee that their bodies will one day be carried. They kneel and pray, and then adjourn to a tavern. To this spot, where the earth is fattened with the spoils of mankind, young surgeons resort by night, and, climbing the wall, carry off the dead corpses to make upon them their bloody experiments. Thus, the poor find no asylum even in death. And such is the tyranny over this unfortunate part of the community, that it does not cease till their very remains are hacked and hewed so as not to retain the least resemblance of man."
[Illustration: RUE DE RIVOLI.]
The Hotel de Ville--Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie--Rue Saint-Antoine--The Reformation.
The H�tel de Ville, new by its architecture, is old by its history, and to some extent by the buildings still surrounding it; though the ancient streets of the neighbourhood have during the last forty years been gradually disappearing. Close to the Church of St. Gervais and St. Protais stood the street significantly named Rue du Martroi--of martyrdom, or death-punishment; also the Rue de la Mortellerie, where the workers in "mortar"--stone-masons that is to say--were in the habit of meeting when out of work. With this may be connected the name of Place de Gr�ve, formerly borne by what is now called the Place de l'H�tel de Ville. The word gr�ve signifies in the present day a strike. Originally it meant simply the condition of being without employment; and it was on the Place de Gr�ve that artisans who found, like Othello, their occupation gone, assembled in search of an employer. Afterwards this became a place of execution; and here it was that Ravaillac, Cartouche, Damiens, and such illustrious victims as the Constable of Saint-Pol under Louis XI., and Lally-Tollendal under Louis XVI., were decapitated, quartered alive, and otherwise tortured. "La journ�e sera rude," said Damiens, when, having already undergone various tortures, he learned that he was to be torn to pieces by four horses; and "rough" indeed have been the days passed by the unhappy wretches brought to punishment on the Place de Gr�ve.
After the Revolution of 1830, when the H�tel de Ville became all at once a place of high political importance, the open space in front of it was looked upon as unworthy any longer to serve as a slaughter-ground, and the Place Saint-Jacques now became the head-quarters of the guillotine; which was afterwards to be transferred to the Place de la Roquette. The region of Paris commanded by the H�tel de Ville forms a long irregular parallelogram, comprising, for the most part, the districts of Saint-M�ry, Saint-Gervais and the Arsenal, bounded on the south by the Seine, on the west by the Place du Ch�telet and the Boulevard S�bastopol, on the east by the Saint-Martin Canal and the Boulevard Bourdon, on the north by the Rue de Rivoli and the Rue Saint-Antoine, rejoining the Boulevard Bourdon at the Place de la Bastille. To the construction of the Rue de Rivoli is due the happy change which has taken place in this populous region, formerly deprived of light and air, and so overcrowded that the inhabitants were always suffering from some serious epidemic. The streets of the neighbourhood must at that time have been good specimens of those so energetically condemned by Arthur Young in one of his descriptions of Paris.
"This great city," he wrote in the very year of the Revolution, "appears to be in many respects the most ineligible and inconvenient for the residence of a person of small fortune of any that I have seen; and vastly inferior to London. The streets are very narrow and many of them crowded, nine-tenths dirty, and all without foot-pavements. Walking, which in London is so pleasant and so clean that ladies do it every day, is here a toil and a fatigue to a man, and an impossibility to a well-dressed woman. The coaches are numerous, and, what is much worse, there is an infinity of one-horse cabriolets, which are driven by young men of fashion and their imitators, alike fools, with such rapidity as to be real nuisances and render the streets exceedingly dangerous without an incessant caution. I saw a poor child run over and probably killed, and have been myself many times blackened with the mud of the kennels. This beggarly practice of driving a one-horse booby-hutch about the streets of a great capital flows either from poverty or wretched and despicable economy; nor is it possible to speak of it with too much severity. If young noblemen at London were to drive their chaises in streets without footways as their brethren do at Paris, they would speedily and justly get very well threshed or rolled in the kennel. This circumstance renders Paris an ineligible residence for persons, particularly families, that cannot afford to keep a coach; a convenience which is as dear as at London. The fiacres (hackney coaches) are much worse than at that city; and chairs there are none, for they would be driven down in the streets. To this circumstance also it is owing that all persons of small or moderate fortune are forced to dress in black with black stockings: the dusky hue of this in company is not so disagreeable a circumstance as being too great a distinction; too clear a line drawn in company between a man that has a good fortune and another that has not. With the pride, arrogance, and ill-temper of English wealth, this could not be borne; but the prevailing good humour of the French eases all such untoward circumstances. Lodgings are not half as good as at London, yet considerably dearer. If you do not hire a whole suite of rooms at an hotel you must probably mount three, four, or five pair of stairs, and in general have nothing but a bed-chamber. After the horrid fatigue of the streets such an elevation is a delectable circumstance. You must search with trouble before you will be lodged in a private family, as gentlemen usually are in London; and pay a higher price. Servants' wages are about the same as at that city. It is to be regretted that Paris should have these disadvantages, for in other respects I take it to be a most eligible residence for such as prefer a great city. The society for a man of letters or one who has any scientific pursuit cannot be exceeded. The intercourse between such men and the great, which, if it is not upon an equal footing, ought never to exist at all, is respectable. Persons of the highest rank pay an attention to science and literature, and emulate the character they confer. I should pity the man who expected, without other advantages of a very different nature, to be well received in a brilliant circle at London because he was a Fellow of the Royal Society. But this would not be the case with a member of the Academy of Sciences at Paris; he is sure of a good reception everywhere. Perhaps this contrast depends, in a great measure, on the difference of the governments of the two countries. Politics are too much attended to in England to allow a due respect to be paid to anything else; and should the French establish a freer government, academicians will not be held in such estimation when rivalled in the public esteem by the orators who hold forth liberty and property in a free parliament."
Napoleon I. began the Rue de Rivoli, tracing it alongside the Tuileries Gardens and the Palais Royal to the Louvre as far as the Rue de Rohan. Napoleon III. continued the great conception of his uncle and pushed on the Rue de Rivoli through the mean habitations and crowded streets in the neighbourhood of the Palais Royal, of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, and of the Halles as far as the upper part of the Rue Saint-Antoine.
The most celebrated, and certainly the most beautiful, monument in the street is the tower of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie; so named from its having been built close to the great butchers' market of Paris. Constructed in 1153, the church, which at first was little more than a chapel, was rebuilt in 1380, but not completed with the principal porch and the tower until the reign of Francis I. The tower is now all that remains of the church, which in 1737, under the Revolution, was alienated by the Administration of Domains and soon afterwards pulled down. Having become private property, the tower passed from hand to hand until 1836, when it was offered for sale, and purchased by the Municipality for 250,000 francs. This sum was not dear for a masterpiece of Gothic art in its last and most delicate period, when it was about to disappear in presence of the Gr�co-Roman Renaissance. Begun under the reign of Louis XII. in 1508, the tower was finished fourteen years afterwards in 1522. It measures fifty-two metres in height from the stone foundations to the summit. The platform of the steeple (which is reached by a staircase of 291 steps) is surrounded by a balustrade, which supports, at the north-west angle, a colossal statue of Saint Jacques. This statue replaces the ancient one which the Revolutionists of 1793 precipitated on to the pavement, though they respected the symbolical animals placed at the four corners of the balustrade. These have been carefully restored. From the height of the platform a magnificent view may be obtained.
"One sees," wrote Sanval under Louis XIV., "as one looks over the town the distribution and course of the streets like the veins in the human body. Unfortunately this incomparable view can no longer be obtained--not at least without much difficulty. The tower of Saint-Jacques has been put in the hands of an astronomical and meteorological society, which denies access to the public, though on rare occasions it admits a few favoured persons to its experiments, which take place at night."
It must here be mentioned that at the foot of the tower is a statue of Pascal, who continued from its top the observations he had begun from the summit of the Puy de D�me. The writer Nicholas Flamel, librarian to the University of Paris, and Pernelle, his wife, both buried in the vaults of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie, had been the benefactors of this church; and their memory is preserved in the name, Nicholas Flamel, given to the street which, beginning on the right of the tower, leads from the Rue de Rivoli to the Rue des Lombards.
Around the tower of Saint-Jacques is a large square, well planted with trees. Further on, towards the east, the Rue de Rivoli runs past the H�tel de Ville and the Napoleon Barracks. Of the Church of Saint-Gervais, one side of which looks towards the Rue de Rivoli, mention has already been made. Close to the point where the Rue de Rivoli and the Rue Saint-Antoine meet, is an offshoot from the Rue Saint-Antoine called Rue Fran�ois Miron, after the independent provost of merchants under the reign of Henri IV. In this street stands the H�tel de Beauvais. From the windows of this mansion Anne of Austria, accompanied by the Queen of England, Cardinal Mazarin, Marshal Turenne, and other illustrious personages, witnessed the procession headed by her son, Louis XIV., and her daughter-in-law, Marie Th�r�se of Austria, when the newly married couple made their solemn entry into Paris through the Gate of Saint-Antoine, August 26, 1660.
Running from the Rue Saint-Antoine to the Rue Charlemagne is a narrow street scarcely twelve feet broad, with walls of extraordinary height. Rue Perc�e it was originally named. For some years past it has been called Rue du Pr�v�t, because at its south-east corner it joins the former mansion of the Provost of Paris, of which the principal entrance is in the Rue Charlemagne. The series of open courtyards known as the Passage Charlemagne, in which all sorts of trades are carried on, lead to the very centre of one of the most interesting and least known monuments of old Paris. It is composed of two blocks of parallel buildings constructed in the style of the first years of the sixteenth century, when French architects were beginning to throw aside the fantasies of Gothic art to subject themselves to the straight lines of the Neo-Roman style. After passing through various hands, and finally from Fran�ois Montmorency, Governor of Paris, to Cardinal Charles de Bourbon--the structure was presented by the latter to the Jesuits, who attached to it a chapel dedicated to St. Louis and St. Paul. The Church of St. Louis and St. Paul possesses, among various works of modern art, the first picture known to have been painted by Eug�ne Delacroix: "Christ in the Garden of Olives." This work is dated 1816.
[Illustration: FA�ADE OF THE CHURCH OF ST. GERVAIS AND ST. PROTAIS.]
[Illustration: THE APSIS, FROM THE RUE DES BARRES.]
The house given to the Jesuits was taken from them in 1767 on their expulsion from France, and it then became the general repository of all maps, plans, and other documents relating to the French navy, and at the same time the Library of the Town of Paris. A passage leading from the Rue Saint-Antoine to the Rue Saint-Paul separated formerly the Church or Chapel of Saint-�loi, where Charles VI. was baptised, from the cemetery of the same name, where the man in the iron mask, under the name of Marchiali, was buried. Here, too, Rabelais, Hardouin, and Mansard, the architect, were interred. Rabelais died on the 9th of April, 1553, in the Rue des Jardins, not very far from the mercers' house where Moli�re went to live nearly a century later.
[Illustration: TOWER OF SAINT-JACQUES-LA-BOUCHERIE.]
The Rue Saint-Antoine was interrupted, until the Revolution of 1789, by the Bastille. This fortress was composed of eight towers, four looking towards the Town, that is to say towards the Rue Saint-Antoine, and four towards the country, that is to say the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. Curiously enough it was no despot, but �tienne Marcel, Provost of the Merchants, who built the original Bastille, destined afterwards to be enlarged (in 1370) by Hugues Aubriot, Provost of Paris.
[Illustration: H�TEL DE BEAUVAIS.]
It was from the H�tel de la Rochepot, in the Rue Saint-Antoine, that Henri II. was accustomed to view the burning at the stake of his Protestant victims. In this street, too, was one of the earliest of the Protestant places of worship established in France at the very beginning of the Reformation. Few persons are aware, though the fact has been pointed out by M. Athanase Coquerel the younger, that the Reformation of the sixteenth century, before breaking out in Germany and elsewhere, had already appeared in Paris. It had for cradle the left bank of the Seine separated at the time from the town and its suburbs, and divided into quarters subject to two special jurisdictions: the University and the vast territory of the Abbaye of Saint-Germain-des-Pr�s. Was it not natural, asks M. Coquerel, in spite of the jealous vigilance of the Sorbonne, that the schools of Paris in which Abailard had so boldly attacked scholasticism should be the first to wake up to the new spiritual life? When professor at the college of Cardinal Lemoine, Lef�vre d'�taples published in 1512 his "Commentary on St. Paul," in whose epistles he pointed out, five years before Luther, the essential doctrines of the Reformation. This book was dedicated to the powerful abb� of Saint-Germain, Bri�onnet, under whose auspices was formed in Paris the first group of ardent propagators of the new ideas. During forty-three years the Reformation spread gradually through the university, the court, and the town; always keeping for headquarters the Faubourg Saint-Germain, which gained the name of "little Geneva," and which is now the most Catholic quarter in Paris. The first Protestant put to death in France for his religious views was one of the pupils of Lef�vre d'�taples, a student named Pauvent, born in the year 1524. The martyrdom of Pauvent was followed by that of many other Huguenots.
Calvin was then studying at Paris, but could not remain there. The rector of the university, Nicholas Cop, a secret promoter of the Reformation, had commissioned the young Calvin to write a discourse for the re-opening of the term, which, according to custom, was delivered on November 1, 1533, in the Church of the Mathurins, built on a portion of the site of the Emperor Julian's baths. The heresies contained in this discourse were denounced to the Parliament by several monks. The rector found it necessary to take flight to B�le, where he became a pastor. Calvin followed his example, and was obliged, it is said, to escape through one of the windows of his college.
The first place in Paris where the Reformation was publicly preached was the Louvre. Here Queen Margaret of Navarre, sister of Francis I., Bri�onnet's studious and learned friend, ordered her chaplain, G�rard Roussel, and other disciples of Lef�vre d'�taples to preach in her presence; for which reason Lemaud, of the Order of Cordeliers, declared publicly in the pulpit that she deserved to be put into a sack and thrown into the Seine. The rage of the priests was shared by the people, and the cry of "Death to the heretics!" was frequently heard about the town. "To be thrown into the river," says a chronicler of the time, "it was only necessary to be called a Huguenot in the open street, to whatever religion one might belong." In all the public places of Paris, on the bridges, and in the cemeteries Protestants were constantly burned. In 1535 Francis I., followed by his three sons, the court, the Parliament, and the guilds of all the trade associations, took part in a general procession, which halted at six of the public places, where six Protestants, suspended by iron chains, were burnt to death. "L'estrapade" this form of punishment was called; and not many years ago the name was still borne by an open space on the left bank of the Seine.
Henri II. imitated his father. One day he assisted, from the window of a house in the Rue Saint-Antoine, at the execution of a Protestant tailor who was burnt alive. But the eyes of the martyr, steadily fixed on his, so frightened him that though this was not the last heretic he sentenced to death, it was the last he saw die.
The Protestants of Paris had not at that time either churches or clergy, but they already had schools. "Hedge schools" they were called, from being held in the country. They would not have been permitted in the town.
The first Protestant place of worship established in Paris was at a house in the Pr�-aux-Clercs. Protestant congregations were often surprised; and in 1557 a number of Protestants assembled for worship at a house in the Rue Saint-Jacques, opposite the building where the Lyc�e Louis le Grand is now located, were besieged by a number of priests attached to the Coll�ge du Plessis. The populace took part in the attack; and after remaining indoors six hours, those who at last went out were stoned, and in several instances killed. The rest of the congregation, to the number of 135, were made prisoners, and many of them sentenced to death. Among those executed was the young and beautiful widow of a member of the Consistory, Mme. de Graveron, who, "seated on the tumbril, showed a rosy countenance of excellent beauty." Her tongue had been cut out, which was often done in those days to prevent the exhortations which martyrs might address to the mob. At other times, as afterwards at the execution of Louis XVI., a constant rolling of drums was kept up. It was granted to Mme. de Graveron as a special favour that flames should be applied only to her feet and face, and that she should be strangled before her body was burnt.
The Protestant poet, Cl�ment Marot, to whom Francis I. had given a house, called the House of the Bronze Horse (now Number 30, Rue de Cond� and 27, Rue de Tournon), translated at this epoch some of the psalms into French verse; and his version had an extraordinary vogue even at the court. The students who, at the close of day, were accustomed to amuse themselves in the Pr�-aux-Clercs opposite the Louvre, replaced their ordinary songs by the psalms of Cl�ment Marot; and it became the fashion with the lords and ladies of the court to cross the Seine in order to hear the singing of the "clerks." Often they would themselves join in, and the Huguenot King of Navarre, Antoine de Bourbon, was frequently seen singing the psalms in the "meadow" at the head of a long procession of courtiers and students.
But persecution, which for a time had ceased, began anew: Marot was obliged to fly. In spite of the danger by which they were threatened, the deputies of the Protestant churches of France met at Paris in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and there, in 1559, held their first national Synod. Francis I., husband of Mary Stuart, allowed the cruel work of his father to be continued. Under his reign the illustrious chancellor Du Bourg was burnt and hanged; as to which Voltaire declared that "this murder did more for Protestantism than all the eloquent works produced by its defenders." Cardinal de Lorraine made many other victims, surrounding on one occasion a Protestant place of assembly, and taking all he could find within. There were secret passages, however, communicating with the buildings around, so that many persons effected their escape. The secret head-quarters of the Reformed Church in France were in the Rue des Marais-Saint-Germain, now called the Rue Visconti. Its ancient name, which need scarcely have been changed, was borne by it for more than three centuries; during which time it was inhabited, or frequently visited, by all the old Protestants of Paris: by the D'Aubign�s and the Du Moulins; as later on by the Duke de la Rochefoucauld, Mme. de S�vign�, Racine and Voltaire, Mme. Clairon and Adrienne Lecouvreur.
[Illustration: CHURCH OF ST. LOUIS AND ST. PAUL.]
[Illustration: RUE DE RIVOLI AND H�TEL DE VILLE.]
Meanwhile the Reformation was constantly gaining ground in Paris. Coligny and his two brothers, one of whom was a cardinal, joined it openly; whereupon a monk, Jean de Han, preached against him, taking for his text, "Ite in castellum quod contra vos est," and translating it thus: "Fall upon Ch�tillon, who is against you." On becoming Regent, Catherine de M�dicis, hesitating between the two religions, tried to bring together the Ch�tillons and those champions of Catholicism, the Guises. With a view to conciliation the conference of Poissy was held; and though no positive result was secured, the Reformed religion was allowed to be practised openly, though its places of worship were, for the most part, beyond the City walls.
From time to time, however, a Protestant "temple" was attacked and burnt; and once, when one of these onslaughts caused a riot, Gabaston, Chief of the Watch, was hanged for arresting indiscriminately the rioters of both religions. The massacre of Vassy (directed by Guise, who boasted that he would cut the edict of toleration in favour of the Protestants with the edge of his sword) and two civil wars were but the prelude to the terrible Massacre of Saint Bartholomew.
[Illustration: RUE GRENIER-SUR-L'EAU.]
The extermination of the heretics had been recommended many times to Catherine de M�dicis by Philip II., by the Duke of Alva, and by Pope Saint Pius V. (Letter 12 of Charles IX. and Papal Bull of August 1, 1568). The queen, after much hesitation, took a sudden resolution, when the Guises aggravated the situation by causing the assassination of Coligny. Catherine obtained, at the last moment, the consent of the king. But it was the brother and successor of Charles, it was Henri III. who assumed the direction of the massacre, and posted himself on the centre of the bridge of Notre Dame, in order to see what took place on both banks of the river. How the bell of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois gave the signal for the massacre, and how Coligny, after escaping with some severe wounds from the first attack, was afterwards put to death, has already been told. In the midst of the general slaughter a few Huguenots of distinction remained safe. Charles IX. kept in his own room the eminent surgeon, Ambroise Par�, of whom he had need, and his old nurse, Philippe Richard, whom he loved. Nor did anyone venture to attack Ren�e, daughter of Louis XII., a zealous Protestant, who was fortunate enough to save a few of her young co-religionists by giving them shelter in her mansion on the left bank of the river. Two days after the massacre thanksgivings were offered up by the clergy, who headed a procession in which all the Court, with the exception of Henri of Navarre, afterwards Henri IV. of France, took part. The King was congratulated from the pulpit by the Bishop of Asti on having "in one morning purged France of heresy." Little did the prelate foresee that the Church of Saint-Thomas of the Louvre in which he was preaching would, some two centuries later, become the recognised centre of this same heresy.
Cond� now abjured at Saint-Germain-des-Pr�s, and Henri de Navarre at the Louvre; but the Reformed Church was far from being destroyed. Only a few months after the massacre, B�renger de Portal left to this church (whose re-establishment he ardently desired) a sum sufficient for the maintenance of the pastors and the education of candidates for the ministry.
The Rue Saint-Antoine touches the Boulevard Bourdon, thus named in memory of Colonel Bourdon, of the 11th Dragoons, killed at Austerlitz. The building which now dominates all this district is the Arsenal, built by the Emperor in 1807 as a granary of reserve for provisioning Paris; at present occupied by manufacturers and workmen of various kinds. The Arsenal was erected on the site of the "little arsenal," built by Francis I. The new structure extends south to the Quai Morland, so styled in honour of the colonel of the Chasseurs of the Guard killed at Austerlitz. Augmented and renovated by various architects, the Arsenal contains a library of which the charming writer, Charles Nodier, was at one time the custodian. The collection was first formed by M. d'Argenson and the Marquis de Paulmy, Minister of State, who was the last Governor of the Arsenal before the suppression of this military establishment by Louis XVI. in 1788, on the eve of the Revolution. To gratify his own private tastes as a bibliophile, M. de Paulmy had got together a library of about 100,000 volumes and 10,000 manuscripts, which was increased by the addition of upwards of 26,000 works from the sale of the Duke de la Valli�re's collection. To prevent the dispersion of the books after his death, M. de Paulmy sold the collection in 1785 to the Count of Artois for a certain number of annuities, which the Count omitted to pay. The library was, all the same, looked upon as government property, and confiscated as such in 1790. Enriched by the confiscation of other libraries in the neighbourhood, the Library of the Arsenal was thrown open to the public by the Imperial Government, which at the same time undertook the payment of the annuities due to M. de Paulmy's heirs. It now comprises about 350,000 volumes, 6,500 manuscripts, and a magnificent collection of prints. It contains, among other interesting documents, the original papers composing the archives of the Bastille, published in part by M. Ravaisson. A clock of ebony and gilt by Louis le Roy, which adorns the entrance, is said to be worth upwards of 40,000 francs; and two of the side rooms are full of curious woodwork, and of interesting objects of all kinds.
In a room occupied at one time by the Duke de Sully are preserved the archives of the Saint-Simonians, including the sealed memoirs of Le P�re Enfantin, which are not to be published until thirty years after his death; Enfantin's colossal bust in the style of Michael Angelo's Moses, a portrait of Saint-Simon, and another of Mme. Th�r�se, the divinity, or at least the Egeria, of the sect.
It was at the Arsenal, when Charles Nodier was librarian, that Victor Hugo, in the midst of a great literary gathering, recited his first poems, soon afterwards to be given to the world under the title of "Odes et Ballades."
A complete list of the writers who have occupied the post of librarian at the Arsenal would include Ancelot, Paul Lacroix (better known as Le Bibliophile Jacob), �douard Thierry, Hippolyte Lucas, and the Viscount de Bornier, author of "La Fille de Roland," "Agamemnon," "Attila," and "Mahomet."
Among the interesting places in the neighbourhood of the Arsenal must be mentioned the little covered market to which the name of Ave Maria has been given. It marks the site of the old tennis court of the Black Cross, where Moli�re erected his second theatre after the failure of the first; and with so little success that he was imprisoned for debt contracted in the name of the company.
The Rue des Nonnains d'Hy�res, which joins the Rue Saint-Antoine, leads to the Pont Marie, by which the Seine is crossed to reach the Island of Saint-Louis. Parallel to this street is the Rue Geoffrey Lasnier, which is scarcely five-and-twenty feet wide, and which has nothing whatever attractive about it. Here, nevertheless, at No. 26, stands the hotel built by the Constable de Montmorency, and restored in the early part of the eighteenth century, when it was known as the H�tel de Ch�lons.
Most of the houses in this curious street are at least three centuries old. Wanderers in search of the quaint will pass from it to the Rue Grenier-sur-l'eau, which leads through the Rue des Barres to the very threshold of the Church of Saint-Gervais. The Rue Grenier-sur-l'eau is so narrow that it would scarcely admit of the passage of a bath chair. It is a lane of walls, without doors or windows, into which light scarcely penetrates.
The Island of Saint-Louis, between the �le Louviers, which precedes it above bridge, and the Island of the City, which follows it below, was nothing but pasture-land until the beginning of Louis XIII.'s reign. It was composed at that time of two islets, a small one called the Isle of Cows, and a larger one known as the Isle of Notre Dame. In 1614 Christophe Marie, general constructor of the bridges of France, undertook to connect these two islets, to furnish them with streets and with a circumference of stone quays, and to join the whole to the right bank by a bridge leading to the Rue des Nonnains d'Hy�res. In 1647 the work had been completed, and the island was covered with buildings. Its principal street crosses it lengthwise from east to west. Rue Saint-Louis-en-l'�le it is called, and it contains two remarkable buildings, the Church of Saint-Louis and the H�tel Lambert. The Church of Saint-Louis was begun in 1664 by Louis Le Vau, continued by Gabriel Leduc, and completed in 1726 by Jacques Doucet, who constructed the cupola. The steeple, thirty metres high, is built of stone, and is in the form of an obelisk. The ornamental sculpture is the work of Jean Baptiste de Champaigne, nephew of the painter, Philippe de Champaigne. The church contains fine paintings by Mignard, Coypel, Lemoine, and Eug�ne Delacroix.
At the beginning of the Rue Saint-Louis, towards the north, commanding a superb view of the Upper Seine, stands the H�tel Lambert, built by Le Vau, Louis XIV.'s principal architect. The first proprietor of the H�tel Lambert, Nicholas Lambert de Thorigny, spared nothing to make it a magnificent abode. The decoration of the interior was entrusted to Lesueur le Brun and other celebrated painters of the time. The treasures which the H�tel Lambert originally contained have in the course of its varied fortunes been dispersed. It passed after the death of Lambert de Thorigny into the hands of M. de La Haye, farmer-general, and successively into those of the Marquis du Ch�telet-Laumont, and of M. Dupin, another farmer-general, brother of the celebrated Mme. d'�pinay. The internal decorations suffered much from these constant changes of ownership. At the death of M. de La Haye, the painting on the ceiling of one of the rooms, "Apollo listening to the prayer of Phaeton," by Lesueur, was removed from the H�tel Lambert to the Luxembourg Gallery, where it may still be seen. Most of the other paintings were transferred, at the time of the Revolution, to the Louvre.
Many distinguished persons have resided at the H�tel Lambert, including Voltaire when he was writing the "Henriade"; and it was here that M. de Montalivet, in 1815, after the battle of Waterloo, had a celebrated interview with Napoleon. Later on the H�tel Lambert became a girls' school; then a depot for military stores; until finally, towards 1840, it was offered for sale, and purchased by Prince Czartoryski, to whose family it still belongs.
The Quai d'Anjou, which looks towards the north, is rich in associations of various kinds. The fa�ade of Number 17 bears these words inscribed on a marble slab, "H�tel de Lauzun, 1657"; and beyond the principal door this other inscription: "H�tel de Pimodan." Lieut.-General Count de Pimodan was the first inhabitant of this hotel, which was built for him in 1657, and which he occupied until the time of his fall. It was the abode of the Marquis de La Vall�e de Pimodan at the time of the Revolution. Under the reign of Louis Philippe a number of distinguished writers lived successively or simultaneously in the mansion: Roger de Beauvoir, who published a collection of tales called "The H�tel Pimodan"; Th�ophile Gautier, Charles Baudelaire, and others. It now gives shelter to a wonderful collection of books and objects of art brought together by Baron Pichon, one of the most eminent members of the Society of French Bibliophiles.
Quitting the Island of Saint-Louis to return to the quay and square of the H�tel de Ville, we reach the Avenue Victoria, which runs to the right of Boccador's fa�ade, and which received this name in honour of Queen Victoria, who paid a visit to the Emperor and to the town of Paris in 1855, at the height of the Crimean War. The avenue in question leads to the Place du Ch�telet, which is enclosed between two monumental fa�ades, those of the Th��tre Lyrique and of the Th��tre du Ch�telet. The Place du Ch�telet was formed in 1813 on the site of the Grand Ch�telet; an ancient castle of Gallo-Roman origin, which defended at this point the entrance to the City. It had been entirely rebuilt in 1684; and in 1813 only a few towers of the original building remained. The Ch�telet was a court of justice with civil, criminal, and police tribunals. Beneath the buildings of the Grand Ch�telet, and in the towers, were confined an enormous number of prisoners. Their dungeons were horrible. A Royal decree of the 23rd of August, 1780 (nine years, be it observed, before the Revolution) ordered the destruction of all subterranean prisons. The jurisdiction of the Ch�telet having been abolished by the Revolution, its buildings remained unoccupied until 1802, when they were entirely destroyed.
Of the two theatres which shut in the Place du Ch�telet, the one to which the ancient building gives its name is much the larger. It accommodates 3,000 spectators, to whom some of the best-known spectacular pieces have been submitted, including Michael Strogoff, Les Pilules du Diable, etc.
[Illustration: THE PONT MARIE.]
The theatre on the other side of the Place du Ch�telet, and which belongs to the town of Paris, has been occupied since the year 1887 by the Op�ra Comique, the establishment having been transferred to it soon after the disastrous fire which consumed the historic Salle Favart. It was originally the Th��tre Lyrique; directed by M. Carvalho, and associated with the triumphs of Mme. Miolan Carvalho, and the earliest successes of Christine Nilsson. Burnt by the Communards in May, 1871, it was re-opened as a dramatic theatre under the title of Th��tre Lyrique-Historique, afterwards to become Th��tre des Nations, Th��tre Italien, Th��tre de Paris, and finally in 1888 Op�ra Comique. The interior of the house is more remarkable for elegance than for comfort. It holds 1,500 spectators. The Op�ra Comique, as here established, receives an annual subvention of 300,000 francs.
The Boulevard de Sebastopol, which starts from the north of the Place du Ch�telet, was, as the name sufficiently denotes, constructed in 1855; opening a broadway through the compact mass of old houses enclosed between the Rue Saint-Denis and the Rue Saint-Martin. It caused the destruction of no interesting edifices, and its roadway, thirty metres wide, is lined solely with new and lofty houses five storeys high. Here traders, artisans, and even artists are to be found: engravers and workers in metal, lamp-manufacturers, workers in bronze, haberdashers, mercers, clock-makers, jewellers, druggists, opticians, confectioners, dyers, lace-makers, button-makers, crape-makers, artificial flower makers, glovers, etc. This broad thoroughfare leads us to the end of the Boulevard Saint-Denis, passing behind the chancel of the Church of Saint-Leu, whose front entrance belongs to the Rue Saint-Denis, and behind the square of the Conservatory of Arts and Trades, which belongs to the Rue Saint-Martin. The street of the Lombards (Rue des Lombards) so much enlarged as to be no longer recognisable, is still the headquarters of the drug trade, wholesale and retail. But it does not now, as in former days, possess a monopoly for confectionery and sweetmeats. Even the Faithful Shepherd (Fid�le Berger), as one celebrated shop for the sale of bonbons was called, and which gave its title to the comic opera by Adolphe Adam, has migrated to a newer and more fashionable locality.
