Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
On page 153, "corrival" should possibly be "co-rival".
On page 201, "Que ne fut rien" should possibly be "Qui ne fut rien"
On page 269, the phrase "with a strange, most ponderous, yet delicate
expression in the big, dull-glowing black eyes and it" possibly
contains a typo.
THE STONES OF PARIS
IN HISTORY AND LETTERS
[Illustration: Molière]
THE STONES OF PARIS
IN HISTORY AND LETTERS
BY
BENJAMIN ELLIS MARTIN
AND
CHARLOTTE M. MARTIN
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I
_ILLUSTRATED_
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
MDCCCXCIX
COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK
TO
W. C. BROWNELL
IN CORDIAL TRIBUTE TO HIS
"FRENCH TRAITS"
CONTENTS
PAGE
Three Time-worn Staircases 11
The Scholars' Quarter of the Middle Ages 73
Molière and his Friends 103
From Voltaire to Beaumarchais 191
The Paris of the Revolution 221
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
_From drawings by John Fulleylove, Esq. The portraits from photographs
by Messrs. Braun, Clément et Cie._
Molière (from the portrait by Mignard in the Musée Condé, at
Chantilly) Frontispiece
PAGE
The so-called Hôtel de la Reine Blanche (from a photograph
of the Commission du Vieux Paris) facing 28
Balcony of the Hôtel de Lauzun-Pimodan, on Île Saint-Louis 47
"Jean-sans-Peur," Duc de Bourgogne (from a painting by an
unknown artist, at Chantilly) facing 56
The Tower of "Jean-sans-Peur" 70
The Church of Saint-Séverin facing 74
Rue Hautefeuille, a Survivor of the Scholars' Quarter 81
The Interior of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre facing 82
Pierre de Ronsard (from a drawing by an unknown artist,
in a private collection) facing 88
Balcony over the Entrance of the Cour du Dragon 92
Clément Marot (from the portrait by Porbus le Jeune, in a
private collection) facing 94
René Descartes (from the portrait by Franz Hals, in the
Musée du Louvre) facing 100
The Stage Door of Molière's Second Theatre in Paris 114
The Stamp of the Comédie Française 121
The Molière Fountain facing 128
The Door of Corneille's Last Dwelling (from a drawing by
Robert Delafontaine, by permission of M. Victorien
Sardou) facing 142
Pierre Corneille (from the portrait by Charles Lebrun)
facing 148
Rue Visconti. On the right is the Hôtel de Ranes, and
in the distance is No. 13 facing 160
La Fontaine (from the portrait by Rigaud-y-Ros)
facing 176
Boileau-Despréaux (from the portrait by Largillière)
facing 184
Voltaire (from the statue by Houdon in the foyer of the
Comédie Française) facing 192
The Hôtel Lambert 198
The Seventeenth-century Buildings on Quai Malaquais,
with the Institute and the Statue of Voltaire facing 212
Charlotte Corday (from the copy by Baudry of the only authentic
portrait, painted in her prison) facing 222
The Refectory of the Cordeliers facing 230
The Carré d'Atalante in the Tuileries Gardens 236
The Girlhood Home of Madame Roland facing 244
No. 13 Quai Conti 258
Monogram from the former entrance of the Cour du Commerce,
believed to be the initials of the owner, one Girardot
(from a drawing by Robert Delafontaine, by permission
of M. Victorien Sardou) 269
INTRODUCTORY
This book has been written for those who seek in Paris something more
than a city of shows or a huge bazaar, something better than the
_cabaret_ wherein François I. found entertainment, and yet not
quite--still in Hugo's phrase--the library that Charles V. esteemed
it. There are many lovers of this beautiful capital of a great people,
who, knowing well her unconcealed attractions, would search out her
records and traditions in stone, hidden and hard to find. This
legitimate curiosity grows more eager with the increasing difficulties
of gratifying it in that ancient Paris that is vanishing day by day;
and, in its bewilderment, it may be glad to find congenial guidance in
these pages. In them, no attempt is made to destroy that which is new
in order to reconstruct what was old. In telling the stories of those
monuments of past ages that are visible and tangible, reference is
made only to so much of their perished approaches and neighbors as
shall suffice for full realization of the significance of all that we
are to see. This significance is given mainly by the former dwellers
within these walls. We shall concern ourselves with the human
document, illustrated by its surroundings. The student of history can
find no more suggestive relics of mediæval Paris than the still
existing towers and fragments of the wall of Philippe-Auguste, which
shall be shown to him; for us, these stones must be made to speak, not
so essentially of their mighty builder as of the common people, who
moved about within that enclosure and gave it character. In like
manner, the walls, which have sheltered soldiers, statesmen,
preachers, teachers, workers in art and letters, illustrious men and
women of all sorts and conditions, will take on the personality of
these impressive presences. When we stand beneath the roof of that
favorite personage in history, that spoiled child of romance, who
happens to be dear to each one of us, we are brought into touch with
him as with a living fellow-creature. The streets of Paris are alive
with these sympathetic companions, who become abiding friends, as we
stroll with them; and allow none of the ache, confessed to be felt in
such scenes, despite her reasoning, by Madame de Sévigné. Nor do they
invite, here, any critical review of their work in life, but consent
to scrutiny of their lineaments alone, and to an appreciation of their
personal impress on their contemporaries and on us. So that essays on
themes, historic, literary, artistic, can find no place in this
record. Indeed, labor and time have been expended "in hindering it
from being ... swollen out of shape by superfluous details, defaced
with dilettanti antiquarianisms, nugatory tag-rags, and, in short,
turned away from its real uses, instead of furthered toward them." In
this sense, at least, the authors can say in Montaigne's words, "_ceci
est un livre de bonne foy_."
