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_The Story of Paris_
[Illustration: _Winged Victory of Samothrace._]
THE STORY OF PARIS
_by Thomas Okey_
_With Illustrations by_
_Katherine Kimball_
_London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd.
Aldine House, 10-13 Bedford Street
Covent Garden, W.C. * * *
New York: E.P. Dutton & Co.--1919_
_First Edition, 1906_
_Reprinted, 1911; July, 1919_
"I will not forget this, that I can never mutinie so much against
France but I must needes looke on Paris with a favourable eye: it hath
my hart from my infancy; whereof it hath befalne me, as of excellent
things, the more other faire and stately cities I have seene since,
the more hir beauty hath power and doth still usurpingly gaine upon my
affections. I love that citie for hir own sake, and more in hir only
subsisting and owne being, than when it is fall fraught and
embellished with forraine pompe and borrowed garish ornaments. I love
hir so tenderly that hir spottes, her blemishes and hir warts are
deare unto me. I am no perfect French man but by this great citie,
great in people, great in regard of the felicitie of hir situation,
but above all great and incomparable in varietie and diversitie of
commodities; the glory of France and one of the noblest and chiefe
ornaments of the world. God of his mercy free hir and chase away all
our divisions from hir. So long as she shall continue, so long shall I
never want a home or a retreat to retire and shrowd myselfe at all
times."
--MONTAIGNE.
"Quand Dieu eslut nonante et dix royaumes
Tot le meillor torna en douce France."
COURONNEMENT LOYS.
PREFACE
In recasting _Paris and its Story_ for issue in the "Mediaeval Towns
Series," opportunity has been taken of revising the whole and of
adding a Second Part, wherein we have essayed the office of cicerone.
Obviously in so vast a range of study as that afforded by the city of
Paris, compression and selection have been imperative: we have
therefore limited our guidance to such routes and edifices as seemed
to offer the more important objects of historic and artistic interest,
excluding from our purview, with much regret, the works of
contemporary artists. On the Louvre, as the richest Thesaurus of
beautiful things in Europe, we have dwelt at some length and even so
it has been possible only to deal broadly with its contents. A book
has, however, this advantage over a corporeal guide; it can be curtly
dismissed without fear of offence, when antipathy may impel the
traveller to pass by, or sympathy invite him to linger over, the
various objects indicated to his gaze. In a city where change is so
constant and the housebreaker's pick so active, any work dealing with
monuments of the past must needs soon become imperfect. Since the
publication of _Paris and its Story_ in the autumn of 1904, a
picturesque group of old houses in the Rue de l'Arbre Sec, including
the Hotel des Mousquetaires, the traditional lodging of Dumas'
d'Artagnan, has been swept away and a monstrous mass of engineering is
now reared on its site: even as we write other demolitions of historic
buildings are in progress. Care has, however, been taken to bring this
little work up to date and our constant desire has been to render it
useful to the inexperienced visitor to Paris. Success in so
complicated and difficult a task can be but partial, and in this as in
so many of life's aims "our wills," as good Sir Thomas Browne says,
"must be our performances, and our intents make out our actions;
otherwise our pious labours shall find anxiety in our graves and our
best endeavours not hope, but fear, a resurrection."
It now remains to acknowledge our indebtedness to the following, among
other authorities, which are here set down to obviate the necessity
for repeated footnotes, and to indicate to readers who may desire to
pursue the study of the history and art of Paris in more detail, some
works among the enormous mass of literature on the subject that will
repay perusal.
For the general history of France, the monumental _Histoire de France_
now in course of publication, edited by E. Lavisse; Michelet's
_Histoire de France_, _Recits de l'Histoire de France_, and _Proces
des Templiers_; Victor Duruy, _Histoire de France_; the cheap and
admirable selection of authorities in the seventeen volumes of the
_Histoire de France racontee par les Contemporains_, edited by B.
Zeller; _Carl Faulmann, Illustrirte Geschichte der Buchdruckerkunst_;
the Chronicles of Gregory of Tours, Richer, Abbo, Joinville, Villani,
Froissart, De Comines; _Geographie Historique_, by A. Guerard;
Froude's essay on the Templars; _Jeanne d'Arc, Maid of Orleans_, by T.
Douglas Murray; _Paris sous Philip le Bel_, edited by H. Geraud.
For the later Monarchy, the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods, the
Histories of Carlyle, Mignet, Michelet and Louis Blanc; the _Origines
de la France Contemporaine_, by Taine; the _Cambridge Modern History_,
Vol. VIII.; the Memoirs of the Duc de St. Simon, of Madame Campan,
Madame Vigee-Lebrun, Camille Desmoulins, Madame Roland and Paul Louis
Courier; the _Journal de Perlet_; _Histoire de la Societe Francaise
pendant la Revolution_, by J. de Goncourt; Goethe's _Die Campagne in
Frankreich_, 1792; _Legendes et Archives de la Bastille_, by F. Funck
Brentano; Life of Napoleon I., by J. Holland Rose; _L'Europe et la
Revolution Francaise_, by Albert Sorel; the periodical, _La Revolution
Francaise_; _Contemporary American Opinion of the French Revolution_,
by C.D. Hazen.
