THE TUILERIES
A Vanished Palace--The Most Magnificent Vista--Enter Louis
XVI. and Marie Antoinette--The Massacre of the Swiss
Guards--The Blood of Paris--A Series of Disasters--The
Growth of Paris--The Napoleonic Rebuilders--The Arc de
Triomphe du Carrousel--The Irony of History--A Frock Coat
Rampant--The Statuary of Paris--The Gardens of the
Tuileries--Monsieur Pol, Charmer of Birds--The Parisian
Sparrow--Hyde Park--The Drum.
Had we turned our back only thirty-eight years ago on Fremiet's statue
of Joan of Arc (which was not there then) in the Place de Rivoli, and
walked down what is now the Rue de Tuileries towards the Seine, we
should have had on our left hand a beautiful and imposing
building--the Palace of the Tuileries, which united the two wings of
the Louvre that now terminate in the Pavillon de Marsan just by the
Place de Rivoli and the Pavillon de Flore on the Quai des Tuileries.
The palace stretched right across this interval, thus interrupting the
wonderful vista of to-day from the old Louvre right away to the Arc de
Triomphe--probably the most extraordinary and beautiful civilised, or
artificial, vista in the world. The palace had, however, a
sufficiently fine if curtailed share of it from its own windows.
All Parisians upwards of forty-five must remember the Palace
perfectly, for it was not destroyed until 1871, during the Commune,
and it was some years after that incendiary period before all traces
were removed and the gardens spread uninterruptedly from the Carrousel
to the Concorde.
The Palace of the Tuileries (so called because it occupied a site
previously covered by tile kilns) was begun in 1564 and had therefore
lived for three centuries. Catherine de Medicis planned it, but, as we
shall read later, she lost interest in it very quickly owing to one of
those inconvenient prophecies which were wont in earlier times so to
embarrass rulers, but which to-day in civilised countries have
entirely gone out. The Tuileries was a happy enough palace, as palaces
go, until the Revolution: it then became for a while the very centre
of rebellion and carnage; for Louis XVI. and the Royal Family were
conveyed thither after the fatal oath had been sworn in the Versailles
tennis-court. Then came the critical 10th of August, when the King
consented to attend the conference in the Manege (now no more, but a
tablet opposite the Rue Castiglione marks the spot) and thus lost
everything.
The massacre of the Swiss Guards followed: but here it is impossible,
or at least absurd, not to hear Carlyle. Mandal, Commander of the
National Guard, I would premise, has been assassinated by the crowd;
the Constitutional Assembly sits in the Manege, and the King, a
prisoner in the Tuileries, but still a hesitant and an optimist, is
ordered to attend it. At last he consents. "King Louis sits, his hands
leant on his knees, body bent forward; gazes for a space fixedly on
Syndic Roederer; then answers, looking over his shoulder to the
Queen: _Marchons!_ They march; King Louis, Queen, Sister Elizabeth,
the two royal children and governess: these, with Syndic Roederer,
and Officials of the Department; amid a double rank of National
Guards. The men with blunderbusses, the steady red Swiss gaze
mournfully, reproachfully; but hear only these words from Syndic
Roederer: 'The King is going to the Assembly; make way'. It has
struck eight, on all clocks, some minutes ago: the King has left the
Tuileries--forever.
[Illustration: THE PARC MONCEAU]
"O ye stanch Swiss, ye gallant gentlemen in black, for what a cause
are ye to spend and be spent! Look out from the western windows, ye
may see King Louis placidly hold on his way; the poor little Prince
Royal 'sportfully kicking the fallen leaves'. Fremescent multitude on
the Terrace of the Feuillants whirls parallel to him; one man in it,
very noisy, with a long pole: will they not obstruct the outer
Staircase, and back-entrance of the Salle, when it comes to that?
