_Execution of the King--Paris under the First Republic--the
Terror--Napoleon--Revolutionary and Modern Paris_
An inscription opposite No. 230 Rue de Rivoli indicates the site of
the old Salle du Manege, or Riding School,[169] of the Tuileries,
where the destinies of modern France were debated. Three
Assemblies--the Constituent, the Legislative and the prodigious
National Convention--filled its long, poorly-furnished amphitheatre,
decorated with the tattered flags captured from the Prussians and
Austrians, from 7th November 1789 to 9th May 1793.
[Footnote 169: The Academie d'Equitation was an expensive and
exclusive establishment where the young nobles and gentlemen of
fortune were taught fencing, riding and dancing. It was long and
narrow, 240 feet by 60, and only the most powerful voices could be
heard in the Assembly. The Rue de Rivoli between the Rues d'Alger and
de Castiglione cuts through the site.]
There, on Wednesday, 16th January 1793, began the solemn judgment of
Louis XVI. by 721 representatives of the people of France. The sitting
opened at ten o'clock in the morning, but not till eight in the
evening did the procession of deputies begin, as the roll was called,
to ascend the tribune, and utter their word of doom. All that long
winter's night, and all the ensuing short winter's day, the fate of a
king trembled in the balance, as the judgment: death--banishment:
banishment--death, with awful alternation echoed through the hall.
Amid the speeches of the deputies was heard the chatter of fashionable
women in the boxes, pricking with pins on cards the votes for and
against death, and eating ices and oranges brought to them by friendly
deputies. Above, in the public tribunes, sat women of the people,
greeting the words of the deputies with coarse gibes. Betting went on
outside. At every entrance, cries, hoarse and shrill, were heard of
hawkers selling "The Trial of Charles I." Time-serving Philip Egalite,
Duke of Orleans, voted _la mort_, but failed to save his skin. An
Englishman was there--Thomas Paine, author of the _Rights of Man_ and
deputy for Calais. His voice was raised for clemency, for temporary
detention, and banishment after the peace. "My vote is that of Paine,"
cried a member, "his authority is final for me." One deputy was
carried from a sick-bed to cast his vote in the scale of mercy; others
slumbering on the benches were awakened and gave their votes of death
between two yawns. At length, by eight o'clock on the evening of the
17th, exactly twenty-four hours after the voting began, the President
rose to read the result. A most august and terrible silence reigned in
the Assembly as President Vergniaud rose and pronounced the sentence
"Death" in the name of the French nation. The details of the voting as
given in the _Journal de Perlet_, 18th January 1793, are as follows:
"Of the 745 members one had died, six were sick, two absent without
cause, eleven absent on commission, four abstained from voting. The
absolute majority was therefore 361. Three hundred and sixty-six voted
for death, three hundred and nineteen for detention and banishment,
two for the galleys, twenty-four for death with various reservations,
eight for death with stay of execution until after the peace, two for
delay with power of commutation." Three Protestant ministers and
eighteen Catholic priests voted for death. Louis' defenders were there
and asked to be heard; they were admitted to the honours of the
sitting. At eleven o'clock the weary business of thirty-seven hours
was ended, only, however, to be resumed the next morning, for yet
another vote must decide between delay or summary execution. Again the
voice of Paine was heard pleading for mercy, but without avail. At
three o'clock on Sunday morning the final voting was over. Six hundred
and ninety members were present, of whom three hundred and eighty
voted for death within twenty-four hours.
To the guillotine on the fatal Place de la Revolution, formerly Place
Louis XV., the very scene of a terrible panic at his wedding
festivities which cost the lives of hundreds of sightseers, the
sixteenth Louis of France was led on the morning of 21st January 1793.
As he turned to address the people, Santerre ordered the drums to
beat--it was the echo of the drums reverberating through history which
had smothered the cries of the Protestant martyrs sent to the scaffold
by the fourteenth Louis a century before. This was the beginning of
that _annee terrible_, into which was crowded the most stupendous
struggle in modern history. Threatened by the monarchies of Europe,
united to crush the Revolution, France, in the tremendous words of
Danton, flung to the coalesced kings, the head of a king as a gage of
battle. A colossal energy, an unquenchable devotion were evoked by the
supreme crisis, and directed by a committee of nine inexperienced
young civilians, sitting in a room of the Tuileries at Paris, to whom
later Carnot, an engineer officer, was added. "The whole Republic,"
they proclaimed, "is a great besieged city: let France be a vast camp.
Every age is called to defend the liberty of the Fatherland. The
young men will fight: the married will forge arms. Women will make
clothes and tents: children will tear old linen for lint. Old men
shall be carried to the market-place to inflame the courage of all."
In twenty-four hours, 60,000 men were enrolled; in two months,
fourteen armies organised. Saltpetre for powder failed; it was torn
from the bowels of the earth. Steel, too, and bronze were lacking:
iron railings were transmuted into swords, and church bells and royal
statues into cannon. Paris became a vast armourer's shop. Smithy fires
in hundreds roared and anvils clanged in the open places--one hundred
and forty at the Invalides, fifty-four at the Luxembourg. The women
sang as they worked:--
"Cousons, filons, cousons bien,
V'la des habits de notre fabrique
Pour l'hiver qui vient.
Soldats de la Patrie
Vous ne manquerez de rien."[170]
[Footnote 170: "Sew we, spin we, sew we well, behold the coats we have
made for the winter that is coming. Soldiers of the Fatherland, ye
shall want for nothing."]
The smiths chanted to the rhythm of their strokes:--
"Forgeons, forgeons, forgeons bien!"
On the new standards waving in the breeze ran the legend: "The French
people risen against Tyrants." Toulon was in the hands of the English;
Lyons in revolt. With enemies in her camp, with one arm tied by the
insurrection in La Vendee, the Revolution hurled her ragged and
despised _sans-culottes_,[171] against her enemies. How vain is the
wisdom of the great! Burke thought that the Revolution had expunged
France in a political sense out of the system of Europe, and his
opinion was shared by every European statesman; but before the year
closed, the proud and magnificently accoutred armies of kings were
scattered over the borders, civil war was crushed, the Revolution
triumphant. Soon the "dwarfish, ragged _sans-culottes_, the small
black-looking Marseillaises dressed in rags of every colour," whom
Goethe saw tramping out of Mayence "as if the goblin king had opened
his mountains and sent forth his lively host of dwarfs," had forced
Prussia, the arch-champion of monarchy, to make peace and leave its
Rhine provinces in the hands of regicides. Meanwhile terror reigned in
Paris. In the frenzy of mortal strife the Revolution struck out
blindly and cut down friend as well as foe; the innocent with the
guilty. At least the guillotine fell swiftly and mercifully. Gone were
the days of the wheel, the rack, the boiling lead and the stake. Under
the _ancien regime_ the torture of _accused_ persons was one of the
sights shown to foreigners in Paris. Evelyn, when visiting the city in
1651, was taken to see the torture of an _alleged_ thief in the
Chatelet, who was "wracked in an extraordinary manner, so that they
severed the fellow's joints in miserable sort." Failing to extort a
confession, "they increased the extension and torture, and then
placing a horne in his mouth, such as they drench horses with, poured
two buckets of water down, so that it prodigiously swelled him." There
was another "malefactor" to be dealt with, but the traveller had seen
enough, and he leaves, reflecting that it represented to him "the
intolerable sufferings which our Blessed Saviour must needs undergo
when His body was hanging with all its weight upon the nailes of the
Crosse."
[Footnote 171: The term implied rather an excess than a defect of
nether garment and was applied in scorn by the fashionable wearers of
_culottes_ to the plebeian wearers of trousers.]
Too much prominence has been given by historians to the dramatic and
violent activities of the men of '93 to the exclusion of acts of
peaceful and constructive statesmanship. The 11,210 decrees issued by
the National Convention in Paris from September '92 to October '95,
included a comprehensive and admirable scheme for national education,
with provision for free meals in elementary schools and the moral and
physical training of the young. It fulminated against the degradation
of public monuments, ordered an inventory to be made of all
collections of works of art, and decided that the Republic be charged
with the maintenance of artists sent to Rome.
It decreed the adoption, began the discussion, and voted the most
important articles of the civil code. It inaugurated the telegraph and
the decimal system, established the uniformity of weights and
measures, the bureau of longitudes, reformed the calendar, instituted
the Grand Livre, increased and completed the Museum of Natural
History, opened the Museum of the Louvre, created the Conservatoire of
the Arts and Crafts, the Conservatoire of Music, the Polytechnic
School and the Institute.
The Convention abolished negro slavery in the French colonies, and
Wilberforce reminded a hostile House of Commons that infidel and
anarchic France had given example to Christian England in the work of
emancipation. In 1793 it was reported that the aged Goldoni had been
in receipt of a pension from the _ancien regime_ and was now dependent
on the slender resources of a compassionate nephew: the Convention at
once decreed as an act of justice and beneficence that the pension of
4000 livres should be renewed, and all arrears paid up. This is but
one of many acts of grace and succour among its records.
The closing months of '95 were sped with those whiffs of grape-shot
from the Pont Royal and the Rue St. Honore, that shattered the last
attempt, this time by the Royalists, at government by insurrection.
The Convention closed its stupendous career, and five Directors of
the Republic met in a room furnished with an old table, a sheet of
paper and an ink-bottle, and set about organising France for a normal
and progressive national life. But Europe had by her fatuous
interference with the internal affairs of France sown dragons' teeth
indeed and a nation of armed men had sprung forth, nursing hatred of
monarchy and habituated to victory. "_Eh, bien, mes enfants_," cried a
French general before an engagement when provisions were wanting to
afford a meal for his troops, "we will breakfast after the victory."
But militarism invariably ends in autocracy. The author of those
whiffs of grape-shot was appointed in 1796 Commander-in-Chief of the
army of Italy, and a new and sinister complexion was given to the
policy of the Republic. "Soldiers," cries Napoleon, "you are
half-starved and almost naked; the Government owes you much but can do
nothing for you. Your patience, your courage do you honour, but win
for you neither glory nor profit. I am about to lead you into the most
fertile plains of the world; you will find there great cities and rich
provinces; there you will reap honour, glory and riches. Soldiers of
Italy, will you lack courage?" This frank appeal to the baser motives
that sway men's minds, this open avowal of a personal ambition, was
the beginning of the end of Jacobinism in France. Soon the wealth of
Italy streamed into the bare coffers of the Directory at
Paris:--20,000,000 of francs from Lombardy, 12,000,000 from Parma and
Modena, 35,000,000 from the Papal States, an equally large sum from
Tuscany; one hundred finest horses of Lombardy to the five Directors,
"to replace the sorry nags that now draw your carriages"; convoys of
priceless manuscripts and sculpture and pictures to adorn Parisian
galleries. So persistent were these raids on the collections of art in
Italy that Napoleon is known there to this day as _il gran ladrone_
and the chief duty of the new French officials in Italy, said Lucien
Bonaparte, was to supervise the packing of pictures and statues for
Paris. No less than 5233 of these works of art were confiscated by the
Allies in 1815, and returned to their former owners.
In less than a decade the rusty old stage properties and the baubles
of monarchy were furbished anew, sacred oil from the little phial of
Rheims anointed the brow of a new dynast, and a Roman Pontiff blessed
the diadem with which a once poor, pensioned, disaffected Corsican
patriot crowned himself lord of France in Notre Dame. The old
pomposities of a court came strutting back to their places:--Arch
Chancellors, Grand Electors, Constables, Grand Almoners, Grand
Chamberlains, Grand Marshals of the Palace, Masters of the Horse,
Masters of the Hounds, Madame Mere and a bevy of Imperial Highnesses
with their ladies-in-waiting. One thing only was wanting, as a Jacobin
bitterly remarked--the million of men who were slain to end all that
mummery. The fascinating story of how this amazing transformation was
effected cannot be told here. The magician who wrought it was
possessed of a soaring imagination, of a mental instrument of
incomparable force and efficiency, of an iron will, a prodigious
intellectual activity, and a piercing insight into the conditions of
material success, rarely, if ever before, united in the same degree in
one man. Napoleon Bonaparte was of ancient, patrician Florentine
blood, and perchance the descendant of one of those of Fiesole--
"In cui riviva la sementa santa
Di quei Romani che vi rimaser quando
Fu fatto il nido di malizia tanta."[172]
He cherished a particular affection for Italy, and, so far as his
personal aims allowed, treated her generously. His descent into
Lombardy awakened the slumbering sense of Italian nationality. In more
senses than one, says Mr. Bolton King the historian of Italian unity,
Napoleon was the founder of modern Italy.
[Footnote 172: _Inferno_, XV. 76-78.--"In whom lives again the seed of
those Romans who remained there when the nest (Florence) of so much
wickedness was made."]
The reason of Napoleon's success in France is not far to seek. Two
streams of effort are clearly traceable through the Revolution. The
earlier thinkers, such as Montesquieu, Voltaire, D'Alembert, Diderot
and the Encyclopedists, whose admiration for England was unbounded,
aimed at reforming the rotten state of France on the basis of the
English parliamentary and monarchical system: it was a middle-class
movement for the assertion of its interests in the state and for
political freedom. The aim of the Jacobin minority, inspired by the
doctrines of the _Contrat Social_ of Rousseau, was to found a
democratic state based on the principle of the sovereignty of the
people. If the French crown and the monarchies of Europe had allowed
the peaceful evolution of national tendencies, the Constitutional
reformers would have triumphed, but in their folly they tried to sweep
back the tide, with the result we have seen. For when everything is
put to the touch, when victory is the price of self-sacrifice, it is
the idealist who comes to the front, and as the nineteenth-century
prophet Mazzini taught, men will lay down their lives for principles
but not for interests.