The Rue de la Verrerie, just opposite, runs in a direct line to the Rue Saint-Antoine. It has preserved in a remarkable manner its physiognomy of two centuries ago; thanks to the architecture of its fine mansions, which has nobly resisted the ravages of time. Who would ever imagine that this dark and narrow street, which is constantly blocked by the most ordinary traffic, was enlarged in 1671 and 1672 because it was the ordinary route along which Louis XIV., coming from the Castle of the Louvre to that of Vincennes, was in the habit of passing, besides being the road by which foreign ambassadors made their formal entry into Paris?
[Illustration: RUE ST.-LOUIS-EN-L'�LE.]
At the corner of the Rue de la Verrerie and the Rue Saint-Martin stands the �glise Saint-Merry, or M�ry. The name, spelt both ways, is in either form a corruption of Saint-M�deric, a monk of the monastery of Saint-Martin d'Autun, who lived a strange life in a cell, and died in odour of sanctity on the 29th of August, 1700. The church was reconstructed as long ago as the tenth century, at the expense of Odo the Falconer, whose body, enclosed in a tomb of stone, was discovered in 1520. The legs were encased in boots of gilded leather. Odo the Falconer was one of the warriors who defended Paris in 886 against the attacks of the Normans. The actual edifice was begun in the reign of Francis I., between 1520 and 1530, and not finished until 1612, under the minority of Louis XIII. Constructed in the form of a Latin cross, the Church of Saint-Merry has two lateral entrances. But from the south side, that is to say, from the Rue de la Verrerie, only a gate of the principal entrance can be seen, together with the two turrets terminating in bell towers, along which "chim�ras dire" are crawling. Buried under the Church of Saint-Merry are Chapelain, author of "La Pucelle," and the Marquis de Pomponne, Minister of Louis XIV. To the north of Saint-Merry stood the cloister of the canons, separated from the church by the fa�ade of the Rue du Clo�tre, and by two narrow little streets bearing the expressive names of Brisemiche and Taillepain, on account of the daily distributions of bread of which they were the scene. At the back of the church the name of the Rue des Juges-Consuls recalls the fact that the first Tribunal of Commerce created by Charles IX. was installed there in a mansion which had belonged to President Baillet in 1570. The Tribunal of Commerce was, in the seventeenth century, the centre of a group of money-changers and bankers, who so infested the Rue Saint-Martin and the Rue Quincampoix as to render them impassable.
The Rue Quincampoix is for ever associated with the name of Law, a Scotch banker related to the Argyll family, and son of a goldsmith and banker who died at Venice in 1729.
Law (John Lauriston Law) was born at Edinburgh in 1671, and he is said at an early age to have studied assiduously the doctrine of chances, which he applied to games of hazard. Whether in virtue of his arithmetical combinations or of that luck which during a long course of years never deserted him, he won large sums of money at the gambling-table, after which he turned his attention to gambling on a wider scale: finance, that is to say. He was still in his twenty-fifth year when, as the result of a love affair, he fought a duel, for which he was sentenced to death. His punishment was commuted to that of imprisonment for life; but he succeeded in escaping, left England, and for some time travelled through the different states of Europe, playing everywhere with success, and proposing everywhere, but without success, a new system of public credit, due to his inexhaustible imagination.
The system would, according to its inventor, multiply one hundredfold the resources of the State by putting into circulation a quantity of paper money, based upon the revenue from taxes and Government property of all kinds, coin, according to Law, being insufficient for the requirements of a large nation. The Regent of Orleans, captivated by this brilliant scheme, saw in it the means of saving France, at the time (1716) threatened by national bankruptcy. He, in the first place, granted to Law the privilege of establishing a general bank with a capital of 6,000,000 francs, divided into 12,000 shares of 500 francs each, with a discount of 25 per cent. to anyone purchasing a thousand shares. The shares were readily taken and the bank proved a great success.
Then, in connection with the bank, Law started successively the Mississippi Company, the Senegal Company, the China Company, the French East India Company, and companies for coining the State money and farming the State revenue. Having now got into his hands all the sources of public income, he made over his bank to the State, and was himself appointed Controller-General of Finance. Instead, however, of helping commerce, Law's creations merely stimulated the spirit of speculation; so that priests, nobles, merchants, shopkeepers, workmen, all began to gamble in stocks and shares. Intoxicated by his success, Law issued an excessive number of shares: "watering" them, according to the financial expression of the present day. In due time, notwithstanding all kinds of expedients (such as forced currency for the new paper money) to keep them at par, the shares lost value in the market, and soon fell to such a point that their depreciation caused a general panic. There was no class in which some, and, indeed, many of Law's shareholders were not to be found; and ere long the inventor of the new system of credit became the object of so much public indignation that he went in danger of his life. There was a riot in the Palais Royal, and Law's carriage was stopped by a band of infuriated persons in the public street. A man of great nerve and of commanding presence, Law looked from the carriage window and exclaimed in a haughty tone: "Back, you rabble!" (Arri�re canaille!) on which his assailants retired. This method of appeasing the stormy waters was tried the next day with less success by Law's coachman. His master was not inside the carriage. The vehicle, however, had been recognised, and the coachman found his progress impeded by an angry mob. "Back, you rabble!" he cried, in imitation of his master; when the mob, unwilling to receive from the servant the defiance which they had listened to in all humility from the master, tore him from his box and put him to death.
Another carriage story of the same period, likewise associated with finance, has a less tragic conclusion. A footman who had learnt, by listening to the conversation of his master at dinner-table, the art of speculating, had at last made a sufficiently large fortune to be able to buy himself a carriage. As soon as he had taken possession of it, he paid a visit to the Rue Quincampoix, a narrow street near the Rue Saint-Martin, where the bankers, brokers, and speculators interested in Law's various enterprises had their headquarters. After transacting a little business, the enriched flunkey entered a much-frequented caf� and refreshed himself. Some time afterwards, in a fit of absence due either to preoccupation or to the effect of alcoholic liquors, he left the caf� and, instead of getting into his carriage, got up behind it. "You have made a mistake, sir," called out the coachman; "your place is inside." "I know it is," replied the proprietor of the vehicle, suddenly recovering his presence of mind; "I wanted to see whether there was room for a pair of lacqueys behind."
If footmen became aristocrats, noblemen, in those subversive days, turned tradesmen.
The Regent made his money with the greatest ease, by simply fixing the official value of the shares he held at a figure which suited his book. The members of the Court followed his lead. One of them, the Duke de la Force, did business on an extended scale. Nothing was too high or too low for him; and on one occasion, being unable to realise the value of his paper in any more profitable form, he took for it the contents of a grocer's shop. It was now necessary to sell the goods; on which the licensed grocers of the capital complained to the Lieutenant of Police that the Duke was entering into illegal competition with them. The Lieutenant did his duty, and the Duke's tea and sugar were confiscated.
A footman named Languedoc, sent by his master to the Rue Quincampoix to sell some shares at a fixed rate, disposed of them for 500,000 francs more than the appointed price, and pocketing the balance, started as a gentleman on his own account, engaged servants and changed his name to that of Monsieur de La Bastide, by which he was thenceforth known.
In times of feverish speculation the surest winners are the brokers--those happy intermediaries who, whether their clients buy or sell, sink or swim, steadily take their commission. A famous intermediary of the Rue Quincampoix was a certain hunchback, who used to let out his hump as a desk for buyers, sellers, and dealers of all kinds. In a comparatively short time he is said to have realised as much as 50,000 francs.
When the financial crash arrived, it was felt necessary to punish someone, and proceedings were taken against Law by the Parliament of Paris. Law, as completely ruined as the most unfortunate of his victims, escaped to Belgium, and thence to England, to die ultimately in Italy.
"When I took service in France," he wrote to the Duke of Orleans, "I had as much property as I needed. I was without debts and I had credit; I left the service without property of any kind. Those who placed confidence in me have been driven to bankruptcy, and I have not the means of paying them."
At the time of his great failure, and for a long time afterwards, if not to the present day, Law was looked upon as a mere swindler; whereas he was nothing worse than a sanguine, over-confident, perhaps even reckless speculator. It has been seen that by his speculations he impoverished himself as well as others.
"The machine he had invented," says one of his critics, M. Gautier, "was ingenious; but in a country like France, without industrial resources, it could not find sufficient motive power. Law thought he could remove this difficulty by joining to his mechanism an artificial motive power. He was wrong. The banks can no more found credit than credit can produce capital. They can turn to the best account a value that exists. But to create value is beyond their power."
According to another French economist, M. Levasseur, "Law acted with the precipitation and violence of a man who, penetrated with the truth of his own ideas, marches straight towards his goal without caring whether the generality of persons understand him or not, and who becomes irritated when natural obstacles present themselves which he had not foreseen."
Law himself, while asserting his own moral integrity, admitted that he had made mistakes. "I do not maintain," he said, "that I was right on every point. I acknowledge that I committed errors, and that if I had to begin again I should act differently. I should advance more slowly but more surely, and should not expose the State and my own person to the dangers necessarily resulting from a general panic." He persisted, however, in asserting that, though his mode of action had been faulty, he nevertheless possessed the true secret of national wealth. "Do not forget," he wrote from his place of exile, "that the introduction of credit has done more for commercial transactions between the countries of Europe than the discovery of India; that it is for the Sovereign to give credit, not to receive it, and that the people of every country have such absolute need of it that they must return to it in spite of themselves, however much they may mistrust the principle."
[Illustration: PONT AU CHANGE, PLACE DU CH�TELET, AND BOULEVARD DE SEBASTOPOL.]
"We must render to this man," says M. Levasseur, "the justice he merits. He was not, as has sometimes been said, an adventurer who had come to France to profit by the weakness of the Regent. If he was wanting in that political prudence by which nations should be guided, and if he was wrong in some of his theories, he had at least fixed principles, and he occupied his whole life, not in making his fortune, but in ensuring the triumph of his ideas.... France allowed him to die in poverty. Yet if the recollection of the misery caused by the ruin of his system was somewhat too recent to give place to gratitude, France ought nevertheless to have felt grateful to him for the generous ideas he had put forth. He laboured to extend the commerce of the country, to re-establish the navy, to found colonies. He suppressed onerous privileges. He endeavoured to do away with venality in the magistracy; to create a less tyrannical and more simple administration of the tax system. Finally he established a bank, which, could it have survived, would have helped powerfully to develop commerce and would have augmented considerably the wealth of the country."
It is not generally known that, besides introducing a new system of credit, Law was the inventor of pictorial advertisements. Specimens, however, have been preserved of the pictures issued by him in connection with the "flotation" of his Mississippi scheme, one of which represents the Indians on the banks of the river, dancing with joy at the approach of the French, who had come to civilise them.
[Illustration: THE PALMIER FOUNTAIN, PLACE DU CH�TELET.]
Rue de Venise--Rachel--St. Nicholas-in-the-Fields--The Conservatoire des Artes et M�tiers--The Gait�--Rue des Archives--The Mont de Pi�t�--The National Printing Office--The H�tel Lamoignon.
The Rue Quincampoix and the Rue Saint-Martin are connected by a narrow lane or alley scarcely ten feet wide, called Rue de Venise, which has a sinister renown in connection with the speculative mania of Law's time. Here it was, in the month of April, that a rich banker was enticed, under pretext of a sale of shares, and assassinated by Laurent de Mille and Count Horn, that same Count Horn whose servant, passing himself off as master, played so infamous a trick upon poor Angelica Kaufmann, ancestress of Pauline in the drama of The Lady of Lyons. A little higher up in the Rue de Venise, and, leading likewise to the Rue Quincampoix, is the Passage Moli�re, which owes its name to the Th��tre Moli�re, opened on the 4th of June, 1791, with a representation of the Misanthrope. In 1793 it was re-baptised Th��tre des Sans-Culottes. Its first director under its new name was Boursault-Malesherbes, comedian, member of the Convention, and farmer of public games. Closed and re-opened a score of times, this house became in the early years of Louis Philippe's reign a theatre for dramatic instruction, where Mlle. Rachel received her first lessons from Saint-Aulaire.
Universally recognised as one of the greatest of French actresses, Rachel, of Jewish race, was born on the 28th of February, 1821, at Munf, a Swiss village in the Canton of Argovia. Her father and mother were, however, both French; the former, Jacques Felix, being a native of Metz, the latter, Esther Hayn, of Guers, in the department of the Lower Rhine. In the year 1831, Rachel, under her true name of Elisa, was a street singer at Lyons, where Choron, director of an important musical academy, chanced to hear her. He was so struck by the beauty of her voice that he called upon Elisa's parents, and induced them to settle in Paris, where he promised to take charge of their little daughter's musical education. He suggested that she should adopt in lieu of "Elisa" the more impressive name of Rachel. But before her studies had progressed very far she lost her voice; and Choron placed her in a dramatic class directed by Saint-Aulaire. This professor, a retired comedian who understood the art of acting better than he had ever practised it, had taken the Salle Moli�re just spoken of; and here during the years 1834, 1835, and 1836 Rachel was made to play a great variety of parts, including nearly every leading character in the plays of Corneille, Racine, and Moli�re. The charges for admission to the Salle Moli�re were moderate, but the house was always full when Rachel had been announced to play, and the tickets on these occasions were sold at a premium.
One day M. V�dl, treasurer of the Th��tre Fran�ais, went to the Salle Moli�re to see a soubrette whom his manager thought of engaging. He was about to leave the theatre, when Saint-Aulaire begged him to remain in order to see a pupil who had not yet appeared, and of whom he entertained the greatest hopes. This, of course, was little Rachel, who was about to play the part of Hermione in Andromaque. She resembled none of the other pupils whom the emissary from the Th��tre Fran�ais had seen. She was small in stature and had a hard, almost a harsh voice; which, however, was firm and impressive, and, when the young girl became excited, almost musical. After the performance, M. V�dl complimented the young actress, and promised to do his best for her at the important theatre with which he was connected. He at once spoke of her to M. Jouslin de La Salle, director of the Fran�ais, who, after seeing her in Tancr�de, arranged a special performance, which was attended, in the character of judges, by M. Samson and Mlle. Mars. "She is too short," objected one of the party. "She will grow," replied Mlle. Mars significantly; and on the recommendation of the manager of the Th��tre Fran�ais she was admitted to the Conservatoire.
Rachel entered the class directed by M. Samson, one of the principal actors of the Th��tre Fran�ais, and under his tuition made rapid progress. Tempted, however, by an engagement offered to her at the Gymnase, she soon left the Conservatoire for that theatre, where she achieved a certain success as Suzette in Scribe's Mariage de Raison. The experiment, however, was not altogether satisfactory, and she returned to the Conservatoire, and remained until May, 1838, when, on the recommendation of M. Samson, she was engaged at the Th��tre Fran�ais. Her first appearance there, as Camille in Les Horaces, took place on the 12th of June in this same year. She was then but sixteen years old, and only moderately pretty. Short for her age, she had the further disadvantage of being marked with the small-pox. With narrow chin, high cheek-bones, and a projecting forehead, she had brilliant, expressive eyes, at once thoughtful and full of fire. The pose of her head was admirable, and all her gestures were marked by dignity and distinction. Calm and self-contained throughout the greater part of the performance, she never abandoned herself to her emotion even while expressing the most ardent passion. There was intensity in all she did, and so novel, so individual was her style that she inspired her audience with the strongest personal admiration. She had now established her position at the greatest theatre in Europe; but it was at the little Salle Moli�re that she had first learned to act.
In the immediate neighbourhood, on the ancient territory of the Abbaye Saint-Martin, stands the Church of St. Nicholas-in-the-Fields, where the mayor or bailiff of the abbaye resided. Dating from the twelfth century, this church was rebuilt in 1420, and underwent various processes of modification and reconstruction until it received its definite form in 1576. Every style, from the Gothic of Charles VI. to the Neo-Roman of Henri III., has left its imprint in the highly composite architecture of this church, said to be the longest and the broadest in all Paris. In one of the chapels of the nave, dedicated to Saint Martin, is a picture which represents Saint Martin curing the leper by taking him in his arms; and the inscription sets forth that the priory of Saint Nicholas-in-the-Fields was founded on the spot where this miracle took place. In the fields of this church lie buried the philosopher Gassendi, and the historians Henri and Adrien de Valois, together with Malle de Scud�ry, who wrote the once celebrated novels, "Le Grand Cyrus" and "Cl�lie."
[Illustration: RUE DE VENISE.]
Under the Revolution the Church of Saint Nicholas-in-the-Fields was converted into "The Temple of Hymen." Most of the property belonging to the religious community of Saint-Martin was sold by the Revolutionary Government. On a portion of what remained was built the Conservatoire des Arts et M�tiers, which was created by a decree of the year 1794, though it did not finally take form until four years afterwards. The building, as it now exists, was partly restored, partly reconstructed, between the years 1852 and 1862, by M. Vandoyer.
[Illustration: ST. NICHOLAS-IN-THE-FIELDS.]
The "arts and crafts," until the time of the Revolution, formed close corporations of their own. The origin of these unions and guilds was very remote. In the middle ages the rules on the subject of apprenticeship were most severe; and after seven years' subjection to a master the artisan became only a "companion" or varlet, and could still work only under the direction of a full member of the guild. To pass as master it was necessary for a "companion" to produce a masterpiece and to pay, moreover, certain dues, onerous for a mere workman; which forced a great number of these varlets to remain in their original condition. The corporations of arts and crafts were governed by a number of edicts which regulated not only the quality and quantity of the work to be done, but prescribed methods of manufacture, and provided for the settlement of disputes between artisans and merchants, or artisans and private persons engaging their services. These strange organisations had the worst effect in an economical sense, and many endeavours were made long before the Revolution to destroy the monopolies they created. In 1776, thirteen years previously to the Revolution, the corporations of arts and crafts were abolished by the famous Minister, Turgot. But the edict was evaded, and it was not until the Revolution, when things that were abolished were abolished for ever, that the French guilds finally disappeared.
[Illustration: THE CONSERVATOIRE DES ARTS ET M�TIERS.]
The "Conservatoire des Arts et M�tiers," established soon after the Revolution, had no direct connection with the "arts and crafts," whose organisation into guilds and close corporations had been suppressed. It was thought desirable, however, to form a central dep�t where newly invented machines, together with machines whose utility had been tested, might be placed together for public inspection. Vaucanson, chiefly remembered by his ingenious automatic contrivances, had formed a collection of machines, which during his lifetime he threw open to working men, and at his death bequeathed to the monarchical government. Thus the nucleus of the important collection formed by the Republic already existed under Louis XVI.
That the exhibition of machines, as superintended during the last days of the monarchy by M. Vandermond, was a sight worth seeing is shown by Arthur Young having gone to see it when he was making, throughout France, that tour of inquiry which was destined to become famous. "I visited," he writes in 1789, just one month before the taking of the Bastille, "the repository of royal machines, which M. Vandermond showed and explained to me with great readiness and politeness. What struck me most was M. Vaucanson's machine for making a chain which, I was told, Mr. Watt, of Birmingham, admired very much, at which my attendants seemed not displeased. Another for making the cogs intended in iron wheels. There is a chaff-cutter from an English original; and a model of the nonsensical plough to go without horses. These are the only ones in agriculture. Many ingenious contrivances for winding silk, etc."
The Convention took steps for keeping the Vaucanson machines when so many treasures of one kind and another were being dispersed, and it seized the earliest opportunity of enlarging the collection, to which, from 1785 to 1792, 500 new machines were added. In 1792 a commission had been appointed to "catalogue and collect in suitable places books, instruments, and other objects of science and art in view of public instruction"; and a few months later in the same year the Convention published a new decree constituting the Conservatoire des Arts et M�tiers on a solid basis, and assigned to it the buildings of the former "abbey of Saint-Martin."
At present this Conservatoire is under the authority of the Minister of Commerce. Fifteen courses of lectures, public and gratuitous, are delivered within its walls on subjects connected with the application of art to manufactures; and for these, three amphitheatres, the largest of which can accommodate an audience of 750, have been provided. The ancient abbey of Saint-Martin is still represented by two edifices connected with the Conservatoire des Arts et M�tiers, and containing the library of the institution. One of these buildings was formerly the chapel, the other the refectory of the abbey.
At the corner of the Rue Saint-Martin and the Rue de Vertbois is an ancient tower in pepper-caster form, which once marked the junction of the fortified part of the abbey and its prison. This tower, bearing the name of Vertbois, was given, in 1712, to the City of Paris on condition that a public fountain should be constructed there; and the fountain, adorned with the arms of Paris, still exists, bearing a somewhat enigmatic inscription, thus: "This tower, which formerly constituted part of the fortified enclosure of the abbey of Saint Martin-in-the-Fields, constructed about the year 1150, and the fountain erected in 1712, have been preserved and restored by the town and the State on the demand of the Parisian arch�ologists, 1880." There was, in fact, a question of destroying both tower and fountain in 1877 in view of certain architectural improvements, or at least changes, then projected. The lovers of antiquity protested, and Victor Hugo is said to have exclaimed, in the very words likewise attributed to him in connection with the proposed destruction of the tower of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, "Demolish the tower? No! Demolish the architect? Yes!" The architect in the case of the tower of Vertbois was the poet's own nephew. Like the tower, however, he was not demolished.
In front of the principal entrance to the Conservatoire a large square was made in 1860; its sides being formed by the Rue Saint-Martin, the Boulevard Sebastopol, the Rue Solomon de Caus, and the Rue du Caire. On the south side of the square, in the Rue du Caire, is seen the fa�ade of the Th��tre de la Gaiet�, which less deserves its title than our own Gaiety Theatre in London. Originally known by the name of Nicolet, its founder, and afterwards called, during the influence of Mme. du Barry, the Theatre of the King's Dancers, it at length received, towards the end of the last century, the inappropriate title which still belongs to it. There was a time, it must be presumed, when at the Gaiet� gay pieces were performed. But since the beginning of the century this house has been chiefly associated with spectacular and melodramatic productions. Here the famous fairy piece, Le Pied de Mouton, was produced with striking success in 1806. Some twenty years ago it was revived at the Porte Saint-Martin, where it ran nearly a year.
Reconstructed in 1808, the Gaiet� was burnt to the ground in 1835. No sooner had it been built up again than it was pulled down to make way for the Boulevard du Prince Eug�ne. The Gaiet�, which now, as already mentioned, stands on the southern side of the square of the Conservatoire des Arts et M�tiers, is one of the four theatres belonging to the Town of Paris. Here were produced some of the best pieces of Auguste Maquet, the most renowned of Alexandre Dumas' numerous collaborateurs, and one of the very few who have shown themselves able, unaided, to produce first-rate work.
Since its removal to the square of the Arts et M�tiers, the Th��tre de la Gaiet� has confined itself to no particular style. Here were represented Sardou's drama La Haine; Jules Barbier's Jeanne d'Arc, with music by Gounod; Offenbach's operettas revived on a large scale, with Orph�e aux Enfers prominent among them; Victor Mass�'s Paul et Virginie, Saint Sa�n's Timbre d'Argent, and the Dmitri of Jonci�res. The last strikingly successful piece produced at this theatre was a dramatic version of Alphonse Daudet's Tartarin sur les Alpes.
The first street parallel to the Rue Saint-Martin is the Rue du Temple, which, much increased in length by the demolition and reconstruction of 1851, is now one of the longest streets in Paris. It owes its name to the ancient habitation of the Order of Templars. After the violent suppression of this fraternity, the property passed to the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, who fixed upon it for their Paris headquarters. The Grand Prior of this Order had, by rule, to be a prince of the blood; and the last to hold the office was the Duke of Angoul�me, eldest son of the Count of Artois, afterwards Charles X. Particulars of the captivity of Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, and the Dauphin in the Temple have already been given. It may here be added, however, that after being used for some years as a State prison, the old building was demolished in 1811. Finally the Palace of the Grand Prior, with its majestic colonnade, which had been allowed to remain untouched until 1854, was pulled down, and the land made over to the Town of Paris on condition of its planting trees on the site and erecting a monument to the memory of Louis XVI. This latter condition was never fulfilled.
Nothing now remains of the fortress which Louis XVI. quitted, on the 21st of January, to be taken to the scaffold, but an old willow, dating from four or five centuries back, beneath whose shadow the king, during his confinement, loved to walk. The monument in the centre of the square is a statue of B�ranger; "the divine B�ranger," as Heine calls him, and of whom Benjamin-Constant said one day, when the poet was yet unknown: "He writes magnificent odes and calls them songs." Close to the spot marked to-day by his statue, in the Rue Vend�me, now re-named Rue B�ranger, died this most poetical of popular song-writers, this most popular of poets. He was honoured by a public funeral at the expense of the State.
[Illustration: THE VERTBOIS TOWER AND FOUNTAIN.]
The Temple Market dates from a remote period; not, however, in its present form, which was given to it by the First Consul in 1802. It was made to include the Rotunda, built in 1788 for the accommodation of debtors without means or without intention to pay, who came to the Temple to enjoy the privileged security of all who there sought refuge. Men's clothes and women's dresses are the articles chiefly in demand at the Temple Market. To the ancient dealers in second-hand garments belonged a reputation for strong language, which has now faded away. Under the conditions of modern life, character perishes, and even the representatives of Mme. Angot and her celebrated daughter are well-behaved and even polite.
Close at hand is the Synagogue of the Rue Notre Dame de Nazareth. The neighbouring Rue des Archives contains the �glise des Carmes, consecrated since 1812 to the Lutheran rite, but formerly a Dominican church erected on the ground previously occupied by a chapel dating from the year 1295. On this site had previously stood the house of Jonathan, the Jew, convicted (or at least accused and declared guilty) of having profaned the sacred host, miraculously preserved from his fury. Of this strange legend, one of many similar ones invented in hatred of the unhappy Jews, an account may be found in Dulaure's "Singularit�s Historiques."
The whole of the right side of the Rue des Archives is taken up by the imposing edifice in which the national archives are preserved. It was formerly the H�tel de Soubise. On the western portion of the ancient property of the Guises was erected the Palais Cardinal, built by Armand Gaston de Rohan, Prince Archbishop of Strasburg, which has long been occupied by the National Printing Office. Up to the time of the Revolution the archives were preserved by the particular establishment, political, judicial, civil or ecclesiastical, to which they belonged; so that in 1782 there were upwards of a thousand different places where documents of national importance were preserved. In the midst of the general uprising, when convents were being pillaged and manor-houses burnt, an immense number of valuable papers were either torn up or given to the flames. At last special commissions were organised for the collection and preservation of all State papers; which in the first instance were deposited at the Tuileries with the official reports of the Assembly which there held its sittings. In 1808 Napoleon ordered that all archives of whatever kind should be kept in one place provided specially for them. He at the same time bought for State purposes, and for the sum of 690,000 francs, the H�tel de Soubise and the H�tel de Rohan; the first for the archives, the second for the Imperial printing office.
[Illustration: THE GAIET� THEATRE.]
The national archives, whose importance is yearly increasing, and which form an historical collection unrivalled elsewhere, are under the care of a Director-General who belongs to the Ministry of Public Instruction. The Director-General is assisted by three chiefs of section, who overlook the reception, classification, and preservation of State documents in the following order: 1. Historical section. 2. Administrative section. 3. Legislative and judicial section. Many very interesting documents relating to the history of France are exhibited in glass cases. The most ancient of these is dated 625, under the reign of Clotaire II. The most modern are of the year 1821. In connection with the national archives a reading-room is kept open every day from 10 to 5 for persons who have sought and obtained permission to consult documents in view of their studies. Attached to the National Archives is the School of Maps, under the direction of a member of the Academy of Inscriptions and of Belles Lettres, assisted by a council. The French, too, have invented a profession unknown in England--that of archivist. To become an archivist it is necessary to follow for three years a course of lectures, each of which is followed by an examination. To pass finally the student writes an essay on some appropriate subject, and, if successful, receives the name of archivist or pal�ographer, which entitles him to employment in connection with the archives, or with one of the libraries under the direction of the Ministry of Public Instruction. By reason of the exceptional importance of their duties, the archivists are liberated from military service, like the pupils of the superior normal schools and of the School of Oriental Languages. The School of Maps was, together with so many other institutions of which France is justly proud, founded by Napoleon I.; who wished, at the time, to establish a lay Order of Benedictines devoted to the study of French history. Without constituting themselves into an order, the students of the School of Maps have, by their conscientious and disinterested labours, done much to throw light on the history and literature of ancient France.
[Illustration: IN THE TEMPLE MARKET.]
[Illustration: THE TEMPLE MARKET.]
On the south side of the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, opposite the School of Maps, stand the buildings of the Mont-de-Pi�t�, established by Louis XVI. in 1771. After the revolution in 1796, the profits of the Mont-de-Pi�t� were assigned to the hospitals, and the institution is now under the direction of the Assistance Publique, or Charity Board, presided over by the Prefect of the Seine. Besides the principal establishment, at No. 55, Rue des Francs Bourgeois, there are two district establishments and twenty-one auxiliary ones dispersed through the different quarters of the capital. The Mont-de-Pi�t� of Paris lends no less than six million francs a year; and it obtains whatever working capital it requires by the issue of bonds bearing interest at five per cent., which are much in favour with investors. The capital of the Com�die Fran�aise is all permanently invested in bonds of the Mont-de-Pi�t�. It was not without serious opposition that the first projectors of the Mont-de-Pi�t� succeeded in getting it authorised; though Mercier, writing only a few years after the publication of the King's edict on the subject, regards this institution as of the greatest benefit to the poor.
"The establishment of the Mont-de-Pi�t� or pawn-warehouse," he says, "was long wished for in vain, but is at last perfected, notwithstanding the opposition it met with from several interested beings who live by the distress of their fellow creatures. At this place the poor may be supplied with money, upon any pawn whatever that they can leave for security, at a very trifling interest; for it is not here in the hands of private individuals, as I am told is the case in London, where a pawnbroker charges no less than 30 per cent. for the loan. I hear they are authorised to do so by law. So much the worse. In Paris the Mont-de-Pi�t� is under the immediate inspection of the Government, and has hitherto proved of the greatest service by giving the mortal wound to usury and its infamous votaries. The greatest proof that can be given of the usefulness of this institution, and how needful it was in Paris, is the great concourse of people who daily resort there to raise temporary sums. It is said, but I will not vouch for the truth of the assertion, that in the space of a few months there were forty tuns filled with gold watches; this I rather take to be an exaggeration, meant only to give an idea of the very great number that were then in the warehouse. Certain it is that I have seen at one time four score people assembled; who, waiting for their turn, came there for the purpose of raising loans not exceeding six livres a head. The one carries his shirts, another a piece of furniture, this an old picture, that his shoe-buckles or a threadbare coat. These visits, which are renewed every day, are the most forcible proofs of the extreme want and poverty to which the greatest number of the inhabitants is reduced. Opulence itself is often obliged to have recourse to the public pawn-warehouse, and the contrast between extreme misery and indigent richness is nowhere better exemplified. In one corner a lady, wrapped up in her cloak, her face half covered, and just stepped out of her coach, deposits her diamonds to a large amount, to venture it in the evening at a card-table; whilst in the other a poor woman, who has trudged it on foot through the muddy streets, pawns her lower garment to purchase a bit of bread. The best regulation prevails in this place; a sworn appraiser stands there to estimate upon oath the real value of the pledge offered. Yet, as the best institution is liable to much abuse, it is said that the poorer sort of people are not always treated with that humanity which they are more justly entitled to than their betters; this evil, with a little attention from the magistrate who presides over this undertaking, may easily be remedied. I make no doubt but the Mont-de-Pi�t� will prove as advantageous an establishment as it is useful and commendable."
