THE SECOND EMPIRE AND AFTER
The Revolution of 1848 narrowed itself down to the issue of Bourbonism or
Bonapartism. Nobody had a good word to say for the constitution, and all
parties took liberties with it. It was inaugurated as the most democratic
of all possible charters. It gave a vote to everybody, women and children
excepted. It affirmed liberty with so wide a latitude of interpretation as
to leave nothing to be desired by the reddest Republican that ever wore
pistols in his belt at the heels of the redoubtable M. Marc Caussidiere,
or expressed faith in the social Utopia of the enthusiastic M. Proudhon.
Freedom to speak, to write, to assemble, and to vote,--all were secured to
all Frenchmen by this marvellous charter. When it became the law of the
land, everybody began to nibble at and destroy it. The right of speaking
was speedily reduced to the narrowest limits, and the liberty of the
press was pared down to the merest shred. The right of meeting was placed
at the tender mercies of the prefect of police, and the right of voting
was attacked with even more zeal and fervour. The Revolution proved more
voracious than Saturn himself, in devouring its children, and it made
short work of men and reputations. It reduced MM. de Lamartine, Armand
Marrast, and General Cavaignac into nothingness; sent MM. Louis Blanc,
Ledru Rollin, and Caussidiere into the dreary exile of London, and
consigned the fiery Barbes, the vindictive Blanqui, the impatient Raspail,
and a host of other regenerators of the human race, to the fastnesses of
Vincennes. Having done this, the Revolution left scarcely a vestige of the
constitution,--nothing but a few crumbs, and those were not crumbs of
comfort, which remained merely to prove to the incredulous that such a
thing as the constitution once existed.
The former king and queen took hidden refuge in a small cottage at
Honfleur, whence they were to depart a few days later for England--ever a
refuge for exiled monarchists. Escape became very urgent, and the king,
with an English passport in the name of William Smith, and the queen as
Madame Lebrun, crossed over to Le Havre and ultimately to England.
Lamartine evidently mistakes even the time and place of this incident,
but newspaper accounts of the time, both French and English, are very full
as to the details. On landing at the quai at Le Havre, the ex-royal party
was conducted to the "Express" steam-packet, which had been placed at
their disposal for the cross-channel journey. Dumas takes the very
incident as a detail for his story of "Pauline," and his treatment thereof
does not differ greatly from the facts as above set forth. Two years later
(August 26, 1850), at Claremont, in Surrey, in the presence of the queen
and several members of his family, Louis-Philippe died. He was the last of
the Bourbons, with whom Dumas proudly claimed acquaintanceship, and as
such, only a short time before, was one of the mightiest of the world's
monarchs, standing on one of the loftiest pinnacles of an ambition which,
in the mind of a stronger or more wilful personality, might have
accomplished with success much that with him resulted in defeat.
After the maelstrom of discontent--the Revolution of 1848--had settled
down, there came a series of events well-nigh as disturbing. Events in
Paris were rapidly ripening for a change. The known determination of Louis
Napoleon to prolong his power, either as president for another term of
four years, or for life, or as consul or emperor of the French, and the
support which his pretensions received from large masses of the people and
from the rank and file of the army, had brought him into collision with a
rival--General Changarnier--almost as powerful as himself, and with an
ambition quite as daring as his own.
What Louis Napoleon wanted was evident. There was no secret about his
designs. The partisans of Henri V. looked to Changarnier for the
restoration of peace and legitimacy, and the Orleanists considered that he
was the most likely man in France to bring back the house of Orleans, and
the comfortable days of bribery, corruption, and a thriving trade; while
the fat _bourgeoisie_ venerated him as the unflinching foe of the
disturbers of order, and the great bulwark against Communism and the Red
Republic.
Still, this was manifestly not to be, though no one seemed to care a straw
about Louis Napoleon's republic, or whether or no he dared to declare
himself king or emperor, or whether they should be ruled by Bonapartist,
Bourbon, or Orleanist.
These were truly perilous times for France; and, though they did not
culminate in disaster until twenty years after, Louis Napoleon availed
himself of every opportunity to efface from the Second Republic, of which
he was at this time the head, every vestige of the democratic features
which it ought to have borne.
At the same time he surrounded himself with imposing state and pomp, so
regal in character that it was evidently intended to accustom the public
to see in him the object of that homage which is usually reserved for
crowned heads alone, and thus gradually and imperceptibly to prepare the
nation to witness, without surprise, his assuming, when the favourable
occasion offered, the purple and diadem of the empire.
