THE BOULEVARD ST. GERMAIN AND ITS TRIBUTARIES
An Aristocratic Quarter--Adrienne Lecouvreur--A Grisly
Museum--A Changeless City--The Pasteur Institute--The Golden
Key--The Stoppeur--Sterne--The Beaux Arts--A Wilderness of
Copies--Voltaire Clad and Naked--The Mint--An Inquisitive
Visitor--Bad Money.
From the Invalides the Boulevard St. Germain, the west to east highway
of the Surrey side of Paris, is easily gained; but it is not in itself
very interesting. The interesting streets either cross it or run more
or less parallel with it, such as the old and winding Rue de Grenelle,
which we come to at once, the home of the Parisian aristocracy after
its removal from the Marais. The houses are little changed: merely the
tenants; and certain Embassies are now here. No. 18 was once the Hotel
de Beauharnais, the home of the fair Josephine; at the Russian
Embassy, No. 79, the Duchesse d'Estrees lived. In an outhouse at No.
115 was buried in unconsecrated ground Adrienne Lecouvreur, the
tragedienne who made tragedy, the beloved of Marechal Saxe. Scribe's
drama has made her story known--how her heart was too much for her,
and how Christian burial was refused her by a Christian priest.
The Rue St. Dominique, parallel with the Rue de Grenelle nearer the
river, is equally old and august. At No. 13 lived Madame de Genlis,
the monitress of French youth. Still nearer the river runs the long
Rue de l'Universite, which also has an illustrious past and a
picturesque present, some great French noble having built nearly every
house.
One of the first old streets to cross the Boulevard St. Germain is the
Rue du Bac, a roadway made when the Palace of the Tuileries was
building, to convey materials from Vaugiraud to the _bac_ (or ferry
boat) which crossed the Seine where the Pont Royal now stands. This
street also is full of ancient palaces and convents. Chateaubriand
died at 118-120. At 128 is the Seminaires des Missions Etrangeres,
with a terrible little museum called the Chambre des Martyrs, very
French in character, displaying instruments of torture which have been
used upon missionaries in China and other countries inimical (like
poor Adrienne's priest) to Christianity. The Rue des Saints-Peres
resembles the Rue du Bac, but is more attractive to the loiterer
because it has perhaps the greatest number of old curiosity shops of
any street in Paris. They touch each other: perhaps they take in each
other's dusting. I never saw a customer enter; but that of course
means nothing. One might be sure of finding a case made of peau de
chagrin here and be equally sure that Balzac had trodden this
pavement before you. You will see, however, nothing or very little
that is beautiful, because Paris does not care much for sheer beauty.
The Rue des Saints-Peres runs upwards into the Rue de Sevres, where
old convents cluster and the Bon Marche raises its successful modern
bulk. It was in the Abbaye-aux-Bois, once at the corner of the Rue de
Sevres and the Rue de la Chaise, but now buried beneath a gigantic
block of new flats, that Madame Recamier lived from 1814 until her
death in 1849, visited latterly every day by the faithful
Chateaubriand. M. Georges Cain has a charming chapter on this
friendship and its scene in his _Promenades dans Paris_, of which an
English translation, entitled _Walks in Paris_, has recently been
published.
Returning to the Boulevard St. Germain, which we leave as often as we
touch it, I remember that, on the south side, between the Invalides
end and the statue of the inventor of the semaphore, used to be a
little shop devoted to the sale of trophies of Joan of Arc. And since
it used to be there, it follows that it is there still, for nothing in
Paris ever changes. One of the great charms of Paris is that it is
always the same. I can think of hardly any shop that has changed in
the last ten years. This means, I suppose, that the French rarely die.
How can they, disliking as they do to leave Paris? It is the English
and the Scotch, born to forsake their homes and live uncomfortably
foreign lives, who die.