In this presentation of people and places it has been difficult,
sometimes impossible, to keep due sequence both of chronology and
topography. Just as Mr. Theodore Andrea Cook found in the various
_châteaux_ of his admirable "Old Touraine," so each spot we shall
visit in Paris "has some particular event, some especial visitor,
whose importance overshadows every other memory connected with the
place." With that event or that visitor we must needs busy ourselves,
without immediate regard to other dates or other personages. Again, to
keep in sight some conspicuous figure, as he goes, we must leave on
one side certain memorable scenes, to which we shall come back. Each
plan has been pursued in turn, as has seemed desirable, for the sake
of the clearness and accuracy, which have been considered above all
else. The whole value of such records as are here presented depends on
the preliminary researches. In the doing of this, thousands of books
and pamphlets and articles have been read, hundreds of people have
been questioned, scores of miles have been tramped. Oldest archives
and maps have been consulted, newest newspaper clippings have not been
disregarded. Nothing has been thought too heavy or too light that
would help to give a characteristic line or a touch of native color. A
third volume would be needed to enumerate the authorities called on
and compared. Nor has any statement of any one of these authorities
been accepted without ample investigation; and every assertion has
been subjected to all the proof that it was possible to procure. Those
countless errors have been run to earth which have been started so
often by the carelessness of an early writer, and ever since kept
alive by lazy copiers and random compilers. These processes of sifting
are necessarily omitted for lack of space, and the wrought-out results
alone are shown. If the authors dare not hope that they have avoided
errors on their own part, they may hope for indulgent correction of
such as may have crept in, for all their vigilance.
It is easier, to-day, to put one's hand on the Paris of the sixteenth
century than on that of the eighteenth century. In those remoter days
changes were slow to come, and those older stones have been left often
untouched. A curious instance of that aforetime leisureliness is seen
in the working of the _ordonnance_ issued on May 14, 1554, by Henri
II. for the clearing away of certain encroachments made on the streets
by buildings and by business, notably on Rue de la Ferronerie; that
street being one of those used "for our way from our royal _château_
of the Louvre to our _château_ of the Tournelles." It was fifty-six
years later, to the very day, that the stabbing of Henri IV. was made
easy to Ravaillac, by the stoppage of the king's carriage in the
blockade of that narrow street, its obstructions not yet swept out, in
absolute disregard of the edict. From the death of the royal mason,
Charles V., who gave a new face and a new figure to his Paris, to the
coming of Henri IV., who had in him the makings of a kingly
constructor, but who was hindered by the necessary destruction of his
wars, there were two centuries of steady growth of the town outward,
on all sides, with only slight alterations of its interior quarters.
Many of these were transformed, many new quarters were created, by
Louis XIII., thus realizing his father's frustrated plans. Richelieu
was able to widen some streets, and Colbert tried to carry on the
work, but Louis XIV. had no liking for his capital, and no money to
waste for its bettering. His stage-subject's civic pride was unduly
swollen, when he said: "_À cette époque, la grande ville du roi Henri
n'était pas ce qu'elle est aujourd'hui._"
At the beginning of the eighteenth century we find Paris divided into
twenty quarters, in none of which was there any numbering of the
houses. The streets then got their names from their mansions of the
nobility, from their vast monasteries and convents, from their special
industries and shops. These latter names survive in our Paris as they
survive in modern London. The high-swinging street lanterns, that came
into use in 1745, served for directions to the neighboring houses, as
did the private lanterns hung outside the better dwellings. Toward the
middle of that century the city almanacs began a casual numbering of
the houses in their lists, and soon this was found to be such a
convenience that the householders painted numbers on or beside their
doors. Not before 1789 was there any organized or official numbering,
and this was speedily brought to naught during the Revolution, either
because it was too simple or because it was already established. To
this day, the first symptom of a local or national upheaval, and the
latest sign of its ending, are the ladder and paint-pot in the
streets of Paris. Names that recall to the popular eye recently
discredited celebrities or humiliating events, are brushed out, and
the newest favorites of the populace are painted in.
The forty-eight sections into which the Revolution divided the city
changed many street names, of section, and renumbered all the houses.
Each lunatic section, quite sure of its sanity, made this new
numbering of its own dwellings with a cheerful and aggressive
disregard of the adjoining sections; beginning arbitrarily at a point
within its boundary, going straight along through its streets, and
ending at the farthest house on the edge of its limits. So, a house
might be No. 1187 of its section, and its next-door neighbor might be
No. 1 of the section alongside. In a street that ran through several
sections there would be more than one house of the same number, each
belonging to a different section. "Encore un Tableau de Paris" was
published in 1800 by one Henrion, who complains that he passed three
numbers 42 in Rue Saint-Denis before he came to the 42 that he wanted.