For instance, he took up his residence in the ancient palace of the
sovereigns of France, the Tuileries, and gave banquets and balls of regal
magnificence; he ordered his effigy to be struck upon the coinage of the
nation, surrounded by the words "Louis Napoleon Bonaparte," without any
title, whether as president or otherwise, being affixed. He restored the
imperial eagles to the standards of the army; the official organ, the
_Moniteur_, recommended the restoration of the titles and orders of
hereditary nobility; the trees of liberty were uprooted everywhere; the
Republican motto, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," was erased from the
public edifices; the colossal statue of Liberty, surmounted by a Phrygian
cap, which stood in the centre of the Place de Bourgogne, behind the
Legislative Assembly, was demolished; and the old anti-Republican names of
the streets were restored, so that the Palais National again became the
Palais Royal; the Theatre de la Nation, the Theatre Francais; the Rue de
la Concorde, the Rue Royal, etc.; and, in short, to all appearances, Louis
Napoleon began early in his tenure of office to assiduously pave the way
to the throne of the empire as Napoleon III.
[Illustration: PALAIS ROYAL, STREET FRONT]
The _London Times_ correspondent of that day related a characteristic
exercise of this sweeping instruction of the Minister of the Interior to
erase the words "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite" from all public buildings.
(The three revolutionary watchwords had, in fact, been erased the previous
year from the principal entrance to the Elysee, and the words "Republique
Francaise," in large letters, were substituted.)
"There is, I believe, only one public monument in Paris--the Ecole de
Droit--where the workmen employed in effacing that inscription will have a
double duty. They will have to interfere with the 'Liberalism' of two
generations. Immediately under the coat of yellow paint which covered the
facade of the building, and on which time and the inclemency of the
seasons have done their work, may still be traced, above the modern
device, the following words, inscribed by order of the Commune of Paris
during the Reign of Terror: 'Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite, Unite,
Indivisibilite de la Republique Francaise!' As the effacing of the
inscription of 1848 is not now by means of whitewash or paint, but by
erasure, both the inscriptions will disappear at the same moment."
Among the most important demolitions and renovations of the sixties was
the work undertaken on the Louvre at the orders of the ambitious emperor,
Napoleon III. The structure was cloven to the foundations, through the
slated roof, the gilded and painted ceiling, the parqueted floors; and,
where one formerly enjoyed an artistic feast that had taken four centuries
to provide, one gazed upon, from the pavement to the roof, a tarpaulin
that closed a vista which might otherwise have been a quarter of a mile in
length.
Builders toiled day and night to connect the Louvre with the main body of
the Palace of the Tuileries, which itself was to disappear within so short
a time. Meanwhile so great a displacement of the art treasures was
undergone, that _habitues_ knew not which way to turn for favourite
pictures, with which the last fifty years had made them so familiar.
To those of our elders who knew the Paris of the early fifties, the
present-day aspect--in spite of all its glorious wealth of boulevards and
architectural splendour--will suggest the mutability of all things.
It serves our purpose, however, to realize that much of the character has
gone from the Quartier Latin; that the Tuileries disappeared with the
Commune, and that the old distinctions between Old Paris, the faubourgs,
and the Communal Annexes, have become practically non-existent with the
opening up of the Haussman boulevards, at the instigation of the wary
Napoleon III. Paris is still, however, an "_ancienne ville et une ville
neuve_," and the paradox is inexplicable.
The differences between the past and the present are indeed great, but
nowhere--not even in the Tower of London, which is usually given as an
example of the contrast and progress of the ages--is a more tangible and
specific opposition shown, than in what remains to-day of mediaeval Paris,
in juxtaposition with the later architectural embellishments. In many
instances is seen the newest of the "_art nouveau_"--as it is popularly
known--cheek by jowl with some mediaeval shrine.
It is difficult at this time to say what effect these swirls and blobs,
which are daily thrusting themselves into every form of architectural
display throughout Continental Europe, would have had on these masters
who built the Gothic splendours of France, or even the hybrid _rococo_
style, which, be it not denied, is in many instances beautiful in spite of
its idiosyncrasies.
* * * * *
To those who are familiar with the "sights" of Paris, there is nothing
left but to study the aspects of the life of the streets, the boulevards,
the quais, the gardens, the restaurants, and the cafes. Here at least is
to be found daily, and hourly, new sensations and old ones, but at all
events it is an ever-shifting scene, such as no other city in the world
knows.
