THE ILE DE LA CITE
Paris Old and New--The Heart of France--Saint Louis--Old
Palaces--Henri IV.'s Statue--Ironical Changes--The Seine and
the Thames--The Quais and their Old Books--Diderot and the
Lady--Police and Red Tape--The Conciergerie--Marie
Antoinette--Paris and its Clocks--Meryon's Etchings--French
Advocates--A Hall of Babel--Sainte Chapelle--French
Newspapers Serious and Comic--The Only Joke--The English and
the French.
Where to begin? That is a problem in the writing of every book, but
peculiarly so with Paris; because, however one may try to be
chronological, the city is such a blend of old and new that that
design is frustrated at every turn. Nearly every building of
importance stands on the site of some other which instantly jerks us
back hundreds of years, while if we deal first with the original
structure, such as the remains of the Roman Thermes at the Cluny,
built about 300, straightway the Cluny itself intrudes, and we leap
from the third century to the nineteenth; or if we trace the line of
the wall of Philip Augustus we come swiftly to so modern an
institution as the Mont-de-Piete; or if we climb to such a recent
thoroughfare as the Boulevard de Clichy, with its palpitatingly novel
cabarets and allurements, we must in order to do so ascend a mountain
which takes its name from the martyrdom of St. Denis and his
companions in the third century. It is therefore well, since Paris is
such a tangle of past and present, to disregard order altogether and
to let these pages reflect her character. Expect then, dear reader, to
be twitched about the ages without mercy.
Let us begin in earnest by leaving the mainland and adventuring upon
an island. For the heart of Paris is enisled: Notre Dame, Sainte
Chapelle, the Palais de Justice, the Hotel Dieu, the Prefecture de
Police, the Morgue--all are entirely surrounded by water. The history
of the Cite is the history of Paris, almost the history of France.
Paris, the home of the Parisii, consisted of nothing but this island
when Julius Caesar arrived there with his conquering host. The Romans
built their palace here, and here Julian the Apostate loved to
sojourn. It was in Julian's reign that the name was changed from
Lutetia (which it is still called by picturesque writers) to Parisea
Civitas, from which Paris is an easy derivative. The Cite remained the
home of government when the Merovingians under Clovis expelled the
Romans, and again under the Carlovingians. The second Royal Palace was
begun by the first of the Capets, Hugh, in the tenth century, and it
was completed by Robert the Pious in the eleventh. Louis VII. decreed
Notre Dame; but it was Saint Louis, reigning from 1226 to 1270, who
was the father of the Cite as we now know it. He it was who built
Sainte Chapelle, and it was he who surrendered part of the Palace to
the Law.
While it was the home of the Court and the Church the island naturally
had little enough room for ordinary residents, who therefore had to
live, whether aristocrats or tradespeople, on the mainland, either on
the north or south side of the river. The north side was for the most
part given to merchants, the south to scholars, for Saint Louis was
the builder not only of Sainte Chapelle but also of the Sorbonne. Very
few of the smaller buildings of that time now remain: the oldest Paris
that one now wanders in so delightedly, whether on the north bank or
the south, whether near the Sorbonne or the Hotel de Sens, dates, with
a few fortunate exceptions, from the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries.
Nowhere may the growth of Paris be better observed and better
understood than on the highest point on this Island of the City--on
the summit of Notre Dame. Standing there you quickly comprehend the
Paris of the ages: from Caesar's Lutetia, occupying the island only and
surrounded by fields and wastes, to the Paris of this year of our
Lord, spreading over the neighbouring hills, such a hive of human
activity and energy as will hardly bear thinking of--a Paris which has
thrown off the yoke not only of the kings that once were all-powerful
but of the Church too.
By the twelfth century the kings of France had begun to live in
smaller palaces more to their personal taste, such as the Hotel
Barbette, the Hotel de Sens (much of which still stands, as a glass
factory, at the corner of the Rue de l'Hotel de Ville and the Rue de
Figuier, one of the oldest of the Paris mansions), the Hotel de
Bourgogne (in the Rue Etienne Marcel: you may still see its tower of
Jean Sans Peur), the Hotel de Nevers (what remains of which is at the
corner of the Rue Colbert and Rue Richelieu), and, of course, the
Louvre. Charles VII. (1422-1461) was the first king to settle at the
Louvre permanently.