For the particular history of Paris, the exhaustive and comprehensive
_Histoire de la Ville de Paris_, by Michel Felibien and Guy Alexis
Lobineau; the so-called _Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris_, edited by
L. Lalanne; _Paris Pendant la Domination Anglaise_, by A. Longnon; the
more modern _Paris a Travers les Ages_, by M.F. Hoffbauer, E. Fournier
and others; the _Topographie Historique du Vieux Paris_, by A. Berty
and H. Legrand, and other works now issued or in course of publication
by the Ville de Paris. Howell's _Familiar Letters_, Coryat's
_Crudities_, Evelyn's _Diary_, and Sir Samuel Romilly's _Letters_,
contain useful matter. For the chapters on Historical Paris, E.
Fournier's _Promenade Historique dans Paris_, _Chronique des Rues de
Paris_, _Enigmes des Rues de Paris_; the Marquis de Rochegude's _Guide
Pratique a Travers le Vieux Paris_; the _Dictionnaire Historique de
Paris_, by G. Pessard, and the excellent _Nouvel Itineraire Guide
Artistique et Archeologique de Paris_, by C. Normand, published by the
_Societe des Amis des Monuments Parisiens_.
For French art, Felibien's _Entretiens_; the writings of Lady Dilke;
_French Painting in the Sixteenth Century_, by L. Dimier; _Histoire de
l'Art, Peinture, Ecole Francaise_, by Cazes d'Aix and J. Berard; the
compendious _History of Modern Painting_, by R. Muther; _The Great
French Painters_, by C. Mauclair; _La Sculpture Francaise_, by L.
Gonse; _Mediaeval Art_, by W.R. Lethaby; the Catalogue of the
_Exposition des Primitifs Francais_ (1904); _Le Peinture en Europe, Le
Louvre_, by Lafenestre and Richtenberger, and the official catalogues
of the Louvre collections. All these have been largely drawn upon and
supplemented by affectionate memories of an acquaintance with Paris
and many of its citizens dating back for more than thirty years.
May we add a last word of practical counsel. Distances in Paris are
great, and the traveller who would economise time and reduce fatigue
will do well to bargain with his host to be free to take the mid-day
meal wherever his journeyings may lead him.
_April, 1906._
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
The demolition of Old Paris has proceeded apace since the publication
of the _Story of Paris_ in 1906. The Tower of Dagobert; the old
Academy of Medicine; the Annexe of the Hotel Dieu and a whole street,
the Rue du Petit Pont; the Hotel of the Provost of Paris--all have
fallen under the housebreakers' picks. As we write the curious vaulted
entrance to the old charnel houses of St Paul is being swept away and
the revision of this little book has been a melancholy task to a lover
of historic Paris. Part II. of the work has been brought up to date
and the changes in the Louvre noted: it is much to be regretted that
the new edition of the official Catalogue of the Foreign Schools of
Painting promised by the authorities in 1909 has not yet seen the
light.
_May, 1911._
CONTENTS
PAGE
_Introduction_ 1
PART I.: THE STORY
CHAPTER I
_Gallo-Roman Paris_ 9
CHAPTER II
_The Barbarian Invasions--St. Genevieve--The
Conversion of Clovis--The Merovingian
Dynasty_ 20
CHAPTER III
_The Carlovingians--The Great Siege of Paris
by the Normans--The Germs of Feudalism_ 35
CHAPTER IV
_The Rise of the Capetian Kings and the Growth
of Feudal Paris_ 51
CHAPTER V
_Paris under Philip Augustus and St. Louis_ 64
CHAPTER VI
_Art and Learning at Paris_ 84
CHAPTER VII
_Conflict with Boniface VIII.--The States-General--The
Destruction of the Knights-Templars--The
Parlement_ 107
CHAPTER VIII
_Etienne Marcel--The English Invasions--The
Maillotins--Murder of the Duke of Orleans--Armagnacs
and Burgundians_ 121
CHAPTER IX
_Jeanne D'Arc--Paris under the English--End
of the English Occupation_ 138
CHAPTER X
_Louis XI. at Paris--The Introduction of
Printing_ 144
CHAPTER XI
_Francis I.--The Renaissance at Paris_ 151
CHAPTER XII
_Rise of the Guises--Huguenot and Catholic--The
Massacre of St. Bartholomew_ 171
CHAPTER XIII
_Henry III.--The League--Siege of Paris by
Henry IV.--His Conversion, Reign and
Assassination_ 186
CHAPTER XIV
_Paris under Richelieu and Mazarin_ 204
CHAPTER XV
_The Grand Monarque--Versailles and Paris_ 223
CHAPTER XVI
_Paris under the Regency and Louis XV.--The
brooding Storm_ 242
CHAPTER XVII
_Louis XVI.--The Great Revolution--Fall of
the Monarchy_ 256
CHAPTER XVIII
_Execution of the King--Paris under the First
Republic--The Terror--Napoleon--Revolutionary
and Modern Paris_ 271
PART II.: THE CITY
SECTION I
_The Cite--Notre Dame--The Sainte Chapelle--The
Palais de Justice_ 295
SECTION II
_St. Julien le Pauvre--St. Severin--The
Quartier Latin_ 313
SECTION III
_Ecole des Beaux Arts--St. Germain des Pres--Cour
du Dragon--St. Sulpice--The Luxembourg--The
Odeon--The Cordeliers--The
Surgeons' Guild--The Musee Cluny--The
Sorbonne--The Pantheon--St.