[Illustration: THE PONT ALEXANDRE III
(FROM THE EAST)
EIFFEL TOWER
TROCADERO]
If one is interested in seeing the Pasteur Institute, now is the
time, for it is not far from the Rue de Sevres, in the Rue Falguiere,
named after Falguiere the sculptor of the memorial to Pasteur in the
Place Breteuil: one of the best examples of recent Paris statuary,
with a charming shepherd boy playing his pipe to his flock on one side
of the pediment, and grimmer scenes of disease on the others. This
monument, however, is some distance from the Institute, the Place
Breteuil being the first carrefour in that vast and endless avenue
which leads southwards from Napoleon's tomb. The Institute itself has
a spirited statue of Jupille the shepherd, one of its first patients,
in his struggle with the wolf that bit him. Pasteur's tomb is here,
but I have not seen it, as I arrived on the wrong day.
One of the most attractive of the Boulevard St. Germain's byways is
entered just round the corner of the Rue de Rennes. This is the Cour
du Dragon, which is not only a relic of old Paris, but old Paris is
still visible hard at work in it. The Cour du Dragon is a narrow court
gained by an archway over which a red dragon perches, holding up the
balcony with his vigorous pinions. It was the Hotel Taranne in the
reigns of Charles VI. and VII. and Louis XI.; later it became a famous
riding and fencing school. It is now a cheerful nest of
artisans--coppersmiths, locksmiths, coal merchants and the like, who
fill it with brisk hammerings, while at the windows above, with their
green shutters, the songs of caged birds mingle in the symphony.
As in all Parisian streets or courts where signs are hung, the golden
key is prominent. (There is one in Mr. Dexter's picture of the Rue de
l'Hotel de Ville.) What the proportion of locksmiths is to the
population of Paris I cannot say; but their pretty symbol is to be
seen everywhere. The reason of their numbers is not very mysterious
when we recollect that practically every one that one meets in this
city, and certainly all the people of the middling and working
classes, live in flats, and all want keys. The streets and streets of
the small houses with which East London is covered are unknown in
Paris, where every facade is but the mask which hides vast tenements
packed with families. No wonder then that the serrurier is so busy.
Another sign which probably puzzles many English people is that of the
stoppeur. Bellows' dictionary does not recognise the word. What is a
stoppeur and what does he stop? I discovered the answer in the most
practical way possible; for a Frenchman, in a crowd, helped me to it
by pushing his lighted cigar into my back and burning a hole in it,
right in the middle of the coat, where a patch would necessarily show.
I was in despair until the femme de chambre reassured me. It was
nothing, she said: all that was needed was a stoppeur. She would take
the coat herself. It seems that the stoppeur's craft is that of
mending holes so deftly that you would not know there had been any. He
ascertains the pattern by means of a magnifying glass, and then
extracts threads from some part of the garment that does not show and
weaves them in. I paid three francs and have been looking for the
injured spot ever since, but cannot find it. It is a modern miracle.
Diagonally opposite the Court of the Dragon is the Church of St.
Germain--not the St. Germain who owns the church at the east end of
the Louvre, but St. Germain des Pres, a lesser luminary. It has no
particular beauty, but a number of frescoes by Flandrin, the pupil of
Ingres, give it a cachet. Flandrin's bust is to be observed on the
north wall. The frescoes cannot be seen except under very favourable
conditions, and therefore for me the greatness of Flandrin has to be
sought in his drawings at the Luxembourg and the Louvre--sufficient
proof of his exquisite hand.
Before descending the Rue Bonaparte to the river, let us ascend it to
see the great church of St. Sulpice and its paintings by Delacroix in
the Chapel of the Holy Angels. Under the Convention St. Sulpice was
the Temple of Victory, and here General Bonaparte was feasted in 1799.
The church is famous for its music and an organ second only to that of
St. Eustache. And now let us descend the Rue Bonaparte to the quais,
where several buildings await us, beginning with the Beaux-Arts at the
foot of the street; but first the Rue Jacob, which bisects the Rue
Bonaparte, should be looked at, for it has had many illustrious
inhabitants, including our own Laurence Sterne, who lodged here, at
No. 46, in the Hotel of his friend Madame Rambouillet (of the easy
manners) when he was studying the French for _A Sentimental Journey_.