Some houses were being pulled down in 1878 for the enlargement of the Mont-de-Pi�t� when a tower belonging to the wall of Philip Augustus was brought to light. This was one of the four towers which flanked the circumvallation of the king just named. The old tower was consolidated and repaired. Near this spot stood, in 1258, the Convent of the White Cloaks, founded by the serfs of the Virgin Mary; to be replaced, in the same century, by the hermits of Saint William, who, in 1816, joined the congregation of the reformed Benedictines. The name of Blancs Manteaux is still connected with a street and a market in the neighbourhood. The Benedictines constructed their church and their monastery in 1695; and it was here that these learned men composed many of their works, imperishable monuments of their erudition. "The Art of Verifying Dates" and "The Collection of the Historians of France" may in particular be mentioned. Sold as national property in 1797, the Benedictine Church was bought back by the Town in 1807 and made the second parochial church of Saint-Merry, under the name of Notre Dame des Blancs Manteaux.
At the south-east corner of the Rue des Blancs Manteaux, in the Rue Vieille du Temple, stands, under the title of H�tel de Hollande, all that remains of the ancient H�tel de Rieux, at one time occupied by the Dutch ambassadors.
The turret at the corner of the Rues Vieille du Temple and Francs Bourgeois is remarkably picturesque.
Just to the right of the Rue Barbette is the ancient Palais Cardinal, forming the rear part of the H�tel de Soubise, and containing the National Printing Office, there established by a decree of 1808. In the centre of the great courtyard a statue of Guttenberg, by David d'Angers, may be seen. On the first storey of the principal building is the bedroom of the Cardinal who played so sad a part in the "Affaire du Collier"--the affair, that is to say, of Marie Antoinette's necklace, which caused such scandal immediately before the Revolution. Here is now housed the library of the National Printing Office, called the Hall of the Monkeys, by reason of its being decorated with scenes from monkey life, attributed to Boucher.
The Royal Printing Office, destined also to be called National and Imperial, according to the Government in power, was founded by King Louis XIII., and dates from 1640. Until that time the King employed private printers; Conrad Naebor, printer in Greek, with an annual allowance of 100 gold crowns, and Robert Estienne, printer in Latin and Hebrew. Though they printed for the King, both Naebor and Estienne had their own private printing offices. The Royal Printing Office was established by Louis XIII. at the Louvre, where it remained until the time of the Revolution--directed from 1691 to 1789 by Jean Anisson and members of his family. Then all kinds of printing offices were established under national control: a national legislative printing office, a national printing office of laws, a national executive printing office, etc. The Directory brought them all together in 1795, under the title of Printing Office of the Republic, which was established in the Rue de la Vrilli�re, at the H�tel de Toulouse, afterwards occupied by the Bank of France. Since 1808 the National Printing Office ("Imperial" as it was called at the time) has not moved from the Palais Cardinal. It is governed by a director belonging to the Ministry, placed beneath the authority of the Minister of Justice. It prints for the State Le Bulletin des Lois, and all the papers, formulas, registers, and cards required by the different Ministries. It also prints--and in this resides its special importance--either at the expense of the State or of the authors, scientific and artistic works for which particular signs or characters, especially Oriental characters, are needed.
[Illustration: SIXTEENTH CENTURY CLOISTERS, RUE DES BILLETTES.]
The scientific and artistic publications of the National Library are counted among the masterpieces of typography. Pierre Corneille's edition of the "Imitation of Jesus Christ," printed expressly for the Exhibition of 1867, was universally admired. Indeed, from 1809, when, after considerable delay, "The Description of Egypt," based on the observations made during Bonaparte's famous campaign, was published, until the present day, the National Printing Office of France has produced a large number of perfectly printed editions. In war, as in peace, this office received important benefits at the hands of the first Napoleon, who, to enrich it, deprived the Italians of a fine collection of Arabic and Persian characters.
[Illustration: PALACE OF THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES.]
At the time of the Restoration, the National, now Royal Printing Office, was placed under the direction of a member of the Anisson family, lineally descended from the Anisson of 1690, who, while working for the Government, carried on a printing office as a private enterprise, and made immense profits. After the Revolution of 1830 it was taken over by the State; and the Government of Louis Philippe purchased for the Royal Printing Institution all kinds of Oriental characters. Now, too, were for the first time acquired fonts of Russian, Servian, and other Slavonian type. At the request of the Government, moreover, a complete set of Chinese characters was sent from Pekin. Under various changes of government the National Printing Office has, from Louis Philippe until now, remained a State establishment.
[Illustration: HOTEL DE HOLLANDE.]
It was calculated twenty years ago that the National Printing Office, with its one hundred hand-presses and a good number of presses worked by steam, prints every year about 200,000 reams of paper in different forms, or altogether about 100,000,000 sheets. Reducing these sheets to octavo volumes, each of thirty sheets, the National Printing Office produces every year 3,330,000 volumes; and reckoning 300 working days in the year, 11,100 volumes per day.
Beneath the statue of Guttenberg, cast from the statue by David d'Angers which adorns Strasburg, Guttenberg's birthplace, is buried an historical account of the National Printing Office, with two commemorative medals.
[Illustration: TURRET AT CORNER OF RUES VIEILLE DU TEMPLE AND FRANCS BOURGEOIS.]
One of the most interesting buildings in this neighbourhood is the H�tel Lamoignon, which, by its architecture, presents the aspect of a fortress, though its walls and windows are ornamented with crescents, hunting-horns, and the heads of stags and hounds, in allusion to its having been built by Diana of France, the legitimatised daughter of Henri II. Passing down the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, along the southern wall of the H�tel Carnavalet, we reach, on the left, the entrance to the Mus�e Carnavalet, associated with the illustrious names of Jean Goujon the sculptor, Fran�ois Mansard the architect, and Mme. de S�vign� the charming letter-writer. The H�tel Carnavalet, which the Marquise de S�vign� inhabited from 1677 to 1698, was restored in 1867 and the years following, when Baron Haussmann resolved to create a municipal museum; of which, however, mention has already been made. It is impossible to quit the Marais, the ancient district in which we have lately been lingering, without calling attention to the beautiful fa�ade of the H�tel Carnavalet, with its graceful representations of the four seasons.
We are now once more in the Rue Saint-Antoine, within a few paces of the ancient Rue de Birague, at the end of which is a large arcade leading to the Place Royale, which Parisians have not yet learned to call the Place des Vosges, a name given to it as long ago as 1800 by Lucien Bonaparte, Minister of the Interior, to reward the department of the Vosges for being the first department to pay certain taxes which had fallen into arrear. After being styled for thirty-four years, from the time of the Restoration, Place Royale, the square was named in 1848 Place des Vosges.
In the previous description of this Place reference has been made to the statue of Louis XIII. which stands in its centre; and also to the beautiful garden which belongs to it.
The Rue Saint-Denis--Saint-Leu-Saint-Gilles--George Cadoudal--Saint-Eustache--The Central Markets--The General Post Office.
[Illustration: RUE DE BIRAGUE, LEADING TO THE PLACE DES VOSGES.]
The Rue Saint-Denis is by ancient tradition, and still in the present day, as a matter of fact, the favourite abode of the French bourgeois. Our aldermen have long ceased to live in the City, and a John Gilpin of our own time, wherever his place of business might be, would have his private residence at Clapham or Brixton, at Holloway or Highgate. The Paris tradesman, however, still lives, like the M. Jourdain in Moli�re's "Bourgeois Gentilhomme," above his shop; and his shop, in a good many typical cases, is, as it was two centuries ago, in the Rue Saint-Denis. "La Grande Rue Saint-Denis" the street was formerly called; and, as it is upwards of three-quarters of a mile long, it may be said to deserve its name. It is even now the most central and the most commercial street in Paris. According to Sanval, one of the many historians of the French capital, it is the street par excellence of all Paris. Voltaire, on the other hand, detested this street, and had good reasons for doing so. One day, when he was but seventeen years of age, he found himself by chance in the Rue Saint-Denis, with his purse well filled, at the very moment when an auctioneer was selling the goods of an unfortunate man who had not been able to pay his taxes. A carriage, with two horses, and the livery of the indispensable footmen, was put up, and in a sudden fit of wildness, the young philosopher, not yet philosophical, purchased the lot. The coachman, who was looking on, offered his services, which the youthful Voltaire at once accepted. "Put in the horses and get up on the box," he said; and the schoolboy, who had just left the Jesuits' College, was seen driving along the Rue Saint-Denis; not, however, for any length of time. The coachman he had engaged, an awkward fellow, managed, at the corner of the street, to upset the carriage. Voltaire's ardour now subsided and he lost no time in getting rid of his newly-acquired equipage. The Rue Saint-Denis, in consequence, no doubt, of this accident, had made a bad impression on Voltaire; and in after days he never spoke of it without sarcasm.
[Illustration: FOUNTAIN OF THE INNOCENTS.]
The Rue Saint-Denis was originally nothing but a highway leading to the Abbey of Saint-Denis; and one of its frequenters is said to have been that very Saint Denis whose name it was afterwards to bear. The highway, thanks to its central position, was soon lined with houses, and before long every house in the street had its shop. Along this great thoroughfare the kings and queens of France passed in returning from their coronations; and it was by the same road that they proceeded to their last resting-place. The Rue Saint-Denis became at once the central line of communication and the central commercial street of Paris. Then it was that the name of "La Grande Rue Saint-Denis" was given to it--a title it well might bear even in the present day.
The Rue Saint-Denis connects the quarter of the "halles," or public markets, with the Bonne Nouvelle quarter. After crossing the Rue Saint-Honor� the Rue Saint-Denis breaks off on the left, interrupted by the Square of the Innocents, in the centre of which stands the fountain of the same name. This square replaces the Market of the Innocents abolished in 1860. The fountain dates from the thirteenth century, having been repaired in 1550 by Pierre Lescot, with Jean Goujon for his assistant. Despite the many alterations and modifications it has undergone, the fountain is still remarkable for a certain nobility and grace. But the five water-nymphs of Jean Goujon, worn by the rays of the sun and by the spray of the cascade, show signs of decay; and it has been proposed to replace them by copies, while preserving the originals in the Louvre.
A little higher up on the right is the Church of Saint-Leu-Saint-Gilles, founded in 1235, and raised to the position of parish church in 1617. It has been so often repaired and reconstructed that very little of the original building remains. The church possesses a portrait of Saint-Fran�ois de Salles, painted after his death by Philippe de Champagne, and a picture of the year 1772, embodying the legend of the soldier who was burnt in 1415 for having stabbed with his knife an image of the Virgin which stood at the corner of the Rue aux Ours, now known as Rue de la Bourse. The image, according to the tradition, shed blood in atonement for the soldier's profanity. An expiatory festival, which lasted three days, used to be celebrated up to the time of the Revolution.
It was in the Church of Saint-Leu-Saint-Gilles that an heroic priest dared, in 1793, at the height of the Reign of Terror, to say a mass for the soul of the Princesse de Lamballe immediately after her execution.
Here, too, George Cadoudal, the Vendean chief, pursued by the police, concealed himself for several days in one of the subterranean tombs. Cadoudal was the son of a farmer. But like all classes in La Vend�e, he was devoted to the Monarchy, and joined one of the first bands formed during the Reign of Terror to fight against the Revolution. After the defeat of the principal corps, Cadoudal was arrested and imprisoned at Brest. He made his escape, however, and soon became one of the most formidable leaders of the rebellion in Brittany, known as that of the Chouans--so called from their cry of recognition resembling that of the screech-owl or chouette. In 1796 he surrendered to Hoche, and was pardoned on condition of not again bearing arms against the Republic. This, however, did not prevent him from heading a new insurrection in 1799. Again defeated, he was received in conference by General Brune, and was once more released on the same conditions as before. The First Consul wished to take him into his service, but Cadoudal would listen to no offers from one whom he regarded as a usurper. He now, in the year 1800, left France for England, where he received, with congratulations on the part of the English Government, the rank of lieutenant-general and the Grand Cordon of Saint Louis, the commission and the decoration being both handed to him by the Count of Artois in the name of Louis XVIII.
[Illustration: SAINT-EUSTACHE.]
After many vain attempts to bring about a new insurrection in the west of France, he resolved to attack Bonaparte's Government in Paris itself, and sent on one of his officers, Saint-R�gent, to prepare the way for him. He afterwards denied all complicity in Saint-R�gent's plot against Bonaparte's life. "He was at Paris," said Cadoudal, "in obedience to my orders, but I never ordered him to construct and employ his infernal machine." Cadoudal was in Brittany at the time. But closely pursued, he was advised once more to take refuge in England, where, with Pichegru and the Count of Artois, he prepared another plot against the First Consul, who was now to be arrested and carried away.
In August, 1803, Cadoudal went to Paris, and remained there, in spite of the constant search of which he was the object, for seven months. He was at last arrested in a hackney-cab, but not until after he had killed one of the police agents. Brought to trial, he avowed that his object had been to upset the Government in order to place Louis XVIII. on the throne. He was executed with eleven of his accomplices. After the Restoration his family was ennobled by Louis XVIII.
The Church of Saint-Leu-Saint-Gilles was converted during the Revolution into a salt-petre store, and then fell into the possession of Jews, from whom it was bought back when public worship was restored in France.
Further on is the Abbey of Saint-Magloire, and beyond that the asylum of Saint-Jacques aux Pelerins, which dates from the early part of the fourteenth century. In 1317 under the reign of Philip V., called The Long, many notable and devout persons who had made the pilgrimage to Saint James Compostella in Galicia, moved by devotion, meditated the construction of a church and an asylum in the Rue Saint-Denis, to the glory of God, the Holy Virgin, and Saint James the Apostle, in order to lodge and feed the pilgrims, whether going or coming. The church was built with an asylum joined to it, and it was open, not only to the pilgrims, but also to seventy poor persons whom it received every day.
The Abbey of Saint-Magloire dates from the tenth century, when it stood half-way on the road from the Cit� to Saint-Denis. It was converted by Marie de M�dicis into a convent known as that of the Filles-Dieu, where penitent girls found shelter. It was suppressed, like all the other religious houses, in 1793. Some fifty years afterwards the foundations of the convent, which had fallen into ruin, were being dug up with a view to some new building, when ten Gothic statues were discovered, mutilated and blackened. Among the stone figures Saint James was easily recognised by his pilgrim's costume. The statues were claimed by the town, and now figure in the Mus�e des Thermes. The shop which at present occupies the site of the ancient convent has for its sign:--"Aux Statues de Saint-Jacques."
Another famous convent existed at one time in the Rue Saint-Jacques--the Convent of the Holy Sepulchre it was called, also known as the H�tel of the Trinity. Built for the pilgrims returning from the East, it was kept up until the taking of Constantinople, more than a hundred years later. The Holy Sepulchre having then fallen into the hands of the Turks, the idea of making pilgrimages to it came to an end; and the hostelry for pilgrims to the Holy Land was no longer required. The convent was now occupied by the Brothers of the Passion, who had obtained letters patent from Charles VI. empowering them to play religious mysteries. Thus the earliest of French theatres stood in the Rue Saint-Denis. It has been said that the kings of France made their coronation processions along the Rue Saint-Denis; and when Louis XI. was crowned, fountains of wine, milk, and mead were established over the whole length of the Rue Saint-Denis. In the present day the Rue Saint-Denis has lost much of its ancient animation through the formation of the Boulevard de Sebastopol. But under the ancient r�gime it was really the leading thoroughfare in Paris. When, after the surrender of Paris to Henri IV., the Spanish garrison marched away, they defiled down the Rue Saint-Denis, while the king, standing at an open window, called out: "Now go home, and do not let us see you here again." The Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis, on the other side of the boulevard, is less rich in historical associations than the Rue Saint-Denis itself. It may be mentioned, however, that at Saint-Lazare the bodies of the French kings made a halt on their way to their last resting-place in the Abbey of Saint-Denis.
The region comprised between the left side of the Rue Saint-Denis, the Rue de Rivoli on the south, the Rue Croix des Petits Champs on the west, and the Rue �tienne Marcel on the north, forms the vast quarter of the markets, with the parish church of Saint-Eustache, the Protestant Temple of the Oratory, the Central Markets, and the old Corn Market as its principal features.
Saint-Eustache is one of the most remarkable and one of the most admired churches in Paris. Erected on the site of an ancient chapel dedicated to Saint Agnes, which dated from the first years of the thirteenth century, it was already a parish church, under the invocation of Saint Eustache, in 1223. In the course of the next three centuries it became the richest and most frequented church in Paris. After Notre Dame, the Church of Saint-Eustache is the largest in Paris. Its coloured windows, signed Soulignac, and dating from the year 1631, eleven in number, are admirable alike by colour and by design. In addition to its mural paintings, dating from the reign of Louis XIII. (discovered beneath a thick coat of plaster in 1849), Saint-Eustache contains a number of frescoes and paintings of high merit. In the Ninth Chapel the tomb of the great Colbert, executed by Coysevox, after the designs of Lebrun, is to be seen. The grand organ, reconstructed in 1844 after a destructive fire, is one of the most complete and most sonorous that exists. This church, thanks to its colossal dimensions and to the perfection of its organs (one at each end), is the favourite church of musicians; and it is here that the Society of Musical Artists celebrates annually the festival of Saint-Cecilia, their revered patroness. On such occasions a new mass or musical service of some kind is given; and it was in this church that the Abb� Liszt had one of his most famous masses performed only a few months before his death. The angle formed by the meeting of the streets called Montmartre, Pont-Neuf, Montorgueil, and Rambuteau, is known as the "Saint-Eustache Point." It dominates the vast quadrilateral occupied by the Central Markets.
The Central Markets were founded by Philip Augustus, and they were soon surrounded by houses and shops. These markets in their present form were constructed on one design, and, so to say, at a stroke, under the reign of Napoleon III., by the architect Beltard, who sought his model in the finest of the Paris railway stations. The principal office of the fish market, at the corner of the Rue Pirouette and of the Rue Rambuteau, is in the ancient H�tel du Heaume, a building of the fourteenth century. At number 108, Rue Rambuteau, was born Regnard, author of "The Gambler" and of "The Universal Legatee," the house having been owned by his father, a fish salesman beneath the sign of Notre Dame. A little nearer the Church of Saint-Eustache, just at the mouth of the Rue de la R�alle, stands a house which once belonged to the carpet-maker, Jean Poquelin, and afterwards to his son and heir, J. B. Poquelin, better known by his adopted name of Moli�re. For the name of Poquelin, by the way, he was indebted to an ancestor serving in the Scottish Guard, who bore the surname and came from the place of Pawkelin.
[Illustration: A MARKET SCENE.]
The Paris markets are the scene of constant activity from morning till evening. Buying and selling comes to an end, it is true, with the approach of night; but then the remains of what has been sold, with rubbish of all kinds, have to be cleared away, and scarcely has this been done, when market carts arrive with produce for the next day. The provisions brought to Paris are either sold to the factors of the market, who buy wholesale and sell retail, or to the market men and market women, or to any private person whom it may suit to become a purchaser. The finest, best, and most highly quoted vegetables and fruits come from the suburbs of Paris, where kitchen-gardening is carried to the last point of perfection. The farmers and gardeners of the environs, whose heavily-laden carts arrive towards nine in the evening, are their own salesmen in the markets. The growers of the departments and of Algeria send their fruit and their fresh vegetables to factors or commissioners, to be sold either in Pavilion Number 6--reserved for this kind of business--or at shops established in the neighbourhood of the markets.
[Illustration: AN AUCTION SALE OF POULTRY IN THE CENTRAL MARKET.]
It is calculated that in the course of the year the sales of fruit and vegetables amount to 241 millions of kilogrammes (one kilogramme represents upwards of two pounds), to which must be added nine million kilogrammes of fresh grapes, 30 million kilogrammes of sea and river fish (including lobsters and crayfish), eight million kilogrammes of oysters from various parts, 18 million kilogrammes of butter, 57 million kilogrammes of cheese, 181 million kilogrammes of meat of all kinds, 24 million kilogrammes of poultry and game; besides 20,721,600 kilogrammes of eggs, representing eggs to the number of 414 million--which gives to each Parisian an average of 166 eggs in the year. This figure, indeed, understates the fact, for the supply contributed by Paris itself has not been reckoned. Paris contains a number of cow-houses and small dairy farms, where milk and eggs are sold morning and evening, new-laid eggs, of which the Parisians are particularly fond, fetching from three to four sous apiece. There are fowls, too, in the Garden of Acclimatization; also in the large stables of the omnibus and cab companies. Many private persons, moreover, keep fowls. During the siege of 1870 a provision dealer in the Rue Vivienne kept on a marble counter a fowl which, when so disposed, laid beneath the eyes of the customer; and the eggs, whose freshness was unimpeachable, were sold at three francs apiece.
[Illustration: RUE RAMBUTEAU IN THE EARLY MORNING.]
There is a great sale, moreover, in the Paris markets for raised pies of various kinds coming from Agen, P�rigueux, Marseilles, Pithiviers, Chartres, Amiens, Auvernay, Colmar, and Strasburg. These are estimated at 1,250,000 kilogrammes in the course of the year. But such a figure represents only a small portion of the p�t�s consumed by the Parisians, large numbers of the delicacies being made in Paris itself, either by pastry-cooks of repute or by the best restaurateurs. At rich private houses, as at the principal clubs, where the kitchen is in the hands of eminent chefs, the pastry is always prepared on the premises. Season the whole with 20 million kilogrammes of grey or white salt, pepper, oil, and vinegar, and Paris will be found to consume of market food-produce alone, 640 million kilogrammes, without counting bread, the consumption of which is estimated at 700 million kilogrammes per year. Each Parisian, male or female, small or great, consumes every year on the average 600 kilogrammes of food, which is washed down with 600 million litres of wine, beer, cider, or perry, independent of coffee and liqueurs, such as Cognac, Chartreuse, rum, Cura�ao, k�mmel, and kirsch.
From the above figures it will be gathered that the Parisian population is well fed; and such is indeed the case. The very poor find their profit in the superfluity of the very rich; while the working classes profit by the relative cheapness of everything. If the minor restaurants, where dinner can be had for 22 sous and breakfast or lunch for 16 sous, are found too dear, there are the cr�meries and the wine shops, where a basin of soup, a slice of boiled beef, and a piece of bread may be had for 8 sous. A number of charitable institutions, moreover, exist, where a basin of soup or a slice of meat costs only 2 sous, or, in some instances, is given gratuitously.
The corn market occupies a portion of the site of the ancient H�tel de Soissons, given to the convent of Penitent Girls by Louis XII., from whom Catherine de M�dicis bought it in 1572 as a residence for herself. A curious and significant memorial of the queen mother's abode subsists in the shape of a column 30 metres high (the French metre is somewhat longer than the English yard), which is said to have been erected for Ruggieri, chief astrologer to the queen. At the base of the column is a fountain inscribed with the Arms of Paris; at the summit a sun-dial, constructed by Canon Pingr�.
Two interesting buildings of different, and, indeed, opposite characters, that must not be forgotten in connection with the central markets are the new Commercial Exchange (in the Rue Etienne Marcel) and the old Fortress of John the Fearless, a very interesting specimen of the medi�val military architecture.
The greater part of this ancient quarter has been pulled down, and in place of it has arisen a new General Post Office (H�tel des Postes), a building which resembles at once a barrack, a prison, a market-place, and a stable. The despatch, reception, and distribution of letters and printed papers is managed in the upper storeys, to which there are lifts, while the ground floor is reserved for the public. The former H�tel des Postes, which has been absorbed in the new one, belonged successively to the Duke of Epernon and to the Controller-General, Barth�lemy d'Hervart, from whom, on a memorable occasion, La Fontaine received hospitality.
The General Post Office of Paris, and central post office of all France, is established in a collection of houses, of which at least one possesses an historical character. Among the numerous persons of distinction who have from time to time directed the French Post Office mention in particular must be made of M. de Lavalette, who began life as a lawyer's clerk, entered, at the time of the Revolution, the National Guard, and volunteered to serve with the army when war broke out. He distinguished himself at Arcola, and attracted the attention of Bonaparte, who promoted him to the rank of captain, appointed him one of his aides-de-camp, and afterwards gave him in marriage the niece of his wife Jos�phine. After taking part in the campaigns of Egypt, Germany, and Prussia, he was charged with the reorganisation of the Post Office, received the appointment of general-director, together with the title of Count, and the right of sitting in the Council of State. Dismissed by the Bourbons in 1814, he did his utmost towards bringing the dethroned Emperor from Elba, and, on the news of his arrival in France, took possession of the Post Office; in return for which Napoleon gave him the superior appointment of Minister of the Interior. After the battle of Waterloo and the Second Restoration, Lavalette was arrested, brought to trial on a charge of high treason, and condemned to death. His wife, however, Louise de Beauharnais, had sworn to save him, and with this view sought an audience of King Louis XVIII. She had many friends who were all willing to aid her in her wifely enterprise. The Duke de Richelieu promised to speak to the Duchess of Angoul�me in favour of Lavalette; and she, it was hoped, would intercede with the king. Marmont, an intimate friend of the prisoner, had arranged to take the young wife to the Tuileries; but on the very day appointed for this purpose an order was issued that no woman was, under any circumstances, to enter the palace. The explanation of so unexpected an edict was that the Duchess of Angoul�me had resolved not only to say nothing to the king on Lavalette's behalf, but to prevent anyone else, and especially his wife, from uttering a word to His Majesty on the subject. Marmont, however, accompanied by Mme. de Lavalette, contrived to force his way into the palace, and took up his position, with the agitated wife by his side, in a room through which he knew that the king and the Duchess of Angoul�me would pass, on returning from mass. Seeing the unhappy woman on her knees, the duchess turned her head away; while the king, after receiving a petition from her, muttered something unintelligible, and walked on. All hope of pardon had vanished; and it was understood that the execution would take place the following day. Foreseeing what in all probability would happen, Mme. de Lavalette had already formed a plan for her husband's escape. One of her associates in the enterprise was an old friend of Lavalette's named Baudus, who, in case of success, had prepared a safe asylum for the prisoner at the house of an old member of the Convention named Bresson, then chief of a division in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The very evening of the day on which she had gone to the Tuileries Mme. de Lavalette was taken to the Conciergerie in a Sedan chair, accompanied by her daughter, a girl of 14, and an old governess. The husband and wife dined together in a separate room; then the countess exchanged clothes with the prisoner. During this time a stupid servant was imprudent enough to say to the porters that they would find their load heavier than when they brought it in; adding, "But there will be 25 louis to pocket." "We are to take away M. de Lavalette, are we?" asked one of the porters. Thereupon he refused to have anything more to do with the affair, and withdrew, but without divulging the secret. Another man was found to replace him. At last, after a painful leave-taking, three women appeared in the lobby of the prison; one of them being in such a state of grief that, covering her face with her handkerchief, she did nothing but sob. The janitor helped her out of the prison without venturing to lift up the veil she wore. Then going to the room which the prisoner had occupied, he saw no one there but Mme. de Lavalette.
[Illustration: ON THE WAY TO THE CENTRAL MARKETS.]
[Illustration: THE FISH MARKET.]
"Ah, madame," he cried, "you have deceived me. I am lost!"
One of the strangest things in connection with this escape was that M. de Lavalette, having been driven off by the friendly Baudus, found shelter with Bresson, who concealed him at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs until the 10th of January, 1816. That day three Englishmen--Mr. Bruce, Captain Hutchinson, and General Sir Robert Wilson--took Lavalette away in the uniform of an English colonel, and conducted him as far as Mons, whence he made for Bavaria, there to find hospitality in the house of his brother-in-law, Eug�ne de Beauharnais.
On hearing of M. de Lavalette's escape, Louis XVIII. could not help exclaiming: "Well, of all of us, Mme. de Lavalette is the only one who has done her duty." After being arrested in the Conciergerie, where she was found wearing the clothes of her husband, the young and heroic woman was in a day or two set free. But the three Englishmen who had conducted Lavalette to Belgium were sentenced to three months' imprisonment, and the janitor to two years'. Soon afterwards the reason of Mme. de Lavalette, who in all her troubles had shown the greatest presence of mind, gave way; and when in 1822 her husband received his pardon and came back to France, she could no longer recognise him. She continued in her sad condition until 1855, when she died.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE MONT-DE-PI�T�, RUE CAPRON.]
[Illustration: THE GENERAL POST OFFICE.]
The interesting "Memoirs" published by Lavalette were chiefly based on documents collected and notes made by his unhappy wife.
[Illustration: THE POSTE RESTANTE.]
The office of postmaster-general does not as a rule expose its holder to any of the dangers incurred by M. de Lavalette. It demands from him nothing more than a certain talent for organisation and administration. The postal services of all the countries in Europe are now for the most part conducted on the same plan, and offer to the public the same advantages. The English penny postage system, whose principle consisted less in the lowness than in the uniformity of the new charge for letter-carrying, has been adopted throughout the civilised world; and since the days of Sir Rowland Hill many innovations and improvements have been introduced in France and in Germany which afterwards found imitation in England. It is undeniable, however, that the most important reformations in connection with postal communications were first made in this country. It was not until nearly a year after the introduction of post-cards in England that, on the proposition of Count Bismarck, only a few weeks before the war of 1870, they were adopted in Germany, which may claim to be the first country that used post-cards, or, indeed, a regular postal service of any kind, in an enemy's country while hostilities were actually going on. The post-card was adopted by the French Chamber in 1872 on the recommendation of M. Wolowski, who had previously published an interesting pamphlet on the subject. After speaking of the great variety of purposes for which the post-card is employed in England, the celebrated economist went on to consider whether the use of post-cards could have an injurious effect on epistolary style. He decided that by imposing brevity it lent itself to conciseness, and that, forced to express himself in narrow limits, the writer on a post-card was bound to be terse, if not epigrammatic. The style, however, of correspondents making use of post-cards is probably not more lapidary than that of ordinary letter-writers. According to M. Wolowski, the circulation of post-cards in England amounted, in 1871, only a year or two after their first introduction, to 75 millions--nearly a million and a half per week. At the post-offices of France, as of England, money may be deposited at interest, lives insured, and annuities purchased; but in France, as in England, the Government hesitates to adopt the German device, by which tradesmen can send goods through the post with an obligation imposed on the postman to collect at the destination of the goods the money due upon them.