The life of the _faubourgs_ and of the _quartiers_ has ever been made the
special province of artists and authors, and to wander through them, to
sit beneath the trees of the squares and gardens, or even outside a cafe,
is to contemplate, in no small degree, much of the incident and
temperament of life which others have already perpetuated and made famous.
There is little new or original effort which can be made, though once and
again a new performer comes upon the stage,--a poet who sings songs of
vagabondage, a painter who catches a fleeting impression, which at least,
if not new, seems new. But in the main one has to hark back to former
generations, if one would feel the real spirit of romance and tradition.
There are few who, like Monet, can stop before a shrine and see in it
forty-three varying moods--or some other incredible number, as did that
artist when he limned his impressions of the facade of the Cathedral of
Notre Dame de Rouen.
Such landmarks as the Place de la Bastille, the Pantheon,--anciently the
site of the Abbey de Ste. Genevieve,--the Chambre des Deputes,--the former
Palais Bourbon,--the Tour St. Jacques, the Fountain des Innocents, St.
Germain l'Auxerrois, the Palais du Luxembourg, the Louvre, and quite all
the historic and notable buildings one sees, are all pictured with
fidelity, and more or less minuteness, in the pages of Dumas' romances.
Again, in such other localities as the Boulevard des Italiens, the Cafe de
Paris, the Theatre Francais, the Odeon, the Palais Royal,--where, in the
"Orleans Bureau," Dumas found his first occupation in Paris,--took place
many incidents of Dumas' life, which are of personal import.
For recollections and reminders of the author's contemporaries, there are
countless other localities too numerous to mention. In the Rue Pigalle, at
No. 12, died Eugene Scribe; in the Rue de Douai lived Edmond About, while
in the Rue d'Amsterdam, at No. 77, lived Dumas himself, and in the Rue St.
Lazare, Madame George Sand. Montmartre is sacred to the name of Zola in
the minds of most readers of latter-day French fiction, while many more
famous names of all ranks, of litterateurs, of actors, of artists and
statesmen,--all contemporaries and many of them friends of Dumas,--will be
found on the tombstones of Pere la Chaise.
The motive, then, to be deduced from these pages is that they are a record
of many things associated with Alexandre Dumas, his life, and his work.
Equally so is a fleeting itinerary of strolls around and about the Paris
of Dumas' romances, with occasional journeys into the provinces.
[Illustration: 77 Rue d'Amsterdam]
[Illustration: Rue de St. Denis]
Thus the centuries have done their work of extending and mingling,--"_le
jeu est fait_," so to speak,--but Paris, by the necessities of her growth
and by her rather general devotion to one stately, towering form of
domestic architecture, has often made the separation of old from new
peculiarly difficult to a casual eye. It is indeed her way to be new and
splendid, to be always the bride of cities, espousing human destiny. And,
truly, it is in this character that we do her homage with our visits, our
money, and our admiration. Out of gray, unwieldy, distributed London
one flies from a vast and romantic camp to a city exact and beautiful. So
exact, so beautiful, so consistent in her vivacity, so neat in her
industry, so splendid in her display, that one comes to think that the
ultimate way to enjoy Paris is to pass unquestioning and unsolicitous into
her life, exclaiming not "Look here," and "Look there" in a fever of
sightseeing, but rather baring one's breast, like Daudet's _ouvrier_, to
her assaults of glistening life.
* * * * *
The Paris of to-day is a reconstructed Paris; its old splendours not
wholly eradicated, but changed in all but their associations. The life of
Paris, too, has undergone a similar evolution, from what it was even in
Dumas' time.
The celebrities of the Cafe de Paris have mostly, if not quite all, passed
away. No more does the eccentric Prince Demidoff promulgate his
eccentricities into the very faces of the onlookers; no more does the
great Dumas make omelettes in golden sugar-bowls; and no more does he pass
his criticisms--or was it encomiums?--on the _veau saute_.
The student revels of the _quartier_ have become more sedate, if not more
fastidious, and there is no such Mardi Gras and Mi-Careme festivities as
used to hold forth on the boulevards in the forties. And on the Buttes
Chaumont and Montmartre are found batteries of questionable
amusements,--especially got up for the delectation of _les Anglais_,
provincials, and soldiers off duty,--in place of the _cabarets_, which, if
of doubtful morality, were at least a certain social factor.