To gain the Ile de la Cite we leave the mainland of Paris at the Quai
du Louvre, and make our crossing by the Pont Neuf. Neuf no longer, for
as a matter of historical fact it is now the oldest of all the Paris
bridges: that is, in its foundations, for the visible part of it has
been renovated quite recently. The first stone of it was laid by Henri
III. in 1578: it was not ready for many years, but in 1603 Henri IV.
(of Navarre) ventured across a plank of it on his way to the Louvre,
after several previous adventurers had broken their necks in the
attempt. "So much the less kings they," was his comment. He lived to
see the bridge finished.
Behind the statue of this monarch, whom the French still adore, is the
garden that finishes off the west end of the Ile very prettily,
sending its branches up above the parapet. Here we may stop; for we
are now on the Island itself, midway between the two halves of the
bridge, and the statue has such a curious history, so typical of the
French character, that I should like to tell it. The original bronze
figure, erected by Louis XIII. in 1614, was taken down in 1792, a
time of stress, and melted into a commodity that was then of vastly
greater importance than the effigies of kings--namely cannon. (As we
shall see in the course of this book, Paris left the hands of the
Revolutionaries a totally different city from the Paris of 1791.) Then
came peace again, and then came Napoleon, and in the collection at
the Archives is to be seen a letter written by the Emperor from
Schoenbrunn, on August 15th, 1809, stating that he wishes an obelisk
to be erected on the site of the Henri IV. statue--an obelisk of
Cherbourg granite, 180 pieds d'elevation, with the inscription
"l'Empereur Napoleon au Peuple Francais". That, however, was not done.
Time passed on, Napoleon fell, and Louis XVIII. returned from his
English home to the throne of France, and was not long in perpetrating
one of those symmetrical ironical jests which were then in vogue.
Taking from the Vendome column the bronze statue of Napoleon (who was
safely under the thumb of Sir Hudson Lowe at St. Helena, well out of
mischief), and to this adding a second bronze statue of the same
usurper intended for some other site, the monarch directed that they
should be melted into liquid from which a new statue of Henri IV.--the
very one at which we are at this moment gazing--should be cast. It was
done, and though to the Roentgen-rayed vision of the cynic it may
appear to be nothing more or less than a double Napoleon, it is to
the world at large Henri IV., the hero of Ivry.
I have seen comparisons between the Seine and the Thames; but they are
pointless. You cannot compare them: one is a London river, and the
other is a Paris river. The Seine is a river of light; the Thames is a
river of twilight. The Seine is gay; the Thames is sombre. When dusk
falls in Paris the Seine is just a river in the evening; when dusk
falls in London the Thames becomes a wonderful mystery, an enchanted
stream in a land of old romance. The Thames is, I think, vastly more
beautiful; but on the other hand, the Thames has no merry passenger
steamers and no storied quais. The Seine has all the advantage when we
come to the consideration of what can be done with a river's banks in
a great city. For the Seine has a mile of old book and curiosity
stalls, whereas the Thames has nothing.
And yet the coping of the Thames embankment is as suitable for such a
purpose as that of the Seine, and as many Londoners are fond of books.
How is it? Why should all the bookstalls and curiosity stalls of
London be in Whitechapel and Farringdon Street and the Cattle Market?
That is a mystery which I have never solved and never shall. Why are
the West Central and the West districts wholly debarred--save in
Charing Cross Road, and that I believe is suspect--from loitering at
such alluring street banquets? It is beyond understanding.
The history of the stall-holders of the quais has been told very
engagingly by M. Octave Uzanne, whom one might describe as the Austin
Dobson and the Augustine Birrell of France, in his work _Bouquinistes
et Bouquineurs_. They established themselves first on the Pont Neuf,
but in 1650 were evicted. (The Paris bridges, I might say here, become
at the present time the resort of every kind of pedlar directly
anything occurs to suspend their traffic.)