The decree of February 7, 1805, gave back to the streets many of their
former names, and ordered the numbering, admirably uniform and
intelligible, still in use--even numbers on one side of the street,
odd numbers on the other side, both beginning at the eastern end of
the streets that run parallel with the Seine, and at the river end of
the streets going north and south. For the topographer all these
changes have brought incoherence to the records, have paralyzed
research, and crippled accuracy. In addition, during the latter half
of the nineteenth century, many old streets have been curtailed or
lengthened, carried along into new streets, or entirely suppressed and
built over. Indeed, it is substantially the nineteenth century that
has given us the Paris that we best know; begun by the great Emperor,
it was continued by the crown on top of the cotton night-cap of
Louis-Philippe, and admirably elaborated, albeit to the tune of the
cynical fiddling of the Second Empire. The Republic of our day still
wields the pick-axe, and demolition and reconstruction have been going
on ruthlessly. Such of these changes as are useful and guiltless are
now intelligently watched; such of them as are needlessly destructive
may be stopped in part by the admirable _Commission du Vieux Paris_.
The members of this significant body, which was organized in December,
1897, are picked men from the Municipal Council, from the official
committees of Parisian Inscriptions, and of Historic Works, from
private associations and private citizens, all earnest and
enthusiastic for the preservation of their city's monuments that are
memorable for architectural worth or historic suggestion. Where they
are unable to save to the sight what is ancient and picturesque, they
save to the memory by records, drawings, and photographs. The "Procès
Verbal" of this Commission, issued monthly, contains its illustrated
reports, discussions, and correspondence, and promises to become an
historic document of inestimable value.
The words _rue_ and _place_, as well as their attendant names, have
been retained in the French, as the only escape from the confusion of
a double translation, first here, and then back to the original by the
sight-seer. The definite article, that usually precedes these words,
has been suppressed, in all cases, because it seems an awkward and
needless reiteration. Nor are French men and French women disguised
under translated titles. If Macaulay had been consistent in his
misguided Briticism that turned Louis into Lewis, and had carried out
that scheme to its logical end in every case, he would have given us a
ludicrous nomenclature. "Bottin" is used in these pages as it is used
in Paris, to designate the city directory: which was issued, first, in
a tiny volume, in 1796, by the publisher Bottin, and has kept his name
with its enormous growth through the century.
The word _hôtel_ has here solely its original significance of a town
house of the noble or the wealthy. In the sense of our modern usage of
the word it had no place in old Paris. Already in the seventeenth
century there were _auberges_ for common wayfarers, and here and there
an _hôtellerie_ for the traveller of better class. During the absences
of the owners of grand city mansions, their _maîtres-d'hôtel_ were
allowed to let them to accredited visitors to the capital, who brought
their own retinue and demanded only shelter. When they came with no
train, so that service had to be supplied, it was "charged in the
bill," and that objectionable item, thus instituted, has been handed
down to shock us in the _hôtel-garni_ of our time. With the emigration
of the nobility, their stewards and _chefs_ lost place and pay, and
found both once more in the public hotels they then started. No
_hôtels-garnis_ can be found in Paris of earlier date than the
Revolution.
In their explorations into the libraries, bureaus, museums, and
streets of Paris, the authors have met with countless kindnesses. The
unlettered _concierge_ who guards an historic house is proud of its
traditions, or, if ignorant of them, as may chance, will listen to the
tale with a courtesy that simulates sympathy. The exceptions to this
general amenity have been few and ludicrous, and mostly the outcome of
exasperation caused by the ceaseless questioning of foreigners. The
_concierge_ of Châteaubriand's last home, in Rue du Bac, considers a
flourish of the wet broom, with which he is washing his court, a
fitting rejoinder to the inquiring visitor. That visitor will find
Balzac's Passy residence as impossible of entrance now as it was to
his creditors. The unique inner court of the Hôtel de Beauvais must be
seen from the outer vestibule, admission being refused by a surly
_concierge_ under orders from an ungenerous owner. The urbanity of the
noble tenant of the mansion built over the grave of Adrienne
Lecouvreur is unequal to the task of answering civil inquiries sent in
stamped envelopes. All these are but shadows in the pervading sunshine
of Parisian good-breeding. In making this acknowledgment to the many
who must necessarily remain unnamed, the authors wish to record their
recognition of the sympathetic counsel of Mlle. Blanche Taylor, of
Paris, and of George H. Birch, Esq., Curator of the Soane Museum,
London. Cordial thanks are especially given to the officials of the
Hôtel de Ville, in the bureau of the Conservation du Plan de Paris, to
M. Charles Sellier of the Musée Carnavalet, to M. Monval, Librarian of
the Comédie Française, to M. G. Lenôtre, and to M. Victorien Sardou,
for unmeasured aid of all sorts, prompted by a disinterestedness that
welcomes the importunate fellow-worker, and makes him forget that he
is a stranger and a foreigner.