King's Guards can go no farther than the bottom step there. Lo,
Deputation of Legislators come out; he of the long pole is stilled by
oratory; Assembly's Guards join themselves to King's Guards, and all
may mount in this case of necessity; the outer Staircase is free, or
passable. See, Royalty ascends; a blue Grenadier lifts the poor
little Prince Royal from the press; Royalty has entered in. Royalty
has vanished for ever from your eyes.--And ye? Left standing there,
amid the yawning abysses, and earthquake of Insurrection; without
course; without command: if ye perish, it must be as more than
martyrs, as martyrs who are now without a cause! The black Courtiers
disappear mostly; through such issues as they can. The poor Swiss know
not how to act: one duty only is clear to them, that of standing by
their post; and they will perform that.
"But the glittering steel tide has arrived; it beats now against the
Chateau barriers and eastern Courts; irresistible, loud-surging far
and wide;--breaks in, fills the Court of the Carrousel, blackbrowed
Marseillese in the van. King Louis gone, say you; over to the
Assembly! Well and good: but till the Assembly pronounce Forfeiture of
him, what boots it? Our post is in that Chateau or stronghold of his;
there till then must we continue. Think, ye stanch Swiss, whether it
were good that grim murder began, and brothers blasted one another in
pieces for a stone edifice?--Poor Swiss! they know not how to act:
from the southern windows, some fling cartridges, in sign of
brotherhood; on the eastern outer staircase, and within through long
stairs and corridors, they stand firm-ranked, peaceable and yet
refusing to stir. Westermann speaks to them in Alsatian German;
Marseillese plead, in hot Provencal speech and pantomime; stunning
hubbub pleads and threatens, infinite, around. The Swiss stand
fast, peaceable and yet immovable; red granite pier in that
waste-flashing sea of steel.
"Who can help the inevitable issue; Marseillese and all France on this
side; granite Swiss on that? The pantomime grows hotter and hotter;
Marseillese sabres flourishing by way of action; the Swiss brow also
clouding itself, the Swiss thumb bringing its firelock to the cock.
And hark! high thundering above all the din, three Marseillese cannon
from the Carrousel, pointed by a gunner of bad aim, come rattling over
the roofs! Ye Swiss, therefore: _Fire!_ The Swiss fire; by volley, by
platoon, in rolling fire: Marseillese men not a few, and 'a tall man
that was louder than any,' lie silent, smashed upon the pavement;--not
a few Marseillese, after the long dusty march, have made halt _here_.
The Carrousel is void; the black tide recoiling; 'fugitives rushing as
far as Saint-Antoine before they stop'. The Cannoneers without
linstock have squatted invisible, and left their cannon; which the
Swiss seize....
"Behold, the fire slackens not; nor does the Swiss rolling-fire
slacken from within. Nay they clutched cannon, as we saw; and now,
from the other side, they clutch three pieces more; alas, cannon
without linstock; nor will the steel-and-flint answer, though they try
it. Had it chanced to answer! Patriot onlookers have their misgivings;
one strangest Patriot onlooker thinks that the Swiss, had they a
commander, would beat. He is a man not unqualified to judge; the name
of him Napoleon Buonaparte. And onlookers, and women, stand gazing,
and the witty Dr. Moore of Glasgow among them, on the other side of
the River: cannon rush rumbling past them; pause on the Pont Royal;
belch out their iron entrails there, against the Tuileries; and at
every new belch, the women and onlookers 'shout and clap hands'.
City of all the Devils! In remote streets, men are drinking
breakfast-coffee; following their affairs; with a start now and then,
as some dull echo reverberates a note louder. And here? Marseillese
fall wounded; but Barbaroux has surgeons; Barbaroux is close by,
managing, though underhand and under cover. Marseillese fall
death-struck; bequeath their firelock, specify in which pocket are the
cartridges; and die murmuring, 'Revenge me, Revenge thy country!'
Brest Federe Officers, galloping in red coats, are shot as Swiss. Lo
you, the Carrousel has burst into flame!--Paris Pandemonium! Nay the
poor City, as we said, is in fever-fit and convulsion: such crisis has
lasted for the space of some half hour.
"But what is this that, with Legislative Insignia, ventures through
the hubbub and death-hail, from the back-entrance of the Manege?