The parapets of the quais then took the place of those of the bridge,
and there the booksellers' cases have been ever since. But no longer
are they the gay resort that once they were. It was considered, says
M. Uzanne, writing of the eighteenth century, "quite the correct thing
for the promenaders to gossip round the bookstalls and discuss the wit
and fashionable writings of the day. At all hours of the day these
quarters were much frequented, above all by literary men, lawyers
clerks and foreigners. One historical fact, not generally known,
merits our attention, for it shows that not only the libraries and the
stall-keepers assisted in drawing men of letters to the vicinity of
the Hotel Mazarin, but there also existed a 'rendez-vous' for the sale
of English and French journals. It was, in fact, at the corner of the
Rue Dauphine and the Quai Conti that the first establishment known as
the Cafe Anglais was started. One read in big letters on the
signboard: Cafe Anglais--Becket, proprietaire. This was the meeting
place of the greater part of English writers visiting Paris who
wished to become acquainted with the literary men of the period, the
encyclopaedists and poets of the Court of Louis XV. This Cafe offered
to its habitues the best-known English papers of the day, the
_Westminster Gazette_, the _London Evening Post_, the _Daily
Advertiser_, and the various pamphlets published on the other side of
the Channel....
"You must know that the Quai Conti up to the year 1769 was only a
narrow passage leading down to a place for watering horses. Between
the Pont Neuf and the building known as the Chateau-Gaillard at the
opening of the Rue Guenegaud, were several small shops, and a small
fair continually going on.
"This Chateau-Gaillard, which was a dependency of the old Porte de
Nesle, had been granted by Francis I. to Benvenuto Cellini. The famous
Florentine goldsmith received visits from the Sovereign protector of
arts and here executed the work he had been ordered to do, under his
Majesty's very eyes....
"One calls to mind that Sterne, in his delightful _Sentimental
Journey_, was set down in 1767 at the Hotel de Modene, in the Rue
Jacob, opposite the Rue des Deux-Anges, and one has not forgotten his
love for the quais and the adventure which befell him while chatting
to a bookseller on the Quai Conti, of whom he wished to buy a copy of
Shakespeare so that he might read once more Polonius' advice to his
son before starting on his travels.
"Diderot, in his _Salon_ of 1761, relates his flirtation with the
pretty girl who served in one of these shops and afterwards became
the wife of Menze. 'She called herself Miss Babuti and kept a small
book shop on the Quai des Augustins, spruce and upright, white as a
lily and red as a rose. I would enter her shop, in my own brisk way:
"Mademoiselle, the 'Contes de la Fontaine' ... a 'Petronius' if you
please."--"Here you are, Sir. Do you want any other books?"--"Forgive
me, yes"--"What is it?"--"La 'Religieuse en Chemise.'"--"For shame,
Sir! Do you read such trash?"--"Trash, is it, Mademoiselle? I did not
know...."'"
[Illustration: THE NATIVITY
LUINI
(_Louvre_)]
M. Uzanne's pages are filled with such charming gossip and with
character-sketches of the most famous booksellers and book-hunters.
One pretty trait that would have pleased Mary Lamb (and perhaps did,
in 1822, when her brother took her to the "Boro' side of the Seine")
is mentioned by M. Uzanne: "The stall-keeper on the quais always has
an indulgent eye for the errand boy or the little bonne [slavey] who
stops in front of his stall and consults gratis 'La Clef des Songes'
or 'Le Secretaire des Dames'. Who would not commend him for this kind
toleration? In fact it is very rare to find the bookseller in such
cases not shutting his eyes--metaphorically--and refraining from
walking up to the reader, for fear of frightening her away. And then
the young girl moves off with a light step, repeating to herself the
style of letter or the explanation of a dream, rich in hope and
illusions for the rest of the day."
But the best description of the book-hunter of the quais is that
given to Dumas by Charles Nodier. "This animal," he said, "has two
legs and is featherless, wanders usually up and down the quais and the
boulevards, stopping at all the old bookstalls, turning over every
book on them; he is habitually clad in a coat that is too long for him
and trousers that are too short; he always wears on his feet shoes
that are down at the heel, a dirty hat on his head, and, under his
coat and over his trousers, a waistcoat fastened together with string.