The Place des Victoires, which we have previously passed, is close to the General Post Office; close also to two other edifices of commercial and financial importance, the Bourse and the Bank of France. Formerly the Place des Victoires was remarkable for its historic houses, many of which no longer exist. Here stood the mansion where, in 1653, Marshal de l'H�pital married Fran�oise Marie Mignot, a simple grisette, or shop girl, who, after the Marshal's death, became the wife of Sobieski, King of Poland and Abb� of Saint-Germain des Pr�s. Up to the time of the Revolution the Place des Victoires was inhabited only by important noblemen or rich financiers. It is now given up entirely to commerce, wholesale and retail; silks, shawls, drapery, and haberdashery of all kinds being largely traded in.
The mansion of Marshal de l'H�pital became the first abode, in 1803, of the Bank of France, where, in virtue of an Imperial decree, it was permanently established five years afterwards. Founded in 1800 by a society of capitalists, who had collected 30 millions of francs, the Bank of France obtained in 1803 the privilege of issuing notes. The notes of the Bank of France now in circulation are of the value of more than three milliards (i.e., 3,000 millions) of francs; to meet which an equal amount of gold and silver are kept in the cellars.
The name of the Secretary of State, de la Vrilli�re, for whom the mansion, afterwards occupied by Marshal de l'H�pital, was originally built, is still preserved in the title of the remarkable and picturesque Rue de la Vrilli�re. Little more need be said about that portion of Paris which separates the quarter of the markets from the Seine; though here and there many a house might be pointed out which suggests interesting associations. Thus, in the Rue Saint-Honor�, at the corner of the Rue Sauval, is a butcher's shop surmounted by an inscription to the effect that in this house Moli�re was born "in 1620." To be quite accurate, he was born in 1622, not in the house which bears the announcement of his birth, but in one on the same site, which long ago fell into ruin.
Close by is the Rue de l'Arbre Sec, where at one time lived the famous Mme. de Saint-Huberty, for whom in opera, as for Mdlle. Sall� in ballet, Mdlle. Clairon in tragedy, and Mme. Favart in comedy and comic opera, is claimed the honour of having played parts for the first time in the costumes historically appropriate to them. The costumes worn at that time on the French stage (nor were they much better on our own) were simply ludicrous. But the public was accustomed to them, and the managers found it more economical to keep to costumes already in the wardrobe than to order new ones for every fresh piece. Actresses representing queens were entitled to two trains and two pages, who followed them everywhere. "Nothing is more amusing," writes a critic of the time, "nothing more comic, than the perpetual movement of these little rascals, who have to run after the actress when she is tearing about the stage in moments of distress. Their activity keeps them in a constant state of perspiration. Their embarrassment, their blunders, excite general laughter. Thus, a farce is always going on, which diverts the spectator in an agreeable manner if the situation is too touching or too sad." When she appeared as Dido, Mme. de Saint-Huberty would have no little boy running after her--ready to pursue her even to the funeral pyre. She at the same time threw off the conventional train and all the trappings which had habitually accompanied it, to appear only in the tunic designed for her by an artist of the period who had studied arch�ology. The operatic directors strongly objected to the introduction of arch�ologists and other costly pretenders into their domain. "If," one director is accused of saying, "this fury for truthfulness of costume only enabled us to save a little money! But, on the contrary, models must be brought in, men of learning consulted, artists paid; and all this costs money, much more money than the dresses to which we are accustomed. Besides, when the piece is laid aside, all the costumes appropriate to it must be laid aside too." M. de la Fert�, the Intendant of the Opera, says in one of his letters on this subject:--"I have just ordered Saint-Huberty's dress. This is terrible. The consulting committee of the Opera held one day a special general meeting to consider whether Mme. de Saint-Huberty could really be allowed to have the costume she desired for the part of Armida." "Madame de Saint-Huberty," said the report on the subject addressed to the Minister, "has sent us the design of a dress she requires for the character of Armida. The committee, considering that this character in which Mme. de Saint-Huberty has not yet been seen, might give to the work the charm of novelty, and procure for the Opera advantageous receipts during a series of representations, has thought it right to agree to Mme. de Saint-Huberty's expressed wish; the more so as she has no objection to share the part with Mdlle. Levasseur, it being arranged that in case of illness the costume made for this opera shall be worn by the substitutes, as well as by Mme. de Saint-Huberty herself."
[Illustration: THE PUBLIC HALL, GENERAL POST OFFICE.]
In the margin of the report the following observation of the Minister appears:--"Good for this time only, and without the establishment of a precedent. All the members of the company must, without distinction, wear the dresses furnished to them by the administration of the Opera, so long as they are considered in a fit state to be worn."
[Illustration: THE TELEPHONE ROOM AT THE GENERAL POST OFFICE.]
"You must be convinced," wrote M. de la Fert� to Mme. de Saint-Huberty on another occasion, "of our desire to satisfy you in all reasonable things and to be generally agreeable to you. But, at the same time, you ought to understand that you are obliged to conform to established rules like all the other members of the company, and like those who played the first parts before you; for if, instead of accepting the appointed costume, each one wished to dress according to individual taste, the result would be hopeless confusion, together with an expenditure both useless and ruinous for the King and for the Opera."
[Illustration: PLACE DES VICTOIRES.]
The end of this celebrated representative of tragic personages was tragic indeed. After marrying Count d'Antraigues, engaged in secret diplomacy on behalf of the exiled royal family, she went with her husband to England, where they lived together for many years, the Count being during this time in constant relations with the Foreign Office, until in July, 1812, they both fell victims to a murderous attack on the part of one of their servants.
A faithful account of the horrible affair appeared in the Times of July 23rd, 1812, from which the following may be extracted:--
"The Count and Countess d'Antraigues, members of the French noblesse, and distantly related to the unfortunate family of the Bourbons, resided," says the English newspaper, "on Barnes Terrace, on the banks of the Thames. They lived in a style which, though far from what they had formerly moved in, yet was rather bordering on high life than the contrary. They kept a carriage, footman, coachman, and a servant out of livery. The latter was an Italian or Piedmontese, named Lawrence; and it is of this wretch that we have to relate the following particulars. The Count and Countess, intending to visit London yesterday, ordered the carriage to be at the door by eight in the morning, which it accordingly was; and soon after that hour they were in the act of leaving the house to get into it, the Countess being at the door, the Count coming downstairs, when the report of a pistol was heard in the passage, which, it has since appeared, took no effect; nor was it then ascertained by whom it was fired. Lawrence was at this time in the passage, and, on the smoke subsiding, was seen to rush past the Count and proceed with great speed upstairs. He almost instantly returned with a dirk in his hand, and plunged it up to the hilt into the Count's left shoulder; he continued his course and made for the street door, where stood the Countess, whom he instantly despatched by plunging the same dirk into her left breast. This last act had scarcely been completed when the Count appeared also at the door, bleeding, and following the assassin, who made for the house and ran upstairs. The Count, though extremely weak and faint, continued to follow him; but so great was the terror occasioned that no one else had the same resolution. The assassin and the Count had not been upstairs more than a minute when the report of another pistol was heard, which satisfied those below that Lawrence had finally put an end to the existence of his master. The alarm was now given, and the cry of 'Murder, murder!' resounded from every mouth. The Countess was still lying at the front door, by which the turnpike road runs, and at length men of sufficient resolution were found to venture upstairs, and, horrible to relate, they found the Count lying across his own bed, groaning heavily, and nearly dead, and the bloodthirsty villain lying by his side a corpse. He had put a period to his own existence by placing a pistol that he found in the room in his mouth, and discharging its contents through his head. The Count only survived about twenty-five minutes after the fatal blow, and died without being able to utter a single word.
"The Countess had by this time been brought into the house; the wound was directly on her left breast, extremely large, and she died without uttering a single word. The servants of the house were all collected last night, but no cause for so horrid an act was at that time known--all was but conjecture.
"The following circumstances in so extraordinary a case may be, however, worth while relating. The Count, it appears, always kept a brace of pistols loaded in his bedroom and a small dirk. About a month ago the Countess and the servants heard the report of a pistol upstairs, and were in consequence greatly alarmed. When one of the latter, a female, went upstairs and looked into her mistress's room, it was full of smoke, and she screamed out. On its clearing away she saw Lawrence standing, who told her nothing was the matter--he had only fired one of his master's pistols. It afterwards appeared that he had fired into the wainscot; it was loaded with ball, and the ball from the pistol is yet to be seen.
"The Count and Countess were about sixty years of age. The latter was highly accomplished, a great proficient in music, and greatly admired for her singing in fashionable parties. There is no reason whatever to believe that Lawrence was insane. Only about ten minutes previous to his committing this deed of blood, he went over to an adjoining public-house and took a glass of gin. He had lived only three months in the family, and, report says, was to be discharged in a few days.
"The Count and Countess had resided in Barnes for four or five years, and have left an only son, who, we understand, is at present in this country, studying the law.
"Besides his house on Barnes Terrace, Count d'Antraigues had a town establishment, No. 7, Queen Anne Street, W. He was fifty-six and the Countess fifty-three years of age. The Count had eminently distinguished himself in the troubles which have convulsed Europe for the last twenty-two years. In 1789 he was actively engaged in favour of the Revolution, but during the tyranny of Robespierre he emigrated to Germany, and was employed in the service of Russia. At Venice in 1797 he was arrested by Bernadotte, at the order of Bonaparte, who pretended to have discovered in his portfolio all the particulars of the plot upon which the 18th Fructidor was founded. The Count made his escape from Milan, where he was confined, and was afterwards employed in the diplomatic mission of Russia at the Court of Dresden. In 1806 he was sent to England with credentials from the Emperor of Russia, who had granted him a pension, and placed great dependence upon his services. He received here letters of denization, and was often employed by the Government. The Countess was the once celebrated Mme. de Saint-Huberty, an actress of the Th��tre Fran�ais. She had amassed a very large fortune by her professional talents."
The Rue de l'Arbre Sec--Dr. Guillotin--Dr. Louis--The Guillotine--The First Political Execution.
The street in which Mme. de Saint-Huberty lived, besides suggesting her fatal end, is connected with a whole series of tragedies. The Street of the Dry Tree--Rue de l'Arbre Sec--recalls, by its picturesque name, the fact that here at one time stood the tree from which hung, as fruit, the bodies of capital offenders. In ancient days, and until the great epoch of the Revolution, hanging was the ordinary punishment in France for felony, though an exception was made in favour of high-born criminals, whose aristocratic origin entitled them to be decapitated. The modern method, indeed, of execution in France is primarily due to a Republican determination not to recognise inequalities, even in the manner of the death-punishment. It is certain that Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, in introducing the too-celebrated invention which is named after him, was actuated by a spirit of impartiality in the first instance, and by humanity in the second.
With the legend, perhaps, of Phalaris and his bull running in their heads, many Frenchmen persist, even to this day, in believing that the inventor of the guillotine was the first victim to fall beneath its blade. As a matter of fact, he survived for upwards of twenty years the introduction of that machine which earned for him so odious a reputation that in the autobiography he left behind not a word, significantly enough, is said about the guillotine.
We have seen that under the ancient r�gime one of the privileges of the nobleman was, in case of execution, to have his head chopped off--a method of punishment held to be more honourable than hanging, which, reserved for plebeian offenders, lent to the execution a character of infamy. To die at the end of a rope was not only a blot on the memory of the offender, but involved his whole family in lasting disgrace.
The principle of equality in the eye of the law, which came beneath the consideration of the Assembly in 1789, naturally included the equality of criminal punishment; which ought to vary according to the offence, but not according to the social rank of the offender. On the 10th of October in the year mentioned Dr. Guillotin moved in the Assembly, where he sat as one of the representatives for Paris, that the executioner should be rendered an impartial functionary, putting all his victims to death in the same fashion and by means of some mechanical apparatus. When he had put this motion he went on to propose the idea of a machine, rapid in action, which would diminish the sufferings of capital offenders. His motion was carried unanimously; but the suggestion as to the machine was reserved for future discussion. It was during this debate that Dr. Guillotin, vehemently advocating the instrument of death which hitherto existed only in his own mind, exclaimed, in an unguarded moment: "With my machine I will cut your head off in a twinkling, and without your suffering a twinge." There was a general roar of laughter. But the hilarity of the Assembly seems tragic enough when we remember how many of those who laughed were destined to perish by that insatiable weapon which as yet had neither name nor form.
As a matter of fact, the worthy doctor, a man already at this time famed for his philanthropy, did not invent, but only suggested, the guillotine. By the expression, "my machine," he simply meant such a machine as the authorities, if they profited by his vague idea, would cause to be constructed. He had proposed nothing more than the principle of decapitation, whilst indicating in general terms the various instruments anciently employed for the purpose in different countries. Nevertheless, the whole nation was soon laughing at him, his exclamation being made the text of endless pleasantries. People were intensely amused at this notion of cutting off one's head in a twinkling from philanthropy. The instrument was christened long before it had been invented, and with the name of the unhappy doctor. A clever song was dashed off at the time, telling how a certain M. Guillotin, doctor and politician, woke up one fine morning and discovered that the custom of hanging was unpatriotic; how he immediately hit upon a method of punishment which, without rope or stake, would be so effective as to throw the executioner out of employment; and how the machine which the doctor indicated could bear no fitter name than the guillotine.
[Illustration: RUE DE LE VRILLI�RE.]
It was this song, perhaps, which really fixed the name of the deadly weapon. So far, however, the Assembly, as we have seen, had come to no decision on the subject, having simply decreed the principle of equality in criminal punishments. The question of the mode of execution was entrusted for discussion to a special committee. On the 21st of September, 1791, after lengthy debate, the Assembly adopted the new penal code, of which one clause provided that every criminal sentenced to death should have his head cut off. The method of decapitation now remained to be decided. Hitherto the instrument employed had been the sword or the axe. This ghastly operation had been performed on a block, and clumsiness or emotion on the part of the executioner had sometimes caused the victim indescribably horrible tortures. Instances had occurred in which the criminal's head had not been severed from his body till the sixth or seventh stroke.
This question greatly preoccupied the Assembly. Ministers openly expressed the horror with which decapitation by the sword inspired them; and the executioner himself published, in reference to the disadvantages of this method, a number of observations tinged with similar abhorrence. At length the Committee of Legislation called upon the celebrated surgeon Louis to draw up a report on the subject, indicating the fittest methods for cutting off a person's head rapidly and according to the principles of science.
The witty Sophie Arnould, meeting once, as she walked through a wood, some physician of her acquaintance, with a gun under his arm, inquired of him: "Do you not find your prescriptions sufficient?" and it seems droll enough that, whilst the mission of doctors is, theoretically at least, to preserve life, a surgeon should have been selected by the Assembly to prescribe the fastest method of taking it. Yet, after all, the selection was prompted by humanity; for the infliction of death is a sufficiently sad necessity of State without the addition of needless torture. Dr. Louis in any case drew up his report, and presented it to the Assembly on the 20th of March, 1792. He set forth, in the first place, that cutting instruments are in reality nothing but saws of a more or less fine description, having very little effect when they strike perpendicularly, and that it was consequently necessary in executions to apply them in an oblique and gliding fashion. Adopting, therefore, the idea propounded by Guillotin--whom he did not even name in the report--he maintained that decapitation, in order to be surely effected, must be the direct act, not of a man, but of a machine, the adoption of which he now recommended. He mentioned a machine then employed in England which was, in fact, a rude sort of guillotine, and suggested several improvements in connection with it. Nor, indeed, was the notion of such an instrument by any means new. Some very old German prints exist representing executions performed in a similar fashion. The Italians employed in the sixteenth century, for the beheading of noble criminals, a machine called the mannaja, consisting of two upright posts, between which was fixed a sliding knife or cleaver, of great weight, designed to descend with enormous force and velocity on the neck of the prisoner leaning over a block below.
Dr. Louis did not content himself with preparing this report. He hired a German mechanician, named Schmidt, to construct at his directions a machine which, after a succession of improvements, was definitely adopted. The first experiments were made at Bic�tre, on animals--which reminds one inevitably of Mr. W. S. Gilbert's executioner, who resolved first to practise on inferior beasts, and then to work his way up through the whole of animate creation until he was artist enough to behead a king. Schmidt, by the way, charged the State 824 livres (francs) for constructing those earliest machines, undertaking, moreover, to superintend their installation in the various departments.
Originally the new instrument was sometimes called the Louisette, after the name of its actual creator. But guillotine was already the common title, and it soon became universal, as well as technical and official. Dr. Guillotin seems never to have protested against this appellation, though it is probable that during the troubles which were so close at hand he would fain have divested himself of the infamy which enshrouded him. As to Dr. Louis, he was fortunate enough not to witness a single political execution, for he died on the 20th of May, 1792.
The guillotine took its first human life on the 25th of April, 1792. The subject was a highwayman named Nicolas-Jacques-Pelletier. The Chronique de Paris said next day of this execution:--"The novelty of the execution had considerably enlarged that crowd of people whom a barbarous pity is wont to draw to these sad spectacles. The new machine has been justly preferred to the old methods of execution. It does not stain any man's hand with the murder of his fellow, and the promptitude with which it strikes the criminal is in the spirit of law, which may often be severe, but ought never to be cruel."
The first political execution took place on the night of 21st August, 1792, at ten o'clock, to the flare of torches. The victim was Louis David Collenot d'Agremont, put to death for having been seen amongst the enemies of the people on the eventful day of the 10th August. This execution marked the commencement of an era of relentless and bloody feuds; but it was not until the establishment of the revolutionary tribunal, on 7th April, 1793, that the guillotine began to ply its deadly blade in such fearful earnest. From that moment to the 28th July the total number of persons executed was 2,625.
The earliest political executions had for their scene the Place du Carrousel, whilst ordinary criminals continued to be decapitated on the Place de Gr�ve. On the 10th May, 1793, the Convention, sitting then at the Tuileries, just opposite the ugly guillotine, called upon the Executive Council to choose another site. The Commune selected the Place de la R�volution (Concorde), where the guillotine was in operation until the 12th June, 1794. It was then erected in the Place du Tr�ne. Some persons had suggested the Bastille; but in the eyes of the people this was a place which had acquired an almost sacred character. Under the Empire and the Restoration the guillotine stood on the Place de Gr�ve, and under Louis Philippe at the Barri�re St. Jacques, whilst to-day it is transferred to the Place de la Roquette.
During the Reign of Terror the French nation was so familiarised with the idea of violent death that executions did not produce the same feeling of horror as at ordinary times. And now the real character of the Frenchman began to assert itself. In the gaols it became a favourite diversion with the prisoners to "play at the guillotine." People gave burlesque names to the horrible machine, such as "national razor," etc. It is even said that ear-rings in the shape of miniature guillotines were now largely worn by fashionable ladies. Within their Paris mansions aristocrats were accustomed to kill the time by means of a toy guillotine, which was placed on the table during dessert. Beneath this instrument were passed in succession several puppets, whose heads, representing those of leading Paris magistrates, liberated from the hollow trunk, as they rolled off the block, a red liquid like blood. All present, and especially the ladies, thereupon saturated their handkerchiefs with the fluid, which contained a highly agreeable scent.
Under the Government of the Commune of Paris, the mob seized the guillotine and burnt it in the open street. Of late years the Paris executioner has distinctly improved the instrument. The scaffold, which was once an adjunct to it, has quite disappeared, and the criminal has no longer to climb a rude staircase before placing himself beneath the knife.
The Executioner--His Taxes and Privileges--Monsieur de Paris--Victor of N�mes.
The executioner is one of the most curious, interesting, and important figures in the history of France in general and of Paris in particular. Going back to the thirteenth century, we find that there already existed an individual whose duty it was to whip, hang, behead, break on the wheel, and burn in the name of the law. He was then called the Executioner of High Justice, and every bailiwick possessed such a functionary. An ordinance of 1264 against blasphemers provides that "anyone who has offended by word or deed shall be beaten, naked, with rods; that is to say, men by a man, and women by a woman, without the presence of any man." Hence some historians have inferred that the office of bourrelle, or female executioner, existed. This is an error; though it is quite true that the wife or the daughter of the bourreau was usually preferred for the duty of whipping female misdemeanants. As to the rest, an elaborate apprenticeship had to be gone through by the executioner before he was deemed fit for his work, the law stipulating that he must be competent to whip, quarter, break on the wheel, fork, clip off ears, gibbet, dismember, and so forth. For a long time the executioner wore a special costume--a cassock wrought in the colours peculiar to the town in which he operated, and bearing in front the representation of a gibbet, and, behind, that of the scaffold staircase--emblems somewhat too obvious of his infamous profession. So soon as the office of bourreau was permanently established, large taxes were enfeoffed to him, and the executioners of France now became so jealous of their prerogatives that one of them in 1560 sued a gentleman at law because, seizing a thief who tried to take his purse, he had drawn his sword and cut off the rascal's ear. In thus acting the gentleman was accused of having infringed on the executioner's rights and invaded his profession, the ear technically belonging to the executioner as one of his perquisites. No less curious than manifold were the taxes and privileges of all kinds enjoyed by this functionary. When he performed an execution on the domain of a monastery he was entitled, amongst other things, to the head of a pig; and the Abb� of Saint-Germain paid him an annual tax of this kind. The heads, moreover, of any pigs found straying in the streets or highways of Paris belonged to the executioner. During the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries the Parisians had permitted their pigs to stroll about in the public thoroughfares; but when the son of Louis le Gros was killed by a fall from his horse, which had stumbled over one of these wandering animals, it was forbidden thenceforth to allow them outside their owners' premises--though an exception was made in favour of the monks of Saint-Antoine, who were still at liberty to let out their pigs, which were distinguished by a peculiar mark on the ear. Any pig found walking abroad without this mark was now seized by the executioner, who could demand either its head, or, in lieu thereof, four sous. Another of his curious privileges was to levy a tax on young women leading objectionable lives. He received duty, moreover, on the goods vended by different classes of shopkeepers, and could walk into their shops and help himself to a certain fraction of their stock. Still more extraordinary than any hitherto mentioned was the tax he levied on all sick persons living in the suburbs of Paris, who were compelled to pay him four sous apiece every quarter. Some of the tolls taken at bridges went into his pocket. He was permitted to despoil the criminals he put to death. At first he could only take possession of what they had upon them above the girdle; but ultimately he obtained everything. Besides the innumerable imposts and perquisites of all kinds belonging to his office, he received a fixed fee for each execution. This, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, was 15 sous. In 1721 his taxes were for the most part abolished, and in lieu thereof an annual salary of 16,000 francs was assigned to him; though, out of this sum, he had to keep two assistants. In 1793 the National Convention entirely reformed the criminal legislation so far as concerned the executioner. By a decree of 13th June it decided that there should be an executioner to every department of the Republic. He was to be remunerated at the expense of the State. In towns with a population not exceeding 50,000 he was to receive a salary of 2,400 francs, besides another 1,600 francs for two assistants (in the departments), or 4,000 francs for four assistants (at Paris). In the French capital today the bourreau has a fixed salary of 5,000 francs, and 10,000 francs for the maintenance of his formidable machine.
The executioner is still regarded in France with much of the abhorrence which has always been felt for him; but although he is an outcast from the ordinary world, admission to churches, theatres, promenades, and public places generally is not to-day, as it once was, denied to him. Whenever his place becomes vacant there is a rush of candidates for it more multitudinous and more eager than for any other State office whatsoever. To be "Monsieur de Paris," as the executioner is styled, seems the pinnacle of ambition with only too large a section of the public. Once, indeed, the post of bourreau, although not, as some have imagined, hereditary, remained long in the same family; and that of Sanson produced seven generations of executioners, from 1688 to 1847. The post has seldom been a sinecure, and it was particularly far from being so during the centuries which followed the thirteenth. Thence, until the eighteenth, the executioner was a terribly busy man, hanging, quartering, and otherwise judicially massacring with scarcely a cessation. Kings with many enemies would sometimes make a pet of him. Louis XI. took a particular fancy to Tristan, whom he called his colleague. This man, by the way, had a genius for his ghastly business, chopping off heads with a dexterity well calculated to excite the favour of a king who had determined that all heads should fall which were difficult to bend.
It was not only upon the persons of criminals that the executioner had to operate. He was sometimes required to burn or behead dummies representing offenders who had eluded capture. Peter the Cruel, King of Castile, having killed one of his subjects, was condemned to death. But as the person of the king was sacred, he was only executed in effigy, the bourreau beheading with his sword an image intended to represent him.
The public executioner has generally been more loathed in France than even in England. And justly so; for in the former country his work for many centuries has been peculiarly infamous, not to say diabolical. In the present day, it is true, "Monsieur de Paris" simply touches a button and his victim, without a struggle or a pang, is no more. But he was not always so humane. Once it was his own hand that dealt slow death and inflicted fiendish torture. It was he who quartered the condemned wretch--who attached horses, that is to say, to his legs and arms, and then drove them in four different directions. It was he who burned or broke on the wheel--the latter an indescribably ghastly operation, in which he used an iron bar to break almost every bone in the victim's body. It is not surprising, therefore, that even to-day "Monsieur de Paris," with such a history behind him, should be the object of a detestation which Ketch himself, or Marwood, failed to excite.
The Revolution of 1789, although it swept away his privileges, completely rehabilitated that bourreau whose services it was so frequently to require; and a decree of the Convention decided that thenceforth this functionary should be admitted to the rank of officer in the army. It was even proposed to confer upon him, as executioner, a new and finer title--that of "National Avenger"; and M. Matton de la Varenne was quite eloquent in his praise. "What would become of society?" he said; "of what use would be the judges, of what avail authority, if an active and legitimate force did not exist to avenge outrages committed upon citizens whom it is the care of the law to protect? If the punishment of the guilty is dishonourable to those who administer it, the magistrate who has pronounced the sentence, the notary who has drawn it up, the protractor and the criminal lieutenant who cause it to be executed beneath their eyes should bear part of the dishonour. Why should he who puts the last hand to the work be reputed infamous for duties which are simply the complement of those of the magistrate?" The argument was specious enough; but the difference between the two functionaries named is, after all, precisely the difference existing between a civic corporation which decrees that its town shall be kept clean, and the scavenger whom it hires to scrape the streets.
However, the bourreau became for a time an influential and admired personage. He was sometimes invited to dine at distinguished tables, and embraced as a favourite guest. Ultimately he figured as an autobiographer. The last of the Sansons wrote his own memoirs, together with those of his ancestors, executioners like himself. By no means the least curious fact in the history of the bourreau is that, in former days, he killed with one hand and healed with the other. He was a physician, that is to say; and at his dispensary, in the intervals between his murderous operations, he dealt out medicines to poor people who flocked to him for advice. By far the most famous of these medical bourreaux was Victor of N�mes. His scientific reputation spread even beyond the boundaries of France. One day an Englishman called upon him for a consultation. This patient had a twisted neck, and had come over to place himself under the treatment of the once-famous school of Montpelier. After having endured all sorts of experiments, he found that his head showed no sign of resuming its normal position, and therefore, wishing his tormentors good day, he went on to Victor. "Can you cure me?" he inquired. The executioner examined him, and then said: "It is a simple case of torticolis. Nothing is easier than to cure you if you will confide in me, and do whatever I command." The Englishman consented; and after certain preliminaries both surgeon and patient passed from the consulting-room into a more retired apartment. That Victor, besides being a surgeon, was a humorist, seems beyond question. The room now entered was remarkable for nothing in particular--with one exception, namely, that from the ceiling hung a rope, at the end of which was a noose. The doctor ordered his patient to put his head in this noose. For a long time the Englishman hesitated and protested; ultimately he obeyed. Then Victor tightened the noose, hoisted his subject high up in the air, and, using the victim's legs as a kind of trapeze, went through the most frightful gymnastic exercises. At the end of a quarter of an hour--a mauvais quart d'heure for our countryman--the performance concluded, and the patient was let down--cured.
[Illustration: IN P�RE-LACHAISE.]
The Cemeteries of Clamart and Picpus--P�re-Lachaise--La Villette and Chaumont--The Conservatoire--Rue Laffitte--The Rothschilds--Montmartre--Clichy.
Before crossing the river to the left bank, we must say a few words about some of those districts of Paris which are reached naturally, and as a matter of course, by the great thoroughfares; the ancient estate, for instance, of Mont-Louis, where, for the last two centuries, has been established the cemetery known as P�re-Lachaise.
The cemeteries of Paris may be distinguished locally, or by the special character belonging to several of them. Each important district has its own cemetery: that of Montmartre, for instance, on the north, that of Mont-Parnasse on the south of Paris. The cemetery of Clamart was reserved, until the Revolution, for the bodies, dissected or undissected, of those who had died in hospital. It is now the last resting-place of criminals who have passed beneath the guillotine. The Picpus cemetery, at present a more or less private cemetery in which only privileged persons are buried, was formerly a place of interment for those who had distinguished themselves in insurrections and civil wars. There reposes La Fayette in the earth of the locality mingled with earth sent from America, in memory of the important part played by La Fayette in the American War of Independence.
P�re-Lachaise, the most celebrated and most interesting of all the cemeteries, owes its name to the famous confessor of Louis XIV., who proposed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes--the edict which accorded a certain toleration to the Protestants of France--and who celebrated the secret marriage of Louis XIV. to Mme. de Maintenon. Father Lachaise was a Jesuit with whom the idea of toleration could find no favour. The Duke de Saint-Simon, in his famous memoirs, gives a very favourable account of him, and while describing him as a "strong Jesuit," adds that he was "neither fanatical nor fawning." Although he advised the king to revoke the Edict of Nantes, he was no party to the active persecution by which the revocation was followed.
The burial-ground of P�re-Lachaise occupies the ancient domain of Mont-Louis, a property given to Father Lachaise by the king, and which in time became known exclusively by the name of its owner. It is for the most part an aristocratic cemetery. Although it contains monuments characterised by a solemnity befitting the idea of eternity, it is by no means the depressing, melancholy, awe-inspiring place which one might expect so vast a necropolis to be. On the one side wealth lies buried, on the other indigence. In juxtaposition to magnificent monuments, shaded with shrubs and graced with flowers, is the common trench, formed by two immense dikes dug in a sterile soil, where the poor sleep their last. There nothing but cold and dreary solitude meets the eye; whilst a few paces off stand Gothic chapels, sarcophagi, pyramids, obelisks, and artistic emblems of every kind--objects expressive, for the most part, of posthumous pride. Here social distinctions are marked with an ostentation painful to see: titles, coats of arms, escutcheons appearing in the marble or the stone. As to the inscriptions, these, written in a variety of styles--now pompous, now epigrammatic, now melodramatic--are frequently fantastic and seldom appropriate. Common to all the epitaphs, however widely they differ in other respects, is the uniform virtue which they ascribe to their subjects. In this connection a few words from the caustic pen of M. Benjamin Gastineau deserve reproduction. "At P�re-Lachaise," he says, "you find nothing but good fathers, good mothers, good brothers, good husbands, faithful wives, true friends, noble hearts, angels flown to heaven, white flowers, chaste spouses, seraphim of perfection. Not a traitor, not a coward, not a hypocrite, not a knave, not an egotist!"