Let us not forget that it was the Jacobin minority who in the heat and
glow of their convictions saved the people of France. Led astray by
their old guides, abandoned in a dark and trackless waste, their heads
girt with horror, menaced by destruction on every side, the people
groped, wandering hither and thither seeking an outlet in vain. At
length a voice was heard, confidant, thrilling as a trumpet call; "Lo
this is the way! follow, and ye shall emerge and conquer!" It may not
have been the best way, but it was _a_ way and they followed.
It is easy enough to pour scorn on the _Contrat Social_ as a political
philosophy, but an ideal, a faith, a dogma are necessary to evoke
enthusiasm, the contempt of material things and of death itself. These
the _Contrat Social_ gave. It defined with absolute precision the
principles latent in the movement of reform that broke up mediaevalism.
Does power descend from God, its primeval source; or does it ascend,
delegated from the people? Once stated, the French mind with its
intense lucidity and logicality saw the line of cleavage between old
and new--divine right: or sovereignty of the people--and bade all men
choose where they would stand. The _Contrat Social_ with its consuming
passion for social justice, its ideal of a state founded on the
sovereignty of the people, became the gospel of the time. Men and
women conned its pages by heart and slept with the book under their
pillows. Napoleon himself in his early Jacobin days was saturated with
its doctrines, and in later times astutely used its phrases as
shibboleths to cloak his acts of despotism. But in that terrible
revolutionary decade the Jacobins had spent their lives and their
energies. A profound weariness of the long and severe tension, and a
yearning for a return to orderly civil life came over men's minds. The
masses were still sincerely attached to the Catholic faith: the
middle-classes hailed with relief the advent of the strong man who
proved himself able to crush faction; the peasants were won by a
champion of the Revolution who made impossible the return of the
_aides_, the _tailles_, the _gabelles_, and all the iniquitous
oppressions of the _ancien regime_ and guaranteed them the possession
of the confiscated _emigre_ and ecclesiastical lands; the army
idolised the great captain who promised them glory and profit; the
Church rallied to an autocrat who restored the hierarchy. Moreover,
the brilliancy of Napoleon's military genius was balanced by an
all-embracing political sagacity. The chief administrative decrees of
the Convention, especially those relating to education and the civil
and penal codes, were welded into form by ceaseless energy. Everything
he touched was indeed degraded from the Republican ideal, but he drove
things through, imposed his own superhuman activity into his
subordinates, and became one of the chief builders of modern France.
"The gigantic entered into our very habits of thought," said one of
his ministers. But his efforts to maintain the stupendous twenty
years' duel with the combined forces of England and the continental
monarchies, and his own overweening ambition, broke him at length, and
he fell, to fret away his life caged in a lonely island in
mid-Atlantic.
The new ideas were none the less revolutionary of social life. The
salon, that eminently French institution, soon felt their power. The
charming irresponsible gaiety and frivolity of the old _regime_ gave
place to more serious preoccupation with political movements. The
fusing power of Rousseau's genius had melted all hearts; the solvent
wit of Voltaire and the precise science of the Encyclopedists were a
potent force even among the courtiers themselves. The centre of social
life shifted from Versailles to Paris and the salons gained what the
court lost. Fine ladies had the latest pamphlet of Sieyes read to them
at their toilette, and maids caught up the new phrases from their
mistresses' lips. Did a young gallant enter a salon excusing himself
for being late by saying, "I have just been proposing a motion at the
club," every fair eye sparkled with interest. A deputy was a social
lion, and a box for the National Assembly exchanged for one at the
opera at a premium of six livres. Speeches were rehearsed at the
salons and action determined. Chief of the hostesses was Madame[173]
Necker: at her crowded receptions might be seen Abbe Sieyes, the
architect of Constitutions; Condorcet, the philosopher; Talleyrand,
the patriotic bishop; Madame de Stael, with her strong, coarse face
and masculine voice and gestures. More intimate were the Tuesday
suppers at which a dozen chosen guests held earnest communion. Madame
de Beauharnais was noted for her excellent table, and her Tuesday and
Thursday dinners: at her rooms the masters of literature and music had
been wont to meet. Now came Buffon the naturalist; Bailly of Tennis
Court oath fame; Clootz, the friend of humanity. The widow of
Helvetius, with her many memories of Franklin, welcomed Volney, author
of the _Ruins of Empires_, and Chamfort, the candid critic of
Academicians. At the salon of Madame Pancroute, Barrere, the glib
orator of the Revolution, was the chief figure.
[Footnote 173: Mlle Curchod, for whom Gibbon "sighed as a lover but
renounced as a son."]
Julie Talma was famed for her literary and artistic circle. Here Marie
Joseph Chenier, the revolutionary dramatic poet of the Comedie
Francaise, declaimed his couplets. Here came Vergniaud, the eloquent
chief of the ill-fated Gironde; Greuze, the painter; Roland, the stern
and minatory minister, who spoke bitter words, composed by his wife,
to the king; Lavoisier, the chemist, who is said to have begged that
the axe might be stayed while he completed some experiments, and was
told that the Republic had no lack of chemists. Madame du Deffand,
whose hotel in the Rue des Quatre Fils still exists, welcomed
Voltaire, D'Alembert, Montesquieu and the Encyclopedists.
In the street, the great open-air salon of the people, was a feverish
going to and fro. Here were the tub-thumpers of the Revolution holding
forth at every public place; the strident voices of ballad-singers at
the street corners; hawkers of the latest pamphlets hot from the Quai
des Augustins; the sellers of journals crying the _Pere Duchesne_,
_L'Ami du Peuple_, the _Jean Bart_, the _Vieux Cordelier_. Crowds
gathered round Bassett's famous shop for caricature at the corner of
the Rue St. Jacques and the Rue des Mathurins. The walls of Paris were
a mass of variegated placards and proclamations. The charming signs of
the old _regime_, the Pomme rouge, the Rose Blanche, the Ami du
Coeur, the Gracieuse, the Trois Fleurs-de-lys Couronnees gave place
to the "Necker," the "National Assembly," the "Tiers," the
"Constitution"--these, too, soon to be effaced by more Republican
appellations. For on the abolition of the monarchy and the
inauguration of the Religion of Nature, the words "royal" and "saint"
disappear from the revolutionary vocabulary. A new calendar is
promulgated: streets and squares are renamed: Rues des Droits de
l'Homme, de la Revolution, des Piques, de la Loi, efface the old
landmarks. We must now say Rue Honore, not St. Honore, and Mont Marat
for Montmartre. Naturalists had written of the queen bee: away with
the hated word! She is now named of all good patriots the _abeille
pondeuse_, the egg-laying bee. In the Punch and Judy shows the gallows
gives place to the guillotine. No more emblems on playing cards of
king, queen, and knave: allegorical figures of Genius, Liberty and
Equality take their places, and since Law alone is above them all,
Patriotism, as it flings down its biggest card, shall cry no longer,
"Ace of trumps," but "Law of trumps," and "Genius of trumps." Chess
terms too were republicanised. Furniture becomes of Spartan
simplicity. The people lie down on patriotic beds and eat and drink
from patriotic mugs and platters. Lotteries are abolished, regulations
launched against the sale of indecent literature, drawings or
paintings; the open following of the profession of Rahab prohibited;
bull fights suppressed. Silver buckles are needed by the national war
chest: shoes shall now be clasped by patriotic buckles of copper. The
monarchial "_vous_" (you) shall give place to "_toi_" (thou); and
"monsieur" and "madame" to "_citoyen_" and "_citoyenne_." The formal
subscriptions to letters, "Your humble servant," "Your obedient
servant," shall no more recall the old days of class subjection; we
write now "Your fellow citizen," "Your friend," "Your equal." Every
house bears an inscription, giving the names and ages of the
occupants, decorated with patriotic colours of red, white and blue,
with figures of the Gallic cock and the _bonnet rouge_. Over every
public building runs the legend, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity or
Death"[174]--it is even seen over the cages of the wild beasts at the
Jardin des Plantes.
[Footnote 174: The meaning of this much misunderstood phrase was
simply that the citizens were ready to sacrifice their lives in
defence of the revolutionary principles.]
Nowhere did the revolutionary ploughshare cut deeper than among the
clergy and the religious orders. Nearly forty monasteries and convents
were suppressed in Paris, and strange scenes were those when the
troops of monks and friars issued forth to secular life, some crying
"_Vive Jesus le Roi, et la Revolution_," for the new ideas had
penetrated even the cloister. The barbers' shops were invaded, and
strange figures were seen smoking their pipes along the Boulevards.
Some went to the wars; others, especially the Benedictines, appealed
for teaching appointments; many faithful to their vows, went forth to
poverty, misery, and death.
The nuns and sisters gave more trouble, and the scenes that attended
their expulsion and that of the non-juring clergy burned into the
memories of the pious. "What do they take from me?" cried the _cure_
of St. Marguerite in his farewell sermon. "My cure? All that I have is
yours, and it is you they despoil. My life? I am eighty-four years of
age, and what of life remains to me is not worth the sacrifice of my
principles." Descending the pulpit the venerable priest passed through
a sobbing congregation to a garret in one of the Faubourgs. There were
but few, however, who imitated the dignified protest of the _cure_ of
St. Marguerite. Many a pulpit rang with fiery denunciations, which
recalled the savage fanaticism of the League. Some of the younger
clergy and a few of the bishops were on the side of the early
Revolutionists. The Abbe Fouchet was the Peter the Hermit of the
crusade for Liberty, and so popular were his sermons in Notre Dame
that a seat there fetched twenty-four sous. But the corruption and
apostasy of the hierarchy as a whole, and their betrayal of the
people, had borne its acrid fruit of popular contempt and hostility,
and the fanaticism of the worship of Reason answered the fanaticism of
the Cross. In Notre Dame and other churches, which became Temples of
Reason, statues of Liberty replaced those of the _ci-devant_ Holy
Virgin and every _Decadi_ services were held in honour of Liberty or
of the Supreme Being. _The Rights of Man_, the Constitution,
despatches from the armies and new laws were read. Prayers were made
to the Supreme Being and Liberty was invoked. Patriotic hymns were
sung, virtuous acts in the sections recited and addresses on morality,
the domestic virtues and other ethical subjects were given. In some,
an orator of morality was appointed. Births, marriages and deaths were
announced and--an essential detail--_collections_ were made in aid of
suffering Humanity. A _Decadi_ Ritual[175] was printed with a
selection of hymns and prayers to be used in the Temples of Reason.
The services were crowded, famous preachers often evoked tears, tracts
were published and saints of Liberty were in course of evolution. But
less than eight years after Robespierre's solemn Festival of the _Etre
Supreme_ all the hierarchy of the old religion returned, sixty
archbishops and bishops, and an army of priests, and a gorgeous Easter
Mass in Notre Dame celebrated the reestablishment of the Catholic
faith by Napoleon, the heir of the Revolution.
[Footnote 175: The services seem to have been not very dissimilar to a
modern Ethical Society meeting. The notorious Festival of the 20th
Brumaire was a Fete of Liberty not of Reason, the mistake being due to
a careless transcription in the _proces-verbal_ of the Convention. A
living representative of Liberty was chosen as less likely to tend to
idolatry than an image of stone. See _La Revolution Francaise_, 14th
April 1899, _La Deesse de la Liberte_.]
It is not within the scope of the present work to deal with the later
annals of Paris. Superficial students of her modern history have
freely charged her with political irresponsibility and fickleness; no
charge could be less warranted by facts. For a thousand years her
citizens were loyal and faithful subjects of a monarchy, and endured
for a century and a half an infliction of misgovernment, oppression
and grinding taxation such as probably no other European people would
have tolerated. With touching fidelity and indomitable steadfastness
they have cherished the principles of the Great Revolution, in whose
name they swept the shams and wrongs of the _ancien regime_ away.
There is a profounder truth than perhaps Alphonse Karr imagined in his
famous epigram, _Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose_. Every
political upheaval of the nineteenth century in Paris has been at
bottom an effort to realise the revolutionary ideals of political
freedom and social equality in the face of external violence or
internal corruption and treachery. Twice the hated Bourbons were
reimposed on the people of Paris by the bayonets of the foreigner:
twice they rose and chased them away. A compromise followed--that of a
citizen king, Louis Philippe of Orleans, once a Jacobin doorkeeper and
a soldier of the Revolution, who had fought valiantly at Valmy and
Jemappes--but he too identified himself with reactionary ministers,
and became a fugitive to England, the bourne of deposed kings. The
Second Republic which followed grew distrustful of the people and
disfranchised at one stroke 3,000,000 citizens: one of the causes of
the success of the _coup d'etat_ of Napoleon III. was an astute edict
which restored universal suffrage.