THREE TIME-WORN STAIRCASES
THREE TIME-WORN STAIRCASES
We are to see a Paris unknown to the every-day dweller there, who is
content to tread, in wearied idleness, his swarming yet empty
boulevards; a Paris unseen by the hurried visitor, anxious to go his
round of dutiful sight-seeing. This Paris is far away from the crowd,
bustling in pursuit of pleasure, and hustling in pursuit of leisure;
out of sound of the teasing clatter of cab-wheels, and the tormenting
toot of tram-horns, and the petulant snapping of whips; out of sight
of to-day's pretentious structures and pompous monuments. To find this
Paris we must explore remote quarters, lose ourselves in untrodden
streets, coast along the alluring curves of the quays, cruise for
sequestered islands behind the multitudinous streams of traffic. We
shall not push ahead just to get somewhere, nor restlessly "rush in to
peer and praise." We shall learn to _flâner_, not without object, but
with art and conscience; to saunter, in the sense of that word,
humorously derived by Thoreau from _Sainte-Terre_, and so transform
ourselves into pilgrims to the spots sacred in history and legend, in
art and literature. In a word, if you go with us, you are to become
Sentimental Prowlers.
In this guise, we shall not know the taste of Parisine, a delectable
poison, more subtle than nicotine or strychnine, in the belief of
Nestor Roqueplan, that modern Voltaire of the boulevards. And we shall
not share "the unwholesome passion" for his Paris, to which François
Coppée owns himself a victim. Nor, on the other hand, shall we find
"an insipid pleasure" in this adventure, as did Voltaire. Yet even he
confesses, elsewhere, that one would "rather have details about Racine
and Despréaux, Bossuet and Descartes, than about the battle of
Steinkerk. There is nothing left but the names of the men who led
battalions and squadrons. There is no return to the human race for one
hundred engagements, but the great men I have spoken of prepared pure
and lasting pleasures for mortals still unborn." It is in this spirit
that we start, sure of seeking an unworn sentiment, and of finding an
undraggled delight, in the scenes which have inspired, and have been
inspired by, famous men and women. Their days, their ways, they
themselves as they moved and worked, are made alive for us once more
by their surroundings. Where these have been disturbed by
improvements, "more fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea," we get
curious suggestions from some forgotten name cut in the stone of a
street corner, from a chance-saved sign, a neglected _tourelle_, or a
bit of battered carving. And where the modern despoiler has wreaked
himself at his worst--as with the Paris of Marot, Rabelais,
Palissy--we may rub the magic ring of the archæologist, which brings
instant reconstruction. So that we shall seem to be walking in a vast
gallery, where, in the words of Cicero, at each step we tread on a
memory. "For, indeed," as it is well put by John Ruskin, "the greatest
glory of a building is not in its stones, or in its gold. Its glory is
in its _age_, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern
watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even of approval or
condemnation, which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the
passing waves of humanity."
These stone and brick vestiges of the people of old Paris are to be
sought in its byways, narrow and winding; or hidden behind those broad
boulevards, that have newly opened up its distant quarters, on the
north or on the south. Sometimes these monuments have been brought
into full view across the grassed or gravelled spaces of recent
creation, so showing their complete and unmarred glory for the first
time in all the ages. Thus we may now look on Notre-Dame and the
Sainte-Chapelle, in dreamy surrender to their bedimmed beauty, that
persuades us that Paris can hold nothing in reserve more reverend in
comely old age. Yet, almost within touch of these two, stands a gray
tower, another sturdy survivor of the centuries. Between the northern
side of Notre-Dame and the river-bank, a happy chance has spared some
few of the streets, though fewer of the structures, of this earliest
Paris of Île de la Cité. This region recalls to us, by its
street-names in part, and partly by its buildings, its former
connection with the cathedral. In Rue des Chantres it lodged its
choristers, and Rue du Cloître-Notre-Dame records the site of the
clerical settlement, beloved by Boileau, wherein dwelt its higher
officials. Rue Chanoinesse has its significance, too, and we will stop
before the wide frontage of differing ages, whose two entrances, Nos.
18 and 20, open into the large courts of two mansions, now thrown into
one. This interior court was a garden until of late years, and while
grass and flowers are gone forever, it keeps its ancient well in the
centre and its stone steps that mounted to the _salons_. Those
_salons_, and the large court, and the smaller courts beyond--all
these courts now roofed over with glass--are piled high with every
known shape of household furniture and utensil in metal; notably with
the iron garden-chairs and tables, dear to the French. For this vast
enclosure is the storage _dépôt_ of a famous house-furnishing firm,
and is one more instance of the many in Paris of a grand old mansion
and its dependencies given over to trade.