The tombs of P�re-Lachaise are frequently remarkable, not merely as fine specimens--or even masterpieces--of sculptural art, but on account of the illustrious personages who slumber beneath them. The magnificent tomb of H�loise and Abailard would justify a page of description, whilst the story of their romantic love sufficed, as we know, to inspire even the frigid pen of Alexander Pope with passion. From this ancient tomb a few steps will take the visitor into the company of the illustrious dead of a later day. Here is the monument of Frederick Souli�, the vehement and impassioned novelist--a simple marble slab, surmounted by a cross, and eloquently inscribed with his mere name. The tomb of the composer Chopin is not far off. In the front appears a medallion portrait of this brilliant genius, whilst, on the tomb itself, Cleslinger has sculptured a poetic figure, breaking the lyre he bears, and in an attitude of profound despair. Hard by is the tomb of Vivant Denon. Upon it his statue, by Cartelier, stands, still smiling with that smile which, as a French historian has ingeniously said, "pleased, turn by turn, Louis XV., Mme. de Pompadour, Voltaire, Louis XVI., Robespierre, and Napoleon."
The most sumptuous monument in the cemetery is that of the Russian Princess, Demidoff. Its height is prodigious. Its semi-Oriental architecture, at once severe and beautiful, is highly imposing. It consists of a rich temple adorned with ten columns of white Carrara marble, supporting a magnificent canopy. On the sarcophagus rests a crown. This monument is said to have cost 120,000 francs.
The stage is represented in this silent city. Here sleeps Mlle. Duchenois, once the rival of Mlle. Georges. At no great distance from where she lies a chapel stands over the remains of the last great C�lim�ne, Mlle. Mars; whilst the name inscribed on a little sarcophagus in the Greek style shows us that even Talma had to die.
Among the host of illustrious names inscribed on the stones of P�re-Lachaise must be mentioned those of Laharpe, Beaumarchais, Moli�re, and La Fontaine. The relics of the two last were transferred to this cemetery at the same time as those of H�loise. Nor, finally, can we forget the monument raised to the famous General Foy. In the inscription which it bears an ingenious and eloquent use is made of the General's celebrated utterance in the Chamber of Representatives: "Yesterday I said I would not yield except to force. To-day I come to keep my word."
The cemetery of P�re-Lachaise has two special quarters: one reserved for Protestants, the other for Jews. The monuments of the former present, by their austere simplicity, a striking contrast to the elegant or sumptuous mausoleums in the Catholic burial-ground. Most of the tombs bear, as their sole emblem, a representation of the Bible, open at a page reflecting upon the ultimate way of all flesh. The Jewish cemetery is situated behind the monument of H�loise and Abailard. On entering it the visitor sees, to the right, a funeral chapel in the Greek style, which is the tomb of Rachel. Further on, to the left, is that of the Rothschild family.
Lastly, at the summit of the hill of P�re-Lachaise, covering an area newly annexed, is the Mussulman cemetery, provided with a mosque. The Princess of Oude and one of her relatives were its first occupants.
On the 27th of May, 1871, P�re-Lachaise became the scene of a horrible slaughter. Five days previously the Army of Versailles had penetrated into Paris. The troops of the Commune, despite a desperate resistance, had had to withdraw to one or two points of retreat: among others to P�re-Lachaise. On the 27th some battalions of Marines, forming part of the corps of General Vinoy, invaded the cemetery. There was a fearful hand-to-hand fight over the tombs. Into the very vaults the marines pursued the insurgents who had spiked their guns and fled. Two days afterwards the cemetery was a litter of broken weapons, empty bottles, and other profane rubbish.
During the last few years a corner of the cemetery of P�re-Lachaise has been set apart for cremations. Paris, which claims to be first in so many things and which is so often justified in these pretensions, did not establish a crematorium until long after the city of Milan had done so.
To the north of P�re-Lachaise extend the hillsides of M�nilmontant and Belleville, commanding, from innumerable points, a magnificent view, and memorable for the defence of Paris conducted from these heights in 1814. Belleville is the scene of more than one remarkable incident in the novels of Paul de Kock, the Maid of Belleville being as much associated with this suburban eminence as the Maid of Orleans with that of Montmartre. The vast region of Belleville and M�nilmontant is chiefly inhabited by the workpeople of Paris, who have here their headquarters. Close at hand is the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, communicating in a direct line with the Rue Saint-Antoine--street and faubourg both celebrated in the annals of popular insurrection. The streets and faubourgs of Saint-Denis and Saint-Martin belong equally to the workmen's quarter, which includes, moreover, La Villette and Chaumont, with its quarries. Here all the vagabonds and malefactors of Paris used at one time to seek refuge. Napoleon III., who systematically made war upon this class of the population, cleared the Buttes Chaumont and caused the slopes to be covered with picturesque gardens. In the valley is an artificial lake fed by one of the tributaries of the Saint-Martin canal. The gardens of the Buttes Chaumont belong to what used to be known as the District of the Fights, or Quartier des Combats, so called from the fights between dogs and bulls or other animals which here took place until the time of the Revolution. These, with some modifications, were continued up to the first years of Louis Philippe's reign. Here Jules Janin found the subject of his famous novel, "L'�ne mort et la femme guillotin�e"--a story written, according to some, in order to turn into ridicule the sensational novelists of the day; according to others, with the view of attracting and forcing attention by means of exaggerated and monstrous sensationalism.
Returning from the heights which bound Paris on the north, by the Rue du Faubourg Poissonni�re, we find at the corner of this street and of the Rue Berg�re the building in which has existed, since the Revolution, the National Conservatory of Music and Declamation. The great musical academy had its origin in a school of singing and declamation established in 1784 in order to prepare singers for the Op�ra. To this institution was added in 1786 a school of dramatic declamation, which had the honour of producing Talma. But the Conservatory of Music, as it now exists, owes its organisation to the Revolution. Founded in virtue of a decree dated August 3rd, 1795, it had for its first director the illustrious Cherubini, who was replaced by Auber, to whom has succeeded M. Ambroise Thomas, the composer of Mignon and of Hamlet. The students are admitted by competition, and the teaching is gratuitous. Prizes are adjudged every year, and of these the most important is the so-called Prix de Rome, which enables its holder to study for a certain number of years in the great Italian city. The concerts of the Conservatoire are famous throughout Europe; and fortunate indeed is the visitor to Paris who can succeed in obtaining a place at concerts which are supported and attended exclusively (except, of course, in case of forced absence) by permanent subscribers. The orchestra which takes part in these concerts is of the finest quality, the principal instruments being all in the hands of the professors of the establishment--the first instrumentalists, that is to say, of France.
The Rue Laffitte, formerly known as the Rue d'Artois, by which, in the neighbourhood of the Conservatoire, one reaches the best part of the Boulevard, has, since the Revolution of 1830, borne the name of the celebrated banker and politician whose mansion was the rendezvous of the Opposition Deputies during the so-called "days of July." Laffitte is, in some sense, the hero of a charming tale published by the so-called Saint-Germain under the title of "Story of a Pin." At the office of a Paris banker, a young man in search of employment has been refused by reason of there being no vacancy. As, however, he goes away in a dejected mood, he is seen to pick up a pin; and this indication of order and economy has such an effect upon the banker that he is called back and at once appointed to a supplementary chair. It is said that a friend of Laffitte's, also out of employment, hearing of the success of this "pin trick," as he termed it, resolved to try it himself. At the next office where he applied for a situation his conversation and general demeanour so pleased the principal that he was all but engaged, when, in order to determine the matter, he went through the gesture of picking up a pin--which he had held all the time between his fingers. "What was that?" asked the head of the firm. "A pin," was the reply. "A pin?" repeated the principal. "A man who would take a pin out of my office would take a cheque. Good morning, sir."
[Illustration: PARC DES BUTTES CHAUMONT.]
Laffitte was the most generous of millionaires. One of the Rothschilds assured the famous actress Rachel that if he had lent money to everyone who asked him he should at last have had to borrow five francs of her. This was in all probability the mere plea of Dives, unwilling to be too much put upon by Lazarus. Laffitte seems to have been ready to lend to anyone who really deserved assistance; and a strange story is told of his advancing a sum of money to an officer of whom he knew nothing. The officer had been gambling and had lost 5,000 francs which did not belong to him. It was necessary to restore this amount to the regimental chest or be for ever disgraced. Laffitte listened to the officer's story, counted out to him the 5,000 francs, and took a receipt, together with a promise that the money should be repaid at the rate of 250 francs a year. "It will take you a long time to pay it off at that rate," said Laffitte, "and who knows whether you will ever bring me the first instalment?" The officer, however, swore that he would keep his word--and, exactly to the day when the first payment became due, brought to the banker his first 250 francs. Laffitte, however, while complimenting him on his punctuality, declared himself unable to receive such a contemptibly small sum, and told his debtor to keep it for another year, when he must bring him 500. On the officer's return, at the expiration of another twelvemonth, with the increased amount, Laffitte exclaimed: "Yes; I see you are a man of honour. Keep the money and take back your note of hand." It is to be hoped that Heine, living in Paris at the time, heard this story, though he did not profit by its teaching; for it was one of his amusing if cynical maxims, that a man had more chance of getting a loan from a poor friend, anxious to appear better off than he really was, than from a rich one whose pecuniary position was above question.
After the Revolution of 1830 Laffitte was appointed Minister of Finance and President of the Council. This just man could not, however, succeed in pleasing either of the sections into which the Chamber was divided. His own party thought him too lukewarm, too unprogressive, while the Legitimists could not forget his alliance with the party of Revolution.
The Rue Laffitte may well be regarded as the headquarters of finance, for, in addition to the banking-house of Laffitte, the French branch of the Rothschilds has here for more than half a century been domiciled. The Rothschilds of Paris, like those of London, Frankfort, Vienna, and Naples, are descendants of the Mayer-Rothschilds who founded the first of the Rothschild banking-houses at Frankfort a century ago. Born at Frankfort-on-the-Maine in 1743, Mayer Anselm Rothschild belonged to a Jewish family of small means. He received, nevertheless, a good education and studied for some time with the view of becoming a Rabbi. Commerce and finance had, however, greater attractions for him than the Law and the Prophets, and, thanks to his industry and intelligence, he soon found himself the possessor of a small amount of capital. He had established himself in the Juden-gasse; and here, faithfully assisted by his young wife, he occupied himself with dealings of the most varied kinds. He had familiarised himself with financial operations at a bank where he had been engaged as clerk; and after his marriage he quickly became known by his enterprise, honesty, and tact to the great financial houses of Frankfort, Mayence, and Darmstadt, who often entrusted him with important commissions. Mayer Rothschild was forty-six years of age when the French Revolution broke out; and it was in the midst of the troubles caused by this great convulsion that he found his first great opportunity of enriching himself. Immediately after the Reign of Terror, when, in 1794, the French armies were replying to the German invasion by themselves invading Germany, the smaller German princes became panic-stricken, and fled with such haste towards the Elbe that some of them had not time to carry away all their gold. Among the illustrious fugitives was the Elector of Hesse-Cassel, who possessed more ready money than all his brethren of the German Federation united. Finding it imprudent, if not impossible, to take with him in his travelling-carriage heaps of silver and gold, he resolved to place a portion of his treasure in the hands of trustworthy persons, and one of those selected was Mayer Rothschild of Frankfort. Two millions of florins were confided to him on the simple understanding that he should restore the money at the conclusion of peace. The war, however, lasted for years; and during this period the talents confided to the Hebrew banker were not allowed to lie buried in a napkin. He put them out at interest, made loans to the Governments and to the military commanders and commissaries on all sides; speculated, in short, with the money carefully and judiciously, without permitting himself to be influenced by any of the prejudices of patriotism. Ubi bene, ibi patria, was the motto of the Hebrew at the beginning of the century, and naturally enough; for in a privileged society he was without privileges and almost without rights. Every career was closed to him except those of medicine and money-making; and in making money it was enough for the Hebrew to make it lawfully. There is no record of Mayer Rothschild's having lent anything to the French Republic, which had liberated the Jews from every burden, every disability, weighing upon them in other countries. But he made advances to Napoleon and also, with fine impartiality, to England, Napoleon's most consistent foe. Any prince, moreover, reigning or deposed, could, if he possessed the requisite security, count upon the Frankfort financier for pecuniary aid.
When peace was established, the Elector of Hesse-Cassel received back the whole of his capital with a fair amount of interest, and Mayer Rothschild was able to congratulate himself on having benefited alike the Elector and himself.
War had broken out again, and Napoleon had undertaken that campaign against Russia which was to bring him to ruin, when Mayer Rothschild died, like a patriarch, surrounded by his ten children. He had never quitted his house in the Juden-gasse, and, millionaire as he now was, had never abandoned the long, characteristic frock-coat of the Frankfort Jews.
Of the ten children surrounding the bed of the dying financier, five were sons--Anselm, Solomon, Nathan, Charles, and James. In giving them his last blessing he exhorted them to live together in the most perfect harmony: a command which was to be religiously obeyed. The five brothers formed in common an immense banking house, with the central establishment at Frankfort, and four branches at Vienna, London, Naples, and Paris. To undertake no important operation without the consent of all the partners, to be content with a relatively small profit, to leave nothing to chance, to be always punctual and exact--such were the principles by which they were to be guided; and in formally adopting them they took this motto: Concordia, Industria, Integritas.
The events of 1813 and 1814 offered to this fraternal association admirable opportunities. It was applied to for loans, first by the coalition of Powers marching against France, and, after Napoleon's final defeat, by the new monarchical Government of France, in view of the war indemnity. From this moment the house of Rothschild assumed colossal proportions. It seemed to hold Europe at every point, and no important financial operation could be undertaken without its consent and aid. The Emperor of Austria ennobled the brothers Rothschild in 1815, at the time of the Vienna Conferences, and in 1822 created them barons and appointed them consuls-general for Austria in the different cities where they were established.
Of Mayer Rothschild's five sons, Baron Anselm, the eldest, born at Frankfort in 1773, assumed, after the death of his father, the direction of the Frankfort bank, and while remaining at its head took an active part in founding the four branch houses at Paris, London, Vienna, and Naples. He died at Frankfort in 1855. Baron Solomon de Rothschild, Mayer Rothschild's second son, born at Frankfort in 1774, died at Paris in 1855. After founding the branch bank of Vienna, he directed, in concert with his brother Anselm, most of the great financial operations undertaken in Germany. He was an intimate friend of Prince Metternich's, and his son, Baron Anselm Solomon, became, less from political tastes than in virtue of his rank, a member of the Austrian Reichsrath.
After quitting Vienna, Baron Solomon, the father, went to Paris, where, in association with his brother James, he undertook the management of the French bank. His son, the before-mentioned Baron Anselm Solomon, died at Vienna in 1874, leaving behind him one of the finest art galleries in the world. He had three sons, Nathaniel, Ferdinand, and Albert, the last-named of whom took the direction of the Vienna bank.
Baron Nathan de Rothschild, brother of the preceding, was born at Frankfort in 1777, and died there in 1836. His father, the founder of the family, had sent him as early as 1798 to England, where, after passing some years at Manchester, he established himself in London in 1806. After the death of his father he remained at the head of the London house, and played a considerable part in the great financial operations undertaken by the five brothers in common. In 1813 he lent large sums to the English Government, as well as to England's allies, and, after the peace, was, like his four brothers, appointed consul-general for Austria, and created baron. Nathan, who, by the way, never made use of his title, died at Frankfort in 1836, and was succeeded in the direction of the London house by Baron Lionel de Rothschild. Baron Charles de Rothschild, the fourth of the five brothers, was born at Frankfort in 1788, and died at Naples in 1855. He directed the Naples bank from its first establishment until his death. He reconstructed the finances of Piedmont and Tuscany, and, in association with his brothers, borrowed for the Roman Government between 1831 and 1856 some 200,000,000 francs.
Baron James de Rothschild, the last of the brothers, born at Frankfort-on-the-Maine in 1792, died at Paris in 1868. It is with him we have chiefly to do, since it was he who in the year 1812, immediately after the death of his father, established at Paris the great banking house which now forms one of the most striking features of the Rue Laffitte. The post of consul-general for Austria was given to him in 1822. Under the Restoration, in December, 1823, Baron James subscribed for a loan of nearly five hundred millions, and, in association with his brothers, he undertook nearly all the important loans issued in Portugal, Prussia, Austria, France, Italy, and Belgium. He rendered important financial aid to the French Government under the reign of Louis Philippe, and during the Second Empire. It was Baron James de Rothschild, moreover, who furnished the brothers Pereire with the sums necessary for the construction of the first railways in France.
Falsely accused of having speculated in corn during the dearth of 1847, he had reason to fear, at least for a time, after the Revolution of 1848, that he could no longer live safely at Paris. His house was pillaged and burnt, and he was indeed on the point of quitting France, when the Prefect of Police, Caussidi�re, persuaded him to stay, and placed at his disposal a picket of the Republican Guard, which was stationed in the courtyard of his mansion night and day. The baron gave 50,000 francs towards the relief of the wounded of February, illuminated his house to show that he was not hostile to Republican institutions, and tranquilly continued his operations at the bank. When Caussidi�re, obliged to leave France, decided to set up as a wine merchant in London, Baron James, mindful of the service he had rendered him, did not, it is true, offer him a present of money, which might have been refused, but in the handsomest manner ordered such large annual consignments of wine from him, that Caussidi�re could thenceforth have lived comfortably without selling a drop of his stuff to any other customer. The baron never boasted of this action, but the wine merchant took delight in telling the story of his patron's delicate gratitude. Thanks to his state loans, to his banking and exchange transactions, and to the great commercial enterprises which he had created or protected, the financier had amassed enormous wealth. He richly endowed or founded all kinds of Jewish institutions, notably a vast hospital in the Rue Picpus, and the synagogue of the Rue Notre-Dame de Nazareth. Every year he sent to Jud�a large sums of money, which the Rabbis distributed to the poor; and the Jews of the East attributed to him the project of redeeming Jerusalem from the government of the Turks.
His ch�teau at Ferri�res, in the department of Seine-et-Marne, is a sumptuous palace; and besides this and his two other residences in the Rue Laffitte and the Bois de Boulogne, he possessed innumerable houses in Paris. In nearly all the great cities and towns of Europe, moreover, he owned valuable properties--at Rome, for instance, Naples, and Turin, where some of the finest palaces and mansions were his. To the end of his life the great financier displayed a most prodigious activity. He was quick, hot-tempered, peevish, and surly to approach. But if he has been often reproached with brutality to underlings, he, on the other hand, treated the great with none too much ceremony. One day the Count de Morny entered the baron's office at a moment when he was busily engaged. "Take a chair," said the financier, without looking at him. "Pardon me," said the injured visitor; "you cannot have heard my name. I am the Count de Morny." "Take two chairs," replied Baron James, without lifting his eyes off the papers before him. This prince of millionaires never carried more than fifty francs in his pocket; and he himself declared that by means of this aid to economy he had saved half a million francs in the course of his life. At the club of the Rue Royale, where he was accustomed to play whist after dinner, much amusement was caused by the extraordinary purse he always carried. It was fitted with a lock, and the key to this lock hung as a pendant to the baron's watchchain. To pay a debt of ten sous he had first to get hold of the key and then open the lock; nor even when he had done so was there always enough in the purse to discharge his liability. At his club he was called simply "The Baron"--his compeers were all barons of something or other; and for this title he had always a punctilious regard. He was a great lover of art, and had formed a magnificent collection in the ch�teau at Ferri�res. By his marriage with his niece, daughter of Baron Solomon de Rothschild, he left four sons--Edmond, Gustave, Alphonse, and Nathaniel, of whom the first-named became naturalised in France, and assumed on his father's death the direction of the Paris house. During the siege of the capital in January, 1871, he, in association with his brothers, expended 300,000 francs on the relief of the necessitous; and in 1872 subscribed for a sum of 2,750,000,000 francs towards the loan required to buy the foe out of the country.
The three houses in the Rue Laffitte occupied by the Rothschilds are numbered 17, 19, and 21. At 21 is the banking establishment, now presided over by Baron Alphonse de Rothschild, third son of the late Baron James. Baron Alphonse is a painter of the highest distinction, in token of which he has been elected a member of the Academy of Fine Arts. No. 19 is the residence of the Dowager Baroness James de Rothschild; while No 17 is occupied by various administrative offices. Close by is the mansion which, under the First Empire, was inhabited by the Queen of Holland. In one of the rooms overlooking the garden was born, April 20th, 1808, Napoleon Louis, the future Emperor of the French.
[Illustration: THE MUFFIN MILL.--THE OBELISK OF THE PARIS MERIDIAN.--THE OBSERVATORY.
MONTMARTRE.]
In the middle of the Rue de la Victoire stands the finest of the three synagogues of Paris, built by the architect Aldrophe in the Roman style.
The perspective of the Rue Laffitte terminates at the frontispiece of the church of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette. The plan of this edifice is that of an ancient Roman basilica, and its aspect that of an Italian church. The interior is very richly adorned with works from the chisels of half a dozen famous sculptors, and from the brushes of a still greater number of distinguished painters. This church, situated in the midst of those quarters where literature, art, and the drama have made their home, is marked by an elegance which approaches the mundane.
Passing northwards through the Rue Laffitte, the visitor sees, rising before him, the hill of Montmartre, which overlooks the church. The windmills which five-and-twenty years ago waved their arms on the summit of this eminence have given way to the imposing church of the Sacred Heart, a massive structure suggestive of a fortress.
The Butte Montmartre, to give the hill its French name, figures on almost every page of the annals of Paris. It is supposed, with a certain degree of probability, that temples to Mars and Mercury were raised there in the Roman era. Three different etymologies have been given to the Butte Montmartre, namely, Mons Martis, or Mount of Mars; Mons Mercurii, or Mount of Mercury; and finally Mons Martyrum, or Mount of the Martyrs. The last-named derivation is justified by the martyrdom of St. Denis, first Archbishop of Paris, who in the third century perished upon this spot. The hill bears a reservoir of water, artistically decorated; and close to it an obelisk erected in 1736 to serve as a point of view by which, from the opposite or southern side of Paris, the city could be surveyed and measured. Our illustration shows, to the right of this edifice, the Observatory of Montmartre, and to the left the Moulin de la Galette, or Muffin Mill.
[Illustration: THE SYNAGOGUE IN THE RUE DE LA VICTOIRE.]
Close by is the church of St. Peter, which presents a miserable front, but which arch�ologists prize as a monument of extraordinary interest. It dates back to the earliest ages of Christianity. Destroyed by the Romans, it was completely rebuilt in 1137. Partly burnt in 1559, it was half demolished in 1792, and restored without any regard to regularity or unity of design. It thus presents, at first sight, the aspect of a ruin held together by means of shaky scaffoldings.
The Butte Montmartre is an enormous mass of gypsum, about 125 metres high, and it has furnished century after century the finest kind of plaster, required for the construction of buildings in Paris. As a consequence it has been dangerously hollowed out, and in recent times a part of the hill gave way and precipitated itself upon the district below. The massive church of the Sacred Heart was built with a special eye to the insecurity of the hill; for it rests on an artificial foundation, in the shape of huge masses of cement, reaching deep down into the lower strata.
In the last generation the Butte Montmartre was, to Parisians, simply a fresh-air resort, picturesque with the before-mentioned windmills, to which rustic taverns were usually attached. From the summit, where city-pent children used on Sundays joyously to romp on the future site of the church of the Sacred Heart, a magnificent view is obtained of the Plain of Saint-Denis, the course of the Seine, and beyond that the fringe of the Montmorency Forest. Then, turning suddenly towards the south, the astonished visitor sees the whole city of Paris lying at his feet.
At the bottom of the Rue Lepic a vast enclosure is visible full of trees of various kinds, with the cypress prominent amongst them. This is the cemetery of Montmartre, or, by its official designation, Cemetery of the North. It contains many a monument as remarkable for its artistic beauty as for the character or celebrity of the sleeper beneath it; that of Godefroi Cavaignac, for instance, brother of the general of the same name, and one of the hopes of the Republican party under the monarchy of Louis Philippe; of Henri Beyle (otherwise "Stendhal"), author of "The Life of Rossini," the treatise on "Love," and of several admirable novels, including "La Chartreuse de Parme," described as a masterpiece by so competent a judge as Balzac. Here, too, repose Paul Delaroche the painter, Marshal Lannes, Hal�vy, composer of La Juive, and Henri Murger, observer, if not inventor, of the literary and artistic Bohemian, described with so much gaiety, vivacity, and picturesqueness in the "Sc�nes de la Vie de Boh�me."
Until a few years ago the Montmartre Cemetery barred the way from Paris to the Butte Montmartre. But since 1888 a bridge or viaduct has connected the Boulevard Clichy with the Rue Caulaincourt. The Barri�re Clichy has given its name to one of the most characteristic of Horace Vernet's works--the picture of this barrier as seen in 1814 during the advance upon Paris of the allied armies.
The prison of Clichy, familiarly known as "Clichy," in the street of the same name, was the Paris prison for debt. Here, until the Second Empire, debtors were confined under conditions peculiar to France, or at least never known in England. The duration of the imprisonment was determined by the magnitude of the debt, up to a period of five years; the maximum term, whatever amount might be owed. The debtor was maintained at the cost of the creditor, who had to deposit a sum of forty-five francs with the prison officials before his victim could be admitted within the prison walls. From early morning until ten o'clock at night the prisoners were free to walk about the grounds and occupy themselves as they thought fit. There were two hundred rooms for men, and sixteen for women; and, contrary to the general opinion on the subject, largely due to humorous writers and caricaturists, the prisoners belonged, for the most part, not to the aristocratic class, but to the class of small tradesmen. As the enforced allowance from the creditor was only sufficient to provide the necessaries of life, a fund was maintained among the prisoners for supplementing the ordinary bill of fare. There was a restaurant for prisoners of means, and light wines were on sale, to the exclusion of dessert wines and liqueurs. If, as often happened, the creditor omitted to pay for the support of the debtor, the latter was set free.
It is recorded in the chronicles of Clichy that among the wines forbidden, as savouring specially of a luxury unbecoming on the part of a man unable to pay his debts, was champagne. The heart of the creditor, says one writer on this subject, would have been too much vexed by the thought of bursting corks and foaming wine. The prisoners at Clichy became, according to the French caricaturists, inordinately fat; and in one of Gavarni's pictures of Clichy a prisoner is represented saying to a friend who has called to see him: "If they don't let me out soon I shall be unable to get through the door." Thus, the mouse of the fable, having crept through a small hole into a basket of provisions, feasted till he was too big to squeeze his way out again.
[Illustration: ST. PETER'S CHURCH, MONTMARTRE.]
[Illustration: THE BELLS OF ST. PETER'S.]
If, under the French system, the creditor was bound to maintain the debtor, the debtor, on his side, was denied the liberties accorded to him in England. Here a man who refused to pay his debts might be detained as long as the creditor wished without any charge to the latter; but here, also, the debtor might lead a luxurious life, and even leave the prison day after day on condition only of returning by a certain hour at night. To live "within the rules" of the Queen's Bench was simply to inhabit an unfashionable and remote part of London, with the additional obligation of getting home early every night. A former manager of Her Majesty's Theatre--King's Theatre, as it was then called--passed several years in the Queen's Bench Prison. This gentleman, Taylor by name, maintained, indeed, that it was the only place where an operatic manager could live so as to be quite beyond the reach of tenors dissatisfied with their parts, and prime donne clamouring for new dresses and increased salaries. In fact, he once declared, it was the only place where a man so rash as to undertake an operatic speculation ought to be allowed to live, since no such person was fit to be at large.
[Illustration: THE NEW MUNICIPAL RESERVOIR AND THE CHURCH OF THE SACRED HEART, MONTMARTRE.]
[Illustration: THE CAULAINCOURT BRIDGE, MONTMARTRE.]
Close to the Clichy district is the more important one of Les Batignolles, a growth of the present century and, one may almost say, of the last half-century. The village of Les Batignolles has developed into a town, inhabited for the most part by retired tradesmen and small annuitants. Close, again, to the Batignolles is the beautiful Parc Monceau, with its Avenue de Villiers, favourite abode of so many painters of the modern school.
We are now once more in the neighbourhood of the Champs �lys�es, with its picturesque avenues, its children, its popular theatres, and its caf�s without number. Once more, too, we are in the vicinity of that Bois de Boulogne, with its beautiful drives, its luxurious restaurants, its enchanting lake, and its forest renowned for duels.
The Legal Institution of the Duel--The Cong� de la Bataille--in the Sixteenth Century--Jarnac--Famous Duels.
Parisian duels are no longer to the death. As a rule, one of the combatants receives a scratch, and the farce is at an end. The story is well known of a Paris journalist's wife, who, alarmed by the sudden disappearance of her husband, continued for a long time to fret and worry about him, until a friend of his told her that he had gone into the country to fight a duel, whereupon she exclaimed: "Thank Heaven! Then he is safe."
[Illustration: IN THE PARC MONCEAU.]
From antiquity, however, until very recent times duels in Paris and in France generally have been only too sanguinary. The French first learned duelling from a ferocious nation. The ancient Franks, in invading Gaul, established there what was known as the "judicial combat." Previously, in their own country, it had been a custom amongst the Franks for an individual who had suffered any private wrong, serious or trivial, to wreak a personal vengeance on the offender, inflicting death, or no matter what bodily injury, in the most barbarous fashion. At length the law intervened and instituted formal combat between the parties at strife--a custom which, in due course, was introduced by the Franks into conquered Gaul. In the regulations of Philippe le Bel, 1306, it is set forth:--
"That the lists shall be forty feet in width and eighty feet in length.
"That the duel shall only be permitted when there is presumptive evidence against the accused, but without clear proof.
"That on the day appointed the two combatants shall leave their houses on horseback, with visor raised; their sabre, sword, axe, and other reasonable arms for attack and defence being carried before them; when they shall advance slowly, making from step to step the sign of the cross, or bearing an image of the saint to whom they are chiefly devoted and in whom they have most confidence.
"That having reached the enclosure, the appellant, with his hand on his crucifix, shall swear on his baptismal faith, on his life, his soul, and his honour, that he believes himself to have got a just subject of contention, and moreover that he has not upon him, nor upon his horse, nor among his arms, any herbs, charms, words, stones, conjurations, pacts, or incantations that he proposes to employ; and that the respondent shall take the same oaths.
"That the body of the vanquished man, if he is killed, shall be delivered to the marshal, until the king has declared if he wishes to pardon him or to do justice upon him; that is to say, hang him up to a gibbet by one of his feet.
"That if the vanquished man still lives, his aiguillettes shall be cut off; that he shall be disarmed and stripped; that all his harness shall be cast here and there about the field; and that he shall remain lying on the ground until the king, in like manner, has declared if he wishes to pardon him or to do justice upon him.
