Old Paris is no more. Every day some feature of the ancient capital
disappears. This is a commonplace remark. Everyone says it; but few
realize how true it is. We, who revisit that queen of cities after
an interval of--say, ten years, see mighty changes. Streets are open
where were houses once; markets have altered their sites; squares
occupy the place where we remember piles of decaying houses; churches
appear, where we did not know that they stood, so buried were they in
high, many-storied houses.
We can breathe in Paris now. Down the boulevards the breeze can now
rustle and sweep away the stale odours which once hung all the year
round ancient Paris.
But we have no conception of what that capital was in 1789. Paris had
grown without system. None had drawn out a plan of what it was to be,
where the streets were to run, and where squares were to open. The
thoroughfares had come by chance, without order, without law, almost
without object; the streets twisted and wound their way between
walls black with smoke, and overhanging; the houses, with their
feet in mud and garbage, and their heads in smoke, stood sideways
to the road, as though they turned away to avoid a disagreeable
sight and odour. Their narrow front to the street was topped with a
high-pitched gable, unless some modern architect had squared it off.
Here and there were cemeteries adjoining markets, a refuse heap on
which lay dead animals in putrefaction, nooks, where beggars crouched
in rags, blind alleys in which squalid children played, open sewers,
and public cesspools.
The Seine, spanned by five bridges encumbered with low vessels moored
head and stern, out of which the washer-women cleaned their dirty
linen, resembled a wide stagnant ditch. The fall being slight, the
river but leisurely carried off the filth from the sewers, the soap
from the washing-boats, and the dye that flowed into it from the
factories. Add to this the slops and sewage of the Hôtel Dieu, which
contained six thousand patients suffering from all the loathsome
disorders to which human nature is subject, and one can appreciate
the _bon-mot_ of Foote, when he was asked by a Parisian whether he
had such a river in London, ‘No, we had such an one, but we stopped
it up (alluding to the Fleet Ditch); at present, we have only the
Thames.’
Beneath the Pont Nôtre Dame, a net was every night let down to stop
the bodies of drowned men, and of such as were murdered and thrown
into the river.
At seven in the morning, twice a week, a bell was rung through the
streets for the inhabitants to sweep before their houses; but for
this, there would have been no possibility of walking, there being no
foot-way.
Gabrielle and the little brown Percenez entered Paris on the 28th of
April. The streets, crowded with people, astonished the girl. Her
eyes turned with wonder from side to side. The height of the houses,
the intricacy of the streets, the antiquity of the buildings, the
number of crossings, shops, coffee-houses, stalls, were such as
she had never seen before. Her ears were assailed by the cries of
fruiterers and pedlars of all sorts with their carts, and by the
rattle and rumble of wheels upon the stone pavement. As a coach
drove by, the girl and her conductor stepped up against the wall,
there being no footway; when a couple of carriages met, it was often
difficult to avoid being run over. The hackney coaches, distinguished
then, as they are now, by numbers in yellow painted on their backs,
jolted past in shoals. Uneasy, dirty vehicles they were, with a
board slung behind the coach-box, upon which the driver stood. Trim
little sedan chairs on wheels some thirty inches high, dragged by
a man between shafts like the handles of a wheelbarrow, dived in
and out among the stalls and carriages, and rattled jauntily and
expeditiously along. Sometimes a grand coach, behind which were
suspended footmen in livery, with long white staves, rolled down
solemnly and slowly, scattering the hucksters and sedan chairs, as a
hawk disperses a flight of sparrows.
‘Do you notice, Gabrielle,’ said Percenez, ‘the wheels of the private
carriages are girt with tires made in small pieces, whilst the hired
fiacres have their wheels girt with hoops of iron in one piece? You
would be surprised, little girl, how much envy the jointed tires
excite; for only gentlemen of birth are entitled to use them.’
‘Are we going the right way, Monsieur Étienne?’ asked Gabrielle,
timidly, for she was so bewildered by the novelty of her position,
that she thought the streets of Paris a tangle in which none could
fail to lose the way.
‘Be not afraid, we are bound for the street S. Antoine. I know the
road. I was here only five years ago, and Paris is not a place to
change in a hurry.’
Just then they heard a body of voices shouting a song. Gabrielle
looked round, and exclaimed:--
‘Oh, Monsieur Étienne, here is a great mob advancing. What is to be
done?’
‘Do not be afraid,’ answered the little man; ‘listen, what is it they
are chanting?’
The words were audible. As the band approached, every man, woman, and
child joined in the song:--
‘Vive le tiers état de France!