By the courtesy of those in charge, we may pass within the spacious
stone entrance arch of No. 18, and pick our way through the ordered
confusion, past the admirable inner façade of the main fabric, with
its stately steps and portal and its windows above, topped by tiny
hoods, to a distant corner; where, in the gloom, we make out the base
of a square tower and the foot of a corkscrew staircase. We mount it,
spirally and slowly. The well-worn stone steps are narrow, and the
turn of the spiral is sharp, for this tower was built when homes were
fortresses, when space was precious, and when hundreds huddled within
walls that will hardly hold one thriving establishment of our day. In
this steep ascent, we get scant assistance from our hold on the rude
hand-rail, roughly grooved in the great central column--one solid
tree-trunk, embedded in the ground, stretching to the top of the
stairs. Experts assure us that this tree was fully five hundred years
old, when it was cut down to be made the shaft of this stairway,
nearly five hundred years ago. For this stone tower is evidently of
late fifteenth-century construction. The mediæval towers were round,
whether built upon their own foundations or rebuilt from Roman towers;
and they gave way to square towers when battering-rams gave way to
guns, in the fifteenth century. Yet this pile of masonry is known as
"_la tour de Dagobert_," and with no wish to discredit this legend,
cherished by the dwellers in this quarter, we may quote Brantôme
concerning certain local traditions of the Tour de Nesle: "_Je ne puis
dire si çela soit vrai, mais le vulgaire de Paris l'affirme._"
We can say, with certainty, that this tower was never seen by
Dagobert, for, long before this tree had sprouted from the ground, he
lived in the old Palace, the home of the early kings, at the other end
of the island. There he flourished, for the ten years between 628 and
638, in coarse splendor and coarser conviviality, his palace packed
with barbaric gold and silver, with crude wall paintings and curious
hangings. For this monarch made much of the arts of his day, whenever
he found leisure from his fighting and his drinking. Because of his
love of luxury, a century of cyclopædias has "curved a contumelious
lip" at his "corrupt court." On the other hand, he has been styled
"Saint Dagobert" by writers unduly moved to emotion by his gifts to
the churches at Saint-Denis, Rheims, Tours; and by his friendship for
certain bishops. But Rome, mindful of sundry other churches plundered
and destroyed by him, has not assented to this saintship. We may
accept his apt popular epithet, "_le bon_," which meant, in those
bellicose days, only merry or jovial; an easy virtue not to be denied
by priggish biographers to this genial ruffian. By turns, he devoted
himself to the flowing bowl in his palace there, and to building
religious edifices all over the face of France. And he has accentuated
the supremacy of the Church over all the warriors and the rulers of
his day, in the soaring majesty of the two towers that dominate the
buried outlines of his favorite church of Saint-Martin at Tours, solid
and lasting in their isolation. There the man is brought almost into
touch with us, while here only his name is recalled by this tower,
which he never saw.
The shadow-land of ancient French history, into which we have made
this little journey, is not darker than this narrow staircase, as we
creep dizzily upward, losing count of steps, stopping to take breath
at the infrequent windows, round-topped at first, then square and
small. It is with surprise that we realize, stepping out on the
tower-roof, that our standing-place is only five floors from the
ground; and yet from this modest height, overtopped by the ordinary
apartment house of Paris, we find an outlook that is unequalled even
by that from Notre-Dame's towers. For, as we come out from the
sheltering hood of our stair-way top, the great cathedral itself lies
before us, like some beautiful living creature outstretched at rest.
Words are impertinent in face of the tranquil strength of its bulk and
the exquisite delicacy of its lines, and we find refuge in the
affectionate phrase of Mr. Henry James, "The dear old thing!"
Beyond the cathedral square, over the bronze Charlemagne on his bronze
horse, glints the untravelled narrower arm of the Seine; we turn our
heads and look at its broader surface, all astir with little fidgetty
_bateaux-mouches_ and big, sedate barges. At both banks are anchored
huge wash-houses and bathing establishments. From this island-centre
all Paris spreads away to its low encircling slopes, to the brim of
the shallow bowl in which it lies. In sharp contrast with all that
newness, our old tower stands hemmed about by a medley of roofs of all
shapes and all ages; their red tiles of past style, here and there,
agreeably mellowing the dull dominant blue of the Paris slate. On
these roofs below jut out dormers, armed with odd wheels and chains
for lifting odd burdens; here on one side is an outer staircase that
starts in vague shadow, and ends nowhere, it would seem; far down
glimmers the opaque gray of the glass-covered courts at our feet. A
little toward the north--where was an entrance to this court, in old
days, from a gateway on the river-bank--is the roof that sheltered
Racine, along with the legal gentry of the Hôtel des Ursins. And all
about us, below, lies the little that is left of _la Cité_, the swept
and set-in-order leavings of that ancient network of narrow streets,
winding passages, blind alleys, all walled about by tall, scowling
houses, leaning unwillingly against one another to save themselves
from falling. This was the whole of Gallic Lutetia, the centre of
Roman Lutetia, the heart of mediæval Paris, the "Alsatia" of modern
Paris; surviving almost to our time, when the Second Empire let light
and air into its pestilent corners. Every foot of this ground has its
history. Down there, Villon, sneaking from the University precincts,
stole and starved and sang; there Quasimodo, climbing down from his
tower, foraged for his scant supplies; there Sue's impossibly dark
villany and equally impossible virtue found fitting stage-setting;
there, François, honest and engaging thief, slipped narrowly through
the snares that encompassed even vagabonds, in the suspicious days and
nights of the Terror.