"That, moreover, all his property shall be confiscated for the benefit of the king, after the victor has been duly paid his costs and damages."
In regard to capital crimes, the issue of a combat authorised by law and consecrated by religious ceremonies was looked upon as a formal judgment by which God made known the truth or falsehood of the accusation. The defeated combatant was dragged on a hurdle in his shirt to the gallows, where, dead or alive, he was hanged. The church itself adopted and sanctioned the superstitious idea that the vanquished in the judicial duel must necessarily be guilty. The one who had been killed in such a duel or combat was, says Brant�me, "in no case received by the church for Christian burial; and the ecclesiastics alleged as a reason for this that his defeat was a judgment from Heaven, and that he had succumbed by the will of God because his quarrel was unjust."
The judicial duel was fully recognised by the Church of Paris. Louis VI. declared that the serfs and ecclesiastics of the Church of Paris might "testify," that is to say maintain their word by a duel. In the reign of Louis the Young the monks of the Abbey of Saint-Genevi�ve, whose domains covered all the high ground which now overlooks the Panth�on, offered to prove by duel that the inhabitants of the little village in the neighbourhood were the serfs of their abbey. In the same reign (1144) the monks of Saint-Germain-des-Pr�s having demanded a duel in order to prove that �tienne de Maci had wrongly imprisoned one of their serfs, the two champions fought for a long time with equal advantage; but at last, "by the help of God," says a chronicler, "the champion of the abbey took out the eye of his adversary, and obliged him to confess that he was conquered."
Among the most remarkable judicial duels may be mentioned one that took place between two Norman knights behind the church of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields in presence of Charles VI. and the whole court. Jacques Legris had been accused by the wife of Jean Carrouge of having entered his castle, masked, in the middle of the night, under pretence of being her husband, who was on his way from the Holy Land and whose return she was daily expecting. He protested his innocence, and on the demand of Carrouge the Parliament ordered the matter to be decided by duel. The judgment of God was unfavourable to Legris, and on being vanquished he was hung up at the gallows attached to the lists. Some time afterwards a malefactor, on the point of being executed for other crimes, confessed to having committed the infamous action for which Legris had suffered. This cruel mistake led to the abolition of the judicial duel. All demands on the subject addressed to the Parliament were from this time rejected--the judicial duel was at an end.
Appeals for a decision by single combat could still be made to the king, who sometimes granted what was known as the Cong� de la Bataille. But simple crimes were no longer the cause of duels; and the personal conflicts that now take place turn upon the modern "point of honour." Assemblies, however, were still held for the purpose of enacting that duels should not be fought without the recognition of the superior authorities and without fair play. Two French officers having quarrelled on a campaign, one of whom had suffered from the other a personal affront, the case was brought before a tribunal of honour, with the highest personages of the court, the Chancellor, the Pope's legate, two cardinals, and a certain number of prelates as judges; when, without any appeal to the sword, it was decided that one of the antagonists should go down on his knees before the other and declare that "madly and rashly, irreverentially, badly advised and badly counselled, he had given a box on the ear or blow with the fist to the other, in the tent and presence of the Duke de Longueville."
The court of honour might or might not be the preliminary to the Cong� de la Bataille. When the latter was granted the fact was announced by the king's herald. The duel might on certain grounds be declined, and an example of this is cited, in which Count William of Furstenberg refused to meet a certain Sieur de Vass� on account of his inferior birth. Victor Hugo has well reproduced this spirit of aristocratic punctilio, which did not spring from personal haughtiness alone, in his drama of Marion Delorme. Didier, the hero, of obscure birth, challenges a distinguished nobleman, who asks for his adversary's name. "Didier," is the reply. "Didier de quoi?" inquires the nobleman. "Didier de rien!" answers the bearer of the homely name, who declares that he never knew his father; whereupon the aristocrat, giving him the benefit of the doubt, observes that he may possibly be of the highest lineage, and at once consents to cut throats with him. This idea of disqualification on account of inferior birth disappeared with the Revolution. But it was maintained, with only the rarest exceptions, until the great outbreak of 1789. Voltaire challenged a duke who had caused him to be waylaid and beaten by hired ruffians, but with no result, except to get himself sent to the Bastille. The incident of the water-carrier, in one of Paul de Kock's novels, challenging and fighting a gentleman by whom he has been aggrieved, would, before the Revolution, have been not merely an improbable, but an impossible one.
While tolerating duels up to the time of Louis XIII., the French kings sometimes intervened in person to put a stop to them. Charles VIII. separated two gentlemen who had "come furiously to blows," and Francis I. brought to an end a combat that was taking place between two gentlemen of Berry, named Veniers and Harzai.
In the sixteenth century the duel was accompanied by great ceremony. Take, for example, the one fought between La Chateigneraie and Guychabot, better known under the name of Jarnac. Guychabot, a distinguished member of the court of Francis I., and afterwards of Henry II., had taken an important part in the war of Italy. But he is chiefly remembered by his duel with La Chateigneraie, arising from the rival influences at court of the Duchess of �tampes and Diana of Poitiers. An offensive statement about him having been made, or rather repeated, by the Dauphin, he replied by charging its author, whoever he might be, with mendacity. La Chateigneraie, as Jarnac may or may not have known, was the originator of the calumny, for which, indeed, he accepted full responsibility. Francis I., now in his old age, would not permit the adversaries to fight; and it was not until Henry II. came to the throne that the duel took place, on the plain of Saint-Germain, with all the pomp and ceremony of the ancient judicial duels, and in presence of the whole court. Jarnac, weaker and less skilful than his enemy, who was one of the first duellists of the age, had taken lessons of an Italian bravo; and he dealt La Chateigneraie a violent and unexpected thrust in the leg (afterwards to be known as le coup de Jarnac). La Chateigneraie perished in the duel, and Henry II. swore on his corpse never to permit another. He endeavoured to keep his word; but his authorisation was dispensed with, and duelling became one of the fashions of the day. In 1560 the States-General of the Kingdom, assembled at Orleans, begged Charles IX. to punish without remission all duellists; and the Tiers �tat having formulated the same request, a royal order was published, which served as basis to the edicts on this subject published by Henry IV. and Louis XIV. In these documents duelling was placed in the category of capital offences; which had no effect but to increase the number of duels. Among the remarkable duels of this period must be mentioned one which was fought in the island of the City, between two gentlemen, who, finding themselves pursued by the police in an approaching boat, fought with such a determination to get the affair quickly to an end, that four sabre strokes sufficed to lay both dead.
To this epoch, too, belongs the duel of the Seigneur de Jensac, who insisted on fighting two adversaries at the same time. The duel was about to begin, when a friend of Jensac's rushed on the scene, and protested against so unequal a combat. "Did you never before hear of a man fighting two antagonists?" asked the seigneur. "Yes, but you must be mad to place yourself in such a position deliberately and beforehand." "Not at all," replied de Jensac; "I wish to be spoken of in the papers."
[Illustration: DIANA OF POITIERS.
(From the Portrait by Belliard.)]
In contrast with this reckless but fundamentally good-natured gentleman, who was ready to perish for a paragraph, may be placed the virtually licensed assassin, Baron de Vitaux, called by Brant�me the "brave baron," who began his murderous career by killing at Toulouse, with a surprise stroke, the young Baron de Soupez. He afterwards, and always with the same stroke, killed a gentleman named Gonnelion; next, the Baron de Millau; and finally the chief favourite of Henry II., Louis B�ranger de Guast. The son of Millau, who had resolved to avenge his father, killed, in a duel, this assassin who never appeared in public unless accompanied by the two brothers Boucicault, known as "Baron de Vitaux's lions." Nor must we forget Bussy d'Amboise, who fought on the most trivial pretexts. A gentleman named Saint-Phal having said something about the letter "x" on a piece of embroidery, Bussy, in order to bring about a quarrel and a duel, declared that the letter was a "y." On this important point a first combat was fought, with six combatants on each side. Bussy having been wounded, Saint-Phal retired, but only to be summoned soon afterwards to a new combat. The Captain of the King's Guard, sent to interdict the fight, made no impression upon Bussy, who tried to pick a quarrel with him, and declared that he would appeal to the King and ask permission to meet his foe in the lists.
From 1598 to 1608 duels caused more victims than the civil wars. It has been calculated that during this period nearly eight thousand gentlemen perished in single combat. Henry IV. himself followed the fashion; but unable from his regal position to fight in person, he fought by procuration. In presence of the Duke de Guise he had shown some jealousy in regard to Bassompierre, who had been much struck by Mlle. d'Antraigues. The duke offered to avenge the aggrieved monarch, and his proposition being accepted, a duel took place. Bassompierre received a lance wound from which he with difficulty recovered. But soon afterwards Henry IV. was himself obliged to issue an order against duelling, which was little more than a reproduction of the one put forth by his predecessor. He charged the constable, the marshals of France, and the governors of provinces to see that his commands were obeyed. The offenders were innumerable, but the king at the last moment mitigated in almost every case the severity of his edict. Thus, in the course of nineteen years seven thousand "letters of grace" were issued.
Thanks to the clemency of Henry IV., the number of duels fought in France increased to such a point that in the reign of Louis XIII. the tragic custom seemed to have reached its height.
Two gentlemen, the Vicomte d'Allemagne and the Sieur de la Roque, fought, on some mere question of precedence, a duel in which, holding each other by the left hand, they exchanged poniard stabs with the right. Another pair of combatants, inspired with deadly and ferocious hatred, shut themselves up together in an empty barrel, and cut each other's throats with knives. In process of time, however, a series of edicts were issued against judicial duelling. The practice received its severest blow in 1626 from Richelieu, who inspired an edict regulating the penalties according to the gravity of the offences. Praslin, who was the first to infringe this edict, was exiled and despoiled of his possessions. But the most remarkable infraction was that which cost the Count de Bouteville his head. He was a notorious bully, and had been known in this character since 1621. He had already crossed swords with the Count de Pont-Gibaut, the Marquis de Portes, and the Count de Thorigny, to mention no other names; and in 1627 he took upon himself, in defiance of the law, to fight the Baron de la Frette and the Marquis de Beuvron. This last duel was fatal to him. He had been foolhardy enough to draw swords with the marquis on the Place Royale and in broad daylight. The marquis fled to England, but Bouteville found his way to the scaffold. Before his execution, Richelieu had said to Louis XIII.:
"It is a question of cutting the throat, either of these duels or of your Majesty's edicts." The exemplary punishment inflicted upon Bouteville did not, however, by any means exterminate duelling. Even ecclesiastics at this period went through a course of training at the fencing academies. Men of letters frequently laid down the pen for the sword. To know how to administer cold steel became the height of ambition with fashionable Parisians. The most desperate duellist of the time was Cyrano de Bergerac, who would challenge on the spot anyone who looked at him, or anyone who did not look at him.
The contagion of the duel spread even to the gentler sex. Two ladies of the court fought at Paris with pistols. The King, when he heard of it, smiled and said that his prohibition had only been aimed at men. The troubles of the Fronde still further increased the number of sword-drawing swaggerers in Paris. One duel which occurred during the civil feuds that disturbed the earlier years of Louis XIV.'s reign, caused an extraordinary sensation. It had its origin in a letter supposed to have dropped from the pocket of the Count de Coligny, one of the tenants of Mme. de Longueville. The missive was compromising to the lady-writer, whoever she might be; and, in connection therewith, the Duchess de Montbazon spread certain scandalous rumours, for which Mme. de Longueville demanded, and obtained, an apology. But with this reparation the offended lady was not content. She urged Coligny to challenge one of the favourites of Montbazon, the Duke of Guise, to fight him. The duel took place on the Place Royale at three o'clock on the 12th of December, 1643. Guise, as he grasped the hilt of his sword, said to Coligny:--"We are going to decide the ancient quarrels of our two houses, and we shall soon see the difference there is between the blood of Guise and the blood of Coligny." Thereupon the adversaries fell to their work. Coligny, in making a gigantic thrust, slipped and fell on his knee. Guise hastened to put his foot on his shoulder, and said: "I do not wish to kill you--I simply treat you as you deserve for having dared to challenge a member of my house without cause." Then he struck the count with the flat of his sword. Coligny threw himself backwards and disengaged his weapon, whereupon the fight recommenced. Guise, however, terminated it by means of a tremendous blow which he dealt his adversary on the arm. At the same moment fell both of the seconds--d'Estrades and Bridieux--who had run each other through. This was the last of the famous duels fought on the Place Royale. Mme. de Longueville had witnessed it, concealed behind a window of the H�tel de Rohan.
Nine years later took place the celebrated and sanguinary duel between the Duke de Nemours and the Duke de Beaufort. They quarrelled at Orleans, where Nemours had cried out, in presence of Beaufort, "The prince is being deceived, and I know by whom!" "Name him," said Beaufort. "You, yourself!" answered Nemours. Beaufort's reply was a box on the ear, instantly returned by Nemours; and they would at once have crossed swords had not Mlle. de Montpensier been present. On the day fixed for the duel, in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, the two brothers-in-law seemed to have become reconciled. But some question of precedence revived the bad feeling between them. "M. de Beaufort," relates the Duchess de Montpensier, "did all he could to avoid the meeting. He set forth, among other reasons, that he had a number of gentlemen with him ready to take part in the duel, while his antagonist had only a few. Monsieur de Nemours returned to his house, where he found awaiting him just as many gentlemen as were required. He went back to M. de Beaufort, and they fought in the horse market, at the back of the H�tel de Vend�me. M. de Nemours had with him Villiers, the Chevalier de La Chaise, Campan, and Luzerche. M. de Beaufort had the Count de Bury, de Ris, Brillet, and H�ricourt. The Count de Bury was severely wounded. De Ris and H�ricourt died in the course of the day. None of the others were wounded, except very slightly. M. de Nemours had brought with him swords and pistols. The latter had been loaded at his house. M. de Beaufort said to his adversary: 'Brother, what a shame! Let us forget and be friends.' M. de Nemours cried out to him: 'No, scoundrel! you must kill me or I will kill you.' He fired his pistol, which missed, and rushed upon M. de Beaufort, sword in hand, so that the latter was obliged to defend himself. He fired, and shot Nemours dead with three balls that were in the pistol."
Under Louis XIV. no less than twelve edicts were issued against duelling. One of the last, published in 1704, promised lawful satisfaction for outraged honour. To give the lie, to strike with the hand or with a stick, were offences punishable with imprisonment. Anyone who had received a box on the ears was entitled to return it. But the royal commands remained without effect. Among the great duellists of Louis XIV.'s reign must be mentioned the Duke de Richelieu, who did as much to promote duelling as the famous cardinal of the same name had done in the previous reign to prevent it. He not only fought duels himself, but was the cause of duels on the part of others; and of ladies above all. In his various encounters he severely wounded the Duke de Bourbon, ran Prince de Lixen through the body, and killed Baron Pontereider. The two ladies who fought at his instigation were Mme. de Nesle and Mme. de Polignac. "Take the first shot," said the last-named antagonist. Mme. de Nesle fired and missed. "Anger makes the hand tremble," observed Mme. de Polignac, with a malicious smile. Taking aim in her turn, she cut off the tip of her adversary's ear; whereupon poor Mme. de Nesle fell to the ground as if mortally wounded.
Two years before the outbreak of the Revolution a sub-lieutenant of the Fourth Hussars was chosen by his comrades to avenge an insult offered to the regiment by a fencing-master. The adversaries had just crossed swords when the officer found himself pulled violently back by someone who had got hold of his pigtail. It was the colonel of his regiment, who had come to stop the duel and to place his subaltern under arrest. This young officer was Michel Ney, afterwards Napoleon's famous marshal. On being liberated from prison, Ney sought out the fencing-master, challenged him, and gave him a wound which injured him for life. Hearing, some years later, that the poor man had fallen into the greatest distress, Ney, at that time a general, settled a pension upon him. After the Republic duels were fought as much as ever; but the pistol had now replaced the sword. Talma, the celebrated actor, fought a pistol duel with an actor named Naudet, in which neither was injured; and about the same time shots were exchanged between two members of the National Assembly, Barnave and Cazal�s. Barnave missed Cazal�s, and Cazales having twice missed Barnave, apologised for his want of skill and for keeping his adversary waiting so long. "I am only here for your satisfaction," said Barnave. "I should be very sorry to kill you," answered Cazales while the pistols were being reloaded, "but you caused us a great deal of trouble. All I desire is to keep you away from the Assembly for a little time." "I am more generous," replied Barnave. "I desire scarcely to touch you, for you are the only orator on your side, whilst on mine my loss would in no way be felt." Barnave's second shot struck Cazal�s on the forehead, but the ball had expended its force on the point of his cocked hat.
Charles Lameth, Mirabeau, and Camille Desmoulins likewise fought duels. Camille Desmoulins had the courage, however, to refuse to settle by arms quarrels of a political kind. "I should have," he said on one occasion, "to pass my life in the Bois de Boulogne if I were obliged to give satisfaction to all who took offence at the frankness of my speech. Let them call me a coward if they like. I fancy the time is not far off when opportunities for dying more gloriously and more usefully will present themselves."
Napoleon did his utmost to stop duelling, but with scarcely more success than his predecessors on the throne. Under the Restoration duels were constantly being fought between the officers of the King's army and Napoleonic officers on half-pay. Benjamin Constant, the famous writer and politician, fought a duel in which, as he was too weak to stand, both antagonists were accommodated with armchairs. This comfortable arrangement was not attended by fatal results. M. Thiers fought a remarkable duel with the father of the young lady to whom he was engaged to be married. Being without means, he wished to postpone the marriage from year to year, till at last the indignant parent insisted on satisfaction. M. Thiers, with the historian Mignet as one of his seconds, received the old gentleman's bullet between his legs without returning the shot. Writers at this period seem to have frequently found themselves compelled to throw down the pen and snatch up the sword or the pistol. General Gourgaud challenged the author of "The History of the Russian Campaign," and slightly wounded him in the duel which ensued. A young cavalry officer, Beaupoil de Sainte-Aulaire by name, having published a political pamphlet under the title of "Funeral Oration of the Duke de Feltre," was immediately called out by the duke's son. Hardly scratched in the encounter, he was challenged a second time by a cousin of the deceased, who killed him with a sword-thrust in the breast.
The Chamber of Deputies in 1819, and the Chamber of Peers in the year following, debated the question of definitive legislation on the subject of duelling; but their deliberations came to nothing. Shortly afterwards literature contributed another victim to the insatiable Moloch of "honour," in the person of a highly talented poet named Dovalle. He had attacked, in some journal, a theatrical director; and the offensive article cost him his life. At the time when the Duchess de Berry was under arrest the editor of the Legitimist journal, the Revenant, called at the office of the Tribune to demand satisfaction for an article directed against the duchess. The immediate result was a second article in the Tribune defying the advocates of the fair prisoner; and so strong a spirit of partisanship was now excited on either side that students from the schools rushed in crowds to enroll their names at the offices of the antagonistic journals. Two small armies having thus been raised, a letter, signed by Godefroi Cavaignac, Armand, Marrast, and Garderin, was addressed to the Revenant in these terms: "We send you a first list of twelve persons. We demand, not twelve simultaneous duels, but twelve successive duels--time and place as may be conveniently arranged. No excuses, no pretexts, no cowardly evasion; this would avail you nothing, and of this you would have to bear the consequences. Henceforth, between your party and ours, there is a drawn sword. There will be no truce, except when one yields to the other." The Legitimist party did not choose to accept the challenge in so generalised a form. It entrusted its cause to the hands of M. Roux-Laborie, who fought a duel with Armand Carrel, the appointed champion of the opposite side. Carrel received an almost fatal wound in the stomach; nor was this the last combat which the arrest of the Duchess de Berry occasioned. Tragedy and comedy were often intermingled in the duelling of the period. There was one well-known swaggerer, an ex-body-guard named Choquart, who was so enormously vain of the reputation he had gained for drawing his sword that, when once a pedestrian had, accidentally, with his elbow pulled it partly out of the sheath as the two men were passing each other in the street, Choquart pulled it out altogether and exclaimed:--"The wine is drawn, and now you must drink it!" "Many thanks," was the cool reply; "but I never take anything between meals."
[Illustration: MARSHAL NEY.]
A list of the duels of this epoch would be too formidable; though mention can scarcely be omitted of the one fought between Armand Carrel and �mile de Girardin, in which the fatal wound received by Carrel was a serious blow to the Democratic cause of which he was so great a champion. It is certain that no one afterwards regretted his death so keenly as the man whose bullet had pierced him; and when, on the second of May, 1848, a concourse of workmen, national guards, and students from the Polytechnic School reassembled at Carrel's grave in the cemetery of Saint-Mand� to pay homage to his memory, it was Girardin himself who made the most pathetic speech over the sleeping democrat. In this speech he expressed a hope that the provisional government would crown the splendid work which Carrel had done by abolishing the duel--that appeal to arms to which he so keenly regretted ever having had recourse. Since then there have been repeated agitations in favour of this abolition, but without result. Duels in France, though seldom serious nowadays, are still fought frequently and with comparative impunity.
[Illustration: THE RACE-COURSE, LONGCHAMPS.]
The leading trait in the French national character is doubtless gaiety. We have seen how, after the first sentiment of horror excited by the guillotine had subsided, ladies in Paris wore miniature guillotines as ear-rings; and we might have mentioned the case of a famous French epicure who used a small guillotine for cutting up his dinner. In like manner duels have been made the subject of endless pleasantries in France, and a good-sized volume could be made up of duelling anecdotes. A few specimens, however, must suffice us here.
M. de Langerie and M. de Montendre, both exceedingly ugly, were drawn up against each other in single combat. Suddenly de Langerie exclaimed: "I cannot fight you. You really must excuse me. I have an invincible reason." "And what is it, pray?" inquired the foe. "Why, this: if I fight, I shall, to all appearances, kill you, and remain the ugliest man in the kingdom." De Montendre yielded. A ballad-writer, known by numerous successes, had a quarrel. An intimate friend interposed his authority, ascertained the exact nature of the difference, and promised to settle it. A few moments afterwards he returned. "The affair," he said "is arranged. I had only to speak and we were instantly agreed." "That is good," replied the writer of ballads, visibly relieved. "Yes," said the amiable intercessor, grasping his friend by the hand; "it is arranged. You fight to-morrow morning at five."
A fastidious duellist, who was ready to fight about any trifle, "to find a quarrel in a straw," as Hamlet expresses it, had taken umbrage at something said by an entirely inoffensive man. He sent his seconds to wait upon this person and to say that he would fight him at a distance of twenty-five paces. "I agree," replied the recipient of the challenge; "but since you have regulated the distance, the choice of arms must rest with me--I name the sword."
Romieu, renowned for his spirit of pleasantry, received one day, from a barren scribbler who had been educated at the �cole de Droit, the manuscript of a play accompanied by the following letter: "Sir,--I herewith submit a piece to which I beg you to give your very careful attention. I accept beforehand any alterations which you may think fit to make in it, with this exception--that I am most punctilious about the philosophical reflections remaining untouched." A few days afterwards the author received back his manuscript with this reply: "Sir,--I have read your work with the greatest attention. I leave to you the choice of arms." Fortunately it was ink alone, and not blood, which was spilt in the affair.
At the time when Sainte-Beuve was contributing to the Globe he quarrelled with a member of the staff of that journal. A duel was arranged; when the combatants arrived on the ground it was raining in torrents; Sainte-Beuve had come provided with an umbrella and with flint pistols of the sixteenth century. At the moment when the adversaries were to pull their triggers Sainte-Beuve was still carefully shielding himself from the elements with his umbrella. The seconds protested, but Sainte-Beuve refused to get wet. "I don't mind being killed," he exclaimed; "but I decline to catch cold." The duel then proceeded, Sainte-Beuve levelling his pistol with one hand and holding up his umbrella with the other. Four shots were exchanged, but without injury on either side.
Cyrano de Bergerac, of whom mention has already been made, was the most ferocious duellist of his time. His nose, of inordinate length, had received such a number of dents that it was quite a curiosity. He was very touchy on this subject, and would allow no one to look at him pointedly. More than ten men expiated with their lives some satirical glance at him, or some ill-sounding word uttered in his presence.
A certain bravo challenged an apothecary, by whom he conceived himself insulted. The duel was arranged, and the adversaries duly met, each accompanied by two seconds. One of the seconds of the aggrieved man held out a pair of swords, and the other a brace of pistols.
"Sir," cried the bravo, "choose weapons. Pistol and sword are the same thing to me." "That is all very well," replied the apothecary, "but I do not see why you should impose your arms upon me; I think I have as much right, and more, to impose mine on you." "Good. What are your arms?" was the reply. The apothecary took a little box from his pocket, opened it, and presented it to his adversary. "There are two pills," he said: "one is poisoned and the other harmless. Choose!" The affair ended in laughter.
The Marquis de Rivarolles, who had just lost one of his legs in battle, uttered certain words offensive to Madillan, Schomberg's aide-de-camp. He was challenged. The marquis appointed his surgeon to act as second. The surgeon promptly waited upon Madillan, but introduced himself without mentioning either his profession or the reply he was authorised to give. He simply displayed his case of surgical instruments. Madillan, mystified, inquired whether the visitor was the representative of de Rivarolles. "I am," he said. "M. de Rivarolles is quite ready to fight you, according to your desire; but, convinced that a man as brave and generous as yourself would not like to fight at a disproportionate advantage, he has ordered me to take one of your legs off beforehand, so that the chances between you will be equal." Madillan was enraged at this extraordinary proposition; but the duel was, in the end, prevented by Marshal de Schomberg, who succeeded in reconciling the adversaries.
Voltaire had recourse to a custom which he had himself energetically condemned. Dining one day at the Duke de Sully's, he happened, in the course of a discussion, to raise his voice a little. "Who is that young man contradicting me so loudly?" asked the Chevalier de Rohan-Chabot. "He is a man," replied Voltaire, "who does not boast a great name, but who honours the name he bears." The chevalier did not reply, but a few days afterwards he caused Voltaire to be waylaid and beaten by half a dozen ruffians. After having vainly tried to persuade the Duke de Sully to espouse his cause, Voltaire determined to trust solely to his own personal courage. He took fencing-lessons, and as soon as he was able to handle a sword, waited upon the chevalier in his box at the Th��tre Fran�ais. "Sir," he said, "unless some business affair has caused you to forget the insult which I suffered at your hands, I hope you will afford me satisfaction." This was one of those arrows, barbed with irony, which Voltaire knew so well how to throw. "Some business affair" was a phrase which the chevalier could not decently bear. He accepted the challenge, but without intending to fight. Instead of crossing swords with the young poet he caused him to be thrown into the Bastille for having presumed to call out so great a personage.
That most amiable of men, La Fontaine, once persuaded himself, or rather allowed himself to be persuaded, that he ought to be jealous of his wife. The circumstances were these. He was on terms of close friendship with an old captain of dragoons, retired from service, named Poignant; a gentleman distinguished by candour and good nature. So much time as Poignant did not spend at the tavern he passed at the house of La Fontaine, and often in the society of his wife when the poet happened not to be at home. One day someone asked La Fontaine how it was that he permitted Poignant to visit him every day. "Why should he not? he is my best friend," was the reply. "That is scarcely what the public say. They maintain that he only goes to see Mme. La Fontaine." "The public are wrong. But what ought I to do in the matter?" "You must demand satisfaction, sword in hand, of the man who has dishonoured you." "Very well," said the fabulist, "satisfaction I will demand." On the morrow, at four in the morning, he called upon Poignant, whom he found in bed. "Get up," he said, "and let us go out together." His friend asked why he wanted him, and what urgent affair had brought La Fontaine out of bed at such an hour. "I will tell you," was the answer, "after we have gone hence." Poignant, quite mystified, arose, dressed, and then inquired to what place the poet was taking him. "You will soon see," replied La Fontaine, who, when they had both quitted the house and reached a sufficiently retired spot, said with solemnity, "My friend, we must fight." Poignant, more puzzled than ever, asked in what way he had offended. "Besides," he added, "I am a soldier, and you scarcely know how to hold a sword." "No matter," replied La Fontaine; "the public wishes me to fight you." Poignant, after protesting for a long time in vain, at length drew his sword from complaisance, and easily disarmed La Fontaine. Then he inquired the meaning of the whole affair. "The public declare," said La Fontaine, "that you come every day to my house to see, not me, but my wife." "My dear friend," returned Poignant, "I should never have suspected you of such a misgiving, and I promise henceforth never to set foot across your threshold." "On the contrary," said La Fontaine, shaking the captain by the hand, "I have done what the public wanted, and I now wish you to continue your visits to my house with more regularity than ever."
Let us conclude with an anecdote concerning another duel which the "public" would have liked to see fought, but which never came to pass, because the aggrieved party had a great weakness for keeping lead and steel out of his body. A certain marquis had been thrashed with a walking-stick, but showed no disposition to take vengeance on his castigator. "Why doesn't he appeal to arms?" people inquired--to which the witty Sophie Arnould replied: "Because he has too much good sense to take any notice of what goes on behind his back."
Paris Students--Their Character--In the Middle Ages--At the Revolution--Under the Directory--In 1814--In 1819--Lallemand--In the Revolution of 1830.
If art and fashion, industry and commerce, are chiefly represented on the right bank of the Seine, science and the schools have their headquarters on the left. The "Latin country" or "pays Latin" occupies a considerable portion of the territory known as the Rive Gauche, and gives to it a distinctive character. Latin, since the Revolution, has been no more the language of instruction in France that it is now in other countries, though in Hungary and Austrian Poland it was the language of the law-courts even until the revolutionary year of 1848.