Il aura la prépondérance
Sur le prince, sur le prélat.
Ahi! povera nobilita!
Le plébéien, puits de science,
En lumières, en expérience,
Surpasse le prêtre et magistrat,
Ahi! povera nobilita!’
Percenez took off his hat, and waved it with a cheer.
On they came, a legion, a billow of human beings, bearing before them
an effigy, raised aloft, of a large man with a white waistcoat, a
snuff-coloured coat, a powdered wig, and wearing a decoration, the
_cordon-noir_. The figure rocked upon the shoulders of the men who
carried it, and the bystanders hooted and laughed. Away before the
mob flew the hackney coaches and the wheeled chairs, like the ‘povera
nobilita’ escaping from the rising people. Heads appeared at the
windows; from some casements kerchiefs were fluttered; from most,
faces looked down without expressing special interest or enthusiasm.
The little brown colporteur caught the sleeve of a man who sold
onions.
‘What effigy is that?’ he asked.
‘That is Réveillon,’ was the answer.
‘And who is he?’
‘A paper-maker.’
‘Why are the mob incensed against him?’
‘He has made a great fortune, and is now bent on reducing the wages
of his workmen.’
‘Is that all?’
‘And he has received, or is about to receive, a decoration.’
Percenez shrugged his shoulders; the onion-seller did the same.
‘Monsieur Étienne!’ said Gabrielle, timidly; ‘do let us retire before
this crowd. It will swallow us up.’
‘You are right, child; we will get out of the way. I have no interest
in this affair.’
He drew her back into a large doorway with a wicket gate in it. They
stepped through this wicket into the carriage-way to the yard within.
A violent barking saluted them. At the same moment, a gentleman
emerged upon one of the galleries that surrounded the court, and,
leaning on the balcony, called--
‘Gustave!’
‘Eh, monsieur?’ exclaimed the porter, starting from his room.
‘Shut and lock the door, before the mob come up.’
Percenez and Gabrielle recognised the voice and face of Berthier.
Before Gustave could fasten the gate, the girl dragged her companion
back into the street; in another moment they were caught in the
advancing wave, and swept onwards towards the Faubourg S. Antoine.
What followed passed as a dream. Gabrielle saw rough faces on all
sides of her, wild eyes, bushy beards and moustaches. She heard the
roar of hoarse voices chanting; she felt the thrust and crush around
her, and her feet moved rapidly, otherwise she would have fallen and
been trodden down. She clung to Percenez, and the little man held her
hand tightly in his own. It was strange to Gabrielle afterwards to
remember distinctly a host of objects, trivial in themselves, which
impressed themselves on her memory in that march. There was a man
before her with a blue handkerchief tied over his hat and under his
chin. The corner of this kerchief hung down a little on the right,
and Gabrielle would have had it exactly in the middle. The green
coat of a fellow bearing a pole and an extemporized flag attached to
it, had been split up the back and mended with brown thread. In one
place only was the thread black. Gabrielle remembered the exact spot
in the coat where the brown thread ended and the black thread began.
The great man who marched on her left had a bottle of leeches in his
hand, and he was filled with anxiety to preserve the glass from being
broken. How came he among the crowd? Gabrielle wondered, and formed
various conjectures. He was very careful of his leeches, but also
very determined to remain in the midst of the throng. Above the heads
and hats and caps rocked the image of the paper manufacturer, and
Gabrielle saw the arms flap and swing, as it was jerked from side to
side by the bearers. A dead cat whizzed through the air, and struck
the effigy on the head, knocking the three-cornered hat sideways. The
mob shouted and stood still. Then one of the men who preceded them
with a banner laid his pole across the street, and shouted for the
cat. It was tossed over the heads of the people, and he picked it up
and attached it to the neck of the image of Réveillon. Then he reared
his banner again, and the crowd flowed along as before.
Gabrielle took advantage of the halt to peep into a basket she
carried on her arm. As she raised the lid, a paw was protruded, and a
plaintive miaw announced to her that the yellow cat she had brought
with her was tired of its imprisonment, and alarmed at the noise.
All at once the pressure on every side became less, the rioters had
moved out of the narrow street into an open space. The girl looked
up. Before her rose dark massive towers,--she could see five at a
glance; one stood at an angle towards the street, drums of towers
crenelated at top, and capped with pepper-boxes for the sentinels.
The walls were pierced at rare intervals with narrow slits. One
window only, of moderate dimensions, was visible, and that was high
up in the angle-tower, oblong, narrow, cut across with a huge stone
transom, and netted over with iron stanchions. The walls were black
with age and smoke. The sunlight that fell upon them did not relieve
their tint, but marked them with shadows black as night.