The nineteenth century, cutting its clean way through this sinister
quarter, cutting away with impartial spade the round dozen churches
and the hundreds of houses that made their parishes, all clustered
close about the cathedral and the palace, has happily left untouched
this gray tower, built when or for what no one knows. It is a part of
all that it has seen, in its sightless way, through the changing
centuries of steady growth and of transient mutilation of its town. It
has seen its own island and the lesser islands up-stream gradually
alter their shapes; this island of the city lengthening itself, by
reaching out for the two low-shored grassy eyots down-stream, where
now is Place Dauphine and where sits Henri IV. on his horse. The
narrow channel between, that gave access to the water-gate of the old
Palace, has been filled in, so making one island of the three, and Rue
de Harlay-au-Palais covers the joining line. So the two islands on the
east--Île Notre-Dame and Île aux Vaches--have united their shores to
make Île Saint-Louis. The third island, most easterly of all--Île des
Javiaux of earliest times, known later as Île Louvier--has been glued
to the northern bank of the mainland, by the earthing-in of the thin
arm of the river, along the line of present Boulevard Morland, and
Quai Henri IV. And the two great islands as we know them--the
permanent outcome of all these topographical transformations--have
been chained to each other and to both banks, by numerous beautiful
bridges.
Our tower raised its head in time to see the gradual wearing away of
the mighty Roman aqueduct, that brought water to the Palais des
Thermes of the Roman rulers--whose immense _frigidarium_ is safe and
sound within the enclosure of the Cluny Museum--from the Bièvre, away
off on the southern outskirts. This aqueduct started at the point
where later was built the village of Arceuil--named from the mediæval,
or late, Latin _Arculi_--where was quarried the best stone that
builded old Paris; and curved with the valley of the Bièvre like a
huge railway viaduct, leaving that stream when it bent in its course
to the Seine near the Salpêtrière, and entering the town along the
easterly line of Rue Saint-Jacques, and so straight away to the baths.
This tower well remembers the new aqueduct, constructed massively on
the ruins of the Roman, between 1613 and 1633, from Rungis, still
farther south, to the Luxembourg Palace. Imperial and royal baths must
have pure water, while wells and rivers must perforce content the
townspeople. They had their aqueduct at last, however, laid, still
along the top of these others, during the Second Empire. It is worth
the little trip by rail to Arceuil to see the huge arches that climb
along the valley carrying these piled-up conduits.
Our old tower has seen the baby town creep, from its cradle on the
shore, up that southern slope to where on its summit it found the tomb
of its patron, Sainte Geneviève--one tower of her abbey still shows
gray above the garden-walls of Lycée Henri IV.--and thence, its
strength so grown as to burst its girdle of restraining wall, it
strode far afield. Roman and Christian settlements, with all their
greenery--palace, abbey, and school, each set within its spacious
gardens--gradually gave place to these serried shining roofs we see,
here and there pierced by church spires and punctuated by domes. And
on the northern bank, our tower has seen the rising tide of the
centuries swallow up the broad marshes along the shore and the wide
woodlands behind; bearing down Roman villa and temple, Christian
nunnery and monastery, washing away each successive breakwater of
wall, until it surged over the crest of the encircling hills, now
crowned by the imposing basilica of the Sacred Heart on Montmartre.
It may have been here in time to look down on the stately procession
escorting the little ten-year-old Henry IV., the new King of England,
from the Palace to the cathedral; wherein was celebrated the service
by which one English cardinal and two French bishops tried to
consecrate him King of France. It saw, when the ceremony was ended,
the turbulent mob of common French folk crowding about the boy-king
and his English escort as they returned, and ignominiously hustling
them into the Palace. Not many years later, on April 13, 1436, it
possibly saw the French soldiery march into Place de Grève, over the
bridge and through the streets behind, from their captured gate of
Saint-Jacques; and not many days thereafter, the English soldiery
hurrying along behind the northern wall from the Bastille to the
Louvre, and there taking boat for their sail to Rouen; the while the
Parisian populace, mad with joy on that wall, welcomed the incoming
friend and cursed the outgoing foe.
Our tower has watched, from its own excellent point of view, the three
successive fires in and about the Palace, in 1618, 1736, and 1776.
Between them, these fires carried away the constructions of Louis
XII., the vast Salle des Pas-Perdus, the ancient donjon, the spires
and turrets and steep roofs that swarmed about the Sainte-Chapelle,
whose slender height seems to spring more airily from earth to sky by
that clearance. Only that chapel, the Salle-des-Gardes, the corner
tower on the quay, the kitchens of Saint-Louis behind it, and the
round-capped towers of the Conciergerie, are left of the original
palace. The present outer casing of this Tour de l'Horloge is a
restoration of that existing in 1585, but the thirteenth-century
fabric remains, and the foundations are far earlier, in the view of
the late Viollet-le-Duc. Its clock dates from 1370, having been twice
restored, and its bell has sounded, as far as our tower, the passing
of many historic hours. It rang menacingly an hour later than that of
Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, which had been advanced by the
queen-mother's eagerness, on Saint Bartholomew's night. It was _en
carillon_ all of Friday, June 12, 1598, for the peace procured by
Henri IV. between Spain and Savoy; and the birth of his son was
saluted by its joyous chimes, at two o'clock of the afternoon of
Friday, September 28, 1601.