One of the signs by which he can be recognised is that he never washes
his hands."
Henri IV.'s statue faces the Place Dauphine and the west facade of the
Palais de Justice. At No. 28 in the Place Dauphine Madame Roland was
born, little thinking she was destined one day to be imprisoned in the
neighbouring Conciergerie, which, to those who can face the
difficulties of obtaining a ticket of admission, is one of the most
interesting of the Island's many interesting buildings. But the
process is not easy, and there is only one day in the week on which
the prison is shown.
The tickets are issued at the Prefecture of Police--the Scotland Yard
of Paris--which is the large building opposite Sainte Chapelle. One
may either write or call. I advise writing; for calling is not as
simple as it sounds: simplicity and sightseeing in Paris being indeed
not on the best terms. It was not until I had asked five several
officials that I found even the right door of the vast structure, and
then having passed a room full of agents (or policemen) smoking and
jesting, and having climbed to a third storey, I was in danger of
losing for ever the privilege of seeing what I had fixed my mind upon,
wholly because, although I knew the name and street of my hotel, I did
not know its number. Who ever dreamed that hotels have numbers? Has
the Savoy a number in the Strand? Is the Ritz numbered in Piccadilly?
Not that I was living in any such splendour, but still, on the face of
it, a hotel has a name because it has no number. "C'est egal," the
gentleman said at last, after a pantomime of impossibility and
reproach, and I took my ticket, bowed to the ground, replaced my hat
and was free to visit the Conciergerie on the morrow. Such are the
amenities of the tourist's life.
Let me here say that the agents of Paris are by far its politest
citizens, and in appearance the healthiest. I have never met an
uncivil agent, and I once met one who refused a tip after he had been
of considerable service to me. Never did I attempt to tip another.
They have their defects, no doubt: they have not the authority that we
give our police: their management of traffic is pathetically
incompetent; but they are street gentlemen and the foreigner has no
better friend.
The Conciergerie is the building on the Quai de l'Horloge with the
circular towers beneath extinguishers--an impressive sight from the
bridges and the other bank of the river. Most of its cells are now
used as rooms for soldiers (Andre Chenier's dungeon is one of their
kitchens); but a few rooms of the deepest historical interest have
been left as they were. These are displayed by a listless guide who
rises to animation only when the time comes to receive his benefice
and offer for sale a history of his preserves.
One sees first the vaulted Salle Saint Louis, called the Salle des Pas
Perdus because it was through it that the victims of the Revolution
walked on their way to the Cour de Mai and execution. The terribly
significant name has since passed to the great lobby of the Palais de
Justice immediately above it, where it has less appropriateness. It is
of course the cell of Marie Antoinette that is the most poignant spot
in this grievous place. When the Queen was here the present room was
only about half its size, having a partition across it, behind which
two soldiers were continually on guard, day and night. The Queen was
kept here, suffering every kind of indignity and petty tyranny, from
early September, 1793, until October 16th. Her chair, in which she sat
most of the time, faced the window of the courtyard.
A few acts of kindness reached her in spite of the vigilance of the
authorities; but very few. I quote the account of two from the
official guide, a poor thing, which I was weak enough to buy: "The
Queen had no complaint to make against the concierges Richard nor
their successors the Baults. It is told that one day Richard asked a
fruitseller in the neighbourhood to select him the best of her melons,
whatever it might cost. 'It is for a very important personage,
then?' said the seller disdainfully, looking at the concierge's
threadbare clothes. 'Yes,' said he, 'it is for some one who was once
very important; she is so no longer; it is for the Queen.' 'The
Queen,' exclaimed the tradeswoman, turning over all her melons, 'the
Queen! Oh, poor woman! Here, make her eat that, and I won't have you
pay for it....'
"One of the gendarmes on duty having smoked during the night, learnt
the following day that the Queen, whom he noticed was very pale, had
suffered from the smell of the tobacco; he smashed his pipe, swearing
not to smoke any more. It was he also who said to those who came in
contact with Marie Antoinette: 'Whatever you do, don't say anything to
her about her children'."
