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.
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'égal
Aux superbes dehors du Palais-Cardinal.
Toute une ville entière, avec pompe bâtie,
Semble d'un vieux fossé par miracle sortie,
Et nous fait présumer, à 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 Hôtel 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 Égalité, 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'Orléans, formed a sort of bazaar, where jewellery,
fans, and ornaments of all kinds were offered for sale. The shops were
varied by cafés and restaurants. In the garden the Café de la Régence
was established, and the Richelieu Theatre being once more rebuilt,
now formed the home of the Comédie Française. 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 Abbé 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,
Excepté l'ombrage et les fleurs.
Si l'on y dérègle ses moeurs,
Du moins on y règle 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 café, 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 Café
Lemblin became the head-quarters of Bonapartist officers on half-pay,
and the Café 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 Désaugiers,
the celebrated songwriter of the period before Béranger, 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 théâtre infernal,
Du gai carnaval
Il est aujourd'hui l'héritage:
Jeu, spectacle, bal
Y sont dans leur pays natal,
Flamand, Provençal,
Turc, Africain, Chinois, sauvage,
Au moindre signal
Tout se trouve au Palais Royal.
Bref, séjour banal,
Du grand, du sot, du fou, du sage,
Le Palais Royal
Est le rendez-vous général."
[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 Théâtre Français, 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 Débats_ 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 cafés, 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'Hôpital, 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-Pélagie, 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]
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE COMÉDIE FRANÇAISE.]