Nearly two years later--on Friday, June 20, 1603--our tower stared in
consternation, out over the end of the island, at the gallant Henry
treading jauntily and safely across the uncompleted arches of the
Pont-Neuf, from shore to shore. The new bridge was a wonder, and in
attempts to climb along its skeleton, many over-curious citizens had
tumbled into the river; "but not one of them a king," laughed their
king, after his successful stepping over. The bridge was built slowly,
and was at last ready for traffic on February 6, 1607, and has stood
so strong and stable ever since, that it has passed into a proverb as
the common comparison for a Frenchman's robust health. It is the only
bridge between the islands and either bank that has so stood, and this
tower has seen each of the others wrecked by fire or flood. The tall
wooden piles, on which the mediæval bridgeways were built, slowly
rotted, until they were carried away by the fierce current. And fire
found its frequent quarry in the tall houses that lined either side of
the roadway, shops on the lower floor, and tenants above.
Thus our tower doubtless heard, on Friday, October 25, 1499, the
wrenching and groaning of the huge wooden piles of Pont
Notre-Dame--its first pile driven down by temporarily sane Charles
VI.--as they bent and broke and tumbled into the Seine, with their
burden of roadway and of buildings; whereby so thick a cloud of dust
rose up from the water, that rescue of the inmates was almost
impossible. Among the few saved, on that calamitous holiday of
Saint-Crespin and Saint-Crespinien, was a baby found floating
down-stream in its cradle, unwet and unharmed. So, too, Pont aux
Meuniers and all its houses and mills fell in fragments into the
stream on December 22, 1596. It was a wooden bridge, connecting the
island end of Pont au Change diagonally with the shore of the
mainland. It is reported that the dwellers on the bridge were rich
men, many of them slayers and plunderers of the Huguenots on the
festival of Saint Bartholomew. So it was said that the weak hand of
city supervision, neglecting the bridge, was aided by the finger of
God, pushing it down!
The Petit-Pont dropped into the Seine no less than six times between
the years 1206 and 1393. The earliest Roman bridge, it had carried
more traffic than any later bridge, and had been ruined and
reconstructed time and again, until stone took the place of wood for
its arches and road-way and houses. But the wooden scaffoldings used
for the new construction were left below, and were the means of
sacrificing it to an old woman's superstition. On April 27, 1718, she
launched a _sébile_--a wooden bowl--carrying a bit of blessed bread
and a lighted taper, in the belief that this holy raft would stop
over, and point out, the spot where lay the body of her drowned son.
The taper failed in its sacred mission, and set fire to a barge loaded
with hay, and this drifted against the timbers under the arches, and
soon the entire bridge went up in flames. When again rebuilt, no
houses were allowed upon it. With the falling of all those bridges and
all that they held, the river-bed grew thick with every sort of
object, common and costly. Coins from many mints found their way
there, not only through fire and flood, but because the
money-changers, warily established on the bridges, dropped many an
illicit piece from their convenient windows into the river, rather
than let themselves be caught in passing counterfeits. This water
museum has been dragged from time to time, and the treasures have gone
to enrich various collections, notably that of M. Victorien Sardou.
With all helpless Paris, our tower watched the old Hôtel-Dieu--on the
island's southern bank, where now is the green open space between
Petit-Pont and Pont au Double--burning away for eleven days in 1772,
and caught glimpses of the rescued patients, carried across Place du
Parvis to hastily improvised wards in the nave of Notre-Dame.
Unscathed by fire, unmutilated by man, unwearied by watching,
"Dagobert's Tower" stands, penned in by the high old buildings that
shoulder it all around. Hidden behind them, it is unseen and
forgotten. The only glimpses to be got of its gray bulk are, one from
the neighboring tower of the cathedral, and another from the deck of a
river-boat as it glides under Pont d'Arcole; a glimpse to be caught
quickly, amid the quick-changing views of the ever-varied perspective
of the island's towers and buttresses, pinnacles and domes.
Far away from the island and its river, over the edge of the southern
slope, behind the distant, dreary, outer boulevards, we find another
ancient staircase. It is within the vast structure known as "_la
maison dîte de Saint Louis_," commonly called the "_Hôtel de la Reine
Blanche_." The modern boulevard, which gets its name from the
astronomer, philosopher, and politician, Arago, has made a clean sweep
through this historic quarter, but it has spared this mansion and the
legend, which makes it the suburban dwelling of Blanche of Castile.
Hereabout was all country then, and a favorite summer resort of the
wealthy citizens, whose modest cottages and showy villas clustered
along the banks of the Bièvre; a free and wilful stream in the early
years of the thirteenth century, often in revolt and sometimes
misleading the sedate Seine into escapades, to the disquiet of these
_faubourgs_. From its gardens, portly meadows smiled townward to
Mont-Sainte-Geneviève, crowded with its schools, and to the convent
gardens, snuggling close under the shelter of the southern wall of
Philippe-Auguste.