Etienne du Mont--Tour Clovis--Wall
of Philip Augustus--Roman Amphitheatre_ 318
SECTION IV
_The Louvre--Sculpture: Ground Floor_ 333
SECTION V
_The Louvre (continued)--Pictures: First Floor_ 350
SECTION VI
_The Ville (S. of the Rue St. Antoine)--The
Hotel de Ville--St. Gervais--Hotel Beauvais--Hotel
of the Provost of Paris--SS. Paul and Louis--Hotel
de Mayenne--Site of the Bastille--Bibliotheque
de l'Arsenal--Hotel Fieubert--Hotel de Sens--Isle
St. Louis_ 400
SECTION VII
_The Ville (N. of the Rue St. Antoine)--Tour
St. Jacques--Rue St. Martin--St. Merri--Rue
de Venise--Les Billettes--Hotels
de Soubise, de Hollande, de Rohan--Musee
Carnavalet--Place Royale--Musee Victor
Hugo--Hotel de Sully_ 407
SECTION VIII
_Rue St. Denis--Fontaine des Innocents--Tower
of Jean sans Peur--Cour des Miracles--St.
Eustache--The Halles--St. Germain
l'Auxerrois_ 417
SECTION IX
_Palais Royal--Theatre Francais--Gardens and
Cafes of the Palais Royal--Palais Mazarin
(Bibliotheque Nationale)--St. Roch--Vendome
Column--Tuileries Gardens--Place
de la Concorde--Champs Elysees_ 424
SECTION X
_The Basilica of St. Denis and the Monuments
of the Kings, Queens and Princes of
France_ 436
_Index_ 441
ILLUSTRATIONS
_The Winged Victory of Samothrace
(Photogravure) Frontispiece_
_Map of the Successive Walls of Paris_ _facing_ 1
_The Cite_ 11
_Remains of Roman Amphitheatre_ 14
_Tower of Clovis_ 25
_St. Germain des Pres_ 31
_St. Julien le Pauvre_ 38
_St. Germain l'Auxerrois_ 45
_Wall of Philippe Auguste, Cour de Rouen_ 67
_La Sainte Chapelle_ 73
_Refectory of the Cordeliers_ 77
_Notre Dame and Petit Pont_ 95
_Tower in Rue Valette in which Calvin is said to
have lived_ 99
_Palace of the Archbishop of Sens_ 115
_Palais de Justice, Clock Tower and Conciergerie_ 119
_Tower of Jean Sans Peur_ 135
_Tower of St. Jacques_ 153
_Pont Notre Dame_ 157
_Chapel, Hotel de Cluny_ 158
_Tower of St. Etienne du Mont_ 161
_La Fontaine des Innocents_ 171
_West Wing of Louvre by Pierre Lescot_ 173
_Tritons and Nereids from the Old Fontaine des
Innocents_ (_Jean Goujon_) " 174
_Catherine de' Medici_ (_French School_) 180
_Petite Galerie of the Louvre_ 183
_Hotel de Sully_ 195
_Old Houses near Pont St. Michel, showing spire
of the Ste. Chapelle_ 201
_The Medici Fountain, Luxembourg Gardens_ 209
_Pont Neuf_ 211
_The Institut de France_ 221
_Portion of the East Facade of the Louvre, from
Blondel's drawing_ (_reproduced by permission
of M. Lampue_) " 236
_River and Pont Royal_ 239
_South Door of Notre Dame_ 253
_Hotel de Ville from River_ 293
_Chapel of Chateau at Vincennes_ 296
_Near the Pont Neuf_ 297
_Notre Dame--Portal of St. Anne_ 301
_Notre Dame--south side_ 303
_Notre Dame--south side from the Seine_ 304
_St. Severin_ 315
_Old Academy of Medicine_ 317
_Interior of Notre Dame_ 320
_Cour de Dragon_ 323
_Tower and Courtyard of Hotel Cluny_ 325
_Arches in the Courtyard of the Hotel Cluny_ 329
_Interior of St. Etienne du Mont_ 332
_Diana and the Stag_ (_Jean Goujon_) " 342
_St. George and the Dragon_ (_M. Colombe_) " 344
_Triptych of Moulins_ (_Maitre de Moulins_) " 370
_Portrait of Elizabeth of Austria_ (_Francois
Clouet_) _facing_ 372
_Shepherds of Arcady_ (_Poussin_) " 376
_Landing of Cleopatra at Tarsus_ (_Lorrain_) " 378
_Embarkation for the Island of Cythera_
(_Watteau_) " 382
_Grace before Meat_ (_Chardin_) " 384
_Madame Recamier_ (_David_) " 388
_The Binders_ (_Millet_) " 394
_Landscape_ (_Corot_) " 396
_St. Gervais_ 402
_Hotel of the Provost of Paris_ 404
_West door of St. Merri_ 409
_Cloister of the Billettes, fifteenth century_ 410
_Archives Nationales, Hotel Soubise, showing
towers of Hotel de Clisson_ 411
_Tower at the corner of the Rue Vieille du Temple_ 413
_Place des Vosges, Maison de Victor Hugo_ 418
_Cathedral of St. Denis_ 437
_Plan of Paris_ " 448
_The majority of the photographs of sculpture have been taken by
Messrs._ HAWEIS AND COLES, _while most of the other photographs are
reproduced by permission of Messrs._ GIRAUDON.
[Illustration: Map of the Successive Walls of Paris.]