During the negation of political rectitude and decency which
characterised the period of the Second Empire, a little band of
Republicans refused to bow the knee to the new pinchbeck Caesar, "the
man," says Freeman, "whose lips uttered the words _je le jure_ and
kept the oath by a December massacre." Inspired by Victor Hugo, their
fiery poet and seer, whose _Chatiments_ have the passionate intensity
of an Isaiah, they braved exile, poverty, calumny and flattery; they
"stooped into a dark, tremendous sea of doubt, pressed God's lamp to
their breasts and emerged" to witness a sad and bitter day of
reckoning, when the corruption and vice of the Second Empire were
swallowed up in shame and disaster at Sedan.[176] The Third Republic,
with admirable energy and patriotism, rose to save the self-respect of
France. The first and Imperial war, up to Sedan, was over in a month;
the second national and popular war endured for five months.
[Footnote 176: "The collapse of the Empire is tremendous. I have no
pity for the melodramatic villain who ends as he began, in causeless
and wanton blood." Lord Coleridge, _Life_, ii., p. 172.]
Dynastic and ecclesiastical ambition die hard, and the new Republic
has had to weather many a storm in her career of a third of a
century. Carducci in a fine poem has imagined Letizia, mother of the
Bonapartes, a wandering shade haunting the desolate house at Ajaccio,
recalling the tragic fate of her children, and, like a Corsican Niobe,
standing on her threshold, fiercely stretching forth her arms to the
savage Ocean, calling from America, from Britain, from burning Africa,
some one of her hapless progeny to find a haven in her breast. But the
assegais of South African savages laid low the last hope of the
Imperialists, and it may reasonably be predicted that neither the
shades nor the living descendants of Bonaparte or Bourbon will ever
trouble again the internal peace of France nor her people be ruled by
one "regnant by right divine and luck o' the pillow." Throughout the
whole land a profound desire of peace possesses men's minds[177] and a
firm determination to effect a material and moral recuperation from
the disasters of the Empire.
[Footnote 177: "We could rouse no enthusiasm," said the head of a
State Department to the writer at the time of the Fashoda incident,
"even for a war for the recovery of Alsace and Lorraine, much less
against England."]
The beneficent results of the Great Revolution have leavened the whole
world. In no small degree may it be said of France that by her stripes
we have been healed. With true insight the Revolutionists perceived
that national liberty is the one essential element of national
progress:--
"When liberty goes out of a place it is not the first to go,
Nor the second or third to go,
It waits for all the rest to go, it is the last."
But the great work is yet incomplete. Political liberty and equality
have been won. A more tremendous task awaits the peoples of the old
and new worlds alike--to achieve industrial emancipation and
inaugurate a reign of social justice. And we know that Paris will
have no small part in the solution of this problem.
* * * * *
It now remains to consider the impress which this stormy period left
on the architecture of Paris. We have seen that the Convention
assigned the royal Palace of the Louvre for the home of a national
museum. The neglect of the fabric, however, continued. Already Marat
had appropriated four of the royal presses and their accessories for
the _Ami du Peuple_ and the types founded for Louis XIV. were used to
print the diatribes of the fiercest advocate of the Terror. All along
the south facade, print and cook shops were seen, and small
huckstering went on unheeded. In 1794 the ground floor of the Petite
Galerie was used as a Bourse. On the Place du Carrousel, and the site
of the Squares du Louvre were a mass of mean houses which remained
even to comparatively recent times. In 1805 the masterful will and
all-embracing activity of Napoleon were directed to the improvement of
Paris, which he determined to make the most beautiful capital in the
world. His architects, Percier and Fontaine, were set to work on the
Louvre, and yet another vast plan was elaborated for completing the
Palace. A northern wing, corresponding to Henry's IV.'s south wing,
was to be built eastwards along the new Rue de Rivoli, from the
Pavilion de Marsan at the north end of the Tuileries; the Carrousel
was to be traversed by a building, separating the two palaces,
designed to house the National Library, the learned Societies and
other bodies. The work was begun in 1812, the Emperor commanding that
the grand apartments were to be prepared for the sovereigns who would
come, _a lui faire cortege_, after the success of the Russian
campaign! Of this ambitious plan, however, all that was carried out
was a portion of the Rue de Rivoli facade, from the Pavilion de
Marsan to the Pavilion de Rohan, which latter was finished under the
Restoration. Some external decorative work was done on the south
facade. Perrault's Colonnade was restored, the four facades of the
quadrangle were completed, and a new bridge to lead to the "Palace of
the Arts" was built. Little or nothing was done to further Napoleon's
plan until the Republic of 1848 decreed the completion of the north
facade, which was actually achieved under the Second Empire by
Visconti in 1857, who built other structures, each with three courts,
inside the great space enclosed by the north and south wings to
correct their want of parallelism. Later (1862-1868), Henry the
Fourth's long gallery and the Pavilions de Flore and Lesdiguieres were
rebuilt, and smaller galleries were added to those giving on the Cour
des Tuileries: after the disastrous fire which destroyed the Tuileries
in 1871, the Third Republic restored the Pavilions de Flore and de
Marsan.
But the vicissitudes of this wonderful pile of architecture are not
yet ended. The discovery of Perrault's base at the east and of
Lemercier's at the north, will inevitably lead to their proximate
disclosure. Ample space remains at the east for the excavation of a
wide and deep fosse, which would expose the wing to view as Perrault
intended it; but on the Rue de Rivoli side the problem is more
difficult, and probably a narrow fosse, or _saut de loup_, will be all
that space will allow there.
Napoleon I.'s new streets near the Tuileries and the Louvre soon
became the fashionable quarter of Paris. The Italian arcades and every
street name recalled a former victory of the Consulate in Italy and
Egypt. The military glories of a revolutionary empire, which at one
time transcended the limits of that of Charlemagne; which crashed
through the shams of the old world and toppled in the dust their
imposing but hollow state, were wrought in bronze on the Vendome
Column, cast from the cannon captured from every nation in Europe. The
Triumphal Arch of the Carrousel, crowned by the bronze horses from St.
Mark's at Venice; the majestic Triumphal Arch of the Etoile--a
partially achieved project--all paraded the Emperor's fame. Of more
practical utility were the quays built along the south bank of the
Seine and the bridges of Austerlitz and Jena, which latter Bluecher
would have blown up had Wellington permitted it.
The erection of the new church of the Madeleine, begun in 1764, had
been interrupted by the Revolution, and in 1806, Napoleon ordered that
it should be completed as a Temple of Glory. The Restoration
transformed it to a Catholic church, which was finally completed under
Louis Philippe in 1842, and it soon became the most fashionable place
of worship in Paris. Napoleon drove sixty new streets through the
city, cleared away the posts that marked off the footways, began the
raised pavements and kerbs, and ordered the drainage to be diverted
from the gutters in the centre of the roadway.
The Restoration erected two basilicas--Notre Dame de Lorette and St.
Vincent de Paul. The Expiatory Chapel raised to the memory of Louis
XVI. and Marie Antoinette on the site of the old cemetery of the
Madeleine--where they lay, until transferred to St. Denis, in one red
burial with the brave Swiss Guards who vainly spent their lives for
them--is now threatened with demolition. Three new bridges--of the
Invalides, the Archeveche and Arcole--were added, and fifty-five new
streets.
Under the citizen king, Napoleon's Arch of Triumph of the Etoile was
completed, and the Columns of Luxor, on the Place de la Concorde, and
of July on the Place de la Bastille, were raised. It was the period of
the admirable architectural restorations of Viollet le Duc. The great
architect has described how his passion for Gothic was stirred when,
taken as a boy to Notre Dame, the rose window of the south transept
seized on his imagination. While gazing at it the organ began to play,
and he thought that the music came from the window--the shrill, high
notes from the light colours, the solemn, bass notes from the dark and
more subdued hues. It was a reverent and admiring spirit such as this
which inspired the famous architect's loving treatment of the Gothic
restoration in Paris and all over France. To him more than to any
other artist we owe the preservation of such masterpieces as Notre
Dame and the Sainte Chapelle.
But the great changes which have made modern Paris were effected under
the Second Empire. In 1854, when the Haussmannisation of the city
began, the Paris of the First Empire and of the Restoration remained
essentially unaltered. It was a city of a few grand streets and of
many mean ones. Pavements were still rare, and drainage was imperfect.
In a few years the whole aspect was changed. Twenty-two new boulevards
and avenues were created. Streets of appalling uniformity and
directness were ploughed through Paris in all directions. "Nothing is
more brutal than a straight line," says Victor Hugo, and there is
little of interest in the monotonous miles of dreary coincidence which
constitute the architectural legacy of the Second Empire.
The sad task of the Third Republic has been to heal the wounds and
cover up the destruction wrought by the Civil War of 1871. The chief
architectural creations of the Third Republic are the Hotel de Ville,
the new Sorbonne, the Trocadero, and the completion of the magnificent
and colossal temple, rich with precious marble and stone of every
kind, which, at a cost of L10,000,000 sterling, has been raised to
the Muses at the end of the Avenue de l'Opera. The Church, too, has
lavished her millions on the mighty basilica of the Sacre Coeur,
which towers over Paris from the heights of Montmartre.
[Illustration: HOTEL DE VILLE FROM RIVER.]
But some of the glory of past ages remains hidden away in corners of
the city; some has been recovered from the vandalism of iconoclastic
eighteenth-century architects, canons, revolutionists and
nineteenth-century prefects. Let us now wander awhile about the great
city and refresh our memories of her dramatic past by beholding
somewhat of the interest and beauty which have been preserved to us;
for "to be in Paris itself, amid the full, delightful fragrance of
those dainty visible things which Huguenots despised--that, surely,
were the sum of good fortune!"
"I see ... long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen
on the destruction of the old, perishing.... I see a
beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this
abyss, and in their struggles to be truly free, in their
triumphs and defeats, through long, long years to come, I
see the evil of this time and of the previous time, of which
this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for
itself and wearing out."--DICKENS.
Part II: The City
SECTION I
_The Cite--Notre Dame--The Sainte-Chapelle[178]--The Palais de
Justice_[179]
[Footnote 178: Open 11-4 or 5. Closed Mondays and Chief Festivals.]
[Footnote 179: Open daily, except Sundays, 11-4.]
If the traveller will place himself on the Pont Royal, or on the Pont
du Carrousel, and look towards the Cite when the tall buildings, the
spire of the Sainte Chapelle and the massive grey towers of Notre Dame
are ruddy with the setting sun, he will enjoy a scene of beauty not
easily surpassed in Europe. Across the picture, somewhat marred by the
unlovely Pont des Arts, stride the arches of the Pont Neuf with their
graceful curves; below is the little green patch of garden and the
cascade of the weir; in the centre of the bridge the bronze horse with
Henry IV., its royal rider, almost hidden by the trees, stands facing
the site of the old garden of the Palais, where St. Louis sat on a
carpet judging his people, and whence Philip the Fair watched the
flames that were consuming the Grand Master and his companion of the
Knights Templars. To the left are the picturesque mediaeval towers of
the Conciergerie and the tall roof of the belfry of the Palais.
Around all are the embracing waters of the Seine breaking the light
with their thousand facets. The island, when seen from the east as one
sails down the river, is not less imposing, for the great mother
church of Notre Dame, with the graceful buttresses of the apse like
folded pinions, seems to brood over the whole Cite.
[Illustration: CHAPEL OF CHATEAU AT VINCENNES.]
[Illustration: NEAR THE PONT NEUF.]
From the time when Julius Caesar addressed his legions on the little
island of _Lutetia Civitas Parisiorum_ to the present day, two
millenniums of history have been enacted there, and few spots are to
be found in Europe where so many associations are crowded together. In
Gallo-Roman times the island was, as we have seen, even smaller, five
islets having been incorporated with it since the thirteenth century.
Some notion of the changes that have swept over its soil may be
conceived on scanning Felibien's 1725 map, where no less than eighteen
churches are marked, scarce a wrack of which now remains on the
island. We must imagine the old mediaeval Cite as a labyrinth of
crooked and narrow streets, with the present broad Parvis of Notre
Dame of much smaller extent, at a higher level, enclosed by a low wall
and approached by steps. Against the north tower leaned the Baptistery
(St. Jean le Rond) and St. Denis of the Ferry against the apse. St.
Pierre aux Boeufs, whose facade has been transferred to St.
Severin's on the south bank, stood at the east corner, St. Christopher
at the west corner of the present Hotel Dieu which covers the site of
eleven streets and three churches. The old twelfth-century hospital,
demolished in 1878, occupied the whole space south of the Parvis
between the present Petit Pont and the Pont au Double. It possessed
its own bridge, the Pont St. Charles, over which the buildings
stretched, and joined the annexe (1606), which, until 1909, existed on
the opposite side of the river.
NOTRE DAME.
The traveller who stands on the Parvis before the Church of Our Lady
at Paris beholds the embodiment and most perfect expression of early
Gothic architecture, the central type and model of the new style
created by the genius of the masters of the Isle de France in the late
twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. On the west front the builders
have lavished all their artistic powers in a synthetic exposition of
their outlook on life and eternity. As the worshipper approaches the
central portal his eye is arrested by a representation of the ultimate
and most solemn fact of human destiny, the Last Judgment. On the
lintel the dead are seen rising from their graves at the last trump;
prelate, noble and serf in one equality of doom. Above, the fine
figure of St. Michael is seen weighing souls in the balance. At his
left the damned are hauled in chains by grinning demons to Hell: at
his right the elect raise joyful eyes toward Heaven. Crowning the
tympanum is Christ the Judge, flanked by angels, and by the Virgin and
the Baptist kneeling in intercession while He shows His wounded hands.