New bridges span the Seine, and new thoroughfares, from humble alleys to
lordly and magnificent boulevards, have clarified many a slum, and
brightened and sweetened the atmosphere; so there is some considerable
gain there.
The Parisian cabby is, as he always was, a devil-may-care sort of a
fellow, who would as soon run you down with his sorry old outfit as not;
but perhaps even his characteristics will change sooner or later, now that
the automobile is upon us in all its proclaimed perfection.
The "New Opera," that sumptuous structure which bears the inscription
"Academie Nationale de Musique," begun by Garnier in 1861, and completed a
dozen years later, is, in its commanding situation and splendid
appointments, the peer of any other in the world. In spite of this, its
fame will hardly rival that of the Comedie Francaise, or even the Opera
Comique of former days, and the names of latter-day stars will have
difficulty in competing with those of Rachel, Talma, and their fellow
actors on the stage of other days.
Whom, if you please, have we to-day whose name and fame is as wide as
those just mentioned? None, save Madame Bernhardt, who suggests to the
well-informed person--who is a very considerable body--the preeminent
influences which formerly emanated from Paris in the fifties. But this of
itself is a subject too vast for inclusion here, and it were better passed
by. So, too, with the Parisian artists who made the art of the world in
the latter half of the nineteenth century. Decamps, Delacroix, Corot, and
Vernet are names with which to conjure up reminiscences as great as those
of Rubens, Titian, and Van Dyke. This may be disputed, but, if one were
given the same familiarity therewith, it is possible that one's contrary
opinion would be greatly modified.
To-day, in addition to the glorious art collection of former times, there
are the splendid, though ever shifting, collections of the Musee du
Luxembourg, the mural paintings of the Hotel de Ville, which are a gallery
in themselves, and the two spring Salon exhibitions, to say nothing of the
newly attempted Salon d'Automne. Curiously enough, some of us find great
pleasure in the contemplation of the decorations in the interiors of the
great _gares_ of the Lyons or the Orleans railways. Certainly these last
examples of applied art are of a lavishness--and even excellence--which a
former generation would not have thought of.
The Arc de Triomphe d'Etoile, of course, remains as it always has since
its erection at the instigation of Napoleon I.; while the Bois de Boulogne
came into existence as a municipal pleasure-ground only in the early
fifties, and has since endured as the great open-air attraction of Paris
for those who did not wish to go farther afield.
The churches have not changed greatly in all this time, except that they
had some narrow escapes during the Franco-Prussian War, and still narrower
ones during the Commune. It may be remarked here _en passant_ that, for
the first time in seventy years, so say the records, there has just been
taken down the scaffolding which, in one part or another, has surrounded
the church of St. Eustache. Here, then, is something tangible which has
not changed until recently (March, 1904), since the days when Dumas first
came to Paris.
The Paris of the nineteenth century is, as might naturally be inferred,
that of which the most is known; the eighteenth and seventeenth are indeed
difficult to follow with accuracy as to the exact locale of their events;
but the sixteenth looms up--curiously enough--more plainly than either of
the two centuries which followed. The histories, and even the guide-books,
will explain why this is so, so it shall have no place here.
Order, of a sort, immediately came forth from out the chaos of the
Revolution. The great Napoleon began the process, and, in a way, it was
continued by the plebeian Louis-Philippe, elaborated in the Second Empire,
and perfected--if a great capital such as Paris ever really is
perfected--under the Third Republic.
Improvement and demolition--which is not always improvement--still go on,
and such of Old Paris as is not preserved by special effort is fast
falling before the stride of progress.
A body was organized in 1897, under the name of the "_Commission du Vieux
Paris_," which is expected to do much good work in the preservation of the
chronicles in stone of days long past.
The very streets are noisy with the echo of an unpeaceful past; and their
frequent and unexpected turnings, even in these modern days, are
suggestive of their history in a most graphic manner.
The square in front of the Fontaine des Innocents is but an ancient
burial-ground; before the Hotel de Ville came Etienne Marcel; and
Charlemagne to the cathedral; the Place de la Concorde was the death-bed
of the Girondins, and the Place de la Madeleine the tomb of the Capetians;
and thus it is that Paris--as does no other city--mingles its centuries of
strife amid a life which is known as the most vigorous and varied of its
age.
To enter here into a detailed comparison between the charm of Paris of
to-day and yesterday would indeed be a work of supererogation; and only in
so far as it bears directly upon the scenes and incidents amid which Dumas
lived is it so made.