INTRODUCTION
The History of Paris, says Michelet, is the history of the French
monarchy: "Paris, France and the Dukes and Kings of the French, are
three ideas," says Freeman, "which can never be kept asunder." The aim
of the writer in the following pages has been to narrate the story of
the capital city of France on the lines thus indicated. Moreover, men
are ever touched by "sad stories of the death of kings," the pomp and
majesty and the fate of princes. By a pathetic fallacy their capacity
to suffer is measured by their apparent power to enjoy, and those are
moved to tears by the spectacle of a Dauphin surrendered to the coarse
and brutal tutelage of a sans-culotte, who read without emotion of
thousands of Huguenot children torn from their mothers' arms and flung
to the novercal cruelties of strangers in blood and creed. In the
earlier chapters the legendary aspect of the story has been drawn upon
rather more perhaps than an austere historical conscience would
approve, but it is precisely a familiarity with these romantic
stories, which at least are true in impression if not in fact, that
the sojourner in Paris will find most useful, translated as they are
in sculpture and in painting, on the decoration of her architecture,
both modern and ancient, and implicit in the nomenclature of her ways.
The story of Paris presents a marked contrast with that of an Italian
city-state whose rise, culmination and fall may be roundly traced.
Paris is yet in the stage of lusty growth. Time after time, like a
young giantess, she has burst her cincture of walls, cast off her
outworn garments and renewed her armour and vesture. Hers are no
grass-grown squares and deserted streets; no ruined splendours telling
of pride abased and glory departed; no sad memories of waning cities
once the mistresses of sea and land; none of the tears evoked by a
great historic tragedy; none of the solemn pathos of decay and death.
Paris has more than once tasted the bitterness of humiliation;
Norseman and Briton, Russian and German have bruised her fair body;
the dire distress of civic strife has exhausted her strength, but she
has always emerged from her trials with marvellous recuperation, more
flourishing than before.
Since 1871, when the city, crushed under a twofold calamity of foreign
invasion and of internecine war, seemed doomed to bleed away to feeble
insignificance, her prosperity has so increased that house rent has
doubled and population risen from 1,825,274 in 1870 to 2,714,068 in
1901. The growth of Paris from the settlement of an obscure Gallic
tribe to the most populous, the most cultured, the most artistic, the
most delightful and seductive of continental cities has been
prodigious, yet withal she has maintained her essential unity, her
corporate sense and peculiar individuality. Paris, unlike London, has
never expatiated to the effacement of her distinctive features and the
loss of civic consciousness. The city has still a definite outline and
circumference, and over her gates to-day one may read, _Entree de
Paris_. The Parisian is, and always has been, conscious of his
citizenship, proud of his city, careful of her beauty, jealous of her
reputation. The essentials of Parisian life remain unchanged since
mediaeval times. Busy multitudes of alert, eager burgesses crowd her
streets; ten thousand students stream from the provinces, from Europe,
and even from the uttermost parts of the earth, to eat of the bread of
knowledge at her University. The old collegiate life is gone, but the
arts and sciences are freely taught as of old to all comers; and a
lowly peasant lad may carry in his satchel the portfolio of a prime
minister or the insignia of a president of the republic, even as his
mediaeval prototype bore a bishop's mitre or a cardinal's hat. The
boisterous exuberance of youthful spirits still vents itself in rowdy
student life to the scandal of bourgeois placidity, and the poignant
self-revelation and gnawing self-reproach of a Francois Villon find
their analogue in the pathetic verse of a Paul Verlaine. Beneath the
fair and ordered surface of the normal life of Paris still sleep the
fiery passions which, from the days of the Maillotins to those of the
Commune, have throughout the crises of her history ensanguined her
streets with the blood of citizens.[1] Let us remember, however, when
contrasting the modern history of Paris with that of London, that the
questions which have stirred her citizens have been not party but
dynastic ones, often complicated and embittered by social and
religious principles ploughing deep in the human soul, for which men
have cared enough to suffer, and to inflict, death.
[Footnote 1: "_Faudra recommencer_" ("We must begin again"), said, to
the present writer in 1871, a Communist refugee bearing a great scar
on his face from a wound received fighting at the barricades.]
Those writers who are pleased to trace the permanency of racial traits
through the life of a people dwell with satisfaction on passages in
ancient authors who describe the Gauls as quick to champion the cause
of the oppressed, prone to war, elated by victory, impatient of
defeat, easily amenable to the arts of peace, responsive to
intellectual culture; terrible, indefatigable orators but bad
listeners, so intolerant of their speakers that at tribal gatherings
an official charged to maintain silence would march, sword in hand,
towards an interrupter, and after a third warning cut off a portion
of his dress. If the concurrent testimony of writers, ancient,
mediaeval and modern, be of any worth, Gallic vanity is beyond dispute.