Towards the Tuileries and Swiss: written Order from his Majesty to
cease firing! O ye hapless Swiss, why was there no order not to begin
it? Gladly would the Swiss cease firing: but who will bid mad
Insurrection cease firing? To Insurrection you cannot speak; neither
can it, hydra-headed, hear. The dead and dying, by the hundred, lie
all around; are borne bleeding through the streets, towards help; the
sight of them, like a torch of the Furies, kindling Madness. Patriot
Paris roars; as the bear bereaved of her whelps. On, ye Patriots:
Vengeance! Victory or death! There are men seen, who rush on, armed
only with walking-sticks. Terror and Fury rule the hour.
"The Swiss, pressed on from without, paralysed from within, have
ceased to shoot; but not to be shot. What shall they do? Desperate is
the moment. Shelter or instant death: yet How, Where? One party flies
out by the Rue de l'Echelle; is destroyed utterly, '_en entier_'. A
second, by the other side, throws itself into the Garden; 'hurrying
across a keen fusillade'; rushes suppliant into the National Assembly;
finds pity and refuge in the back benches there. The third, and
largest, darts out in column, three hundred strong, towards the Champs
Elysees: 'Ah, could we but reach Courbevoye, where other Swiss are!'
Wo! see, in such fusillade the column 'soon breaks itself by diversity
of opinion,' into distracted segments, this way and that;--to escape
in holes, to die fighting from street to street. The firing and
murdering will not cease; not yet for long. The red Porters of Hotels
are shot at, be they _Suisse_ by nature, or _Suisse_ only in name....
"Surely few things in the history of carnage are painfuller. What
ineffaceable red streak, flickering so sad in the memory, is that, of
this poor column of red Swiss 'breaking itself in the confusion of
opinions'; dispersing, into blackness and death! Honour to you,
brave men; honourable pity, through long times! Not martyrs were ye;
and yet almost more. He was no King of yours, this Louis; and he
forsook you like a King of shreds and patches: ye were but sold to him
for some poor sixpence a-day; yet would ye work for your wages, keep
your plighted word. The work now was to die; and ye did it. Honour to
you, O Kinsmen."
[Illustration: LE PRINTEMPS
ROUSSEAU
_(Louvre: Thomy-Thierret Collection)_]
Is that too dreadful an association for this spot? It is terrible; but
to visit Paris without any historical interest is too materialistic a
proceeding, and to have the historical interest in Paris and be afraid
of a little blood is an untenable position. Paris is steeped in blood.
The Tuileries had not seen all its riot yet; July 29th, 1830, was to
come, when, after another taste of monarchy, revived in 1814 after its
murder on that appalling 10th of August (which was virtually its death
day, although the date of the birth of the First Republic stands as
September 21st, 1793), the mob attacked the Palace, the last Bourbon
king, Charles X., fled from it and from France, and Louis-Philippe of
Orleans mounted the throne in his stead. But that was not all. Another
seventeen and a half years and revengeful time saw Louis-Philippe,
last of the Orleans kings, escaping in his turn from another besieging
crowd, and the establishment of the Second Republic.
During the Second Empire some of the old splendour returned, and it
was here, at the Tuileries, that Napoleon III. drew up many of his
plans for the modern Paris that we now know; and then came the
Prussian war and the Third Republic, and then the terrible Communard
insurrection in the spring of 1871, in which the Tuileries disappeared
for ever. Napoleon III., as I have said, assisted by Baron Haussmann,
toiled in the great pacific task of renovating Paris, not with the
imaginative genius of his uncle, but with an undeniable largeness and
sagacity. He it was who added so greatly to the Louvre--all that part
in fact opposite the Place du Palais Royal and the Magasins du Louvre
as far west as the Rue de Rohan. A large portion of the corresponding
wing on the river side was his too. But here is a list, since we are
on the subject of modern Paris--which began with the great Napoleon's
reconstruction of the ravages (beneficial for the most part) of the
Revolutionaries--of the efforts made by each ruler since that epoch. I
borrow the table from the Marquis de Rochegude.