On the archivolts are, to the right of the spectator, demons and
damned souls and quaint personifications of death: to his left the
heavenly host, choirs of angels, seated prophets and doctors and the
army of martyrs. On the jambs are the five wise and five foolish
virgins; apostles and saints on the embrasures of the door; below them
reliefs of the virtues, each symbolised above its opposite vice. On
the central pillar stands Christ in act of blessing; below Him,
bas-reliefs typifying the seven liberal arts.[180]
[Footnote 180: This portal suffered much from the vandalism of
Soufflot and his clerical employers of the eighteenth century (p.
252): all that remains of the original carvings in the tympanum is a
portion of the figure of Christ and the angels. The Revolutionary
Chaumette, when it was proposed to destroy the Gothic _simulacra_ of
superstition, protected the carvings on the west portals on the plea
that they related to astronomy, to philosophy and the arts. The
astronomer Dupuis was added to the Commission and the reliefs were
saved.]
We turn to the lovely portal of the Virgin under the north tower. In
the lower compartment of the tympanum is figured the ark of the
Covenant attended by prophets and kings; above, is the burial of the
Virgin, and crowning all, Our Lady in glory. On the archivolts are
angels, patriarchs, prophets, and kings. The jambs and casements are
decorated with thirty-seven marvellously vivid reliefs of the signs of
the Zodiac, the seasons and labours of the year, a kind of almanac of
stone of rare invention and execution. On the embrasures of the door
are, among others, the favourite Parisian saints: Denis, Genevieve and
Stephen. On the central pier, below the Virgin and Child, are the
Creation, Temptation and Fall. The whole of this portal will repay
careful inspection.
St. Anne's portal, under the south tower, is more archaic, and indeed
some of its sculptures are believed to have come from an earlier
Romanesque building. Along the lintel are seen episodes in the life of
St. Anne and in the life of Mary: in the central band, to the left,
are the Presentation, the Annunciation, the Visitation; in the middle
the Nativity in various scenes; to the right Herod, and the Adoration
of the Magi. The whole of these reliefs are twelfth-century work, with
the exception of the Presentation, which is thirteenth century. In the
hemicycle above are the Virgin and Child under a Byzantine canopy with
angels and founders on either side. On the central pier stands St.
Marcel, Bishop of Paris, banning the horrible serpent that made his
lair in a tomb: the retreating serpent's tail is seen on the pier.
Both on this and on the north portal traces of painting still remain.
Before leaving, we note the beautiful mediaeval wrought hinges
(restored) which came from the old church of St. Stephen and which
have been copied for the central portal. The three portals were
completed in 1208.
Above them and across the whole facade runs a gallery of kings,
twenty-eight in number--a perennial source of controversy. Authorities
are divided between the kings of France and the kings of Israel and
Judah, the royal ancestry of the Virgin. From the analogy of other
cathedrals we incline to the latter view. The gallery dates not later
than 1220, but the statues are modern reproductions. Yet higher, on
the pierced balustrade, is a group of the Virgin between two angels
and on either side, over the N. and S. portals, Adam and Eve. A
gallery of graceful columns knits the towers together (which were
intended to be crowned by spires) before they soar from the facade.
Between the towers, in olden times, as we know from an illumination in
a Froissart MS., stood a great statue of the Virgin. The whole of this
glorious fretwork of stone, including the tracery of the rose window,
was once refulgent with gold and azure and crimson, and the finished
front in its mediaeval glory has been compared to a colossal carved
and painted triptych.
[Illustration: NOTRE DAME--PORTAL OF ST. ANNE.]
On the central pier of the greater portal of the N. transept, called
of the Cloister, we note a fine ancient statue of the Virgin, famed
for its grace of expression. The smaller Porte Rouge, further
eastward, is remarkable for some well-preserved antique sculpture: a
Coronation of the Virgin in the tympanum and six scenes in the life of
St. Marcel in the archivolt: some old gargoyles and reliefs may be
seen on either side of the door.
We pursue our way by the east end of the cathedral, where in mediaeval
times was an open waste, the Motte aux Papelards, the playground of
the cathedral servants, the graceful outlines of the apse and the bold
sweep of the flying buttresses ever varying in beauty as we pace
around. The south portal (ill seen through the iron railings) called
of St. Stephen or of the Martyrs is decorated with statues of the
saint and of other martyrs, with scenes of their martyrdom. The
inscription (p. 88) may be seen at the base to the R.
[Illustration: NOTRE DAME--SOUTH SIDE.]
[Illustration: NOTRE DAME--SOUTH SIDE--FROM THE SEINE.]
We may now enter the noble and harmonious interior, unhappily bared of
its rich old decorations, its tombs and statues cleared away, its fine
Gothic altar destroyed by clerical and royal vandals to give place to
renaissance and pseudo-classic pomposities (p. 252). We approach the
choir from the right aisle, noting a fourteenth-century statue of the
Virgin and Child on the left as we reach the entrance, perhaps the
very statue before which _povre Gilles_ did his penance (p. 142) and
proceed to examine all that remains of the "histories" in stone on the
choir wall round the ambulatory, twenty-three in number, begun in 1319
by Master Jean Ravy, mason of Notre Dame, and finished (_parfaites_)
by Master Jean le Bouteiller in 1351, all _dorez et bien peints_.
Those on the choir screen were destroyed by the Cardinal Archbishop de
Noailles in 1725. On the north side are twelve reliefs drawn from
earlier New Testament history: on the south are nine from later
episodes in the life of Christ. These naive mediaeval sculptures of
varying merit will repay careful examination. The gilding and
colouring are modern. Of the jewelled splendour of the western rose
and of the two great rose windows of the transepts the eye will never
tire. With every changing light new beauties and new combinations of
colour reveal themselves. Those who care to read the subjects will
discern in the north transept rose, incidents depicted in the life of
the Virgin, and eighteen founders and benefactors: in the south are
apostles and bishops crowned by angels.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF NOTRE DAME.]
We return to the Porte Rouge in the Rue du Cloitre opposite which is
the Rue Massillon, where at Nos. 4 and 6 we may note some remains of
the cloisters and canons' dwellings, once a veritable city within a
city, fifty-one houses with gardens sequestered within a wall having
four gates. We continue to the Rue Chanoinesse, where, No. 10, is the
site of Canon Fulbert's house: at No. 18, by the courtesy of Messieurs
Allez Freres, we may visit the curious old fifteenth-century tower of
Dagobert[181] which marks the site of the old port of St. Landry and
affords a fine view of the north side of Notre Dame. We return to No.
10 and descend the Rue des Chantres to the Quai aux Fleurs: at No. 9,
the site of the house of Abelard and Heloise, an inscription recalls
the names of the unhappy lovers,
"... for ever sad, for ever dear,
Still breathed in sighs, still ushered with a tear."
[Footnote 181: Now (1911) demolished.]
We turn westward along the Quai and ascend on our L., the narrow Rue
de la Colombe, across which a double line of stones traces the
position of the Gallo-Roman wall, that enclosed the Cite. We continue
to ascend, and on our L., No. 26 Rue Chanoinesse, we enter a small
court where we find a portion of the old pavement of St. Aignan's
church, with the almost effaced lineaments on the tombstones of those,
now forgotten, who were doubtless famous churchmen in their time, and
where St. Bernard wept a whole day, fearing that God had withdrawn
from him the power of converting souls. This faint trace of the past
wealth of churches remains, but where are the sanctuaries of Ste.
Genevieve des Ardents, St. Pierre des Arces, St. Denis of the Prison,
St. Germain le Vieux, Ste. Croix, St. Symphorien, St. Martial, St.
Bartholomew, and the church of the Barnabites, which replaced that of
St. Anne, which replaced the old Abbey church of St. Eloy, all
clustering around their parent church of Our Lady like nuns under
their patroness' mantle? Until comparatively recent times the church
of St. Marine was used as a joiner's workshop, and one of the chapels
of Ste. Madeleine, parish church of the water-sellers, served as a
wine merchant's store! All that survives of the ancient splendour of
the Cite are Notre Dame and some portions of the Palais, including the
Ste. Chapelle.
We turn R. to the Rue d'Arcole that has swept away the old church of
St. Landry, near which, until the reign of Louis XIII., a market was
held for the sale of foundling children at thirty sous. The scandal
was abolished by the efforts of the gentle St. Vincent de Paul, Anne
of Austria's confessor. Turning L. along this street we emerge on the
Parvis, which we skirt to the R. along the facade of the new Hotel
Dieu, and reach the Rue de la Cite. We turn R., cross to the L. and
follow the broad Rue de Lutece to the Palais de Justice.
THE SAINTE CHAPELLE AND THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE.
Entering the Cour du Mai by the great iron grille which has replaced
the old stone portal, flanked by two towers, a passage on the left
leads us to the Cour de la Ste. Chapelle (p. 86). We enter by the west
porch of the lower chapel. On the central pier is a restored figure of
the Virgin whose original is said to have bowed her head to the famous
Scotch theologian Duns Scotus, in recognition of his championship of
the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, in 1304: in the decoration of
the base of the column and of the embrasures of the door, the
Fleur-de-Lys of St. Louis is seen alternating with the Castilian Tower
of his mother, Blanche of Castile, a decorative motive repeated in the
painting of the chapel.
Beautiful as are the vaultings and proportions of the lower chapel,
and the decoration, copied, as in the upper chapel, from traces of the
original colouring found under the whitewash, the visitor will
doubtless prefer to ascend, after a cursory inspection, the narrow,
winding stairway to the resplendent upper sanctuary, whose dazzling
brilliancy moved an ancient writer to declare that "in the contest
between light and darkness in architecture, the creator of the Ste.
Chapelle in the pride of his victory built with light itself." In the
apse, flooded by streams of colour falling from the windows, is the
platform or tribune where, in a rich reliquary of gold, glittering
with precious stones, and under a baldachin, the holy relics from
Constantinople were exposed in days of old. Part of the tribune is
preserved and one of the staircases by which it is ascended, that to
the N., is said to date from the founder's time, and may often have
been trodden by the very feet of St. Louis himself. Little else of the
interior furniture has escaped destruction. The beautiful high altar,
the rood loft, the choir stalls, have long disappeared. Four only of
the statues of the apostles bearing the crosses of consecration are
said to be originals--the fourth and fifth on each side of the nave
counting from the west door; the relics, or all that escaped the
political storms of the _annee terrible_, are now at Notre Dame, and
the reliquary that contained them went to feed the hungry war-chest of
the revolutionary armies. But the thirteenth-century jewelled windows,
as left to us by the admirable restorers of 1855, are of paramount
interest. The wealth of design and amplitude of the series are truly
amazing. The panels, numbering about eleven hundred, are a compendium
of sacred history and a revelation of the world to come: the whole
scene from the Creation to the Apocalypse is unrolled before our eyes,
pictured in a transparent symphony of colour. Seven windows of the
nave and four of the apse deal with Old Testament history: three at
the end of the apse with the New. The eighth window of the nave (the
first to the R. of entrance), dealing with the story of the
Translation of the relics from Constantinople, although the most
restored--nineteen only of the sixty-seven subjects are original--is
perhaps the most interesting, for among the nineteen may be seen St.
Louis figured by the contemporary artist: receiving the relics at
Sens; assisting to carry the relics, barefoot; taking part at the
exposition of the relics with his queen and his mother; receiving an
embassy from the Emperor Baldwin; carrying the Byzantine cross which
holds a portion of the true cross. Another of the original panels
contains a representation of the Cite with the enveloping arms of the
Seine. The rose window at the west end is obviously later, and dates
from the fifteenth century.
In olden times the lower part of the central window of the apse was
made of white glass that the people massed in the courtyard below
might behold the relics as St. Louis and his successors, after
exhibiting them to the privileged congregation in the chapel, turned
round to show them. Against the south wall of the nave is a little
oratory with a squint through which it is said Louis XI. used to
venerate the relics unobserved.
We step out from the west door of the upper chapel to examine the more
richly decorated upper portal. The carvings are all modern and, except
such as were suggested by traces of the old work, are copied from the
west front of Notre Dame and other churches. Many a solemn and many a
strange scene have been enacted in this royal oratory; the strangest
of all perhaps when Charles V. of France, the Holy Roman Emperor
Charles IV., and his son Wenceslaus, king of the Romans, in the _role_
of the three Holy Kings, came to venerate the relics and laid
oblations before the shrine.
Before we turn away from the building we should observe on the west
facade above the rose window wherein the architect has literally
sported with the difficulties of construction in stone a charming
design of fleurs-de-lys framed by quatrefoils along the balustrade;
the central design is an R. (rex), crowned by two angels. The present
spire is a fourth erection. The second, which replaced the original
spire in 1383, was one of the wonders of Paris, and fell a victim to
fire in 1630. A third, erected by Louis XIII., was demolished in 1791,
and in 1853 Lassus, Viollet le Duc's principal colleague in the
restoration of the chapel, designed the graceful fleche we see to-day.