Dante, expressing the prevailing belief of his age, exclaims, "Now,
was there ever people so vain as the Sienese! Certes not the French by
far."[2] Of their imperturbable gaiety and their avidity for new
things we have ample testimony, and the course of this story will
demonstrate that France, and more especially Paris, has ever been,
from the establishment of Christianity to the birth of the modern
world at the Revolution, the parent or the fosterer of ideas, the
creator of arts, the soldier of the ideal. She has always evinced a
wondrous preventive apprehension of coming changes. Sir Henry Maine
has shown in his _Ancient Law_ that the idea of kingship created by
the accession of the Capetian dynasty revolutionised the whole fabric
of society, and that "when the feudal prince of a limited territory
surrounding Paris began ... to call himself _King of France_, he
became king in quite a new sense." The earliest of the western people
beyond Rome to adopt Christianity, she had established a monastery
near Tours, a century and a half before St. Benedict, the founder of
Western monasticism, had organised his first community at Subiaco. In
the Middle Ages Paris became the intellectual light of the Christian
world. From the time of the centralisation of the monarchy at Paris
she absorbed in large measure the vital forces of the nation, and all
that was greatest in art, science and literature was drawn within her
walls, until in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, she became
the centre of learning, taste and culture in Europe.[3] "Alone of the
capitals of Modern Europe," said Freeman, "Paris can claim to have
been the creator of the state of which it is now the head." The same
authority bears witness to the unique position held by France in her
generous and liberal treatment of new subjects, and the late
historian, Mr. C.A. Fyffe, told the writer that when travelling in
Alsace in 1871 the inhabitants of that province, so essentially German
in race, were passionately attached to France, and more than once he
heard a peasant exclaim, unable even to express himself in French:
"_Nimmer will ich Deutsch sein._"
[Footnote 2: _Inf._ XXIX. 121-123. A French commentator consoles
himself by reflecting that the author of the _Divina Commedia_ is far
more vituperative when dealing with certain Italian peoples, whom he
designates as hogs, curs, wolves and foxes.]
[Footnote 3: Cobbett, comparing the relative intellectual culture of
the British Isles and of France between the years 1600 and 1787, found
that of the writers on the arts and sciences who were distinguished by
a place in the _Universal, Historical, Critical and Bibliographical
Dictionary_, one hundred and thirty belonged to England, Scotland and
Ireland, and six hundred and seventy-six to France.]
During the first Empire and the Restoration, after the tempest was
stilled and the great heritage of the Revolution taken possession of,
an amazing outburst of scientific, artistic and literary activity made
Paris the _Ville Lumiere_ of Europe. She is still the city where the
things of the mind and of taste have most place, where the wheels of
life run most smoothly and pleasantly, where the graces and
refinements and amenities of social existence, _l'art des plaisirs
fins_, are most highly developed and most widely diffused. There is
something in the crisp, luminous air of Paris that quickens the
intelligence and stimulates the senses. Even the scent of the wood
fires as one emerges from the railway station exhilarates the spirit.
The poet Heine used to declare that the traveller could estimate his
proximity to Paris by noting the increasing intelligence of the
people, and that the very bayonets of the soldiers were more
intelligent than those elsewhere. Life, even in its more sensuous and
material phases, is less gross and coarse,[4] its pleasures more
refined than in London. It is impossible to conceive the pit of a
London theatre stirred to fury by an innovation in diction in a
poetical drama, or to imagine anything comparable to the attitude of a
Parisian audience at the cheap holiday performances at the Francais or
the Odeon, where the severe classic tragedies of Racine, of Corneille,
of Victor Hugo, or the well-worn comedies of Moliere or of
Beaumarchais are played with small lure of stage upholstery, and
listened to with close attention by a popular audience responsive to
the exquisite rhythm and grace of phrasing, the delicate and
restrained tragic pathos, and the subtle comedy of their great
dramatists. To witness a _premiere_ at the Francais is an intellectual
feast. The brilliant house; the pit and stalls filled with
black-coated critics; the quick apprehension of the points and happy
phrases; the universal and excited discussion between the acts; the
atmosphere of keen and alert intelligence pervading the whole
assembly; the quaint survival of the time-honoured "overture"--three
knocks on the boards--dating back to Roman times when the Prologus of
the comedy stepped forth and craved the attention of the audience by
three taps of his wand; the chief actor's approach to the front of the
stage after the play is ended to announce to Mesdames and Messieurs
what in these days they have known for weeks before from the press,
that "the piece we have had the honour of playing" is by such a
one--all combine to make an indelible impression on the mind of the
foreign spectator.
[Footnote 4: "Nous cuisinons meme l'amour."--TAINE.]
The Parisian is the most orderly and well-behaved of citizens. The
custom of the _queue_ is a spontaneous expression of his love of
fairness and order. Even the applause in theatres is organised. A
spectacle such as that witnessed at the funeral of Victor Hugo in
1885, the most solemn and impressive of modern times, is inconceivable
in London. The whole population (except the Faubourg St. Germain and
the clergy) from the poorest labourer to the heads of the State issued
forth to file past the coffin of their darling poet, lifted up under
the Arc de Triomphe, and by their multitudinous presence honoured his
remains borne on a poor bare hearse to their last resting-place in the
Pantheon. Amid this vast crowd, mainly composed of labourers,
mechanics and the _petite bourgeoisie_, assembled to do homage to the
memory of the poet of democracy, scarcely an _agent_ was seen; the
people were their own police, and not a rough gesture, not a trace of
disorder marred the sublime scene. The Parisian democracy is the most
enlightened and the most advanced in Europe, and as of old the
Netherlanders, in their immortal fight for freedom against the
monstrous and appalling tyranny of Spain, were stirred to heroic deeds
by the psalms of Clement Marot, even so to-day, where a few desperate
and devoted men are moved to wrestle with a brutal despotism, the
Marseillaise is their battle hymn. It is to Paris that the dearest
hopes and deepest sympathies of generous spirits will ever go forth in
"The struggle, and the daring rage divine for liberty,
Of aspirations toward the far ideal, enthusiast dreams of
brotherhood."