It was here perhaps that he penned the famous opening sentence: "'They
order,' said I, 'these things better in France'"--which no other
writer on Paris has succeeded in forgetting. At No. 20 lived Adrienne
Lecouvreur, and hither Voltaire must often have come, for he greatly
admired her. At No. 7 is a fine old staircase and an old well in the
court.
The Palais des Beaux-Arts, where the Royal Academy Schools of Paris
are situated, is an unexhilarating building containing a great number
of unexciting paintings. Indeed, I think that no public edifice of
Paris is so dreary: within and without one has a sense not exactly of
decay but certainly of neglect. This is not the less odd when one
thinks of the purpose of the institution, which is to foster the arts,
and when one thinks also of the spotless perfection in which the Petit
Palais, the latest of the Parisian picture galleries, is maintained.
The spirit, however, is willing, if the flesh is weak, for in the
first and second courts are examples of the best French architecture,
and a bust of Jean Goujon is let into the wall of the Musee des
Antiques. The building contains a number of casts of the best
sculptures and an amphitheatre with Delaroche's pageant of painters on
the hemicycle and Ingres' Victory of Romulus over the Sabines opposite
it; but there is not always enough light to see either well. For the
best view of Delaroche's great work one must go upstairs to the
Gallery. The library also is upstairs, with many thousand of valuable
works on art and a collection of drawings by the masters, access to
which is made easy to genuine students.
By returning to the first court we come to the Musee de la
Renaissance, which now occupies an old chapel of the Couvent des
Petits-Augustins, on the site of which the Palais de Beaux-Arts was
built. Here are more casts and copies, and there are still more in the
adjoining Cour du Murier, where stands the memorial of Henri Regnault,
the painter, and the students who died with him during the defence of
Paris in 1870-71.
We then enter the Salle de Melpomene, so called from the dominating
cast of the Melpomene at the Louvre, and are straightway among what
seem at the first glance to be old friends from all the best galleries
of the world but too quickly are revealed as counterfeits. Rembrandt's
School of Anatomy and the Syndics, our own National Gallery Correggio,
the Dresden Raphael, the Wallace Collection Velasquez (the Lady with a
Fan), one of Hals' groups of arquebusiers, and Paul Potter's Bull: all
are here, together with countless others, all the work of Beaux-Arts
students, and some exceedingly good, but also (like most copies)
exceedingly depressing.
In other rooms almost pitch dark are modelled studies of expression
and paintings which have won the Grand Prix of Rome during the past
two hundred years. It is odd to notice how few names one recognises:
it is as though, like the Newdigate, this prize were an end in itself.
Having contemplated the statue of Voltaire in his robes outside the
Institut, the next building of importance after the Beaux Arts, you
may, if you so desire, gaze upon the same philosopher in a state of
nature by entering the Institut itself, and ascending to its
Bibliotheque. There he sits, the skinny cynic, among the books which
he wrote and the books which he read and the books which would not
have been written but for him. I was glad to see him thus, for it
showed me where our own Arouet, Mr. Bernard Shaw, found his
inspiration when he too subjected recently his economical frame to the
maker of portraits. Mr. Shaw sat, however, only to a photographer
(although a very good one, Mr. Coburn); when he visited Rodin it was
for the head, a replica of which may be seen at the Luxembourg.
Speaking of heads, the Institut is a wilderness of them: heads line
the stairs; heads line the walls not only of its own Bibliotheque but
of the Bibliotheque de Mazarin, which also is here, a haven for every
student that cares to seek it: heads of the great Frenchmen of all
time and of the Caesars too.
The Pont des Arts, which leads direct from the old Louvre to the
Institut (a connection, if ever, no longer of any importance), is for
foot passengers only. One is therefore more at ease there in observing
the river than on the noisy bridge of stone. But it is inexcusably
ugly and leaves one continually wondering what Napoleon was about to
allow it to be built--and of iron too--in his day of good taste.