We return to the Cour du Mai: on the R., before we ascend the great
stairway, we look down on the nine steps leading from the Vestibule
(now a Cafe Restaurant) of the Conciergerie, up which those doomed to
the guillotine ascended to the fatal tumbrils awaiting them in the
courtyard. We ascend to the Galerie Marchande: the stairway, rebuilt
after the fire of 1776, replaced the old flight of stairs at whose
feet heralds proclaimed treaties of peace and tournaments, criminals
were branded, and books condemned by the Parlement, burned. Here
Pantagruel loved to stand and cut the stirrup-straps of the fat
councillors' mules, and see the _gros sufle de conseiller_ fall flat
when he tried to mount; and here the clercs of the Basoche planted the
annual May-tree, brought from the forest of Bondy, with much playing
of drums and trumpets and elaborate ceremony.
The Galerie Marchande, formerly known as the Galerie Merciere, was
once a busy and fashionable bazaar, where lines of shops displayed
fans, shoes, slippers and other dainty articles of feminine artillery.
The further galleries were also invaded by the traders, who were only
finally evicted in 1842. We turn R. and enter the Grande Salle or, as
it is now known, the Salle des Pas Perdus. It, too, was once a busy
mart, booksellers especially predominating, most of whom had stations
there, much as we see them to-day, round the Odeon Theatre. Verard's
address was--"At the image of St. John the Evangelist, before Notre
Dame de Paris, and at the first pillar in the Grande Salle of the
Palais de Justice, before the chapelle where they sing the mass for
Messieurs of the Parlement." Gilles Couteau's address was at "The Two
Archers in the Rue de la Juiverie and at the third pillar at the
Palais." Every pillar had its bookseller's shop. In 1618 the great
chamber, the finest of its kind in Europe, with its rich stained
glass, its double vaultings resplendent with blue and gold, was gutted
by fire, and its long line of statues of the kings of France, from
Pharamond to Henry IV.--the _rois faineants_ with pendent arms and
lowered eyes, the valiant warrior kings with heads and arms
erect--disappeared for ever. This was the hall where the clercs of the
Basoche performed their _farces_, _sottises_ and _moralites_, and
where Victor Hugo has placed the scene of the famous performance of
the _moralite_, composed by Pierre Gringoire,[182] so vividly
described in the opening chapters of _Notre Dame_.
[Footnote 182: Notes exist of payments in 1502, 1505 to Pierre
Gringoire, _histrion et facteur_ for the mysteries--well and honestly
performed--at the entries of Madame la reine, before the portail of
the Chatelet.]
Debrosse, who built the new Salle in 1622, left a noble and harmonious
Renaissance chamber, which, again restored after the fire of 1776,
endured until its destruction by fire during the Commune. The present
rather frigid hall was completed in 1878 by J.L. Duc, who respected
the traditional form and amplitude of the older structures. Nearly
opposite the monument to Malesherbes (R.) was the position of the old
Pilier des Consultations, where the lawyers were wont to give
gratuitous legal help to the poor. The best time to visit the Hall is
in the afternoon, when the courts are sitting and when the footsteps
of the lawyers and their clients are indeed lost amid the buzz of
conversation as they pace up and down.
The _Premiere Chambre_ to the L., in the north-west corner of the
Hall, is one of the most profoundly interesting in the agglomerated
mass of buildings known as the Palais de Justice. This, now somewhat
reduced in size, was the old _Grande Chambre_, rebuilt by Louis XII.
on the occasion of his marriage with Princess Mary of England, which
replaced the earlier bed-chamber of St. Louis.
Fra Gioconda's sumptuous decorations of 1502, which won for it the
name of the _Chambre doree_, the gold used being, it is said, equal in
purity to the famous Dutch golden florin, have been partially
restored. Here the kings of France held their Beds of Justice; here
the Fronde held its sittings, and here on 15th April, 1654, the young
king Louis XIV. strode in, booted and spurred, and is said to have
uttered the famous words _l'Etat c'est moi_. Here too, renamed the
Salle Egalite, the dread Revolutionary Tribunal held its sittings and
condemned 2742 victims; here on 14th October 1793, at half-past four
in the morning, appeared Marie Antoinette, "widow of Louis Capet,"
before her implacable judges and heard her doom; hence the twenty-one
Girondins trooped forth to their common fate; here Robespierre,
St. Just, and, at length, the unwearied minister of death,
Fouquier-Tinville himself, the revolutionary public prosecutor, heard
their condemnation. We leave by the Cour du Mai and note, to our L.,
the restored clock tower, replacing the most ancient and famous clock
of Paris. It was renewed by Germain Pilon in 1588 and restored in
1685. Demolished during the Revolution, the face and decoration were
again renewed in 1852. The silvery-toned bell that hung here, called
the _tocsin_, cast in 1371 and known as the _cloche d'argent_, was
accused, together with the bell of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, before the
Commune on 21st August 1792, of having given the signal for the
massacre of St. Bartholomew, and its immediate destruction was
ordered. We turn along the picturesque river facade, and between
its two mediaeval towers, de Cesar and d'Argent, enter the
Conciergerie.[183] The condemned cell of Marie Antoinette (transformed
into a chapel) and the cell of Robespierre are shown, together with
the chapel where the Girondins passed their last night and where their
legendary banquet is famed to have taken place. The so-called _Cuisine
de St. Louis_, a remain of the old Gothic palace of Philip le Bel, is
no longer shown. The third tower on the river facade, which we pass on
our way westward, has been wholly rebuilt. In the original tower was
the judicial torture-chamber (an adjunct of every court of justice in
olden times), used to wrest confessions from prisoners and evidence
from unwilling witnesses, hence its name of Tour Bon Bec or Bavarde.
The fine western facade and the Salle des Pas Perdus of the Cour
d'Assises, looking on the Place Dauphine, were completed in 1868.
[Footnote 183: Permission to visit on Thursdays, 9-5, to be obtained
by written application to the Prefect of Police, Rue de Lutece.]
Few Law Courts in Europe have so venerable a history as the Palais de
Justice. From the times when the Roman praetor set up his court, more
than two thousand years ago, to the present day, a temple of Law and
Justice has ever stood on this spot.
SECTION II
_St. Julien le Pauvre--St. Severin--The Quartier Latin._
As we fare S. from the W. end of the Parvis of Notre Dame and cross
the Petit Pont, we behold the old Roman Road, now Rue St. Jacques,
rising straight before us and on the annexe of the Hotel Dieu,[184] to
the L. of the Place du Petit Pont find inscribed their names (p. 46),
who nearly twelve centuries ago dared:--
"For that sweet motherland which gave them birth,
Nobly to do, nobly to die."
On the site of the Place stood the Petit Chatelet, demolished in 1782,
a gloomy prison where many a rowdy student was incarcerated. To the L.
of the Rue du Petit Pont[184] we turn by the Rue de la Bucherie and on
our R. find the Rue St. Julien le Pauvre. Here on the L., hidden
behind a pair of shabby wooden gates, stands the modest little
twelfth-century church, now used for the Uniat Greek services, where
St. Gregory of Tours found the drunken impostor (pp. 32, 33), where
the University of Paris first held its sittings, and where twice a
year the royal provost attended to swear to preserve the privileges
of the rector, masters and scholars. Near by stood the house of
Buridan (_note_, p. 68). At the end of the street we turn R. by the
old Rues Galande and St. Severin: at No. 4 of the latter, we see a
trace of the original naming of the streets by Turgot, the marks of
the erasure of the word "Saint" during the Revolution being clearly
visible. Parallel with this street to the N. is the Rue de la
Huchette, from which opens the curious old Rue du Chat qui Peche and
the Rue Zacharie, in mediaeval times called Sac a Lie, which
communicates with the Rue St. Severin. To our L. is the fine Gothic
church of St. Severin, one of the most beautiful and interesting in
Paris, on the site of the oratory of Childebert I., where St. Cloud
was shorn and took his vows. On the thirteenth-century N. portal of
the tower have been replaced the two small lions in relief between
which, in olden times, the cures are said to have exercised justice.
We note the thirteenth-century W. portal, transferred from the old
church of St. Pierre aux Boeufs, and enter for the sake of the
beautiful Gothic interior, mainly fifteenth century, with its double
aisles and ambulatory and fine stained-glass in the nave. We turn L.,
on leaving, along the Rue des Pretres St. Severin (No. 5 is the site
of the old College de Lisieux) which is continued by the Rue
Boutebrie, in former times the Rue des Enlumineurs, famous for those
who practised the art, "_che alluminare chiamata e in Parisi_."[185]
At the end of the Rue des Pretres we turn L. along the picturesque Rue
de la Parcheminerie, where we may recall the old poet Corneille
sitting at a cobbler's stall while his gaping shoe was patched, and
where still remain, among other curious old houses, Nos. 6 and 7,
which in the thirteenth century were owned by the canons of Norwich
Cathedral, who maintained a number of scholars there. We are now on
the very foyer of the University quarter, in mediaeval times swarming
with poor scholars, the busy hive of knowledge, and so notorious for
its misery and rowdy depravity, that Charles V. during his regency had
the Rue du Fouarre closed at curfew by strong iron grilles. We pass on
to the Rue St. Jacques, then R. to the Boulevard St. Germain, again
sharply to the L. and descend the new Rue Dante, R. of which, in the
Rue Domat, are some quaint old houses: at 12 _bis_ is the site of the
old College de Cournouailles (Brittany). The Rue Dante is continued by
the Rue du Fouarre (Straw Street) where Siger taught (p. 103) and in
one of whose colleges the author of the _Divina Commedia_ probably sat
as a scholar. The houses are all modernised and the name alone
remains. We turn R. along the Rue Galande, noting R. the Rue des
Anglais which reminds us that there the English scholars congregated.
We pass on by the Rue Lagrange and reach the place Maubert of dread
memories, for here were burnt many a Protestant martyr and the famous
printer philosopher, Etienne Dolet, friend of Erasmus, of Marot and of
Melancthon, whose statue in bronze stands on the Place. Dolet's
martyrdom is still yearly celebrated there by democratic Parisians,
and the Place has always been famous for its barricades during the
Fronde and later Revolutionary times. We cross the Boulevard to the
Rue des Carmes, whose name recalls the Carmelite monastery founded by
St. Louis, and at No. 15 find the site of the old Italian College
(College des Lombards). Much of this "hostel of the poor Italian
scholars of the charity of Our Lady," as rebuilt by two Irish priests,
Michael Kelly and Patrick Moggin, still exists, including the chapel,
and is partly occupied by a Catholic Workmen's Club It gave shelter
to forty missionary priests and an equal number of poor Irish
scholars, and the earliest disciples of Loyola found temporary shelter
there. Some idea of the vast extent of the ancient foundation may be
gained by walking round to 34 Rue de la Montagne Ste. Genevieve on the
other side of the Marche where the principal portal may be seen. We
return to the Place Maubert, which we recross, and descend direct
before us to the Rue de la Bucherie on our L. This street was the
centre of the medical students, and from 1369 to the times of Louis
XIV. the Faculty of Medicine held its lectures and demonstrations
there. At No. 13 still remains the old anatomical and surgical theatre
of the Faculty erected in 1617, which has been acquired by the
Municipality, but had a neglected, almost ruined aspect when we last
passed (Feb. 1906).[186] We continue along this street and return to
the Place du Petit Pont.
[Footnote 184: The annexe, the inscription and the Rue du Petit
Pont--all have disappeared (1911).]
[Footnote 185: _Purgatorio_, XI. 81.]
[Illustration: ST. SEVERIN.]
[Illustration: OLD ACADEMY OF MEDICINE.]
SECTION III
_Ecole des Beaux Arts_[187]--_St. Germain des Pres_--_Cour du
Dragon_--_St. Sulpice_--_The Luxembourg_--_The Odeon_--_The
Cordeliers_--_The Surgeons' Guild_--_The Musee Cluny_[188]--_The
Sorbonne_[189]--_The Pantheon_[190]--_St. Etienne du Mont_--_Tour
Clovis_--_Wall of Philip Augustus_--_Roman Amphitheatre_
[Footnote 186: Now demolished (1911).]
[Footnote 187: Open Sundays, 10-4.]
[Footnote 188: Open 11-4 or 5, closed Mondays and Chief Festivals.]
[Footnote 189: May be visited Thursdays and Sundays, 11-4. Apply
Concierge, 7 Rue des Ecoles.]
[Footnote 190: Open 10-4 or 5, closed Mondays and Festivals.]
We cross to the S. bank of the Seine by the Pont du Carrousel (or des
Saints Peres). Opposite on the Quai Malaquais stands the Ecole des
Beaux Arts (on the site of the old Convent of the Petits Augustins
where Lenoir organised his museum), founded by the Convention and now
one of the most important art-teaching centres in Europe. We turn S.
by the Rue Bonaparte, and soon find the entrance, on the R., to the
first courtyard, in which we note, on our R., the fine Portal of the
Chateau of Anet, built for Diana of Poitiers by Delorme and Goujon
(1548): opposite the entrance, giving access to the second courtyard,
is placed a facade, transitional in style, from the Chateau of
Gaillon. An hour may profitably be spent on Sundays strolling through
the rooms viewing the interesting collection of casts and
reproductions of masterpieces of painting by the pupils of the school.
Delaroche's famous Hemicycle, representing the great artists of every
age, seventy-five figures larger than life, will be found in the
theatre of the Musee des Antiquites entered from the second courtyard.