To-day, all this quarter is made malodorous by its many tanneries and
dye-works; they have enslaved the tiny Bièvre and stained it to a
dirty reddish brown; so that it crawls, slimy and sluggish and
ashamed, between their surly walls and beneath bedraggled bridges,
glad to sink into the Seine, under the Orleans railway station. Its
gardens and meadows are covered by square miles of stone, and the line
of the old wall is hidden behind and under modern streets. And this
so-called country home of Queen Blanche, become plain No. 17 Rue des
Gobelins, yet refuses, in its mediæval dignity, to regard itself as a
mere number in a street, and withdraws behind its wall, its shoulder
aslant, to express its royal unconcern for the straight lines of city
surveyors. These have not yet stolen all its old-time character from
the remaining section of the street, nor spoiled such of its old-time
façades as are left. This one at No. 19 demands our especial scrutiny,
by its significant portal and windows, and by the belief that it was
originally joined in its rear to No. 17, the two forming one immense
structure of the same style of architecture. When was its date, who
was its builder, what was its use, are undisclosed, so far, and we may
follow our own fancies, as we enter through the narrow gateway into
the front court of "Queen Blanche's house." Its main fabric on the
ground floor, with its low arched window, insists that it is
contemporary with the clever woman and capable queen, to whom legend,
wider than merely local, brings home this building. Yet its upper
windows, and the dormers of the wing, and the slope of the roof,
suggest a late fifteenth or an early sixteenth century origin; and the
cornice-moulding is so well worked out that it speaks plainly of a
much later date than the mediæval fortress-home. In a _tourelle_ at
either end is a grand spiral staircase, as in Dagobert's Tower, and,
like that, these turn on huge central oak trunks. Here, however, the
steps are less abrupt; the grooving of the hand-rail, while it
testifies to the stroke of the axe, is less rude; and daylight is
welcomed by wider windows. Each of the three floors, that lie between
the two staircase turrets, is made up of one vast hall, with no traces
of division walls. Whether or no a Gobelin once made usage of this
building, as has been claimed, it has now come into a tanner's
service, and his workmen tread its stairs and halls, giving a living
touch of our workaday world to these walls of dead feudalism.
[Illustration: The So-called Hôtel de la Reine Blanche.
(From a photograph of the Commission du Vieux Paris.)]
It was in 1200 that Blanche of Castile was brought to France, a girl
of twelve, for her marriage with little Louis, of the same ripe age.
His father, Philippe-Auguste, was a mighty builder, and Paris
flourished under him, her "second founder." In the intervals between
crusades against infidels and wars with Christians, he founded
colleges and gave other aid to the university on this bank; he pushed
on with his strong hand the building of Notre-Dame and of the old
Hôtel-Dieu on the island; he removed his residence from the ancient
Palace, there, to the Louvre on the northern bank, constructed by him
to that end--his huge foundation-walls, with some few capitals and
mouldings, may be seen deep down in the substructures of the present
Louvre--he shut in the unfenced cemetery of the Innocents from the
merry-makers who profaned it; he roofed and walled-in the open markets
in the fields hard by that burial-ground; and he paved the streets of
the _Cité_. To meet this last outlay, he was lavish with the money of
the citizens, notably of Gérard de Poissy, who was moved to donate
one-half of his entire fortune by the sight of the King, "sparing
neither pains nor expense in beautifying the town." Sparing himself no
pains for the bettering of his beloved capital, Philippe-Auguste
spared no expense to its worthy burghers, and in their purses he found
the funds for his great wall. This he planned and began, toward the
close of the twelfth century, when at home for awhile from the
warfaring, during which he had captured the "saucy Château-Gaillard"
of his former fellow-crusader, Richard the Lion-Hearted.
Around the early Lutetia on the island, with the river for its moat,
there had been a Gallo-Roman wall, well known to us all; and there was
a later wall, concerning which none of us know much. We may learn no
more than that it was a work of Louis VI., "_le Gros_," early in the
twelfth century, and that it enclosed the city's small suburbs on
both banks of the mainland. Where this wall abutted on the two
bridge-heads that gave access to the island, Louis VI. converted the
wooden towers--already placed there for the protection of these
approaches by Charles II., "_le Chauve_," in the ninth century--into
great gateways and small citadels, all of stone. They were massive,
grim, sinister structures, and when their service as fortresses was
finished, they were used for prisons; both equally infamous in cruelty
and horror. The Petit Châtelet was a donjon tower, and guarded the
southern approach to the island by way of the ancient main-road of the
Gaul and the Roman, known later as the Voie du Midi, and later again
as the Route d'Orléans, and now as Rue Saint-Jacques. This _châtelet_
stood at the head of Petit-Pont, on the ground where Quais
Saint-Michel and Montebello meet now, and was not demolished until
late in the eighteenth century. The Grand Châtelet ended the northern
wall where it met Pont au Change, and its gloomy walls, and conical
towers flanking a frowning portal, were pick-axed away only in 1802.
It had held no prisoners since Necker induced Louis XVI. to institute,
in La Force and other jails, what were grotesquely entitled "model
prisons." On the building that faces the northern side of Place du
Châtelet you will find an elaborate tablet holding the plan of the
dreary fortress and the appalling prison. When we stroll about the
open space that its destruction has left, and that bears the bad old
name, we need not lament its loss.