"Siede Parigi in una gran pianura,
Nell' ombilico a Francia, anzi nel core.
Gli passa la riviera entro le mura,
E corre, ed esce in altra parte fuore;
Ma fa un' isola prima, e v'assicura
Della citta una parte, e la migliore:
L'altre due (ch' in tre parti e la gran terra)
Di fuor la fossa, e dentro il fiume serra."
_Orlando Furioso_, Canto xiv.
Part I.: The Story
CHAPTER I
_Gallo-Roman Paris_
The mediaeval scribe in the fulness of a divinely-revealed cosmogony is
wont to begin his story at the creation of the world or at the
confusion of tongues, to trace the building of Troy by the descendants
of Japheth, and the foundation of his own native city by one of the
Trojan princes made a fugitive in Europe by proud Ilion's fall. Such,
he was very sure, was the origin of Padua, founded by Antenor and by
Priam, son of King Priam, whose grandson, yet another Priam, by his
great valour and wisdom became the monarch of a mighty people, called
from their fair hair, Galli or Gallici. And of the strong city built
on the little island in the Seine who could have been its founder but
the ravisher of fair Helen--Sir Paris himself? The naive etymology of
the time was evidence enough.
But the modern writer, as he compares the geographical position of the
capitals of Europe, is tempted to exclaim, _Cherchez le marchand!_ for
he perceives that their unknown founders were dominated by two
considerations--facilities for commerce and protection from enemies:
and before the era of the Roman road-makers, commerce meant facilities
for water carriage. As the early settlers in Britain sailed up the
Thames, they must have observed, where the river's bed begins somewhat
to narrow, a hill rising from the continuous expanse of marshes from
its mouth, easily defended on the east and west by those fortified
posts which, in subsequent times, became the Tower of London and
Barnard's Castle, and if we scan a map of France, we shall see that
the group of islands on and around which Paris now stands, lies in the
fruitful basin of the Seine, known as the Isle de France, near the
convergence of three rivers; for on the east the Marne, on the west
the Oise, and on the south the Yonne, discharge their waters into the
main stream on its way to the sea. In ancient times the great line of
Phoenician, Greek and Roman commerce followed northwards the valleys
of the Rhone and of the Saone, whose upper waters are divided from
those of the Yonne only by the plateau of Dijon and the calcareous
slopes of Burgundy. The Parisii were thus admirably placed for tapping
the profitable commerce of north-west Europe, and by the waters of the
Eure, lower down the Seine, were able to touch the fertile valley of
the Loire. The northern rivers of Gaul were all navigable by the small
boats of the early traders, and, in contrast with the impetuous sweep
of the Rhone and the Loire in the south and west, flowed with slow and
measured stream:[5] they were rarely flooded, and owing to the
normally mild winters, still more rarely blocked by ice. Moreover, the
Parisian settlement stood near the rich cornland of La Beauce, and to
the north-east, over the open plain of La Valois, lay the way to
Flanders. It was one of the river stations on the line of the
Phoenician traders in tin, that most precious and rare of ancient
metals, between Marseilles and Britain, and in the early Middle Ages
became, with Lyons and Beaucaire, one of the chief fairs of that
historic trade route which the main lines of railway traffic still
follow to-day. The island now known as the Cite, which the founders of
Paris chose for their stronghold, was the largest of the group which
lay involved in the many windings of the Seine, and was embraced by a
natural moat of deep waters. To north and south lay hills, marshes and
forests, and all combined to give it a position equally adapted for
defence and for commerce.
[Footnote 5: The Seine takes five hours to flow through the seven
miles of modern Paris.]
[Illustration: THE CITE.]
The Parisii were a small tribe of Gauls whose island city was the home
of a prosperous community of shipmen and merchants, but it is not
until the Conquest of Gaul by the Romans that Lutetia, for such was
its Romanised name, joins the great pageant of history. It was--
"Armed Caesar falcon-eyed,"[6]
who saw its great military importance, built a permanent camp there
and made it a central _entrepot_ for food and munitions of war. And
when in 52 B.C. the general rising of the tribes under Vercingetorix
threatened to scour the Romans out of Gaul and to destroy the whole
fabric of Caesar's ambition, he sent his favourite lieutenant,
Labienus, to seize Lutetia where the Northern army of the Gauls was
centred. Labienus crossed the Seine at Melun, fixed his camp on a spot
near the position of the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, and began
the first of the historic sieges for which Paris is so famous. But the
Gaulish commander burnt the bridges, fired the city, and took up his
position on the slopes of the hill of Lutetius (St. Genevieve) in the
south, and aimed at crushing his enemy between his own forces and an
army advancing from the north. Labienus having learnt that Caesar was
in a tight place, owing to a check at Clermont and the defection of
the Eduans, by a masterly piece of engineering recrossed the Seine by
night at the Point du Jour, where the double viaduct of the girdle
railway crosses to-day, and when the Gauls awoke in the morning they
beheld the bannered host of the Roman legions in battle array on the
plain of Grenelle beneath. They made a desperate attempt to drive them
against the river, but they lost their leader and were almost
annihilated by the superior arms and strategy of the Romans. Labienus
was able to join his master at Sens, and the irrevocable subjugation
of the Gauls soon followed. With the tolerant and enlightened
conquerors came the Roman peace, Roman law, Roman roads, the Roman
schoolmaster; and a more humane religion abolished the Druidical
sacrifices. Lutetia was rebuilt and became a prosperous and, next to
Lyons, the most important of Gallo-Roman cities. It lay equidistant
from Germany and Britain and at the issue of valleys which led to the
upper and lower Rhine. The quarries of Mount Lutetius produced an
admirable building stone, kind to work and hardening well under
exposure to the air, whose white colour may have won for Paris the
name of Leucotia, or the White City, by which it is sometimes known to
ancient writers. Caesar had done his work well, for so completely were
the Gauls Romanised, that by the fifth or sixth century their very
language had disappeared.[7]
[Footnote 6: "_Cesare armato con gli occhi grifani._"--_Inferno_, iv.