We continue along the Rue Bonaparte past the new Academie de Medecine
and on our L. soon sight the grey pile of the old Abbey Church of St.
Germain des Pres, once refulgent in colour and gold. A part of the
great tower is said to have resisted the Norman conflagrations, but
the church as we now behold it, is that rebuilt 1000-1163; enlarged in
1237 and restored at various periods in the first half of the
nineteenth century. Of the great fortress-monastery, with its immense
domains of land; its cloisters, walls and towers; its prison and
pillory, over which the puissant abbots once held sway, only a memory
remains. The fortifications were razed in the seventeenth century and
gave place to artizans' houses. The famous Fair of St. Germain has
long been suppressed, where Henry IV. on the royal entry of Marie de'
Medici, after promising the merchants that they should grow rich,
since his queen had _de l'argent frais_, disappointed them all by
chaffering much and buying nothing. Over the entrance of the church
within the W. porch is a well-preserved Romanesque relief of the Last
Supper. Some bases and capitals of the triforium date from the twelfth
century, but the heavy Romanesque capitals of the eleventh century
nave are restorations, and the beautiful early Gothic choir has also
been much modified at various epochs. The interest of the interior is
enhanced to the lover of French art by Flandrin's admirable frescoes
(p. 391), illustrating scenes from the Old and New Testaments.
Unhappily, they are seen with difficulty, and a bright, sunny day is
necessary to appreciate the masterly art, the noble and reverent
spirit that animates them. One of the most successful and best seen is
the Entry into Jerusalem, L. of the choir.
If we turn by the Rue de l'Abbaye, N. of the church, we shall find
part of the sixteenth-century Abbot's Palace yet standing, and a walk
round the apse and the S. side of the church will afford a view of its
massive bulk, its flying buttresses and steep-pitched roof. Crossing
the Place St. Germain obliquely to the S.W. we reach the Rue de
Rennes: at No. 50 is the entrance of the picturesque Cour du Dragon
with an eighteenth-century figure of a Dragon carved over it. At the
end of this curious courtyard, paved, as old Paris was paved, with the
gutter down the middle, will be seen two old towers enclosing
stairways. We return to the Rue Bonaparte and faring still S. reach
the huge fabric of St. Sulpice with its massive, gloomy towers and
pretentious facade of cumbrous splendour. We enter for the sake of
Delacroix' fine paintings in the side chapel R. of entrance: Jacob
wrestling with the Angel; Heliodorus driven from the Temple; and St.
Michael and the Dragon. In this and in many of the numerous chapels
are other decorative paintings by modern artists, few of which will
probably appeal to the visitor. It was in this church that Camille
Desmoulins was wedded to Lucille, Robespierre acting as best man. On
the S. side of the ample Place St. Sulpice is the great Catholic
Seminary,[191] and the whole neighbourhood has an essentially
ecclesiastical character. Shops and emporiums displaying _objets de
piete_; all kinds of church furniture and art (most of it bad art)
abound. We continue our southward way by the Rue Ferou, opposite the
end of which is the Musee du Luxembourg containing a collection of
such contemporary sculpture and paintings as has been deemed worthy
of acquisition by the State. The rooms are crowded with statuary and
pictures which evince much talent and technical skill, but the visitor
will be impressed by few works of great distinction. The English
traveller, perchance, will leave with kindlier feelings towards those
responsible for the Chantrey pictures, though envious of a collection
whose catholicity embraces works by two great modern masters,
Londoners by option--Legros and Whistler. But any impression that may
be left on the traveller's mind by the inspection of the examples of
contemporary French art exhibited in this museum should be
supplemented and corrected by an examination of decorative works of
greater range in the chief public edifices, such as the Hotel de
Ville, the Sorbonne, the Pantheon and the Ecole de Medecine. We enter
the Luxembourg Gardens by the gate R. of the museum, turn L., pass the
facade of the palace and opposite its E. wing discover the charming
old Medici Fountain. After strolling about the delightful gardens,
unhappily by the erection of the Observatory in 1672 reduced by more
than one-third of their former extent, we leave by the gate N. of the
Medici Fountain which gives on the Rue Vaugirard opposite the Odeon
Theatre, formerly the _Theatre de la Nation_, where the _Comedie
Francaise_ performed for a few years after 1781. The Paris booksellers
still have their stalls inside the colonnade even as they used to do
in the great Salle of the Palais de Justice.
[Footnote 191: Now suppressed and the building taken over by the State
(1911).]
[Illustration: COUR DU DRAGON.]
Descending (R. of the Odeon) the Rues Corneille, Casimir Delavigne and
Antoine Dubois, we strike the Rue de l'Ecole de Medecine where (No. 15
to R.) will be seen the Refectory, all that remains of the great
Franciscan monastery, and now used as a pathological museum (Musee
Dupuytren), for medical students. In this hall was laid the body of
Marat after his assassination by Charlotte Corday, and the famous club
of the Cordeliers, where the gentler rhetoric of Camille Desmoulins
vied with the thunderous declamation of Danton to stir republican
fervour, met in the Hall of Theology. We pass to No. 5, where are some
remains of the old School of Surgery or Guild of SS. Cosmas and
Damian, founded by St. Louis; adjacent stood the church of St. Cosmas,
famous for the fiery zeal of its cure during the times of the League.
The surgeons of the Guild being compelled by their charter to give
professional aid to the poor every Monday, the churchwardens obtained
a papal Bull authorising them to erect in their church a suitable
consulting-room for the use of the patients. In 1694 the surgeons
built an anatomical theatre which, enlarged in 1710, is now used as an
art school. We continue our pilgrimage and, crossing the Boulevard St.
Michel to the Rue des Ecoles, descend on our L. the Rue de la Sorbonne
and find the entrance to the beautiful late Gothic palace built for
the abbots of Cluny in 1490.
[Illustration: TOWER AND COURTYARD OF HOTEL CLUNY.]
The delightful old mansion, (p. 159) now the Musee de Cluny, is
crowded with a selection of mediaeval and renaissance objects
unparalleled in Europe for variety and excellence and beauty. The
rooms themselves, with their fine carved chimney-pieces, where on
winter days wood-fires, fragrant and genial, burn, are not the least
charming part of the museum. Many of the exhibits (about 12,000) are
uncatalogued, and the old catalogue, long out of date, may well be
classed among the antiquities. The traveller will doubtless return
again and again to this rich and fascinating museum. The present
installation is provisional, and we do but indicate the chief classes
of objects exhibited, most of which are clearly labelled. L. of
vestibule, Rooms I. and II. contain a miscellaneous collection of
wood carving, statuary, ivories, etc. Room III. has some important
examples of carved and painted altar-pieces: 709 is late
fifteenth-century work; 712, Flemish of the sixteenth century; 710, a
German domestic altar-piece, near which stands a fine Flemish
altar-piece (no number), carved with scenes from the Passion. On a
screen in the centre are some important paintings, carvings and other
objects of ecclesiastical art from the Rothschild Collection. Room IV.
shows some beautiful renaissance furniture, cabinets, medals, etc. To
the R. is the smaller Room V. The chief exhibits here are an
eighteenth-century Neapolitan _Creche_, with more than fifty doll-like
figures; a rich tabernacle of plateresque Spanish work, and some
furniture of interest. We return and descend to Room VI. (on the R), a
large hall, where many important mediaeval sculptures will be seen. At
the four corners are thirteenth-century statues from the Ste.
Chapelle. We may also mention: 429 (under a glass case), some lovely
fourteenth-century statuettes, mourners from the tomb of Philip the
Bold, by the Burgundian artist, Claus Sluter; a painted statue of the
Baptist, Sienese work; statuette in wood of the Virgin, French art of
the fourteenth century; 725, statuette in wood of St. Louis from the
Ste. Chapelle. Other noteworthy examples of mediaeval plastic art by
French, Italian and Netherland craftsmen will be found in this room,
and around the walls are specimens of tapestries, carvings, paintings
and mosaics, among the last being some from St. Denis and one, 4763,
by David Ghirlandaio from St. Merri. We cross a passage to the
parallel Hall VII., where hang three grand pieces of early sixteenth
century Flemish tapestry, illustrating the story of David and
Bathsheba. Among the statuary are: 251, Virgin and Child, French work
of early sixteenth century; 448, The Three Fates, attributed to
Germain Pilon, and said to be portraits of Diana of Poitiers and her
daughters. 449, The Forsaken Ariadne; 456, Sleep; 450, Venus and
Cupid; 479, a small and beautiful entombment, are French work of the
sixteenth century. Hall VIII. Here are exhibited the sumptuously
decorated robes of the Order of the Holy Ghost (p. 187); other
examples of fine tapestry; a Venetian Galley Lamp; and some statuary
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
We return to the passage and ascend the stairs to the first floor.
Here are three galleries devoted to Faiences and other specimens of
the potter's art of French, Italian, Flemish, German, Spanish, Persian
and Moorish provenance. All are of admirable craftsmanship, the
Italian (including some from Faenza itself, the home of Faience ware)
being of especial beauty and excellence. Among the Della Robbia ware
is an exquisite Child-Baptist by Andrea. We now ascend three steps to
the room which contains, among other objects, a matchless collection
of Limoges enamels; some Venetian glass; and the marvellous
fifteenth-century tapestries from Boussac, probably the finest of that
fine period which have survived to us. The upper portion illustrates
the Life and Martyrdom of St. Stephen; the lower, the story of the
Lady and the Unicorn, or the Triumph of Chastity.
We descend to the Gallery of Hispano-Moorish and Persian pottery, and
cross to a suite of small rooms where specimens of Jewish sanctuary
art, old musical instruments, wedding cassoni and Flemish cabinets are
displayed. We then turn R. to the Hall of Francis I., with a stately
bed of the period; carved cabinets and cupboards, and proceed direct
to the room devoted to the ivories. These are of extraordinary variety
and beauty, and range from the sixth century downwards. The next room
is crowded with an equally varied collection of bronze and iron work,
among which we note a fifteenth-century statuette in bronze of Joan of
Arc. The examples of the locksmith's art shown are of great beauty and
excellence. The elaboration of French keys has a peculiar origin.
Henry III., as a mark of royal favour, permitted his minions to
possess a key of his private apartment: as a piece of swagger the
royal favourite was wont to wear the key ostentatiously on his breast,
whereby French smiths were spurred in emulation to produce keys of
exquisite craftsmanship and design. Another kind of interest attaches
to the key (No. 5962 in the case on the L. as we enter) which was made
by Louis XVI. The following room contains specimens of the goldsmith's
art. 5104 is a curious sixteenth-century model of a ship in gilded
bronze, with figures of Charles V. and his court on the deck: it has
an ingenious mechanism for discharging toy cannon. 5299, is a set of
chessmen in rock crystal; 4988, the face of an altar, rich gold
repousse work, was given by the Emperor, Henry II., to Bale Cathedral.
The glass case in the centre holds nine golden Visigothic crowns found
near Toledo in 1860, the largest is that of King Reccesvinthus who
reigned in the latter half of the seventh century; 5044 is a
fourteenth-century Italian processional cross of great beauty. We
retrace our steps to the Hall of Francis I., turn R. and enter the
private chapel. Opposite the charming little apse are placed some
admirably preserved fourteenth-century reliefs in stone from the Abbey
of St. Denis. On leaving, we turn R. along the passage, hung with
armour and weapons, to the stairway, descend to Room VI., ground
floor, open a door at its W. end, and in the twinkling of an eye are
swept back nigh two thousand years along the stream of the ages, for
the frigidarium of the Baths of the Palace of the Caesars is before us,
a fabric of imperial architecture, spoiled of its decorations but yet
massive and strong, as of elemental strength, defiant of time, the
imperishable mark of Rome. We descend and find in the centre the altar
(p. 17), bearing the inscription of the _Nautae_. A statue of the
Emperor Julian; some thirteenth and fourteenth-century statues are
also exhibited. We may enter and rest in the garden where a
twelfth-century cloister portal from the Benedictine Abbey of
Argenteuil, a fourteenth-century portal from the Abbey of St. Denis,
and other fragments of architecture are placed.
[Illustration: ARCHES IN THE COURTYARD OF THE HOTEL CLUNY.]
We return to the Rue des Ecoles which we cross to the imposing new
University buildings. The vestibule, grand staircase and amphitheatre
are of noble and stately proportions and adorned with mural paintings,
among which Puvis de Chavannes' great composition, The Sacred Grove,
in the amphitheatre, is of chief interest.[192] We continue along the
Rue de la Sorbonne and soon reach the old chapel, all that remains of
Richelieu's Sorbonne, containing his tomb, a masterpiece of monumental
art of the late seventeenth century, designed by Lebrun and executed
by Girardon. The church of St. Benoist and its cloister, where
Francois Villon assassinated his rival Chermoye, has also been swept
away. We proceed by the Rue Victor Cousin, a continuation of the Rue
de la Sorbonne, and debouch on the broad Rue Soufflot. Turning L., an
inscription on No. 14 marks the site of the Dominican monastery where
the great schoolmen, Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas taught.
Opposite (No. 9), at the corner of the Rue St. Jacques is the site,
marked by a plan, of the old Porte St. Jacques of the Philip Augustus
wall. We are now on the Mount of St. Genevieve, crowned by the
majestic and eminent Pantheon, whose pediment is adorned by David
d'Angers' sculptures, representing La Patrie, between Liberty and
History, distributing crowns to her children. Among the figures are
Malesherbes, Voltaire, Rousseau, Mirabeau, Carnot, Bonaparte, behind
whom stand an old grenadier and the famous drummer-boy of Arcole.