"Napoleon I.--Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, Vendome Column, Facade du
Corps Legislatif, Commencement of the Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile, La
Bourse, the Bridges d'Austerlitz, d'Iena, des Arts, de la Cite,
several Markets, Quais d'Orsay, de Billy, du Louvre, Montebello, de la
Tournelle; the Eastern and Northern Cemeteries; numbering the houses
in 1806, begun without success in 1728; pavements in the streets and
doing away with the streams or flowing gutters in the middle of the
streets." (How like Napoleon to get the houses numbered on a clear
system! Throughout Paris the odd numbers occupy one side of the street
and the even the other. All are numbered from the Seine outwards.)
"The Restoration.--Chapel Expiatoire, N.D. de Bonne-Nouvelle, N.D. de
Lorette, St. Vincent de Paul; Bridges of the Invalides, of the
Archbishopric, d'Arcole; Canals of St. Denis and St. Martin;
fifty-five new streets; lighting by gas." (It was about 1828 that cabs
came in. They were called fiacres from the circumstance that their
originator carried on his business at the sign of the Grand St.
Fiacre.)
"Louis-Philippe, 1830-1848.--Finished the Madeleine, Arc de Triomphe,
erected the Obelisk (Place de la Concorde), Column of July; Bridges:
Louis-Philippe, Carrousel; Palace of the Quai d'Orsay; enlarged the
Palais de Justice; restored Notre Dame and Sainte Chapelle; Fountains:
Louvois, Cuvier, St. Sulpice, Gaillon, Moliere; opened the Museums of
Cluny and the Thermes. In 1843--1,100 streets.
"Napoleon III., 1852-1870.--Embellished Paris--execution of
Haussmann's plans, twenty-two new boulevards; Streets Lafayette,
Quatre-Septembre, de Turbigo; Bvd. St. Germain; Rues des Ecoles, de
Rivoli, the Champs Elysees Quarter, the Avenues Friedland, Hoche,
Kleber, the Marceau, de L'Imperatrice, many squares; a part of new
Louvre; Churches of St. Augustine, The Trinity, St. Ambroise, Ste.
Clotilde (finishing of); Theatres, Chatelet, Lyrique, du Vaudeville;
Tribunal of Commerce, Hotel Dieu, Barracks, Central Markets (also the
ceinture railway); finishing of the Laribosiere hospital, the Fountain
of St. Michel, the Bridges of Solferino, L'Alma, the Pont au Change.
In 1861, 1,667,841 inhabitants.
"The Commune.--Burning of the Tuileries, the Ministry of Finance, the
Louvre Library, the Hotel de Ville, the Palace of the Legion of
Honour, the Palace of the Quai d'Orsay, the Lyric, the Chatelet and
the Porte St. Martin theatres, etc.
"The Republic.--Reconstruction of the buildings burnt by the Commune;
Avenue de l'Opera, the Opera House; Streets: Etienne Marcel, Reaumur,
Avenue de la Republique, etc. In 1892, 4,090 streets, in 1902 there
were 4,261 streets. The Exhibition 1878 left the Trocadero, and that
of 1889 the Eiffel Tower, and that of 1900 the two Palaces of the
Champs-Elysees and the bridge Alexander III." (To this one should add
the Metro, still uncompleted, which has the advantage over London's
Tubes of being only just below the surface, so that no lift is
needed.)
[Illustration: THE ARC DE TRIOMPHE DU CARROUSEL (WEST FACADE)]
The Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, at the east end of the gardens, is a
mere child compared with the Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile, which stands
there, so serenely and magnificently, at the end of the vista in the
west, nearly two amazing miles away; it could be placed easily, with
many feet to spare, under that greater monument's arch (as Victor
Hugo's coffin was); but it is more beautiful. Both were the work of
Napoleon, both celebrate the victories of 1805-06. The Carrousel is
surmounted by a triumphal car and four horses; but here again, as in
the case of the statue of Henri IV. on the Pont Neuf, there have been
ironical changes. Napoleon, when he ordained the arch, which was
intended largely to reproduce that of Severus at Rome, ravished for
its crowning the quadriga from St. Mark's at Venice: those glorious
gleaming horses over the door. That was as it should be: he was a
conqueror and entitled to the spoils of conquest. But after his fall
came, as we have seen, a pedantic disgorgement of such treasure; the
golden team trotted back to the Adriatic, and a new decoration had to
be provided for the Carrousel. Hence the present one, which
represents--what? It is almost inconceivable; but, Louis XVIII. having
commissioned it, it represents the triumph no longer of Napoleon but
of the Restoration! Amusing to remember this under the Third Republic,
as one looks up at it and then at the bas-reliefs of the battle of
Austerlitz, the peace of Tilsit, the capitulation of Ulm, the entry
into Munich, the entry into Vienna and the peace of Pressburg. Time's
revenges indeed.