The students of Paris have so interesting a history that the task of writing it in voluminous fashion was undertaken long ago by a very able writer, Antonio Watripon, whom death unfortunately prevented from completing his "Histoire politiques des �coles et des �tudiants." Already in the reign of Charlemagne schools existed and learning flourished in the capital. At the commencement of the twelfth century Abailard grouped around him a large number of pupils; and not long after his time Paris students had so multiplied that in some quarters they outnumbered the townspeople, and lodging was scarcely procurable. The schools were thrown open to the whole world, and foreigners coming to Paris to study were granted the same privileges as native scholars. The Duke Leopold of Austria received his education there, and Charles of Luxemburg, King of Bohemia, and afterwards Emperor of Germany, took the Paris school, in which he had studied, as model for the one he afterwards founded at Prague. Before very long the students of Paris, spoilt by the special privileges which they enjoyed, gave rein to every whim and fancy which occurred to them. In the thirteenth century they nicknamed the townspeople, whom they despised for their ignorance, "cornificiens"; and the latter, jealous of the advantages conferred on the students, took their revenge by calling them "Abraham's oxen," and even "Balaam's asses." A writer of this period gives the students in general a most profligate character. Their reading was a farce. "They preferred to contemplate the beauties of young ladies rather than those of Cicero." On the other hand the Abb� Leboeuf cites a letter in which, as a body, they are spoken of with the highest esteem. The truth, doubtless, is that then, as now, some students were serious, and others abandoned to idleness and folly. As early as the thirteenth century student-riots became so frequent in Paris that, the church in this matter supporting the State, all scholars were forbidden to carry arms under pain of excommunication. During the Carnival of 1229 a band of students, after having eaten and drunk at a tavern in the suburb of Saint-Marcel, then outside the walls, provoked a quarrel at the moment of paying, and beat the tavern-keeper and his wife. The neighbours put the aggressors to flight. Next day the students returned in great force, broke into the house, smashed up the furniture, set the wine running, and wounded several persons. The Provost of Paris hastened to the scene with his archers, and meeting a group of peaceable students who were innocent of the affair, swooped down upon them. Two were killed. The masters demanded reparation, but to no purpose. Then the schools were suspended, and Paris was deserted both by professors and students, who went to Rheims, Toulouse, Montpelier, already celebrated for its faculty of medicine, Orleans, and other towns, where the foundations of other universities were laid. The Paris University remained closed for two years. After the reopening of the schools new subjects of quarrel between the students and the townspeople, and between the students and the authorities, constantly arose. The right of fishing in one of the arms of the Seine was claimed by the students, or at least exercised by them until fines were imposed, which in most cases had to be recovered by legal process. The foreign students, moreover, who from the earliest times until now have always been admitted to the Paris schools on the most favourable terms, had disputes of their own; seldom with the other members of the university, but very often with the citizens and the officials.
As we leave the Middle Ages we find that the Paris students, whilst losing a good deal of their original character, preserve all their turbulence and want of discipline. At the fair of Saint-Germains in 1609 they abandoned themselves to all kinds of debauchery, and fought in companies with pages, lackeys, and soldiers of the guard. One lackey cut off a student's ears and put them in his pocket; after which the students pounced upon every footman or groom they came across, killing some and wounding others. The students of Louis XIII.'s reign are described as "more debauched than ever"; carrying arms, pillaging, killing, making love, and in order to support their excesses, robbing their relatives or even their professors.
[Illustration: CAMILLE DESMOULINS.]
It was doubtless the schools, however, which chiefly contributed to make Paris the powerful and active agent of civilisation which that capital so early became. They formed a theatre of discussion for a vast laboratory of ideas. Many a student was beheaded, hanged, or burned in a wooden cage on accusations of heresy; for liberty of conscience, that is to say. "We should greatly deceive ourselves," says Antonio Watripon, "if we judged the students of other days by their external aspect--drunken challengers, beaters of tavern-keepers, brawlers in the Pr� aux Clercs, ravishers of tradesmen's wives. It is always the same picture on the surface; but underneath there is something which is not at first perceived, and which is marching ever forward--thought! A poor student is persecuted by the parliament. The rector is called to the bar and commanded to imprison the suspected heretic, who, however, has the good fortune to find refuge in Saintonge. Soon the whole world will know that his name is Calvin. The Protestant books are burnt and the printers cast into the dungeons of the bishopric. These persecutions serve only to swell the ranks of the reformers."
The reputation of the Paris schools spread far and wide, and their civilising influence created institutions of learning in foreign lands. From the ranks of the Paris students in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries stepped forth artists and writers who have remained the glory of France.
A great number of students were initiated into freemasonry and the other secret fraternities which preceded the Revolution. They saluted the era of political emancipation with enthusiasm. The first actor in the great drama, Camille Desmoulins, had sat on the benches of the �cole de Droit. Most of the orators or politicians of the great Assemblies were old students. In 1789 the students of law and medicine in the departments fraternised with those of Paris, so as to march hand-in-hand in the exploration of liberty and truth. Many scholars hastened to the menaced frontiers. On the 9th Thermidor a medical student named Soubervielle rallied around him the patriots of the schools, a large number of whom prepared, in insurrection, to fly to the assistance of those sacred principles which threatened to perish with the last of the Montaguards.
[Illustration: THE POLYTECHNIC SCHOOL.]
Under the Directory the generous impulses of a section of the studious youth were lost in the orgies of libertinism. The Imperial despotism weighed upon the students as upon the rest of the citizens. Nevertheless the Republican sentiment was by no means extinguished within them, nor did it fail to find expression amid those events which were the development of the vast revolutionary tradition.
The defence of Paris against the foreign invasion, in 1814, offered the students of the various schools, with those of the Polytechnic as leaders, an opportunity of proving their patriotism. In presence of the peril into which the insatiable ambition of Napoleon had thrown the nation, the Polytechnic students, with those of law and medicine, made up twelve batteries of artillery for the National Guard. The pupils of the veterinary school of Alfort particularly distinguished themselves by their splendid defence of Charenton. These, however, were but isolated examples. "History," writes Louis Blanc, "which soars high above the lies of party, will tell us that in 1814 Paris did not care to protect itself; that the National Guard, with the exception of a few true men, failed to do their duty; that the townspeople, with the exception of a small number of valorous students and of devoted citizens, fled before the invasion." In 1815 the students, called anew to the defence of the capital, were reconstituted into companies of artillery, and served beneath the walls of Paris.
At political junctures the students of Paris have seldom failed to assert themselves. The opposition of the younger generation to the Restoration had its origin in the Polytechnic School, which in 1816 refused to conform to certain religious observances. Fifteen pupils were expelled on the 12th of April, and next day the school was dissolved by the king.
In 1819, when the cry of "Liberty" was resounding through more than one European country, the Paris schools responded to the agitation. The lectures delivered by Nicholas Bavoux, professor of criminal law, caused between the Liberal students and certain Royalist auditors discussions which, but for the intervention of the dean and of armed force, would have degenerated into sanguinary conflicts. Bavoux's professorship was suspended and the school of law closed. Prosecuted in a criminal court, Bavoux was acquitted by the jury and found himself the hero of the hour. At Grenoble, on 8th May, 1820, the law students profited by the arrival of the Duke of Angoul�me to make a public manifestation, in which they endeavoured to drown the cry of "Vive le roi!" with that of "Vive la charte!" Every day large groups of students stationed themselves outside the Palais-Bourbon to cheer the deputies of the Opposition, defenders of electoral liberty. Driven back from the Quai d'Orsay by the gendarmerie, they reassembled on the Place Louis XV., still shouting for the charter. Again forcibly displaced, they repaired in a mass to the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, where they fraternised with the working men. Thirty-five were arrested. On Saturday, the third of June, new gatherings took place at the approaches to the Chamber in which the deputies sat. A descent was made upon them by the police. The students, who wore as their sign of recognition a white cravat as well as a buckle in front of their hats, rescued those of their friends who were taken prisoners. On the Place du Carrousel they snatched from the hands of the body-guards by whom he had been seized one of their comrades named Lallemand. This young man, a law student of three-and-twenty, was at the selfsame instant struck by a bullet and killed. The death of Lallemand fanned the flame of rebellion. His corpse was transported to the Church of Bonne-Nouvelle, guarded by the scholars themselves. Next day it was borne to P�re-Lachaise by the two schools of medicine and law. Within the cemetery accents of vengeance and of liberty could be heard. The friends of the victim determined to raise a monument to his honour, and the subscription-lists which for this purpose were instantly opened by the schools, not only of Paris but of the provinces, showed that enough money could have been procured to erect to Lallemand a statue nearly as big as the Colossus of Rhodes. These incidents produced a burning discussion in the Chamber, where the schools found at least one eloquent champion in the person of M. Demarcay. "These youths," he said, "who, by their studies, their occupations, their emulation, would seem to belong to a ripe age of life, fill our schools and surrender themselves to the ardour of work and science. They have fire, you say, in their nature; they love liberty: and at what age would you wish men to love liberty and defend it with courage? Is it not the same fire and courage which you demand when you summon such youths to defend the country? Cease, then, to impute to them those disorders of which they have been the victim." Foy and Benjamin Constant spoke in the same strain. But the Commission of Public Instruction passed a measure which excluded from the schools thirteen students of law and medicine; and one of these, Robert Lailavoix, suffered an imprisonment of two months. The indignation thus excited amongst the scholars of Paris found an echo in the provinces. Not long afterwards some six hundred students were secretly formed into a military corps styled the Free Company of the Schools. For two months they were instructed in the use of arms. The students, however, were Republican, whilst their leaders were Bonapartist; and the latter, seized at the last moment with a fit of discretion, refused to act. Otherwise the fiery youths who looked to them for guidance, and who had numerous sympathisers in the military, would have carried out their programme to the letter.
The first anniversary of the death of Lallemand reunited the Paris students into an enthusiastic federation. The funeral service having been forbidden, they affected to fix their rendezvous at the Buttes Chaumont; where at the price of their blood they had defended the capital against invasion seven years before. Forming themselves into a long file, they silently descended towards the cemetery of P�re-Lachaise. They found the gates shut. Then a remarkable scene occurred. A certain student, acting as orator, was hoisted by his comrades on to one of the highest walls in the cemetery, and spoke from this elevation as from an improvised tribunal. He invoked the shade of Lallemand, and called upon him to witness both the odious persecution which pursued his memory and the solemn oath which everyone took, in presence of his tomb, to avenge him or die as he had died. An electric thrill ran through the crowd; all fell on their knees in the dusty road, and bent their heads while the orator, turning towards the cemetery, bade Lallemand a last adieu. The column returned to Paris and defiled, bareheaded, along the Rue des Petits-Carreaux, past the house of Lallemand. The victim's father appeared at one of the windows, with his hand pressed to his heart, to show how deeply he was affected by this public protestation.
Constantly engaged in political agitation, the students of Paris bore a formidable part in the Revolution of 1830. On the 26th of July the famous Ordonnances were issued. The same day secret meetings were held by the students, at which they resolved to take up arms. In the evening, at the Chaumi�re ball, the quadrilles were stopped in virtue of the new decrees. A thrill of indignation ran through the assembly. The orchestra played the Marseillaise, and all present sang it in chorus. Hands were grasped, and vows uttered to conquer or die for liberty. The day afterwards intrepid students denounced the ordonnances in the public streets and called the citizens to arms. The pupils of the Polytechnic School passed the night in improvising implements of war, and with Vanneau, a bold spirit, at their head, scaled the walls and hurried to the barricades, where the students of the capital were mingled with the people. Already several had fallen dead. One student of medicine, named Papu, seeing his column, composed of youths and working men, disperse before a murderous musketry fire, sprang forward and cried--"I will show you how to die!" He was almost shattered to pieces, though he managed before expiring to gasp an exhortation to his comrades to continue the struggle. Rennes, his native town, honoured him with a monument. At the attack on the H�tel de Ville another medical student, Labarbe, had both his legs broken, dying two days afterwards from the effects of the amputation, which he had undergone with a pipe in his mouth. Many a deed of heroism was done at this juncture by the Paris students, fighting like the populace for a Republic, which they did not obtain, and for which a disappointing compromise was furnished in the person of Louis Philippe.
The political history, however, of the Paris students is too formidable to trace in anything like detail. In modern times these once ardent youths have shown themselves comparatively indifferent to politics, and have sought diversion from their studies rather in the cigar than in the sword or musket.
The Paris student's general history, like that of everyone and everything French, consists largely of anecdotes. One of the best is a legend of a medical student who was not accustomed to pay his landlady. Tired at length of waiting for her money, she paid him a visit at his rooms. The student, forewarned, received her with perfect self-composure. "Sir," she exclaimed without circumlocution, as she crossed his threshold, "pay me or go." "I prefer to go," was the reply. "Very well then; go at once." "Precisely, madame; and I shall go all the faster if you will consent to assist me." Thereupon he went to his chest of drawers, and from the top drawer took out a large skeleton. "Would you," he said, "be kind enough to place this at the bottom of my portmanteau?" "What is it?" cried the lady, retreating a few paces. "What is it? Why, it is my first landlady. She had the indiscretion to demand three quarters' rent which I owed her, and then--mind you don't break it. It is No. 1 in my collection." "Sir!" exclaimed the lady, turning pale. The student, without replying, opened another drawer, and extracted a second skeleton. "This," he said quietly, "is my landlady of the Rue de l'�cole-de-M�decine, a most admirable woman, who, in like manner, had applied to me for two quarters' rent. Place it carefully on the other--it is No. 2. This," continued the student, "is No. 3, an excellent woman, whom I had ceased to pay. Let us now pass on to No. 4." The landlady fled, and her tenant was never thenceforth inconvenienced with applications for rent.
[Illustration: NOTRE DAME, FROM THE PONT SAINT-LOUIS.]
The Chiffonnier, or Rag-picker--His Methods and Hour of Work--His Character--A Diogenes--The Chiffonnier de Paris.
Perhaps the most distinct type of character in Paris is the chiffonnier. Every evening, towards eight o'clock in the summer, and somewhat earlier in the winter, the streets of the capital are scoured by a class of individuals of both sexes, clad in sordid garments, who carry on their back a wicker basket, in their left hand a lantern, and in their right a stick with an iron hook at the end. A provincial or a foreigner might ask with curiosity what part these persons, so strangely armed, play in the social system; but Parisians, to whom they have long been familiar, and to whom they are indeed historical, know them as the chiffonniers or rag-pickers. An observer, if he follows one of these wretched adventurers, will see him stop at every dust-heap lying along the thoroughfares, previously to their being cleared away by the city scavengers. He rummages in these heaps, turning their contents over and over, and with the aid of his stick picks up and thrusts into his basket whatever objects will find a sale in his peculiar market. Not content with collecting those rags or chiffons from which he seems to have derived his name, he gathers up old papers, corks, bones, nails, broken glass, human hair, and even cats and dogs, which, contrary to the regulations, have been flung dead into the streets. Some of the more enterprising of these explorers will, in defiance of the law, strip the walls or hoardings of their placards. Occasionally it happens that the rag-picker finds objects of value, silver spoons, jewels, or even bank-notes, which have accidentally got swept into the rubbish. In these cases he is obliged, under the severest penalties, to surrender the treasure-trove to the nearest commissary of police. The old papers and rags are employed in the manufacture of paper and cardboard; the glass is melted again; the bones are turned into animal black; the nails are thrown in with old iron; the cats and dogs are stripped of their skins, and the hair reappears--according to a vivacious, and, let us hope, imaginative writer--upon the heads of the fashionable, in waving tresses or other elegant forms of coiffure. But this human ferret, who may be seen every night at work in the corners of the Paris streets, is only the emissary of a more exalted chiffonnier: the lord of the iron crook, who does not quit his palace, but simply purchases the nightly harvests, which he afterwards "tests," sorts, and classifies, so as to sell again to the various trades which may have a use for such merchandise. Everything picked up serves some commercial purpose; each of those vile objects unearthed from the dust-heaps is a chrysalis to which industrial science will give an elegant form and transparent wings. The prices paid by manufacturers of paper and cardboard, who are the chief buyers of rag-pickers' produce, vary from something under a sou per pound for dirty old rags and papers, to five sous for rags of the very best description.
The rag-picker does not exercise too nice a faculty of discrimination whilst filling his basket. The sifting is the business of the "tester," a special functionary employed to classify the harvest. He evolves order from the chaos of disgusting rubbish which the opulent rag merchant will presently convert into odourless gold. The professional "testers" enjoy but a short career. The scents exhaled by the accumulated abominations which they handle are so many virulent poisons. It is said that even the lamps go out in the horrible dens where they toil.
The chiffonnier who scours the streets is always a miserable object; the master chiffonnier who buys the contents of his basket is often a millionaire, and splashes with his carriage wheels as he returns from the theatre those wretches who next day will go and sell to him what the city has thrown into the gutter.
[Illustration: A RAG-PICKER]
Upon the rag-pickers of Paris the law, as might be imagined, keeps an eye; and sundry ordinances regulating their profession have at different periods been issued. The oldest of these forbade them to wander in the Paris streets except by daylight, so that they might not be suspected of participation in night robberies and brawls. In the present day the chiffonnier is required, whilst exercising his profession, to wear an official docket, duly numbered, and attached conspicuously to his indispensable basket. The municipal law prohibits him from walking the streets between midnight and five in the morning. As the reaping of the gutter harvest begins at 8 p.m., and the scavengers do not clear the rubbish away till between 7 and 9 a.m., those rag-pickers who have been carried by their explorations too far from home are obliged to pass the interdicted hours in such filthy hovels as are left open for them.
The chiffonniers of Paris can boast a history. They have played a part in their time, and once they were even invested with civil functions, though these functions were of a sad nature. In 1826 M. Delavan commissioned them to kill in the streets all dogs they could find attached to bakers' and greengrocers' carts; and they executed the order with downright ferocity. In 1832, when the cholera invaded Paris, they figured amongst the licensed murderers who massacred those luckless persons whom ignorance and superstition had accused of poisoning the fountains. At the same period they smashed a number of newly-invented dust-carts, intended to clear the streets instantly of rubbish, so that they could only explore it at the dep�t where it was shot. The rag-pickers won the day. The authorities yielded before their violence and projected the relegated reforms into the future.
No one would expect to find among the Paris chiffonniers a high moral standard; their work can scarcely have other than a degrading influence upon them. Their numbers are recruited as a rule from the most infamous regions of the capital, and from a social stratum only just above that of the vilest criminality. It has often been said that counts and marquises have sunk, by means of wine, cards, and so forth, into the ranks of the chiffonniers, even as a certain fraction of the English aristocracy are popularly supposed, after driving recklessly through life four-in hand, to end their career on the perch of a hansom cab. In London, it is true, such things have happened, and men of title have been known to adopt even less heroic methods of livelihood than that of driving a hackney vehicle for hire; they have--there is at least one contemporary instance--ground barrel-organs. But these are the very rarest exceptions; and in Paris, although it is not theoretically impossible for an aristocrat to find himself reduced to the basket and crook of the rag-picker, such a case would be an exception infinitely rarer still. So disgusting an occupation would be absolutely the last to which a ruined gentleman would resort.
The chiffonnier, however, despised as he is, figures a good deal in literature. A moving drama from the pen of M. Felix Pyat, and a vaudeville by MM. Fr�d�ric de Courcy, Sauvage, and Bayard, have reproduced on the stage his manners and customs. One chiffonnier named Liard passed for a philosopher, and has been treated as such by more than one writer, and by at least one distinguished artist. He had descended from a higher station in life, and had suffered misfortunes. He would come out with Latin sentences on occasion. Scorning the wicker basket, he carried a simple wallet on his shoulder. Having collected his scraps from the gutter, he would pensively study them and draw philosophical reflections therefrom. The chiffonniers, too, sketched by Gavarni are not mindless tramps but profound reasoners.
Let us glance at the character of the Paris rag-picker as represented by a French writer of keen observation. "This chiffonnier," he says "carries in him the stuff of a Diogenes. Like the latter he is content in his nomadic life, in his endless peregrinations, in his ragged independence. He regards with infinite contempt the slaves who are shut up from morning till night in a workshop, or behind a counter. Let others, mere living machines, measure out their time by the hands of the clock, he, the philosophical rag-picker, works when he likes, rests when he likes, without recollections of yesterday or thoughts of the morrow. If the north wind is icy, he warms himself with a few glasses of camphor, or a cup of petit noir; if the heat inconveniences him, he throws off part of his rags, lies down beneath the shadow of his basket, and goes to sleep. If he is hungry, he hastens to earn a sou or two, and then feasts like a Lucullus on bread and Italian cheese. If he is ill, that matters nothing to him. 'The hospital,' he says, 'was not built for dogs.' Diogenes threw away his basin; the chiffonnier has no less a disdain for the goods of this world. It was a drunken chiffonnier, uncoifed by his own lurchings, who addressed to his battered felt hat, lying on the ground, this apostrophe full of logic: 'If I pick you up, I fall; if I fall, you will not help me up again. I shall leave you!' Subjected to all kinds of privations, the chiffonnier is proud because he feels himself free. He treats with haughtiness even the rag merchant to whom he brings the sheaves which he has gathered, and from whom he occasionally receives slight advances. 'If you don't want to buy of me, well and good; I shall go elsewhere,' he says, making a gesture as if to depart. Through the multitudinous holes in his coat his pride is visible. He will say to the great of the earth: 'Get out of my daylight.'"
The Chiffonnier de Paris, Felix Pyat's drama, first produced at the Porte-Saint-Martin Th��tre in 1847, is admirable not only for its story and its dramatic power, but also for the fidelity with which it reproduces the life of the rag-picker. Let us glance at this piece, in which Frederick Lema�tre, as the chiffonnier, achieved so great a triumph. In the prologue are represented two chiffonniers, who happen to meet on the Quai Austerlitz, lantern in hand, for it is evening. These men have begun life very differently. One has assumed the crook and basket after having recklessly squandered his patrimony. He has known the most sybaritic luxury, and now, in the position to which he has sunk, feels a disgust for life and wishes to have done with it. The other has never known anything but rags and tatters. Just as the former is going to leap into the dark waves of the Seine, which splash at his feet, his comrade, though drunk and scarcely able to stand, suspends his hiccoughs and rushing towards him prevents the accomplishment of the fatal purpose. Then he reasons with the would-be suicide, and his bacchanalian eloquence prevails with the wretch, who, in a paroxysm of despair, cries: "No, I will not kill myself--but I will kill!" At that moment a bank cashier, laden with money, passes by. The excited chiffonnier springs forward, seizes him by the throat, assassinates him, robs him, and flies. Father John, as the drunkard is called, has tried to prevent the tragedy, but the murderer, with a blow from his fist, has sent him rolling in the mud. When he gets up, sobered by the horrors of the moment, he hears the sound of an approaching patrol, and escapes in order to avoid unjust suspicion. And now the curtain rises. Twenty years meanwhile have elapsed. Father John, a virtuous and pensive rag-picker, has not moistened his lips with wine since that fatal night, of which the memory pursues him like a nightmare. In expiation for the drunken fit which prevented his staying the murderer's hand, he has set himself the task of watching over the daughter of the victim, Marie Didier, left alone and penniless in the world. Marie occupies a little room, bare of furniture, and near the sky, and here she struggles for a livelihood with her needle. She has nothing to divert her weary life but the visits of her neighbour, Father John, who occupies the adjoining room, both apartments being exhibited on the stage. The first scene shows us on one side Marie toiling at a ball-dress which she has to finish for one of her customers, and on the other the chiffonnier starting out upon his nocturnal explorations. It is the last night of the Carnival, and the streets resound with songs and laughter. Marie, as she stitches on and on, dreams of the pleasures which beneath the gauze-like garment she is preparing the rich wearer will experience, and then, in a moment of childish playfulness, tries whether the narrow corset will fit her own slender and graceful waist. As she is looking at herself sideways in the glass a number of young girls come trooping gaily upstairs into the room, disguised in different fancy costumes. They are Marie's companions and fellow-workers, who, at the risk of having no bread to eat during Lent, are revelling in the Carnival. Laughing, singing, dancing, they would drag Marie to the ball. She has no costume? they say. Then let her wear her customer's. She is surrounded, and despite a partial resistance is dressed in the twinkling of an eye. Timid in her beautiful attire, she allows herself to be carried off by the friendly revellers, and just afterwards Father John comes back from his midnight prowl, and proceeds to examine the contents of his basket. His reflections as he turns over the different and multitudinous objects, now a letter beginning: "Dearest Angel,--My blood, my life, my blood, my soul, I will sacrifice all for you"--now a printed police ordinance, "Rag-pickers are forbidden to tear placards from these walls"--now the fragment of a pie--form one of the most admirable passages in the play. Towards the end of the examination, as he is raking about with his crook, he comes across a little bundle of thousand-franc notes, ten in number. "What poor devil has lost these?" he exclaims. The idea of appropriating the treasure never once occurs to him. "If there is an honest reward to be had," he says, "I shall buy a new basket." Henceforth he will not close his eyes until he has discovered the possessor.
[Illustration: A RAG-PICKER.]
To return to Marie. The stage is transformed into a sumptuously decorated saloon. Around a table sparkling with wax tapers and crystals the joyous companions of Henri Berville are performing the obsequies of his bachelorhood, for he is shortly to be married. Henri alone resists the general gaiety. He neither eats nor drinks, and the champagne bubbling in the glass or discharging its corks against the ceiling is powerless to relieve his melancholy. Suddenly the door opens and the band of laughing grisettes who have carried off Marie from her dreary room enter to the movement of a polka. Marie follows them, but feels ashamed and bewildered; so much so that she crosses her hands over her mask as though it did not sufficiently disguise her. Her companions, however, are ready enough to lift their masks to anyone who will admire their neat little noses or roguish eyes; and presently one of the guests fastens himself on to the bashful Marie, and carries his insolence so far as to unmask her. In trying to escape, moreover, from his violent hands she tears a part of that precious robe which a year's toil would scarcely pay for. Henri Berville interposes and indignantly reproaches his friend with such behaviour. The friend replies with insolence, and a duel becomes inevitable. Marie, meanwhile, half mad with shame and fear, has fled. During her absence a mysterious woman has penetrated into her chamber and deposited on the bed an infant. This woman had been paid to kill the innocent child, but shrinking at the last moment from so great a crime, has simply got rid of it as best she could. The fee she had received was ten thousand francs, and this was the sum, in bank-notes, which the rag-picker had discovered at the end of his crook. In her eagerness to escape she had lost the precious paper. Now Marie enters the room with her torn dress, still deeply vexed at the affront she has received. But if she has been grossly insulted, she has likewise found a noble defender; and for this young man, as brave and generous as his companion was cowardly, she begins to feel the flame of an impossible love, which simply mocks her, whilst a thousand regrets disturb her gentle breast. How can she replace this torn dress? In despair she determines to put an end to her life. But, on the point of doing so, she hears a plaintive cry in the room. She goes to the bed and discovers the child. The sight of it changes her resolution, and when Father John appears he finds his prot�g�e nursing the little one whom she proposes to adopt. In a later scene Marie pays a visit to the mansion of Baron Hoffman in order to present her bill to Mademoiselle, the baron's daughter. The little dressmaker is very ill received, and tries to excuse her importunity by explaining the circumstances in connection with the child she has to support--at which the daughter seems strangely disquieted and the father enraged. The truth is that Mlle. Hoffman herself has brought this child into the world, and has confessed her shame to the baron, who thereupon wished to get rid of the little creature for a very particular reason. Baron Hoffman is the rag-picker who assassinated Marie's father twenty years before. For the whole world he would not have had an obstacle arise to the marriage of his daughter with Henri Berville; nor is his anxiety on this point unintelligible. Henri Berville is the son of the banker whose cashier the ex-rag-picker has killed, and with whom, subsequently, he has entered into partnership. Dreading every moment of his life that some traces of his crime may be discovered, he wishes, by marrying his daughter to the banker's son, to identify the interests of Henri Berville with his own. From what is said during her visit to Mlle. Hoffman by the unsuspecting Marie, who does not dream that she is addressing the mother of the foundling, the baron sees that his grandchild is not dead. The woman who has already received one fee of ten thousand francs is now presented with another of like amount, and this time she executes her mission to the letter. The infant is found murdered in Marie's room. Marie is arrested on suspicion and imprisoned, and Father John swears to discover the true assassin. Fortune assists him. He discovers the owner of the bank-notes in his possession, visits her, perceives her guilt, and, working partly upon her cupidity, partly upon her fear, obtains from her a compromising letter. Then, armed with damnatory evidence, he calls upon Baron Hoffman, who, recognising him, gets his lackeys to make him drunk. An abstinence of twenty years has not destroyed his liking for wine, and he now in a weak moment sacrifices so unreservedly to Bacchus, that the baron has no difficulty in wresting from him as he lies inebriated the documentary evidence of his guilt. Instead of accuser he has now become the accused, and Baron Hoffman has him arrested for complicity with the murderer of the bank cashier. Having ridded himself of this dangerous witness, the baron goes to Saint-Lazare to see Marie, who is in detention there, and manages to make her believe that she will be the cause of Henri Berville's ruin by preventing his marriage with Mlle. Clara Hoffman. Between Marie and Henri an undeclared passion already exists. Since their first meeting at the masked ball, Henri has sworn that he will marry her and no one else; for indeed he has never loved Clara, whose hand was forced upon him, and who already has another less chivalrous lover, as events have only too painfully proved.
Marie, deceived by the baron's representations, now resolves to sacrifice herself to Henri's welfare, and signs a false confession which has been prepared for her, and by which she lays claim to a crime of which she is guiltless. Meanwhile Father John, brought before the commissary, is concerned with nothing but the demonstration of Marie's innocence. He speaks with such eloquence and grief, his accents are so real and heartrending, that the hesitating magistrate consents to make experiment of a proof which the chiffonnier proposes. "Lend me thirty thousand francs!" he cries. At this demand everyone present thinks him insane, with the exception of Henri, who promptly furnishes the loan. With the aid of this sum the chiffonnier obtains from the murderess of Clara's child conclusive evidence of Marie's innocence and the baron's guilt. Hoffman is brought to justice, and no obstacle remains to the union of Marie and Henri Berville. "But how can we reward devotion like yours?" ask Henri and his friends of Father John; who, a true chiffonnier to the last, replies, "Give me a new basket!"
B�ranger's Bohemians--Balzac's Definition--Two Generations--Henri M�rger.
Another extremely interesting type of character in Paris--likewise of the vagrant nature--is the Bohemian. According to the definition of a French lexicographer the Bohemian is "a gay and careless man who laughingly endures the ills of life." B�ranger has written a charming poem upon the Bohemians of his day--describing the wandering and eccentric life of bronzed-faced, brilliant-eyed men of athletic stature, with their free amours and their romantic slumbers, during summer nights, beneath the canopy of heaven. But B�ranger did not dream of any analogy between poets or artists in search of a supper and a cheap bed, and those simple mendicants whose existence he idealised. The comparison, however, soon began to assert itself. A new sense, peculiar and fascinating, was given to the word Bohemian; and George Sand, the first writer who seems to have applied it, finishes her novel entitled "La Derni�re Aldini" with the exclamation, "Vive la Boh�me!" Balzac, in his "Prince de la Boh�me," presents an admirable definition of the intellectual Bohemians. "They are young men," he writes, "of any age over twenty, but not yet in their thirtieth year; men of genius in their respective walks of life, little known hitherto, but who will make themselves known and conquer fame. In this class you may find diplomatists who could overthrow the projects of Russia if supported by the power of France. Authors, too, administrators, warriors, journalists, artists, belong to the order of Bohemians." A less flattering notion, however, of the Bohemian is given by Xavier de Mont�pin, who in his "Confessions d'une Boh�me" describes the adventurer thus: "A lost child of this great Paris, where all the vices have temples and all the bad passions altars and priests, the Bohemian cultivates, with dangerous skill, the worse side of human nature. Sometimes he is really clever and succeeds in deceiving the whole world, which for a moment accepts him. Then he is brilliant and proud, delicately gloved and fastidiously shod; he has horses, mistresses, gold. Of this lying edifice, so elaborately constructed, not one stone, perhaps, will to-morrow rest upon another." It is to be hoped that Mont�pin was, in this case, generalising from a few very bad specimens.