123.]
[Footnote 7: Of some 10,000 ancient inscriptions found in Gaul, only
twenty are in Celtic, and less than thirty words of Celtic origin now
remain in the French language.]
But towards the end of the third century three lowly wayfarers were
journeying from Rome along the great southern road to Paris, charged
by the Pope with a mission fraught with greater issues to Gaul than
were the Caesars and all their legions. Let us recall somewhat of the
appearance of the city which Dionysius, Rusticus and Eleutherius saw
as they neared its suburbs and came down what is now known as the Rue
St. Jacques. After passing the arches of the aqueduct, two of which
exist to this day, that crossed the valley of Arcueil and brought the
waters of Rungis,[8] Paray and Montjean to the baths of the imperial
palace and the public fountains, they would discern on the hill of
Lutetius to their right, the Roman camp, garrison and cemetery. Lower
down to the east they would catch a glimpse of a great amphitheatre,
capable of accommodating 10,000 spectators.[9]
[Footnote 8: The water supply of Paris is even now partly derived from
these sources, and flows along the old repaired Roman aqueduct.]
[Footnote 9: Part of this amphitheatre was laid bare in 1869 by some
excavations made for the Compagnie des Omnibus between the Rues Monge
and Linne. Unhappily, the public subscription initiated by the
Academie des Inscriptions to purchase the property proved inadequate,
and the Company retained possession of the land. In 1883, however,
other excavations were undertaken in the Rue de Navarre, which
resulted in the discovery of other remains of the amphitheatre which
have been preserved and made into a public park.]
[Illustration: REMAINS OF ROMAN AMPHITHEATRE.]
On their left, where now stands the Lycee St. Louis, would be the
theatre of Lutetia, and further on, the imposing and magnificent
palace of the Caesars, with its gardens sloping down to the Seine. The
turbulent little stream of the Bievre flowed by the foot of Mons
Lutetius on the east, entering the main river opposite the eastern
limit of the _civitas_ of Lutetia, gleaming white before them and
girdled by the waters of the Seine. A narrow eel-shaped island,
subsequently known as the Isle de Galilee, lay between the Isle of the
Cite and the southern bank; two islands, the Isles de Notre Dame and
des Vaches, divided by a narrow channel to the east, and two eyots,
the Isles des Juifs and de Bussy, to the west. Another islet, the Isle
de Javiaux or de Louviers, lay near the northern bank beyond the two
eastern islands. Crossing a wooden bridge, where now stands the Petit
Pont, they would enter the forum under a triumphal arch. Here would be
the very foyer of the city; a little way to the left the prefect's
palace and the basilica, or hall of justice;[10] to the right the
temple of Jupiter. As they crossed the island they would find it
linked to the northern bank by another wooden bridge (the Grand Pont)
replaced by the present Pont Notre Dame.[11] In the distance to the
north stood Mons Martis (Montmartre), villas nestling on its slopes
and crowned with the temples of Mars and Mercury, four of whose
columns are preserved in the church of St. Pierre: to the west the
aqueduct from Passy bringing its waters to the mineral baths located
on the site of the present Palais Royal. A road, now the Rue St.
Martin, led to the north; to the east, fed by the streams of
Menilmontant and Belleville, lay the marshy land which is still known
as the quarter of the Marais.
[Footnote 10: In 1848 some remains were found of the old halls of this
building, and of its columns, worn by the ropes of the boatmen who
used to moor their craft to them. In 1866 fragments of the triumphal
arch were found in digging the foundations of the new Hotel Dieu.]
[Footnote 11: In 860 a new bridge was built east of the Grand Pont by
Charles the Bold and defended by a tower at its head. The
money-changers were established on the bridge by Louis VI., and it
became known subsequently as the Pont au Change.]
Denis, who by the mediaeval hagiographers is invariably confused with
Dionysius the Areopagite, and his companions, preached and taught the
new faith unceasingly and met martyrs' deaths. In the _Golden Legend_
he is famed to have converted much people to the faith, and "dyde do
make many churches, and at length was brought before the judge who
dyde do smyte off the hedes of the thre felawes by the temple of
Mercurye. And anone the body of Saynte Denys reysed hymselfe up and
bare his hede beetwene his armes, as the angels ladde hym two leghes
fro the place which is sayd the hille of the martyrs unto the place
where he now resteth by his election and the purveance of god. And
there was heard so grete and swete a melodye of angels that many that
herd it byleuyd in oure lorde."
The work that Denis and his companions began was more fully achieved
in the fourth century by the rude Pannonion soldier, St. Martin, who
also evangelised at Paris. He is the best-known of Gallic saints, and
the story of his conversion one of the most popular in Christendom.