Standing under the Arc du Carrousel one makes the interesting but
disappointing discovery that the Arc de Triomphe, the column of Luxor
in the Place de la Concorde, the fountain, the Arc du Carrousel, the
Gambetta monument and the Pavillon Sully of the Louvre do not form a
straight line, as by all the laws of French architectural symmetry
they should--especially here, where compasses and rulers seem to have
been at work on every inch of the ground, and, as I have ascertained,
general opinion considers them to do. All is well, from the west,
until the Arc du Carrousel; it is the Gambetta and the Pavilion Sully
that throw it out.
The Gambetta! This monument fascinates me, not by its beauty nor
because I have any especial reverence for the statesman; but simply by
the vigour of his clothes, the frock coat and the light overcoat of
the flamboyant orator, holding forth for evermore (or until his hour
strikes), urgent and impetuous and French. To the frock coat in
sculpture we in London are no strangers, for have we not Parliament
Square? but our frock coats are quiescent, dead even, things of stone.
Gambetta's, on the contrary, is tempestuous--surely the most heroic
frock coat that ever emerged from the quarries of Carrara. It might
have been cut by the Great Mel himself.
I have never seen a computation of the stone and bronze population of
Paris, but the statues must be thousands strong. A Pied Piper leading
them out of the city would be worth seeing, although I for one would
regret their loss. Paris, I suppose, was Paris no less than now in the
days before Gambetta masqueraded as a Frock Coated Victory almost
within hail of the Winged Victory of Samothrace; but Paris certainly
would not be Paris any more were some new turn of the wheel to whisk
him away and leave the Place du Carrousel forlorn and tepid. The loss
even of the smug figure of Jules Simon, just outside Durand's, would
be something like a bereavement. I once, by the way, saw this statue
wearing, after a snowstorm, a white fur cap and cape that gave him a
character--something almost Siberian--beyond anything dreamed of by
the sculptor.
It is not until one has walked through the gardens of the Tuileries
that the wealth of statuary in Paris begins to impress the mind. For
there must be almost as many statues as flowers. They shine or glimmer
everywhere, as in the Athenian groves--allegorical, symbolical,
mythological, naked. The Luxembourg Gardens, as we shall see, are
hardly less rich, but there one finds the statues of real persons.
Here, as becomes a formal garden projected by a king, realism is
excluded. Formal it is in the extreme; the trees are sternly
pollarded, the beds are mathematically laid out, the paths are
straight and not to be deviated from. None the less on a hot summer's
day there are few more delightful spots, with the placid bonnes
sitting so solidly, as only French women can sit, over their
needlework, and their charges flitting like discreet butterflies all
around them; and here are two old philosophers--another Bouvard and
Pecuchet--discussing some problem of conduct or science, and there a
family party lunching heartily, without shame. Pleasant groves,
pleasant people!
But the best thing in the Tuileries is M. Pol. Who is M. Pol? Well, he
may not be the most famous man in Paris, but he is certainly the most
engaging. M. Pol is the charmer of birds--"Le Charmeur d'oiseaux au
Jardin des Tuileries," to give him his full title. There may be other
charmers too at their pretty labours; but M. Pol comes easily first:
his personality is so attractive, his terms of intercourse with the
birds so intimate. His oiseaux are chiefly sparrows, whom he knows by
name--La Princesse, Le Loustic, Garibaldi, La Baronne, l'Anglais, and
so forth. They come one by one at his call, and he pets them and
praises them; talks pretty ironical talk; uses them (particularly the
little brown l'Anglais) for sly satirical purposes, for there are
usually a few English spectators; affects to admonish and even
chastise them, shuffling minatory feet with all the noise but none of
the illusion of seriousness; and never ceases the while to scatter his
crumbs or seeds of comfort. It is a very charming little drama, and
although carried on every day, and for some hours every day, it has no
suggestion of routine; one feels that the springs of it are sweetness
and benevolence.