[Footnote 192: The College de France may be seen further along the Rue
des Ecoles at the corner of the Rue St. Jacques.]
The Pantheon has the most magnificent situation and, except the new
church of the Sacre Coeur, is the most dominant building in Paris.
Its dome is seen from nearly every eminence commanding the city, and
has a certain stately, almost noble, aspect. But the spacious
interior, despite the efforts of the artists of the third Republic, is
chilling to the spectator. Swept and garnished, it has no warmth of
historical or religious associations; it is devoid of human sentiment.
The choice of painters to decorate the interior was an amazing act of
official insensibility. The most discordant artistic temperaments were
let loose on the devoted building. Puvis de Chavannes, the only
painter among them who has grasped the limitation of mural art, has
painted with restraint and noble simplicity incidents in the story of
St. Genevieve. Jean Paul Laurens is responsible for a splendid but
incongruous representation of the death of St. Genevieve. A St. Denis,
scenes in the lives of Clovis, Charlemagne, St. Louis, and Jeanne
d'Arc, by Bonnat, Blanc, Levy, Cabanel and Lenepveu, are all excellent
work of the kind so familiar to visitors to the Salon at Paris, but
lacking in harmony and in inspiration. The angel appearing to Jeanne
d'Arc seems to have been modelled from a _figurante_ at the opera. The
visitor who has perused the opening chapters of this book will have no
difficulty in following the subjects depicted on the walls. A more
ambitious scheme of decoration was abruptly closed by the Coup d'Etat
of Napoleon III.: Chenavard, who had been commissioned, in 1848, to
decorate the interior by a series of forty cartoons, illustrating the
"History of Man from his first sorrows to the French Revolution,"
found his gigantic project made abortive by the Prince President's
treachery.
To the L. of the Pantheon, the library of St. Genevieve stands on the
site of the College Montaigu and behind, in the Rue Clotilde, will be
seen the steep-pitched roof of the old dormitory and refectory of the
monastery of St. Genevieve: to our L. stands the picturesque church of
St. Etienne du Mont (p. 85), whose interior is architecturally of much
interest. The triforium, supported by round pillars and arches, in its
turn supports a _tournee_, with another row of arches and pillars; some
fine sixteenth-century coloured glass still remains. Biard's florid
choir screen (p. 344) or _jube_ will at once attract the visitor, and
the ever-present worshippers around the rich shrine R. of the choir will
tell him that there such relics of the holy patroness of Paris as
survived the Revolution are preserved. Two inscriptions near by recall
the historical associations of the site. Leaving by the door this side
of the choir, we issue into the Rue Clovis: opposite we sight the
so-called Tower of Clovis, now enclosed in the buildings of the Lycee
Henri IV., and once the tower of the fine old abbey church of St.
Genevieve. A closer examination from the courtyard proves it to be
partly Romanesque, partly Gothic. We descend the Rue Clovis and at No. 7
find one of the best-preserved remains of the Philip Augustus wall.
Proceeding to the end of the Rue Clovis, we turn R., ascend the Rue
Cardinal Lemoine, and cross to the Rue Rollin, which we descend to its
intersection with the Rue Monge: in the Rue de Navarre opposite will be
found the ruins of the old Roman Arena (p. 13). To return, we descend
the Rue Monge, which terminates at the Place Maubert, where we find
ourselves on familiar ground; or we may re-ascend the Rue Rollin,
retracing our steps to the Rue Cardinal Lemoine, cross L. to the Place
Contrescarpe and on our L. find the interesting Rue Mouffetard with
curious old houses: 99, the site of the Palace of the Patriarchs of
Alexandria and Jerusalem, is now the Marche des Patriarchs. The street
terminates at the church of St. Medard, whose notorious cemetery (p.
245) is now a Square. We retrace our steps, noting L. the old fountain
at the corner of the Rue Pot de Fer, continue to the end of the Rue
Mouffetard, and descend by the Rue Descartes, where at No. 50 is an
inscription marking the site of the Porte St. Marcel called Porte
Bordet. We pass the Ecole Polytechnique, on the site of the old College
of Navarre, and continue down the Rue de la Montagne Ste. Genevieve to
the Place Maubert.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF ST. ETIENNE DU MONT.]
SECTION IV
_The Louvre[193]--Sculpture: Ground Floor._
[Footnote 193: The Louvre is open from 9-5 in summer, from 10-4 in
winter. On Sundays it is open from 10-4. It is closed on Mondays and
holidays and on Thursdays till 1 o'clock.]
No other edifice in Europe contains so vast a treasure of things
beautiful and rare as the great royal palace of the Louvre, whose
growth we have traced in our story. From periods so remote that works
of art sometimes termed ancient are in comparison but of yesterday to
the productions of the generation of artists who have just passed
away, we may study the varying phases of the manifestation through the
ages of the artistic sense in man. From Egypt, Chaldea and Assyria,
from Persia, Phoenicia and Greece, rich and marvellous collections
afford a unique opportunity for the study of comparative aesthetics.
We may safely assume, however, that the traveller will be chiefly
interested in the manifold examples of the plastic and pictorial arts,
here exhibited, from Greece downwards. In the limited space at our
disposal we can do no more than indicate the principal and choicest
objects in the various rooms, praying those whose leisure and interest
impel them to more thorough examination of any one department, to
possess themselves of the admirable and exhaustive special catalogues
issued by the Directors of the Museum.
The nucleus of the gallery of sculpture and painting was formed by
Francis I. and the Renaissance princes at the palace of Fontainebleau,
where the canvases at the beginning of the seventeenth century had
reached nearly 200. Colbert, during the reign of Louis XIV. by the
purchase of the Mazarin and other Collections, added 647 paintings and
nearly 6000 drawings in ten years. In 1681 the Cabinet du Roi, for so
the collection of royal pictures was called, was transferred to the
Louvre. They soon, however, followed their owner to Versailles, but
some hundred were subsequently returned to Paris, where they might be
inspected at the Luxembourg Palace by the public on Wednesdays and
Saturdays. In 1709 Bailly, the keeper of the king's cabinet, took an
inventory of the paintings and they were found to number 2376. In 1757
all were again returned to Versailles, and it was not until 1793, when
the National Convention, on Barrere's motion, took the matter in hand,
that they were restored to the Parisians and, together with the works
of art removed from the suppressed churches and monasteries preserved
by Lenoir, formed the famous gallery of the Louvre, which was formally
opened to the public on the first anniversary of the memorable 10th of
August. The arrival of the artistic spoils from Italy was
stage-managed by Napoleon with consummate skill and imposing
spectacular effect. Amid the applauding multitudes of Parisians a long
procession of triumphal cars slowly wended its way, loaded with famous
pictures, securely packed, but each bearing its title in monumental
inscription. THE TRANSFIGURATION, by RAPHAEL: THE CHRIST, by TITIAN,
etc. Then followed the heavy rumbling of massive cars groaning under
the weight of sculptures, these too inscribed: THE APOLLO BELVEDERE:
THE LAOCOON, etc. Other chariots loaded with trunks containing famous
books, precious manuscripts, captured flags, trophies of arms, gave
the scene all the pomp and circumstance of a veritable Roman triumph.
These spoils, which almost choked the Louvre during Napoleon's reign,
were reduced by the return, in 1815, of 5233 works of art to their
original owners under British supervision, and during the removal of
the statues and pictures, ostentatiously effected to the bitter
humiliation of the Parisians, British sentinels were stationed along
the galleries and British soldiers stood under arms in the quadrangle
and the Place du Carrousel to protect the workmen.
Before beginning our artistic pilgrimage let us pay grateful tribute
to the memory of Alexandre Lenoir, to whose tact and love for the arts
we owe the preservation of so many priceless objects here, at St.
Denis, and other museums of Paris. Appointed by the National Assembly,
Director of a _Commission pour les Monuments_ formed to collect all
objects of art worthy of preservation during the search for lead
coffins to be cast into bullets, he induced the authorities to grant
him the use of the monastery of the Petits Augustins (now part of the
Ecole des Beaux Arts) for their storage. There the admirable official
succeeded in rescuing some 500 historical and royal monuments from
Paris and St. Denis and some 2,600 pictures from the confiscated
monasteries and ecclesiastical establishments, although existing
receipts for about 600 pictures reclaimed from Lenoir by the
Revolutionary Tribunal and burned, prove that he was only partially
successful. In 1793 the National Convention assigned the Petits
Augustins to Lenoir as a Museum of French Monuments, and the
collection was pieced together, somewhat unskilfully it is true, and
arranged in six rooms: many of the objects were in due time destined
to find their way back to St. Denis, others to enrich the Louvre.
(_a_) ANCIENT SCULPTURE.
Entering the quadrangle of the Louvre and making our way to the S.W.
angle we shall see, traced on the granite paving by a line of smaller
stones, the outline of the E. and N. walls and towers of the old
fortress of Philip Augustus, the position of the E. gateway, the Porte
de Bourbon, being marked by its two flanking towers. Enclosed within
these lines, the site of the massive old keep is shown by two circular
strings of stones on the asphalt. Lescot's and Goujon's beautiful
facade (p. 173) is now before us. Although the whole of the decorative
sculpture was designed by Goujon, only three groups of figures can be
safely attributed to his hand; those that adorn the three _oeil de
boeuf_ windows of the ground floor: Fame and Victory; Peace, and War
disarmed; History and Glory. Concerning the two first-named
figures--Fame blowing a trumpet, and a winged Victory offering a crown
of laurel--on either side of the window in the S.W. angle, it is
related that one day as King Henry II. sat at table with his
architect, he asked him what he had in mind when he made the design.
"Sire," answered Lescot, "by the first figure I meant Ronsard, and by
the trumpet, the power of his verse, which carried his name to the
four quarters of the earth." Ronsard, who was present, returned the
compliment by a flattering poetic epistle which he sent to Lescot.
Goujon's figures, destined for the pediment of the attic, were placed
by Napoleon I. most awkwardly over the entrances to the Egyptian and
Assyrian collections in the E. wing, and utterly spoiled of their
effect. The monograms on either side of the windows: two D's
interlaced with the bar of an H, or two C's with the whole of the
letter H, are variously interpreted as the initials of Diana of
Poitiers and Henry II. or Catherine de' Medici and Henry II.
We enter the palace by the Pavilion de l'Horloge (the clock pavilion)
and, turning L. find on our L. a door which opens to the Salle des
Caryatides (p. 173). Here, in the old Salle Basse, memories crowd upon
us--the dangling bodies of the four terrorist chiefs of the Sections
hanged by the Duke of Mayenne from the beams of the old ceiling; the
Red Nuptials of fair Queen Margot and Henri Quatre; the chivalrous and
handsome, but ill-fated young hero of Lepanto, Don John of Austria, on
his way, in 1576, to the Netherlands, his brain seething with romantic
dreams of rescuing Mary Queen of Scots and seating her beside himself
on the throne of England, taking part in a royal ball, disguised as a
Moor, and leaving, smitten by the charms of Queen Margot; the lying in
state of the murdered Henri; the dying Mazarin wheeled in his chair to
witness the royal performances by Moliere. Beneath our feet in the
_caves_ are part of the foundations of the old feudal chateau, and
pillars and fragments of old sculpture discovered in 1882-1884.
We note Goujon's Caryatides (p. 174), traverse the hall, filled with
Roman sculpture and, turning R. along the Corridor de Pan, enter the
Salle Grecque, which contains a small but precious collection of Greek
sculptures. In the centre are three archaic works: a draped Juno, and
in glass cases, a Head of Apollo, and a Head of a Man, the latter
still bearing traces of the original colouring. Also in cases are:
Head of a Lapith from the Parthenon; and Head of a woman attributed to
the sculptor Calamis, acquired in 1908 from the Humphrey Ward
collection. Three bas-reliefs from a temple of Apollo at Thasos show a
marked advance in artistic expression, which reaches its ultimate
perfection in the lovely fragment of the Parthenon frieze, and in a
mutilated metope from the same temple. An interesting comparison is
afforded by the metopes (The Labours of Hercules) from the Temple of
Jupiter at Olympia, earlier and transitional in style but admirable in
craftsmanship. On the walls and in the embrasures of the S. windows
are a number of stele, or sepulchral reliefs,[194] executed by
ordinary funeral masons, which will demonstrate the remarkable general
excellence of Attic sculpture in the finest period: 766, to Philis,
daughter of Cleomedes, is especially noteworthy. Even the inferior
reliefs are characterised by an atmosphere of dignified and restrained
melancholy.
[Footnote 194: The architectural framework is believed to represent
the portal of Hades.]