For her trial the Queen was taken to the Tribunal sitting in what is
now the First Circle Chamber of the Palais de Justice, and led back in
the evening to her cell. She was condemned to death on the fifteenth,
and that night wrote a letter to her sister-in-law Elizabeth which we
shall see in the Archives Nationales: it is firmly written.
[Illustration: GIOVANNA TORNABUONI AND THE CARDINAL VIRTUES
BOTTICELLI. FRESCO FROM THE VILLA LEMMI
(_Louvre_)]
The Conciergerie had many other prisoners, but none so illustrious.
Robespierre occupied for twenty-four hours the little cell adjoining
that of the Queen, now the vestry of the chapel. Madame Du Barry and
Madame Recamier had cells adjacent to that of Madame Roland. Later
Marechal Ney was imprisoned here. The oldest part of all--the kitchens
of Saint Louis--are not shown.
The Pont au Change, the bridge which connects the Place du Chatelet
with the Boulevard du Palais, the main street of the Ile de la Cite,
was once (as the Ponte Vecchio at Florence still is) the headquarters
of goldsmiths and small bankers. Not the least of the losses that
civilisation and rebuilders have brought upon us is the disappearance
of the shops and houses from the bridges. Old London Bridge--how one
regrets that!
At the corner of the Conciergerie is the Horloge that gives the Quai
its name--a floridly decorated clock which by no means conveys the
impression that it has kept time for over five hundred years and is
the oldest exposed time-piece in France. Paris, by the way, is very
poor in public clocks, and those that she has are not too trustworthy.
The one over the Gare St. Lazare has perhaps the best reputation; but
time in Paris is not of any great importance. For most Parisians there
is an inner clock which strikes with perfect regularity at about
twelve and seven, and no other hours really matter. And yet a certain
show of marking time is made in the hotels, where every room has an
elaborate ormolu clock, usually under a glass case and rarely going.
And in one hotel I remember a large clock on every landing, of which I
passed three on my way upstairs; and their testimony was so various
that it was two hours later by each, so that by the time I had reached
my room it was nearly time to get up. On asking the waiter the reason
he said it was because they were synchronised by electricity.
There has been a Tour de l'Horloge at this corner of the Conciergerie
ever since it was ordained by Philippe le Bel in 1299; the present
clock, or at least its scheme of decoration, dates, however, from
Henri III.'s reign, about 1585. The last elaborate restoration was in
1852. In the tower above was a bell that was rung only on rare
occasions. The usual accounts of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew say
that the signal for that outrage was sounded by the bell of St.
Germain l'Auxerrois; but others give it to the bell of the Tour de
l'Horloge. As they are some distance from each other, perhaps both
were concerned; but since St. Germain l'Auxerrois is close to the
Louvre, where the King was waiting for the carnage to begin, it is
probable that it rang the first notes.
One of Meryon's most impressive and powerful etchings represents the
Tour de l'Horloge and the facade of the Conciergerie. It is a typical
example of his strange and gloomy genius, for while it is nothing else
in the world but what it purports to be, it is also quite unlike the
Tour de l'Horloge and the facade of the Conciergerie as any ordinary
eyes have seen them. They are made terrible and sinister: they have
been passed through the dark crucible of Meryon's mind. To see Paris
as Meryon saw it needs a great effort of imagination, so swiftly and
instinctively do these people remove the traces of unhappiness or
disaster. It is the nature of Paris to smile and to forget; from any
lapse into woe she recovers with extraordinary rapidity.
Meryon's Paris glowers and shudders; there is blood on her hands and
guilt in her heart. I will not say that his concept is untrue, because
I believe that the concept formed by a man of genius is always true,
although it may not contain all the truth, and indeed one has to
recall very little history to fall easily into Meryon's mood; but for
the visitor who has chosen Paris for his holiday--the typical reader,
for example, of this book--Mr. Dexter's concept of Paris is a more
natural one. (I wish, by the way, before it is too late, that Mr.
Muirhead Bone would devote some time to the older parts of the
city--particularly to the Marais. How it lies to his hand!)