Adjoining the street was a high wall, against which were built shops
and taverns. These, however, ceased to encumber the wall near the
gate, which was in the Italian style, low pedimented, and adorned
with the arms of France in a shield. Through slits on either side
moved the great beams of the drawbridge.
As Gabrielle looked, awe-struck, at this formidable building, she
heard the clank of chains and the creak of a windlass, and slowly the
great arms rose and carried up with them a bridge that shut over the
mouth of the gate, as though there were secrets within which might
not be uttered in the presence of that crowd.
The mob fell into line before the gate and moat that protected it,
facing it with threatening looks. All at once, with a roar like
that of an advancing tidal wave, there burst from the mob, with one
consent, the curse--‘Down with the Bastille!’
Then they faced round again, and rushed upon the factory of
Réveillon, situated under the towers of the terrible fortress.
‘Up to the lanthorn!’
The cry was responded to by a general shout. In another moment a rope
was flung over the chain stretched across the street from which
the lanthorn lighting the street was suspended, and the effigy of
Réveillon dangled in the air. This execution was greeted with yells
of applause; men and women joined hands and danced under the figure.
Some threw sticks and stones at it; these falling on the heads of the
spectators, added to the confusion. At last, a young man, catching
the legs of the image, mounted it, and seated himself astride on the
shoulders. He removed the three-cornered hat and wig and placed them
on his own head, amidst laughter and applause. The strain upon the
lanthorn-chain was, however, too great, and one of the links yielding
at the moment when the youth stood upon Réveillon’s shoulders and
began a dance, he, the effigy, and the lanthorn were precipitated
into the street. What became of the man nobody knew, and nobody
cared; the image was danced upon and trodden into the dirt; the
lanthorn was shivered to pieces, and the glass cut the feet of those
who trampled on it.
The factory doors were shut and barred; the windows were the same.
The rioters hurled themselves against the great gates, which were
studded with iron, but they could not burst them open. Some shouted
for fire, others for a beam which might be driven against them, and
so force them open. But the banner-bearer in the green coat stitched
with black and brown thread laid his pole against the side of the
house, swarmed up it, axe in hand, and smote lustily at the shutters
of one of the windows. The splinters flew before his strokes, and
soon one of the valves broke from its hinges, and slid down the wall.
Next minute, the green man was inside, waving his hat to the people,
who cheered in response.
They fell back from the door. Another man crept in at the broken
window, and joined the fellow who had cut his way through the
shutter. The two together unfastened the door, and the mob poured
into Réveillon’s factory. Adjoining was the house of Réveillon.
Its doors were forced open at the same time as the paper-making
establishment. The private entrance to an upper storey of the
workshops from the house was burst by those in the factory, and the
mob crowding in from the street met that breaking in from above. The
besiegers having now taken complete possession, and meeting with no
resistance (for Réveillon had taken refuge in the Bastille, and his
servants had fled,) they spread themselves over the premises from
attic to cellar. The workmen lately employed to make and dye the
paper were foremost in breaking the machinery, and in tapping the
large vats in which the white pulp lay, thus flooding the floors with
what looked like curdled milk. Some descended to the cellars and
drank the wine stored for Réveillon’s table, others drank the dyes,
mistaking them for wine, and rolled in agony in the whey-like fluid
on the ground, spluttering out the crimson and green liquors they had
imbibed. Those who had axes, and those who had armed themselves with
fragments of the machinery, smashed mirrors, tables, pictures, broke
open drawers and destroyed all the movables within reach, and then
flung them through the windows among the crowd below. Among other
objects discovered was a portrait in oils of Réveillon; this was
literally minced up by the rioters, who waxed more furious as they
found material on which to expend their rage. Two men, armed with a
great saw, began to cut through the main rafters of the great room of
the factory. When those who thronged this appartement saw what was
taking place, they were filled with panic, and rushed to the door, or
flung themselves out of the windows, to escape being trampled down by
those behind. Some, entering the rag-store, rent open the bales, and
strewed the tatters about in all directions. One man--it was he with
the leeches--holding his bottle, still unemptied and unbroken, in one
hand, applied a torch to the rag-heaps, and set the store in a blaze;
others fired the warehouse of paper. Flames issued from the cellars
of Réveillon’s house. It was apparent to all the rioters within,
that, unless they made a speedy exit, they would perish in the fire.
Instantly a rush was made to the doors. As they poured through them,
a horizontal flash of light darted into their eyes, followed by a
rattling discharge, and several of the foremost rioters rolled on the
pavement.