He is a typical elderly Latin, this M. Pol, a little unmindful as to
his dress, a little inclined to shamble: humorous, careless, gentle.
When I first saw him, years ago, he fed his birds and went his way:
but he now makes a little money by it too, now and then offering, very
reluctantly, postcards bearing pictures of himself with all his birds
about him and a distich or so from his pen. For M. Pol is a poet in
words as well as deeds: "De nos petits oiseaux," he writes on one
card:--
"De nos petits oiseaux, je suis le bienfaiteur,
Et je vais tous les jours leur donner la pature,
Mais suivant un contrat dicte par la nature
Quand je donne mon pain, ils me donnent leur coeur."
I think this true. It is a little more than cupboard love that
inspires these tiny creatures, or they would never settle on M. Pol's
hands and shoulders as they do. He has charmed the pigeons also; but
here he admits to a lower motive:--
"Ils savent, les malins, que leur couvert est mis,
C'est en faisant du bien qu'on se fait des amis."
It amused me one day at the Louvre to fix one of these photographs in
the frame of Giotto's picture of St. Francis (in Salle VII.), one of
the scenes of which shows him preaching to the birds, thus bridging
the gulf between the centuries and making for the moment the Assisi of
the Saint and the Paris of M. Briand one.
London has its noticeable lovers of animals too--you may see in St.
Paul's churchyard in the dinner hour isolated figures surrounded and
covered by pigeons: the British Museum courtyard also knows one or
two, and the Guildhall: quite like Venice, both of them, save that no
one is excited about it; while in St. James's Square may be seen at
all hours of every day the mysterious cat woman with her pensioners
all about her on their little mats. Every city has these
humorists--shall I say? using the word as it was wont to be used long
ago. But M. Pol--M. Pol stands alone. It is not merely that he charms
the birds but that he is so charming with them. The pigeon feeders of
London whom I have watched bring their maize, distribute it and go. M.
Pol is more of a St. Francis than that: as I have shown, he converses,
jokes and exchanges moods with his friends.
Although he is acquainted with pigeons, his real friends are the
gamins of the air, the sparrows, true Parisians, who have the best
news. Pigeons, one can conceive, pick up a fact here and there, but it
would have a foreign or provincial flavour. Now if there is one thing
which bores a true Parisian it is talk of what is happening outside
Paris. The Parisian's horizons do not extend beyond his city. The sun
for him rises out of the Bois de Vincennes, and evening comes because
it has sunk into the Bois de Boulogne. Hence M. Pol's wisdom in
choosing the sparrow for his companion, his oiseau intime.
So far had I written when I chanced to walk into London by way of Hyde
Park, and there, just by the Achilles statue, was a charming gentleman
in a tall white hat whistling a low whistle to a little band of
sparrows who followed him and surrounded him and fluttered up, one by
one, to his hand. We talked a little together, and he told me that the
birds never forget him, though he is absent for eight months each
year. His whistle brings them at once. So London is all right after
all. And I have been told delightful things about the friends of the
grey squirrels in Central Park; so New York perhaps is all right too.
The Round Pond of Paris is at the Tuileries--not so vast as the _mare
clausum_ of Kensington Gardens, but capable of accommodating many
argosies. Leaving this Pond behind us and making for the Place de la
Concorde, we have on the right the remains of a monastery of the
Cistercians, one of the many religious houses which stood all about
the north of the Gardens at the time of the Revolution and were first
discredited and emptied by the votaries of Reason and then swept away
by Napoleon when he made the Rue de Rivoli. The building on the left
is the Orangery. It is in this part that the temporary pavilions are
erected for the banquets to provincial mayors and such pleasant
ceremonies, while in the summer some little exhibition is usually in
progress.
But what is that sound? The beating of a drum. We must hasten to the
gates, for that means closing time.