Since we are at the gates of the Palais de Justice let us spend a
little time among the advocates and their clients in the great
hall--the Salle des Pas Perdus. (In an interesting work, by the way,
on this building, with a preface by the younger Dumas, the amendment,
"La Salle du temps perdu" is recommended.) The French law courts, as a
whole, are little different from our own: they have the same
stuffiness, they give the same impression of being divided between the
initiated and the uninitiated, the little secret society of the Bar
and the great innocent world. But the Salle des Pas Perdus is another
thing altogether. There is nothing like that in the Strand. Our Strand
counsel are a dignified, clean-shaven, be-wigged race, striving to
appear old and inscrutable and important. They are careful of
appearances; they receive instructions only through solicitors; they
affect to weigh their words; sagacious reserve is their fetish. Hence
our law courts, although there are many consultations and incessant
passings to and fro, are yet subdued in tone and overawing to the
talkative.
But the Palais de Justice!--Babel was inaudible beside it. In the
Palais de Justice everyone talks at once; no one cares a sou for
appearances or reticence; there are no wigs, no shorn lips, no
affectation of a superhuman knowledge of the world. The French
advocate comes into direct communication with his client--for the most
part here. The movement as well as the vociferation is incessant, for
out of this great hall open as many doors as there are in a French
farce, and every door is continually swinging. Indeed that is the
chief effect conveyed: that one is watching a farce, since there has
never been a farce yet without a legal gentleman in his robes and
black velvet cap. The chief difference is that here there are hundreds
of them. As a final touch of humour, or lack of gravity, I may add
that notices forbidding smoking are numerous, and every advocate and
every client is puffing hard at his cigarette.
Victor Hugo's _Notre Dame_ begins, it will be remembered, in the great
Hall of the Palais de Justice, where Gringoire's neglected mystery
play was performed and Quasimodo won the prize for ugliness. The Hall,
as Hugo says, was burned in 1618: by a fire which, he tells us, was
made necessary by the presence in the archives of the Palais of the
documents in the case of the assassination of Henri IV. by Ravaillac.
Certain of Ravaillac's accomplices and instigators wishing these
papers to disappear, the fire followed as a matter of course, as
naturally as in China a house had to be burned down before there could
be roast pig.
Sainte Chapelle, which, with the kitchens of Saint Louis under the
Conciergerie, is all that remains of the royal period of the Palais de
Justice, is, except on Mondays, always open during the reasonable
daylight hours and is wholly free from vexatious restrictions.
Sanctity having passed from it, the French sightseers do not even
remove their hats, although I have noticed that the English and
Americans still find the habit too strong. The Chapelle may easily
disappoint, for such is the dimness of its religious light that little
is visible save the dark coloured windows. One is, however, conscious
of perfect proportions and such ecclesiastical elegance as paint and
gold can convey. It is in fact exquisite, yet not with an
exquisiteness of simplicity but of design and elaboration. It is like
a jewel--almost a trinket--which Notre Dame might have once worn on
her breast and tired of. Its fleche is really beautiful; it darts into
the sky with only less assurance and joy than that of Notre Dame, and
I always look up with pleasure to the angel on the eastern point of
the roof.
[Illustration: LA VIERGE AUX ROCHERS
LEONARDO DA VINCI
(_Louvre_)]
What one has the greatest difficulty in believing is that Sainte
Chapelle is six hundred and fifty years old. It was built for the
relics brought from the Crusades by Saint Louis, which are now in the
Treasury of Notre Dame. The Chapel has, of course, known the
restorer's hand, but it is virtually the original structure, and some
of the original glass is still here preserved amid reconstructions. To
me Sainte Chapelle's glass makes little appeal; but many of my friends
talk of nothing else. Let us thank God for differences of taste.
During the Commune (as recently as 1871) an attempt was made to burn
Sainte Chapelle, together with the Palais de Justice, but it just
failed. That was the third fire it has survived.
From Sainte Chapelle we pass through the Rue de Lutece, which is
opposite, across the Boulevard, because there is a statue here of some
interest--that of Renaudot, who lived in the first half of the
seventeenth century at No. 8 Quai du Marche Neuf, close by, and
founded in 1631 the first French newspaper, the _Gazette de France_.