When stationed at Amiens he was on duty one bitter cold day at the
city gate, and espied a poor naked beggar asking alms. Soldiers in
garrison are notoriously impecunious, and Martin had nothing to give;
but drawing his sword he cleaved his mantle in twain, and bestowed
half upon the shivering wretch at his feet. That very night the Lord
Jesus appeared to him in a dream surrounded by angels, having on His
shoulders the half of the cloak which Martin had given to the beggar.
Turning to the angels, Jesus said: "Know ye who hath thus arrayed Me?
My servant Martin, though yet unbaptised, hath done this." After this
vision Martin received baptism and remained steadfast in the faith.
The illiterate and dauntless soldier became the fiery apostle of the
faith, a vigorous iconoclast, throwing down the images of the false
gods, breaking their altars in pieces and burning their temples. Of
the Roman gods, Mercury, he said, was most difficult to ban, but Jove
was merely stupid[12] and brutish, and gave him least trouble.
[Footnote 12: "_Jovem brutum atque hebetem._"]
On the 16th of March 1711, some workmen, digging a burial crypt for
the archbishops of Paris under the choir of Notre Dame, came upon a
wall, six feet below the pavement, which contemporary antiquarians
believed to be the wall of the original Christian basilica over which
the cathedral was built, but which modern authorities affirm to have
been part of the old Gallo-Roman wall of the Cite. In the fabric of
this wall the early builders had incorporated the remains of a temple
of Jupiter, and among the _debris_ were found the fragments of an
altar raised to Jove in the reign of Tiberius Caesar by the _Nautae_, a
guild of Parisian merchant-shippers, and the table of another altar on
whose foyer still remained some of the very burnt wood and incense
used in the last pagan sacrifice. The mutilated stones, with their
rude Gallo-Roman reliefs and inscriptions,[13] may be seen in the
Frigidarium of the Thermae, the old Roman baths by the Hotel de Cluny,
and are among the most interesting of historical documents in Paris.
The Corporation of _Nautae Parisiaci_, one of the most powerful of the
guilds, among whose members were enrolled the chief citizens of
Lutetia, who dedicated this altar to Jove, were the origin of the
Commune or Civil Council of Paris, whose Provost[14] was known as late
as the fourteenth century as the _Prevot des Marchands d'Eau_. Their
device was the _Nef_, or ship, which is and has been throughout the
ages, the arms of Paris, and which to this day may be seen carved on
the vaultings of the Roman baths.
[Footnote 13: On the former may still be read: TIB ... CAESARE AVG.
IOVI. OPTVM ... MAXSVMO. ARAM. NAVTAE. PARISIACI PVBLICE. POSIERVNT.]
[Footnote 14: Not to be confounded with the Royal Provost, a king's
officer, who in 1160 replaced the Capetian viscounts. The office was
abolished in 1792.]
In the great palace of which these baths formed but a part was enacted
that scene so vividly described in the pages of Gibbon,[15] when, in
355, Julian, after his victories over the Alemanni and the Franks, was
acclaimed Augustus by the rebellious troops of Constantius. He had
admonished the sullen legions, angry at being detached from their
victorious and darling commander for service on the Persian frontier,
and had urged them to obedience, but at midnight the young Caesar was
awakened by a clamorous and armed multitude besieging the palace, and
at early dawn its doors were forced; the reluctant Julian was seized
and carried through the streets in triumph, lifted on a shield, and
for diadem crowned with a military collar, to be enthroned and saluted
as emperor. In after life the emperor-philosopher looked back with
tender regret to the three winters he spent in Paris before his
elevation to the imperial responsibilities and anxieties. He writes of
the busy days and meditative nights he passed in his dear Lutetia,
with its two wooden bridges, its pure and pleasant waters, its
excellent wine. He dwells on the mildness of its climate, where the
fig-tree, protected by straw in the winter, grew and fruited. One
rigorous season, however, the emperor well remembered[16] when the
Seine was blocked by huge masses of ice. Julian, who prided himself on
his endurance, at first declined the use of those charcoal fires which
to this day are a common and deadly method of supplying heat in Paris.
But his rooms were damp and his servants were allowed to introduce
them into his sleeping apartment. The Caesar was almost asphyxiated by
the fumes, and his physicians to restore him administered an emetic.
Julian in his time was beloved of the Lutetians, for he was a just and
tolerant prince whose yoke was easy. He had purged the soil of Gaul
from the barbarian invaders, given Lutetia peace and security, and
made of it an important, imperial city. His statue, found near Paris,
still recalls his memory in the hall of the great baths of the Lutetia
he loved so well.
[Footnote 15: French authorities believe the scene to have been
enacted in the old palace of the Cite.]
[Footnote 16: The present writer recalls a similar glacial epoch in
Paris during the early eighties, when the Seine was frozen over at
Christmas time.]
The so-called apostasy of this lover of Plato and worshipper of the
Sun, who never went to the wars or travelled without dragging a
library of Greek authors after him, was a philosophic reaction
against the harsh measures,[17] the bloody and treacherous natures of
the Christian emperors, and the fierceness of the Arian controversy.
The movement was but a back-wash in the stream of history, and is of
small importance. Julian's successors, Valentinian and Gratian,
reversed his policy but shared his love for the fair city on the
Seine, and spent some winters there. Lutetia had now become a rich and
cultured Gallo-Roman city.
[Footnote 17: By the law of 350 A.D. it was a capital offence to
sacrifice to or honour the old gods. The persecuted had already become
persecutors. Boissier, _La Fin du Paganisme_.]