Like his counterpart in London, the Bohemian of Paris has usually long to wait for his hour of triumph. He has to pass through years of struggles and privations, to hunger and to thirst. He does not surrender, however; for he has an ardent faith in himself, and never loses the sheet-anchor of hope. The life he leads has, moreover, its seductive side, without which the bravest soul could not support it--hours of delightful illusion, the pleasures of study, the buoyant companionship of others engaged in the same warfare, and a free vent for the explosive gaieties of youth. Then there are the periods of discouragement and anguish, the unkindnesses of friends, the physical frame yielding even whilst the spirit defiantly holds out; then, perhaps, despair or even death. Such things as these constitute the chequered life of the Bohemian. The Bohemia of Paris, according to Henri M�rger, is "the stage of artistic life; it is a preface to the Academy, to the hospital, or to the Morgue." This inevitably reminds an Englishman of the old Grub Street Bohemian, the man of talent or genius who, in a few exceptional instances, struggled on, like Johnson, to greatness, but who, as a rule, thought Fortune had smiled when he could fill the vacuum in his stomach with four-pennyworth of shin of beef; who, after months of toil in his garret, would take his work to the bookseller's and return with a pocketful of guineas, only to be penniless again on the morrow, to starve for another twelvemonth, and perhaps to end his career, heartbroken and forgotten, in a pauper's grave.
The present century has produced two generations of Paris Bohemians who have left their mark upon the history of arts and letters. The first had its cradle in a now demolished house of the Rue du Doyenn�. Nothing could have been more sombre or depressing than this street, which was one of the ugliest in Paris. Yet the indomitable spirits who made it their haunt lived within sight of all that the most artistic and delicate imagination could desire. There were the remains of the H�tel Rambouillet, in which French literature had, in its infancy, been nursed; the fa�ade of the Mus�e, resplendent with sculptures of the Renaissance; a cluster of trees, which might almost have been called a wood, in the branches of which feathered Bohemians trilled their songs of love and liberty. The walls of the house were old and bare; but the inhabitants soon covered them with decorations of a magnificence scarcely to be found in palaces. There Corot painted his Provence landscapes and Chausserian his bacchants; and there the earliest novels of Ars�ne Houssaye and the earliest poems of Th�ophile Gautier were penned. No troop of gipsies, encamped beneath foliage in the midst of a perfumed wood, ever led a more buoyant life. Comedy was played within those artistic walls; masked balls were given; the landlord and the scandalised citizens were defied. Years went by, and at last the Bohemians of the Rue du Doyenn� had constrained the public to accept their ideals of art and literature. And now they were petted, f�ted, adored by those who had previously taken them for fools. Yet even whilst Fortune was thus smiling, one famous member of the order--one who, in the eyes of posterity, personifies the Bohemians of this period--threw his fellows into mourning. The unhappy G�rard de Nerval--translator of Faust, friend and collaborator of Heine--was found one morning suspended from a street-lamp.
So much for the first generation of Paris Bohemians. The second comprised, among others, Privat d'Anglemont, Auguste Vitu, Schanne, Alfred Delvan, Champfleury, and, above all, Henri M�rger. Their haunt was the Caf� Momus, in the Rue Pr�tres-Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois. This caf� has, within the last few years, disappeared, and its site is now occupied by a colour-merchant's warehouse and a pawnbroking establishment. The place no longer resounds with the laughter, the reckless gaiety, the folly of Bohemians such as those just named. At the door of the little temple Death or Glory sometimes came and knocked, to summon one or other of its inhabitants away. Privat d'Anglemont entered the Municipal Maison-de-Sant� and died there; M�rger, a few months afterwards, breathed his last in the same retreat. He left behind him a literary monument in the pictures, at once charming and grotesque, of that strange life in which he played so important a part. Every writer of distinction in Paris followed his bier to the grave; and the tomb erected to his memory is worthy of the man who slumbers beneath it. His companion, Privat d'Anglemont, lies near him; but without even a stone to tell his admirers where to cast their wreaths. Of the survivors, one--Schanne--became a toy-merchant in the Rue Saint-Denis and is suspected of having, to the delight of children, invented certain mechanical rabbits which beat a drum at every movement of the car to which they were harnessed.
The first Bohemians of France must be looked for among her earliest poets. Fran�ois Villon, for instance, who was publicly whipped, and the vagabond minstrels, one of whom in Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame so narrowly escapes hanging. But these lively, luckless bards were in the position of the warriors who lived before the time of Homer, and whose deeds were destined to remain unsung. The great student and chronicler of Bohemian life (whose "Vie de Boh�me," as translated into German, was classed by a Leipzic bookseller under the head of ethnography) was Henri M�rger, with his four literary and artistic personages and their servant, himself a Bohemian, who lends small sums of money to his masters out of the wages he does not receive, and who, in his love of the picturesque, finds himself unable to interfere with the beau d�sordre in which they leave their rooms. Highly ingenious are these four typical Bohemians in getting rid of their money when there are funds in hand, and in making both ends meet when their purses are nearly empty. Thus, one of them having obtained a certain sum from a confiding relative, purchases for a young woman to whom he is attached a monkey and a parrot; only to find, a few days afterwards, that the monkey has eaten the parrot and died of indigestion. They have not even a suit of dress-clothes among them; and on one occasion, when the musician wishes to go to a ball, the painter induces a gentleman whose portrait he is taking to divest himself of his evening coat that he may secretly lend it to his pleasure-seeking friend. Varied and original are the devices by which the attention of the puzzled sitter is diverted from his missing garment. The Bohemian who has gone to the ball, and who puts on a pair of white gloves with the view of disguising himself from possible creditors, passes most of his time in the refreshment room; returning to it, when for a moment he has been taken out by one of the dancers, on the plea that if he were to stop away too long his absence would be "remarked."
There are some Bohemians who seem to have a particular fancy for white kids. In M. Ponsard's drama of Honneur et Argent the romantic but impecunious hero rushes forward at one critical moment to the front of the stage, exclaiming: Je porte des gants blancs, et je n'ai pas d�n�! H�g�sippe Moreau, Bohemian and true poet, who for want of a bed slept at times in one of the trees of the Champs Elys�es, went one evening to a ministerial party, where, expecting to get something to eat, he was driven to despair at finding nothing to relieve his hunger except jellies and ices. It was probably in view of famished Bohemians that an old French book on etiquette warned persons invited out to dinner not, if the meal was long delayed, to exclaim: On ne a�ne jamais dans cette maison. A well-known Bohemian, on being asked by a wealthy friend to take pot-luck with him at a certain hour, is said to have replied: "With pleasure; and you will excuse me if I am rather punctual."
The Bohemian consoles himself by the thought that the greatest writers have often in their youth been in almost as dire straits as himself. How indeed, without such a reflection, could he from day to day exist? He remembers that when, during the first performance of Hernani, Victor Hugo was called out of the theatre by a bookseller and requested to accept 6,000 francs for the right of publishing the play, he had not more than forty francs in his actual possession. He may even, if he has studied the literary history of a neighbouring country, recall the case of Samuel Johnson, who for years had to live on fourpence a day.
Even in the depths of poverty Bohemians, if there is anything in them, are sure (so Henri M�rger testifies) to make from time to time an impression upon some rich man, who will invite them to dinner, partly from sympathy and admiration, partly in order to have the opportunity of reading to them some poem or drama that vanity has impelled him to compose. On these occasions the Bohemian is said to revenge himself for having been condemned to play the part of listener only--auditor tant�m--by staying late and drinking profusely. Macaulay had such a Bohemian in view when he described a member of this interesting class--a guest at the time in the house of his patron--as "roaring for fresh punch" at four in the morning.
[Illustration: THE BOULEVARD POISSONI�RE.]
To be suspected, however, of a Bohemianism of which they are innocent is sometimes the fate of eminent and well-conducted authors; and Macaulay's roarer for punch reminds one of a certain fashionable Parisian novelist who, as Grenville Murray relates, went once to stay at a country house where the host and hostess had very romantic notions of the life usually led by the knights of the pen. Towards twelve o'clock the eminent litt�rateur, slightly fatigued by his journey, retired to his room, and before long was in bed and fast asleep. In about a quarter of an hour he was awakened by a continued tapping at the door, and, raising his head, wondered for a moment whether the house could be on fire. Then, recovering his presence of mind, he called out "Entrez"; on which two sturdy footmen appeared, bearing between them an ice-pail with a bottle of champagne in it. The novelist had some difficulty in prevailing upon the wine bearers to retire with their well-intended burden. His host and hostess had been under the impression that authors wrote habitually at night, and were unable to get through their work unless well primed with alcoholic liqueur.
The Gar�on--The Development of the Type--The Gar�on's Daily Routine--His Ambitions and Reverses.
[Illustration: SELLING GOATS.]
The waiter of Paris, whose manners are of velvet, whose flittings are bird-like, and whose smile is eternal, is another pronounced type of character. The gar�on may be said to have originated at a Paris refreshment-room established in or before the time of Scarron (who celebrates it in verse), by a certain Se�or Lopes in association with a certain Se�or Rodrigues. This restaurant, in the Portuguese style, was celebrated for a beverage then much in vogue, known as "citrate," and composed of lemon-juice, cedrat, and sugar in fresh or iced water. It was dispensed to the frequenters of the place by extremely polite servants, who were the first in France to exercise the suave and delicate functions of the waiter. Gradually other restaurants were opened in the capital for the sale, first of lemonade and orgeat, and subsequently of coffee, tea, chocolate, and wines. The waiter, as these houses of refreshment improved and developed, became more and more polished and indispensable, so that to-day, according to a French writer, "He is a personage. He wears shirts of the finest Holland, glazed shoes, white stockings, and a tie which would move the envy of a sub-prefect. But for his vest, which indemnifies itself for not being quite a vest by the fineness of its tissue, he would be mistaken for an ambassador or a tenor. His hair, cut in the latest fashion, exhales sweet odours, and his lips express a perpetual smile of complaisance. The lady at the counter, it should be added, shows him delicate attentions."
The true Paris waiter, like the true poet, is born, not made. He has hereditary waiter's blood coursing through his veins. His father was a gar�on before him, and from childhood he has been instructed in the family art, learning celerity and grace of movement, with that patience, politeness, and amiability by which he is distinguished. There are exceptions to this rule, all the same; and good waiters have sometimes been made out of men who have failed in the higher walks of life; of bankrupt merchants or ruined gentlemen. A spendthrift who, having run through his fortune, prefers to wait rather than work is already in some degree qualified for the post of gar�on. His experience will constitute him an authoritative arbiter in disputes over a game of billiards, or a pretty girl, or dominoes, or cards; he knows how to please men who love to dine or sup as sumptuously as he once did, and the winebibbers excite within him no repulsion, but on the contrary strike a chord of sympathy in his soul.
Whatever his antecedents may be, the Paris waiter invariably becomes fashioned after a certain recognised type. This type is well described by a French writer in the following words: "Vigour of constitution and honesty of soul are two qualities without which the caf� gar�on would not exist. The master's eye cannot always be hovering over the bottles, the decanters, the cups, and the coffee-pots of the laboratory. Nothing is easier than to divert, in the midst of the gigantic consumption which distinguishes certain establishments, an occasional drop from the ocean of refreshments and liqueurs; a fraction of that total which the proprietor counts every evening, to the great annoyance of the late-staying customer exchanging his last ten-sou piece at midnight for a final petit verre. The gar�on is therefore, of necessity, an honest man. From the rising of the sun to the extinction of the gas he is handling the money of others; he is a confidential servant, a cashier on a small scale. As to vigour of constitution, you will soon see how indispensable that is to the gar�on. Day dawns, and late as he went to bed the night before, he has to rise betimes. At that hour there is hardly anyone awake in Paris but fruiterers, scavengers, and water-carriers; nevertheless he, the man of eloquence, who passes his time amongst epicures and who forms an indisputable part of the fashionable world, must tear himself from the luxury of repose. Every day the luxury of life surrounds him with its seductions, its perfumes, and its joys, and yet he is condemned to live the hard life of an artizan. His master wishes him to have at once the complaisant elegance of a spaniel and the vigilance of a fox. Well, he wakes up, and stretches his arms; striking, perhaps, with his extended fingers the table-legs between which he has thrown his mattress the night before. For you must quite understand that he is obliged to take his food and to sleep within that space which is the scene of his duties; like the soldier in action, he sleeps on the field of battle. When, thus early, he rises, he is breathing a heavy air, impregnated with the too-familiar emanations from gas, not to mention the odours (hermetically closed in by the caf� shutters) of that punch, wine, and haricot mutton which the proprietor has shared at midnight with his companions, at table No. 1, the table, that is to say, nearest the counter. The only glimpse of light which cheers the gar�on as he opens his eyes proceeds from the inextinguishable lamp which burns in the laboratory with the obstinacy of the vestal fire. As to those matutinal sounds which herald the approach of day, the gar�on is quite free to regard as such the mewing of the cat, or the shrill whistlings of Madame's canaries, which are anticipating a near visit from the chickweed merchant. But suddenly the tread of the master, who, in a room overhead, is searching for his braces and his cravat, shakes the ceiling. In an instant the mattresses of all the waiters are snatched up and bundled behind an old partition, side by side with spoilt billiard cues, watering cans, broken chess-boards, and the antique counter which the proprietor purchased with the original stock. The shutters are taken down, the milkmaid arrives, the principal comes downstairs with a bag of money under his arm, Madame thinks about her toilette, butter pats are distributed on the plates, the stove-tender lights the fire, and all the bees in this hive are in motion. The hour of work has struck."
After this first tug at his collar, it is a relief to find that the gar�on enjoys a brief period of repose, and, whilst awaiting custom, tears the wrappers off the newspapers and studies the European situation. In the morning he is occupied entirely with dispensing caf�-au-lait. This first service is productive of very few "tips," as the customers who breakfast at the caf�s are usually employ�es, or old bachelors, or provincial visitors lodging in the small hotels of the neighbourhood; people more or less pledged to a discreet economy. From noon, however, till two o'clock black coffee and alcoholic liqueur absorb the waiter's energies. It is between those hours that gay consumers, with hearts already warmed by a visit to the neighbouring restaurant, arrive in troops and pay without counting their change. This, however, is not a wise proceeding if we are to be guided by a certain M. Vidocq, who, in his "Arch Thief (Paravoleur); or, The Art of conducting oneself prudently in all countries and especially at Paris," a book at once curious and rare, does not, like a beforementioned writer, rely on the universal integrity of the gar�on, and whose advice to his readers is as follows:--"At the caf� you must not, from a sense of false shame or from misplaced confidence, put in your pocket without counting it the change which the gar�on gives you when the piece of money you have tendered in payment exceeds the charge you have incurred. This is particularly to be avoided in the caf�s-jardins, where the crowd presses on all sides, and where twenty panting waiters seem hardly sufficient to serve the customers. You have come with some friends, and have taken ices, punch, liqueurs, etc. When you are about to depart you tell the waiter that you wish to settle. You call in vain for him five or six times, getting no reply but--'Coming, sir; coming.' At length he arrives, scared, bewildered, and staring right and left as though anxious to despatch you and rush off to someone else. You tell him to reckon what you owe. He gabbles certain words about ices, punch, liqueurs, which you cannot understand, and then distinctly mentions a certain sum-total. If you pay on the spot, without any explanation, you are pretty sure to have been charged fifteen or twenty sous too much. If you have calculated your debt beforehand, with the aid of the tariffs posted up at these places, you will easily perceive, before parting with your money, what errors have been committed. If, however, you have failed to take this precaution, do not be imposed upon by the distracted air of the gar�on, but make him enumerate each separate item of your account, and it will be a wonder indeed if you do not gain by this recapitulation." Yet another ingenious device on the part of the gar�on is made by M. Vidocq a subject of admonition to his readers. "When a party of friends," he writes, "have run up rather a heavy bill, it often happens that the gentleman who is doing the honours finds amongst the change he receives a piece of ten or twenty sous from which the image and superscription have been almost entirely effaced; and he ultimately throws it to the waiter, saying that it is for him. This coin has not been introduced without intention. It has already been frequently presented to customers and frequently thrown back to the waiter. You would give the gar�on two or three sous if you received good money, and you give him ten or twenty because he tenders a piece of money which you are afraid you cannot pass."
Although everywhere very much on the same pattern, the Paris gar�on varies somewhat in his manners, customs, and general bearing according to the establishment in which he exercises his functions. There are caf�s on the Boulevard des Italiens where he deviates somewhat from his traditional amiability, and, when a customer complains of the caf�-au-lait with which he has been served, raises his eyes to the ceiling, sighs, places a fresh cup on the table, and filling it from the self-same coffee-pot, exclaims, "I know you will like that, sir." The waiter of the Boulevard Saint-Martin is a man of letters, particularly conversant with dramatic literature. He picks up his education from the eminent actors and dramatists who frequent the establishment, and knows everything that is going on behind the scenes. At one time the gar�on of the Caf� Desmares was an eminent authority on military matters. He knew all the superior officers of the Royal Guard, and everything that was whispered in the barracks. In course of time--after 1830 that is to say--he lost his martial tint, and became highly aristocratic; speaking in measured tones and looking exceedingly bored. Now, however, like the caf� itself, he is no more. The body-guards were accustomed under the Restoration to assemble at the Caf� Valois; whilst the Bonapartists had their headquarters at the Caf� Lemblin. Challenges were sent from one caf� to the other, swords were drawn and duels were fought by the dim light of some street lamp. The weapons, it is said, were confided to the waiters of the belligerent caf�s, together with the pipes of the frequenters. The intending duellist called for them as he would have called for a newspaper, and the waiter sometimes replied:--"They are all in use, sir."
The gar�on aspires to wealth and greatness. Sometimes, in his vaulting ambition, he o'erleaps himself. Says a French student of his manners and customs: "He takes a wife and a new house, puts frills on his shirt, and inscribes his name in the National Guard. Become, in his turn, a master, he puts a hundred thousand francs' worth of gilding, pictures, and mirrors (obtained on credit) into the establishment which he opens with unusual �clat. The public rush to his doors, and all goes well until some neighbouring caf�, more sumptuous still, draws the crowd away again. Then the time has arrived for him to make up his balance-sheet and pay two and a half per cent. to his creditors. What becomes of him after that? If he has protected his wife's dowry he takes refuge in his native country, between two cabbage beds with a pond for his ducks. One day the malady of dethroned kings seizes him, and he dies of ennui in the midst of an inconsolable family. Heaven take pity on his soul! Many caf� waiters die without having fulfilled their dream of having an establishment of their own. The life of fatigue which they lead kills them, as a rule, towards their thirtieth year. It is thus that we have seen the greatest of them all vanish from our midst--that waiter of the Caf� de la Rotonde, whose 'baoum!' uttered in a far-resounding voice, has found so many imitators. We see him still, coffee-pot in hand, saying in a voice profound, 'Pas de Cr�me?' Alas, alas, he is dead. He died of consumption, and when he was about to expire the nurse still offered him a mixture of cod-liver oil and milk, which his doctor had prescribed. He exclaimed with his last gasp, 'Pas de Cr�me?'"
Brillat-Savarin on the Art of Cooking--The Cook and the Roaster--Cooking in the Seventeenth Century--Louis XV.--Mme de Maintenon.
From the Paris waiter to the Paris cook the transition is, in literary phrase, "easy and natural." There is probably no prouder personage in the world than this artist, who knows that mankind cannot dispense with him, and who, if one were to ask him whether the revolution of his spit or of the earth on its axis were the more important, might hesitate to decide.
In that excellent comedy from the combined pens of �mile Augier and Jules Sandeau, entitled Le Gendre de M. Poirier, we see an illustration of the solemn importance which is attached by the French cook to a well-ordered menu. M. Poirier, an aspirant for social position, has married his daughter to a ruined marquis, Gaston de Nesle, whom he soon finds to be a magnificently expensive son-in-law. One day, determined to retrench, he sends for his chef and asks what he intends to prepare for dinner that day. The chef enumerates a list of some twenty costly and exquisite dishes; to which M. Poirier replies: "You will replace all that by soup, roast meat, salad, and a fruit tart." The cook feels like a soldier required to chop wood with the sword with which he has been accustomed to cut his way to glory, and who prefers to snap that sword in two. "I resign!" exclaims the cuisinier. "No man will cook for you!" "Then I will engage a woman," is the economist's base rejoinder.
To pass from fiction to fact we find a very much stronger instance of the spirit of the French cook in the famous Vatel, who was so delicate on the "point of honour" that he ran a sword through his own body because the fish which should have arrived for an important dinner he was cooking did not turn up in time. This artist was first attached to the intendant Foquet, afterwards to the Prince de Cond�; and he could not endure the shame of letting the king go short of one particular course in the dinner which the prince offered him at the Castle of Chantilly.
Some of the loftiest functions of the Parisian chef can be performed by no one who is not endowed with absolute genius. Training, experience, industry, will go some distance in the French culinary art; but, according to Brillat-Savarin, in his Physiologie du Go�t, they would apparently never qualify a man for the sublimer functions of roasting a joint or a fowl.
"On devient cuisinier mais on na�t rotisseur," exclaims this excellent writer, who raised the art of the kitchen to the dignity of a science, and who propounds the maxims of cooking with the same gravity, the same sincerity, the same ardour as if he were laying the bases of a grand moral philosophy. "A dessert without cheese is like a beautiful woman with but one eye," he declared in a neat sentence which admits of only a lumbering translation.
Why a roasting-cook should require greater talent than one of his kitchen colleagues, who, for instance, like the chef spoken of by Macaulay, could make ten different dishes out of a poppy-head, is not at first sight apparent. One might imagine that the roaster required nothing but care and patience; but after the dictum of so high an authority as Brillat-Savarin, it must by the uninitiated be supposed that for the seemingly simple operation of roasting a bird or joint as it ought to be roasted, a combination of subtle qualities are requisite, just as the mere two hands of a watch need, for their due regulation, a complex system of machinery.
[Illustration: THE BIRD MARKET.]
As roaster, or in no matter what capacity, the Paris cook had his poetic eulogist. One gastronomic versifier was wont, whilst sitting at dinner, to regard the genius who was furnishing his stomach as a divinity--
Un cuisinier, quand je a�ne, Me semble un �tre divin.
Another regarded his cook as a present from the sky--
Que je puisse toujours, apr�s avoir din�, B�nir le cuisinier que le ciel m'a donn�!
The science of cooking in France was in a languid condition when Francis I. ascended the throne. The presence of ladies at his court, and the f�tes and banquets which were given, reanimated the cuisinier. It was the renaissance of the kitchen as well as of the arts; and Francis I. imported from Italy cooks as well as painters and sculptors. The Italian cooks viewed their art in a very serious light. Montaigne well portrays a typical member of their order.
"Just now," he writes, "I was mentioning an Italian I have recently entertained, who acted as ma�tre d'h�tel to the late Cardinal Caraffe until his death. I made him describe his duties, and he gave me a discourse on this science of the jaws with a gravity and countenance quite magisterial, precisely as if he had been engaged on some subject in theology. He indicated the different stages of appetite: that which exists after fasting, and that which remains when the first or second course has been served; the methods employed, now simply to gratify it, now to awaken and spur it; the policy with which he prepares his dishes, adorning and embellishing them so as to fascinate the eye. After that he entered upon the order of the service, full of fine and important considerations; the whole inflated with a magnificence of words such as characterises a treatise on the government of an empire."
The luxury of gastronomy was carried to such a point in France that edicts were issued by several French kings for the purpose of restraining it; but the Italian cooks whom Catherine de Medici brought to the court of Henri II. easily contrived to vanquish the law. They formed a school and produced pupils who were destined to surpass their preceptors. Until the Revolution the profession of cook was regulated by a succession of statutes. So far back as 1260 the corporation of "goose-cooks" (geese being their most important commodity) received statutes from the provost of the merchants. Later on the name of "roasters" was given to them; and anyone not of their order who ventured to cook for the public was termed a traitor. The cooks of Paris had already been made the subject of many enactments when Louis XIV., in 1663, gave them new statutes which were registered in parliament the following year; nor was it until the Revolution that their profession became free.
In the seventeenth century the culinary art had reached a high pitch of perfection, and epicures abounded in high life, amongst princes, seigneurs, and even bishops--indeed bishops in particular. One day when a certain archbishop famed for good living, in a sense otherwise than ecclesiastical, had dined at the palace of his episcopal brother in the capital, he called his servants around him and said: "I have been dining with the archbishop of Paris; there was this and that dish, and such and such defects. Now I tell you, so that you may fall into the danger, that if you were to treat me in that fashion, you would be wishing to throw away your lives." At the end of dinner he was accustomed to send for Ma�tre Nicholas, his cook, and say: "Ma�tre Nicholas, what shall we have for supper?" After supper his inquiry was: "Ma�tre Nicholas, what shall we have for to-morrow's dinner?" Another bishop having returned home very hungry and demanded his dinner, the episcopal cook made his appearance empty-handed. "As a bishop," he said, "I forgive you; but if you fail to produce my supper, I shall talk to you like a man, and flatten your nose for you."
Louis XIV. was a great gastronomist, but in the refinements of the culinary art Louis XV. eclipsed his predecessor. The artists of the kitchen were not yet in his reign paid twenty thousand francs a year, as they have since been paid in Paris; but they were petted, yielded to, and stroked down when out of temper. The cooks from Languedoc were chiefly in demand at Paris; they received very large salaries and exercised domestic despotism, the other servants of the household having to bow to their authority.
Expense was nothing when it became a question of stimulating the jaded appetite of a count or a wealthy merchant. Mercie in his "Picture of Paris" shows us a ma�tre d'h�tel presenting the bill of fare to his aristocratic master, who throws it down disdainfully, exclaiming: "Always the same dishes! You have no imagination. These are nothing but nauseating repetitions." "But, monseigneur, the sauces are varied." "I tell you the whole thing is detestable, and I can no longer eat it." "Well, monseigneur, I will prepare you a grilled boar." "When?" "To-morrow. I will make him drink sixty bottles of champagne first. And after that I want you to eat a Jamaica turtle." "Bravo! And when? Where is the turtle?" "In London." "Send a courier at once: let him fetch it post-haste." The courier is despatched, and returns with the turtle. There is a solemn conference as to the most effective way of preparing the animal; and after all kinds of processes, it appears on the table. That dish has cost a thousand crowns. Seven or eight gourmands devour it, and while they are drinking costly wines discuss the question as to how much a peasant can live on. They decide that three sous a day are enough for him, and that the inhabitants of the towns are well off if they have seventeen. Beyond these figures all is superfluity, according to the turtle-devouring economists.
The whole court of Louis XV. consisted of gourmands, loyal imitators of their sovereign. Marshal de Richelieu attached his name to various dishes, prepared for the purpose of making an epicure's mouth water. The gay and ingenious Mme. de Pompadour invented three or four recipes which have become famous. Gastronomy, however, did not flourish at the court of Louis XVI., who was by no means fastidious in the choice of his food, and for whose robust appetite rude joints of meat amply sufficed. Coming to the Revolution, we find the culinary art injured a good deal by the arbitrary closing of the mansions of the great nobility.
Those thousand and one ruinous inventions without which courtiers, financiers, and ecclesiastics found existence impossible, were seductions for the severe Republicans. A celebrated gastronomist, Grimod de la Reyni�re, paints, in what he doubtless intended for very black tints, the calamity which marked the revolutionary period. "It is an unquestionable fact," he writes, "that during the disastrous years of the Revolution not one fine turbot entered the market"; and he has thus exposed himself to Republican reproaches as to the seat of his patriotism and political sentiment being his stomach.
All the celebrities of the eighteenth century sat at the table of the la Reyni�res, which was more sumptuously kept than Scarron's. There was first the grandfather, la Reyni�re, who died in 1754 with a napkin under his chin, suffocated by a p�t�-de-foie-gras; then the father, whose dinners were better than his society, if we are to judge from the remark passed upon him by one of his guests, namely: "You can eat him; but digest him you cannot"; and finally the son, who has exercised by his pen and his stomach a considerable influence on gastronomy, and rescued French cookery from the indifference of the Revolution.
[Illustration: MADAME DE MAINTENON.
(From an old Print.)]
We have just mentioned the exquisite table which was kept by the inimitable Scarron. The time came, however, when his resources dwindled and the dishes laid before his distinguished guests were less numerous and less varied. The conversation of Scarron's vivacious wife, however, the future Mme. de Maintenon, did much to atone for a poor menu. On one occasion, whilst dinner was proceeding, Scarron received a secret message from his cook--who had to prepare the meal with very spare materials--to the effect that a certain dish, usually regarded as essential, was wanting. Turning his head aside from the guests, Scarron whispered to his wife: "My dear, give them another of those charming little stories. There is no roast."
So much for the ingenuity of a French host. The ingenuity of a French cook was perhaps never better exemplified than under the following circumstances. A rich financier was once dining at an aristocratic table where one of the courses consisted of some preparation of veal, highly gratifying to the palate. Whilst this course was being eaten one of the guests happened to say to the host: "Your epigrams, you know, are excellent." When the financier got home he summoned his cook, told him he had just dined at a house where a ravishing dish of veal, mysteriously prepared, had been served, and directed the cuisinier to manufacture something like it, adding that he could not describe the precise nature of the dish, but that he knew it was called an "epigram." For a moment the cook was staggered. Then a sudden inspiration came upon him, and he declared that he clearly perceived how epigrams should be prepared. Next day he invented an exquisite dish, which was destined to become famous--to his own and his master's glory--as the "Epigramme de veau � la financi�re."
It was a maxim of Brillat-Savarin's that "the discovery of a new dish is more precious for the universe than the discovery of a new star"; and there have been plenty of illustrious diners and cooks in Paris who lived up to this lofty idea. The greatest chef who ever turned a spit was doubtless the immortal Car�me, who commenced his career as ma�tre d'h�tel to the Prince de Talleyrand. Having broken with his first master on some question of politics, he was successively employed by the Prince Regent of England, whom he quitted because George IV. did not sufficently understand the refinements of the culinary art; by the Emperor Alexander I. of Russia, whose dominions he found too cold; by Prince Bagration, who was a fine connoisseur but whose stomach was out of order; by the Prince of Wurtemberg, who had vulgar culinary tastes; and finally by an English lord, said to have been a glutton, and who was in any case choked to death with a bone. Car�me was a friend of the illustrious Villeroux, famed partly as Mirabeau's cook, but chiefly for his courage and adventures. Having sailed to the Indies, he fell into the midst of a savage race with strong gastronomic instincts, and prepared for them such delicious sauces and ragouts that they enthusiastically proclaimed him king. For several years, with a frying pan in his hand and the crown on his head, he played the dual part of cook and king. When he died he left his subjects a very precious legacy, a recipe, that is to say, for a bacon-omelette.
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
boulevard Saint-Denis=> Boulevard Saint-Denis {pg 95}
It vain will despotism dread=> In vain will despotism dread {pg 188}
THE PALMIER FOUNTAIN, PLACE DU CH�TELET=> THE PALMIER FOUNTAIN, PLACE DU CH�TELET {pg 298}
The Boheman consoles himself=> The Bohemian consoles himself {pg 367}
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