Looking up stream, the Pont Neuf is close by with the thin green end
of the Cite's wedge protruding under it and, in winter, Henri IV.
riding proudly above. In summer, as Mr. Dexter's drawing shows, he is
hidden by leaves. A basin has been constructed at this point from
which the tide is excluded, and here are washing houses and swimming
baths; for Parisians, having a river, use it.
[Illustration: LA VIERGE AU DONATEUR
J. VAN EYCK
_(Louvre)_]
The Hotel des Monnaies, close by the Beaux Arts, is another surprise.
One would expect in such a country as France, with its meticulously
exact control of its public offices, that its Mint, the institution in
which its money was made, would be a miracle of precision and
efficiency. Efficiency it may have; but its proceedings are casual
beyond belief: the workmen in the furnaces loaf and smoke and stare at
the visitors and exchange comments on them; the floors are cluttered
up with lumber; the walls are dirty; the doors do not fit. A very
considerable amount of work seems to be accomplished--there are
machines constantly in movement which turn out scores of coins a
minute, not only for France but for her few and dispiriting colonies
and for other countries; and yet the feeling which one has is that
France here is noticeably below herself.
I was shown round by a very charming attendant, who handled the new
coins as though he loved them and took precisely that pride in the
place that the Government seems to lack. The design on the French
franc, although it ought to be cut, I think, a little deeper, a little
more boldly, is very attractive, both obverse and reverse, and it is a
pleasant sight to see the bright creatures tumbling out of the
machine as fast as one can count. Pleasanter still is it to the frail
human eye when the same process is repeated with golden
Louis'--baskets full of which stand negligently about as though it
were the cave of the Forty Thieves.
An Englishman's perhaps indiscreet questions as to what precautions
were taken to prevent leakage amused the guide beyond all reason. "It
is impossible," he said; "the coins are weighed. They must correspond
to the prescribed weight." "But who," my countryman went on, in the
relentless English way, "checks the weigher?" "Another," said the
guide. "But a time must come," continued the Briton, who probably had
a business of his own and had suffered, "when there is no one left to
check--when the last man of all is officiating: how then?" Our guide
laughed very happily, and repeated that there were no thieves there;
and I daresay he is right. "Perhaps," I said, to the English
inquisitor, "perhaps, like assistants in sweet shops, they are allowed
at first to help themselves so much that they acquire a disgust for
money." He looked at me with eyes of stone. I think he had Scotch
blood. "Perhaps," he said at last.
My own contribution to the guide's entertainment was the production,
before a machine that was shooting five-franc pieces into a bowl at
the rate of one a second, of the four bad (demonetise) coins of the
same value which had been forced upon me during the few days I had
then been in Paris. They gave immense delight. Several mintners (or
whatever they are called) stopped working in order to join in the
inspection. It was the general opinion that I had been badly treated:
although, of course, I ought to have known. Three of the coins were
simply those of other nations no longer current in France, and for
them I could get from two to three francs each at an exchange. Unless,
of course, a man of the world put in, I liked to sell them to a
waiter, and then I should get perhaps a slightly better price. "Be
careful, however," said he, "that he does not give them back to you in
the next change." The fourth coin was frankly base metal and ought not
to have taken in a child. That, by the way, was given to me at a Post
Office, the one under the Bourse, and I find that Post Offices are
notorious for this habit with foreigners. The mintners generally
agreed that it was a scandal, but they did so without heat--bearing
indeed this misfortune (not their own) very much as their countryman
La Rochefoucauld had observed men to do.
After the coins we saw the medal-stampers at work, each seated in a
little hole in the ground before his press. The French have a natural
gift for the designing of medals, and they are interested in them as
souvenirs not only of public but of private events--such as silver
weddings, birthdays and other anniversaries. Upstairs there is a
collection of medals by the best designers--such as Roty, Patey,
Carial, Chaplain, Dupuis, Dupre--many of them charming. Here also are
collections of the world's coinage and of historical French medals.