Late in the day, when all the mischief was done, a regiment of
Grenadiers had been ordered to the spot by the commandant of that
quarter of the town, M. de Châtelet.
The mob replied to the volley by hurling paving-stones, broken pieces
of Réveillon’s furniture, iron fragments of the machinery; in short,
anything ready at hand.
The man with the bottle of leeches ran out into the middle of the
street, a torch in his right hand, flourished the firebrand over
his head, and called on his companions to follow him against the
soldiers. Two or three started forwards. The military fired again.
The man leaped high into the air, hurled his firebrand into their
midst, and fell his length, shot through the heart; his bottle broke,
and the leeches wriggled over his prostrate form.
The Grenadiers did not fire again. A rumbling noise was heard, and
along with it the tramp of advancing feet. In another moment the
red uniforms of the Swiss soldiers gleamed out of the shadow of
the street, and a battalion with fixed bayonets charged down the
square in front of the Grenadiers, sweeping the mob before them.
In their rear were a couple of cannon, drawn by horses, which were
rapidly placed in position to clear the streets. But they were not
discharged. The Grenadiers wheeled and charged in the direction
opposite to that taken by the Swiss, and in a few minutes the scene
of the riot was deserted by all save the dead and the dying, and the
inhabitants looking anxiously from their windows.
Why had not the soldiers been sent earlier?
On the preceding day the mob had threatened this attack, but had
been prevented from accomplishing their intention by the train of
carriages that encumbered the road through the Faubourg S. Antoine,
the 27th April being the day of the Charenton races. They had
contented themselves with stopping all the carriages, and shouting
through the windows, ‘Long live the Third Estate!’ The carriage
of the Duke of Orleans had been alone excepted. The people had
surrounded it, and cheered vociferously.
The reason why the destruction of Réveillon’s factory was permitted
by Berthier the Intendant, and Besenval the Commandant of the
Forces in and around Paris, was that the Court had taken alarm at
the threatening attitude of the third estate and the people of the
metropolis, and it hoped to have an excuse for concentrating troops
on Versailles and Paris.
The elections at Paris were not completed, the Estates-General had
not met, but the crowd of nobles, headed by the Count d’Artois and
the Princes of Condé and Conti, had seen that the King, by calling
together the three estates, and by permitting Necker to double the
representation of the Commons, had created a Frankenstein, which,
if allowed to use its power, would strangle privilege. The Count
d’Artois ruled the Queen, and the Queen ruled the weak, good-natured
King. Marie Antoinette had imbibed fears from the Count, and had
communicated them to the King, and he had begun to feel restless and
anxious about the great assembly, which he had convoked. He could not
prevent its meeting, but he could constrain its utterances, and he
only wanted an excuse for massing around it the army, to force the
third estate to vote money, and to keep silence on the subject of
reform.
But where are Percenez and Gabrielle? We have lost sight of them in
the crowd. We must return to their side. We left them before the
Bastille, as the mob rolled towards Réveillon’s factory.
‘Now, my child, hold fast to me,’ said the colporteur; ‘my sister
lives near this,--yonder, under the wall. She is married again; I
always forget her new name,--it is not that of a Christian--at least,
it is not a French name. She has married one of the Swiss guard, a
widower, with a tall, hulking son, and she has got a daughter by her
late-husband, Madeleine. Ah! you will like her,--a nice girl, but
giddy.’
The little man worked his way through the crowd till he had brought
Gabrielle before a small house that abutted upon the outer wall of
the fortress. The door was shut and locked, and Percenez knocked
at it in vain; then he beat against the window-glass, but no one
answered, the fact being that his sister, Madame Deschwanden--such
was the name unpronouncable by French lips--and her daughter,
Madeleine Chabry, were upstairs, looking out of the window at the
mob and its doings, and were deaf to the clatter at their own door.
Percenez soon discovered the faces of his sister and niece, and
stepping back to where he could be seen by them, signalled to them,
and shouted their names.
‘Ah!’ screamed Madame Deschwanden, clasping her hands, then throwing
them round her daughter’s neck, and kissing her, ‘there is my brother
Stephen! Is it possible? Stephen, is that really you? What brought
you here? How are all the good people at Bernay? I am charmed!
Madeleine, I shall die of joy.’
‘Will you let us in, good sister?’
‘Who is that with you? You must tell me. But wait! I will open the
door myself. Oh ecstasy! oh raptures! Praised be Heaven! Come,
delicious brother, to my bosom.’