Little could he have foreseen the consequences of his rash act! It is
amusing to stand here a while and meditate on the torrent that has
proceeded from that small spring. Other cities have as busy a
journalistic life as Paris, and in London the paper boys are more
numerous and insistent, while in London we have also the contents'
bills, which are unknown to France; and yet Paris seems to me to be
more a city of newspapers than even London is. Perhaps it is the
kiosques that convey the impression.
The London papers and the Paris papers could not well be more
different. In the matter of size, Paris, I think, has all the
advantage, for one may read everything in a few minutes; but in the
matter of ingredients the advantage surely lies with us, for although
English papers tell far too much, and by their own over-curiousness
foster inquisitiveness and busy-bodydom, yet they have some sense of
what is important, and one can always find the significant news. In
Paris, if one excepts the best papers, the _Temps_ in particular, the
significant news is elusive. What one will find, however, is a short
story or a literary essay written with distinction, an anecdote of the
day by no means adapted for the young person, and a number of trumpery
tragedies of passion or excess, minutely told; and in the _Figaro_
once or twice a week an excellent humorous or satirical drawing. The
signed articles are always good, and when critical usually fearless,
but the unsigned notices of a new play or spectacle credit it with
perfection in every detail; and here, at any rate, as in our best
reviews of books, we are in a position to feel some of the
satisfaction that proceeds from conscious superiority.
But, it has to be remembered, in Paris people go to the theatre
automatically, whereas we pick and choose and have our reasons, and
even talk of one play being moral and another immoral, and therefore
in Paris an honest criticism of a play is of little importance. The
Paris _Daily Mail_ seems to have fallen into line very naturally, for
I find in it, on the morning on which I write these lines, a puff of
the Capucines revue, saying that it kept the house in continuous
laughter by its innocent fun, and will doubtless draw all Paris. As if
(i) the laughter in any Paris theatre was ever continuous, and as if
(ii) there was ever any innocent fun at the Capucines, and as if (iii)
all Paris would go near that theatre if there were!
One reason, I imagine, for the diffuseness of the English paper and
the brevity of the French, is that the English have so little natural
conversation that they find it useful to acquire news on which to base
more; while the French need no such assistance. The English again are
interested in other nations, whereas the French care nothing for any
land but France. There is no space in which to continue this not
untempting analysis: it would require much room, for to understand
thoroughly the difference between, say, the _Daily Telegraph_ and the
_Journal_ is to understand the difference between England and France.
The French comic papers one sees everywhere--except in people's hands.
I suppose they are bought, or they would not be published; but I have
hardly ever observed a Frenchman reading one that was his own
property. The fault of the French comic paper is monotony. Voltaire
accused the English of having seventy religions and only one sauce; my
quarrel with the French is that they have seventy sauces and only one
joke. This joke you meet everywhere. Artists of diabolical cleverness
illustrate it in colours every week; versifiers and musicians
introduce it into songs; comic singers sing it; playwrights dramatise
it; novelists and journalists weave it into prose. It is the oldest
joke and it is ever new. Nothing can prevent a Parisian laughing at it
as if it were as fresh as his roll, his journal or his petit Gervais.
For a people with a world-wide reputation for wit, this is very
strange; but in some directions the French are incorrigibly juvenile,
almost infantine. Personally I envy them for it. I think it must be
charming never to grow out of such an affection for indecency that
even a nursery mishap can still be always funny.
One of the comic papers must, however, be exempted from these
generalisations. _Le Rire_, _Le Journal Amusant_, _La Vie Parisienne_
and the scores of cheaper imitations may depend for their living on
the one joke; but _L'Assiette au Beurre_ is more serious. _L'Assiette
au Beurre_ is first and foremost a satirist. It chastises continually,
and its whip is often scorpions. Even its lighter numbers, chiefly
given to ridicule, contain streaks of savagery.
At the end of the brief Rue de Lutece is the great Hotel Dieu, the
oldest hospital in Paris, having been founded in the seventh century;
and to the left of it is one of the Paris flower markets, where much
beautiful colour may be seen very formally and unintelligently
arranged. Gardens are among those things that we order (or shall I say
disorder?) better than the French do.
And now we will enter Notre Dame.