We return to the Corridor de Pan and continue past the Salle des
Caryatides through halls filled with Graeco-Roman work of secondary
importance, to the sanctuary of the serenely beautiful Venus of Melos,
the best-known and most admired of Greek statues in Europe. Much has
been written by eminent critics as to the attitude of the complete
statue. Three conflicting theories may be briefly summarised: (1) That
the left hand held an apple, the right supporting the drapery; (2)
that the figure was a Victory holding a shield and a winged figure on
an orb; (3) the latest conjecture, by Solomon Reinach, that the figure
is the sea-goddess Amphitrite, who held a trident in the extended left
arm. It was to this exquisite creation[195] of idealised womanhood
that the poet Heine dragged himself in May 1848 to bid adieu to the
lovely idols of his youth, before he lay, never again to rise, on his
mattress-grave in the Rue d'Amsterdam. "As I entered the hall," he
writes, "where the most blessed goddess of beauty, our dear lady of
Melos, stands on her pedestal, I well-nigh broke down, and fell at her
feet sobbing piteously, so that even a heart of stone must be
softened. And the goddess gazed at me compassionately, yet withal so
comfortless, as who should say: 'Seest thou not that I have no arms
and cannot help thee?'"
[Footnote 195: We are credibly informed that this priceless statue was
first offered to the English Government for 4,000 francs and refused!
The French Government bought it for 6,000 francs.]
To the R. of the Salle de la Venus de Milo is the Salle Melpomene,
with a fine colossal figure of the Tragic Muse, and, No. 419[196]
(163), an excellent Head of a Woman. We enter the Salle de la Pallas
de Velletri, and ranged along its centre find: 436, a fine bust of
Alexander the Great; the Venus of Arles, 439, said to be a copy of an
early work by Praxiteles; a magnificent Head of Homer, 440; and 441,
Apollo, the Lizard-slayer, after a bronze by Praxiteles. The colossal
Pallas, in a recess to the R., was found at Velletri in 1797: it is
another Roman reproduction of a Greek bronze. Near the entrance to the
next room stands a pleasing Venus, 525, and in the centre the famous
"Borghese Gladiator" or _Heros Combattant_, actually, a warrior
attacking a mounted Amazon. An inscription states that it is the work
of Agasias of Ephesus. To the R. is a fine Marsyas, doomed to be
flayed alive by order of Apollo; to L. 562, the Borghese Centaur, and
near the exit, 529, the charming Diana of Gabii, a Greek girl
fastening her mantle. We pass to the Salle du Tibre, in the centre of
which stands the famous Diana and the Stag, acquired for Francis I.,
much admired and over-rated by the sculptors of the renaissance: at
the end is a colossal group, symbolising the Tiber and Rome. We turn
R. and again enter the Corridor de Pan, pass through the Salle Grecque
and reach the Rotonde with the Borghese Mars in its centre. We turn
L., continue direct through Rooms XIV. to XVIII. the old Petite
Galerie[197] and the apartments of the queen mothers of France still
retaining their ceiling decorations by Romanelli. We then turn R. to
the spacious Salle d'Auguste, (XIX), at the end of which, in a recess,
stands a majestic draped statue of Augustus. In the centre are a bust,
1204, said to be the head of Antiochus III., king of Syria 223-187
B.C., and 1207 the stately Roman Orator as Mercury, which an
inscription on the tortoise states to be the work of Cleomanes, an
Athenian. In this and the subsequent halls are placed many imperial
busts[198] of much historical and some artistic interest.
[Footnote 196: Unfortunately the numeration of the sculpture in the
Louvre is in a most chaotic state. Some of the objects are unnumbered;
others retain their old numbers, yet others have both old and new
numbers.]
[Footnote 197: There was originally a fosse between it and the garden
which Marie de' Medici bridged by a wooden structure, known as the
Pont d'Amour, to facilitate interviews with her favourite Concini.]
[Footnote 198: It may not be inopportune to summarise here,
Bienkowski's criterion for dating Roman busts, which is as follows:
Augustan and Julio-Claudian epoch, head only rendered; Flavian,
shoulders rendered but juncture of arms not indicated; the sculptors
of Trajan's time included the juncture of the arms, and of Hadrian's
and the Antonines, part of the upper arm. Later, the bust developed to
a half-length figure. It is necessary of course to exclude decapitated
busts subsequently restored or fitted with heads of another epoch.]
We return to Room XVIII. where we find, 1205, the colossal bust of
Antinous, the beautiful young favourite of Hadrian, who in a fit of
melancholy flung himself into the Nile and (deified) became the most
popular of the gods in the Pantheon of the later Empire: the eyes were
originally formed of jewels. This is the bust referred to by J.A.
Symonds, in his _Sketches and Studies in S. Europe_, as by far the
finest of the simple busts of the imperial favourite. In Room XV. is a
statue, 1121, of the Emperor Julian, found at Paris, some curious
Mithraic reliefs, and, in Room XIV. are interesting Roman altars and
sacrificial reliefs. We again enter the Rotonde, turn L. and proceed
across the Vestibule Daru to the Escalier Daru, ascending which, we
are confronted by the majestic Victory of Samothrace, one of the
noblest examples of Greek art, wrought immediately before it had spent
its creative force and began to direct a subtle and technical mastery
to serve private luxury and pomp. We descend and return to the
Quadrangle.
(_b_) MEDIAEVAL AND RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE.
We cross the quadrangle to the S.E. and enter[199] the Musee des
Sculptures du Moyen Age et de la Renaissance, where the sense of
beauty inherent in the Gallic race is seen expressed in a medium which
has always appealed to its peculiar objective and lucid temperament.
We proceed to Room I., which contains some typical early Madonnas and
other figures in wood and stone; a fifteenth-century statuette in
marble (No. 211), in the embrasure of the second window, is worthy of
special attention. The fine sepulchral monument of Phil. Bot,
Seneschal of Burgundy, an effigy on a grave-stone borne by eight
mourners, illustrates a favourite design of the Burgundian sculptors.
The recumbent figure, 224, of Philippe VI. of France (1350),
attributed to Andrieu Beaunepveu, the art-loving Charles V's. _cher
ymagier_, is one of the earliest attempts at portraiture. Centre of
hall, 887 and 888, recumbent statues of Charles IV. and Jeanne
d'Evreux, fourteenth-century, by Jean de Liege. The tomb of Philippe
de Morvillier, 420, in the recess of a window, is an example of early
fifteenth-century acrolithic monumental sculpture; the head and hands
of the figure being of marble according to a common custom dating from
Greek times. On either side of the entrance are fine busts of Charles
VIII. and Marie of Anjou.
[Footnote 199: Now (1911) entered from the E. portal (_Antiquites
Egyptiennes_).]
Rooms II., IX. and X. should next be visited. In IX. stands the oldest
fragment of mediaeval sculpture in the Louvre, a capital from the old
abbey of St. Genevieve, whereon an eleventh-century artist has carved
a quaint relief of Daniel in the Lions' Den. The Virgin and Child in
the same room, 37, is late twelfth-century; the painted statue of
Childebert, 48, from the abbey of St. Germain, is an example of the
more mature art of the thirteenth century, as are also in Room II.,
78, a scene in the Inferno from Notre Dame, and two lovely angels from
the tomb of St. Louis' brother, in the embrasures of the window.
The fourteenth-century Madonnas in these mediaeval rooms possess a
peculiar, intimate character and mark the change of feeling which came
over French artists of the time. The impersonal, unemotional and regal
bearing of the thirteenth-century figures give way to a more
naturalistic treatment. The Virgin's impassive features soften;
they become more human; she turns to her child with a maternal smile
(which later becomes conventionalised into a simper), or permits a
caress. In Room X. are: 889, 890, two fifteenth-century statues,
admirable and living portraitures of Charles V. and his queen, from
the church of the Celestins, whose preservation is due to the
excellent Lenoir--statues famous in their day, and mentioned by the
contemporary Christine de Pisan as _moult proprement faits_; 892, a
fifteenth-century statue in wood of St. John; 943, Eve, a fine example
of the German school of the sixteenth century, painted and gilded;
other works are temporarily placed in this room. We return to Room
III., noting in passing (Room IX.) 875, a small thirteenth-century
relief of St. Matthew writing his Gospel at the dictation of an angel.
[Illustration: DIANA AND THE STAG.
_Jean Goujon._]
The stubborn individuality of French sculptors who long resisted the
encroaching advance of the Italian renaissance is well seen in Room
III. by the works of Michel Colombe (? 1430-1570), after whom this
hall is named. The exquisite relief on the L. wall, St. George and the
Dragon, displays an art touched indeed by the new Italian life, but
impressed with an intimate charm and spirit which are eminently
French. The Virgin and Child, 143, and the tombs of Roberte Legendre
and her husband have also been ascribed to this truly great master.
The fine effigies of Philippe de Comines the annalist, and his wife,
126, are wrought in the traditional French manner, the decorations on
the tomb being obviously by another and Italianised artist; the shells
on the shields denote that the knight had made the pilgrimage to St.
James of Compostella in Galicia. Beneath is the tomb of their
daughter, Jeanne. The sixteenth-century Virgin of Ecouen, 144, is
typically French in treatment; the large relief on the L. wall from
the old church of St. Jacques de la Boucherie, 199, is an excellent
example of transitional Franco-Italian sculpture; and the
half-reclining bronze effigy of Prince Carpi from the great Franciscan
church (the Cordeliers) of Paris, is wholly Italian in style. The
gruesome figure, _La Mort_, in the embrasure of a window, from the old
cemetery of Les Innocents, and a fine bust, 173, of John of Alesso,
will also be noted. We pass to Room IV., dominated by the most eminent
sculptor of the French renaissance, Jean Goujon (? 1520-1567), whose
famous Diana and the Stag, from a fountain at Diana of Poitiers'
chateau of Anet, marks the increasing influence of the Italians, and
especially of Cellini, who were attracted to Fontainebleau by the
patronage of Francis I. A more intimate example, however, of Goujon's
genius will be seen in the beautiful bas-reliefs on the L. wall,
Tritons and Nereids, from the Fontaine des Innocents, executed
1548-49, and those (R. wall) from the old choir screen of St. Germain
l'Auxerrois in 1544, happily rescued from clerical vandals.[200] For
sheer loveliness of form and poetry of outline, those reliefs are
unsurpassed by any contemporary artist. His younger contemporary,
Germain Pilon (1535-1590), is well represented in this room. The Three
Graces (_trois graces decentes_), which Catherine de' Medici
commissioned him to execute, to sustain an urn containing the heart of
her royal husband at the Celestins, is an early work; the admirable
kneeling bronze effigy, 257, of Rene of Birague, a maturer production.
The four cardinal virtues in oak were executed for the abbey church
of St. Genevieve: they were originally covered with stucco and held on
high the saint's reliquary. The too lachrymose Madonna in terra-cotta,
256, already ushers in the decadence. Portrait busts of Henry II.,
227, the vicious Henry III., 253, and of the feeble Charles IX., 252,
are also to be noted. Pilon's pupil, Bart. Prieur (d. 1611), is
responsible for the monument to the Constable Anne of Montmorency and
Madeleine of Savoy, in the recess of a window, and the three bronze
statues placed by the opposite wall. With Pierre Biard the elder, who
about 1600 executed the elaborate choir-screen of St. Etienne du Mont,
the French renaissance sinks to a not inglorious end. His Fame (224,
_bis_), in Room III. and a copy of Giov. da Bologna's Mercury, made
for the Duke of Epernon's tomb, hints at the impending pomposity and
extravagance of the later French pseudo-classic school. Room V.
affords an instructive comparison with some productions of the Italian
renaissance. 332, Florentine school, is a charming bust of Beatrice
d'Este, the girl bride of Lodovico il Moro, autocrat of Milan. The
fine bas-relief, 386, Julius Caesar, was formerly ascribed to
Donatello; 389, Virgin and Child, is also a school work; 403, the
Child-Baptist, is a good example of Mino da Fiesole's sweet and tender
style, as are some Madonna bas-reliefs in the embrasure of the first
window. Here, too, and in the next window, are some well-wrought early
renaissance reliefs in bronze (scenes in the life of a physician), by
a Paduan artist, from the tomb of a celebrated professor of Verona,
Marc'antonio della Torre. In the lunette of the R. wall is embedded
Cellini's Nymph of Fontainebleau, and on either side of the noble
portal from the Palazzo Stanza at Cremona, which forms the entrance to
Room VI., stand the divine Michael Angelo's so-called Two Slaves,
actually fettered Virtues intended for the unfortunate tomb of Pope
Julius II. These priceless statues, given to Francis I. by Robert
Strozzi, subsequently found their way to Richelieu's garden, and
during the later years of the monarchy lay neglected in a stable in
the Faubourg du Roule: when put up to auction in 1793 the vigilant and
admirable Lenoir seized them for his Musee National at the Augustins.
Among other objects we note, 396, a fine bust of Filippo Strozzi by
Benedetto da Maiano. We enter Room VI. The excellent bust of the
Baptist, 383, by Desiderio da Settignano is officially assigned to
Donatello, and the coloured Virgin and Child in wood to the Sienese
Jacopo della Quercia. Room VII. contains many beautiful specimens of
della Robbia ware, and among the statues and busts we note Louis XII.
by Lorenzo da Mugiano, of which the head has been restored.
Provisionally placed in this room is a recently acquired relief in
marble of the Madonna by Agostino di Duccio.
[Footnote 200: The canons decided that these were unworthy of the
enlightened taste of the eighteenth century and had them cleared away.
The relief of the Evangelists was discovered in 1850 embedded in the
wall of a house in the Rue St. Hyacinthe.]
[Illustration: ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON. _Michel Colombe._]
(_c_) MODERN SCULPTURE.