PARIS OF LOUIS THE “WELL-BELOVED”
It was a pitiful country to which Louis XV fell heir (in 1715) when his
great-grandfather died. The peasants had been taxed to the last sou, the
nobles, untaxed and selfish, scrambled greedily for court preferment and
left their estates uncared for, many of the _bourgeois_ tried to emulate
the nobles in extravagance, and all of them seemed to view with apathy a
government in which the most intelligent part of the community had an
extremely small share.
The _nouveau riche_ has his place in the picture. It is related of a
rich salt manufacturer, for instance, that he was asked by a friend to
whom he was showing a fine villa that he had just built, why a certain
niche was left vacant. Proud of his occupation the owner replied that he
intended to fill the space with a statue symbolic of his business. To
which the friend retorted with a prompt suggestion, “Lot’s wife.”
At the time of his accession Louis was but five years old, and the
regency was given into the hands of the unscrupulous Duke of Orleans.
Both courtiers and Parisians were delighted at the removal of the court
from Versailles to the city, but the good people of the town soon
realized that the added liveliness was a doubtful advantage, for the
gayeties of the Palais Royal in which the regent lived were gross
debaucheries. Even holy days were not held sacred, and Orleans is said
to have expressed extravagant admiration for a certain church dignitary
who was reputed not to have gone to bed sober for forty years. To such a
pass did the extravagances fostered by the regent grow that even Louis
the Well-Beloved, himself the Prince of Extravagance, was compelled
later to pass sumptuary laws regulating dress and the expense of
entertainments.
There is in the French character to-day a certain credulity as concerns
“get-rich-quick” schemes which renders the people astonishingly
responsive to the efforts of swindlers like Madame Humbert, notorious a
few years ago. It is a quality in curious contrast to the shrewdness
which makes them the readiest financiers of modern Europe, yet in a way
it supplements the thrift which some students look upon as a result of
the bitter days of the “Old Régîme,” the pinching period that resulted
in the Revolution. It would seem that this characteristic is not a
modern phenomenon, for at the beginning of Louis XV’s reign a Scotsman
named Law proposed a paper money scheme that was seized upon with
eagerness by all classes of an impoverished society. Nor was it a
phenomenon peculiar to France, for at about the same time the South Sea
Bubble was exciting England to a frenzy of acquisitiveness. Whatever the
psychology, all France and especially all Paris went wild over Law’s
propositions. He issued small notes which he redeemed in specie until he
won the confidence of the public and the government endorsed his bank
and permitted the use of his paper in payment of taxes. The Mississippi
valley was supposed at that time to abound in gold and silver and Law’s
office in the rue Quincampoix, near the Halles and the church of Saint
Leu, was fairly besieged by courtiers and clergy, by tradesmen and
ladies of the nobility eager to buy stock in a mining company which Law
organized. West of the Halles, near the Hôtel de Soissons, was a Bourse
des Valeurs established entirely for the conduct of business connected
with Law’s schemes.
It is probable that Law was self-deceived. At any rate, when the bubble
burst he was as hard hit financially as any of his victims, and, in
addition, barely escaped with his life from their wrath, when they
besieged his bank in the Place Vendôme and rushed, howling with rage, to
the Palais Royal where they thought he had taken refuge. The government
repudiated its debts, but private individuals could not do that and the
ruin was general. A rhyme of the day says:
On Monday I bought share on share;
On Tuesday I was a millionaire;
On Wednesday I took a grand abode;
On Thursday in my carriage rode;
On Friday drove to the Opera-ball;
On Saturday came to the paupers’ hall.
Louis ruled--or misruled--for sixty years. In the space of six decades
much may happen for good or ill, but this long reign was marked by no
rises and by few falls, merely by a gradual, consistent decadence. The
country engaged in the War of the Polish Succession, the War of the
Austrian Succession, and the Seven Years’ War, and in all lost
territory, men and prestige, while the effects of the hated tax
collector added to the ever-growing misery. The people were too crushed
to do more than look on dully while their sovereign secured in infamous
ways the wherewithal for his infamous pleasures. He sold the liberty of
his subjects, for any one who could pay for a warrant (_lettre de
cachet_) could put a private enemy into prison where he might lie
forgotten for years. He sold the lives of his people, for he starved
them to death by scores through the negotiation of a successful corner
in food stuffs. Even when he disbanded the parliaments (courts) the
only bodies that were trying to do anything, there was small stir made
about it.
Louis encouraged a persecution of the Huguenots, yet, Catholic though he
was, he favored the expulsion of the Jesuits against whom the
Jansenists, also Catholics, were contending. Friend was pitted against
friend, neighbor against neighbor in these fierce quarrels based on
religious differences, always the fiercest quarrels that man can know.
The persecution was often petty, always bitter, yet it had its serious
side when Pascal and the writers who gathered at Port Royal entered into
philosophic discussion. This serious addiction of the people was a
curious aspect of the mental and moral state of the period. While some
people were entering heart and soul into these arguments there was at
the same time an ample number of readers who devoured with gusto poems,
plays and novels so coarse that to-day they never would reach print.
That the same people might be interested in both sorts of literature is
attested by the temper of some of the highest ecclesiastics who not only
connived at the king’s immoral life, but furthered it. In some
temperaments the extremes of the age produced an unbalanced state. This
showed itself at one time throughout Paris in the behavior of the
“Convulsionaries of Saint Médard,” who hysterically proclaimed the
miracles performed at the tombs of two priests buried in the ancient
churchyard of Saint Médard, near the Gobelins factory. So wide-spread
and so distracting was this belief that the graveyard was closed to the
public. This step caused a wit to fasten upon the wall an inscription.
“By order of the king, God is forbidden to perform miracles in this
place.”
Contemporary accounts of the execution of a man who had made an attempt
upon the life of the king shows a callousness to suffering that would
seem impossible if one had not read recently of the brutalities of the
Balkan war, nearly three hundred years later. The execution took place
as usual in the Place de Grève, and every window and balcony was filled
with eager spectators, many of them elegantly dressed ladies of the
court who played cards to while away the moments of waiting. The poor
wretch who was to furnish amusement for this gay throng was placed on an
elevated table where all might see him, and he was gashed and torn and
twisted and burned and broken for an hour before the breath mercifully
left his mangled body.
Like his great-grandfather, Louis preferred Versailles to Paris, but not
for the Sun King’s reason. He had no especial desire to keep his eye on
his courtiers, but kindred spirits he gathered about him and the
favorites of Madame de Pompadour ruled and of Madame du Barry vulgarized
the once decorous though far from impeccable salons of Versailles.
With lowered taste architecture became _rococo_ and decoration a mass of
wreaths and shells and leaves and scrolls.
In Paris, meanwhile, the Louvre fell into such disrepair that it was
habitable only by people willing to live in haphazard fashion for the
sake of a free lodging, while private stables occupied much of the
ground floor and the government post horses stamped and kicked beneath
Perrault’s unfinished colonnade. Disgusted at this eyesore in their once
beautiful city the Parisians authorized the Provost of the Merchants to
offer to repair the building at the expense of the town. Louis, however,
seems to have thought that if the citizens had so much money to spend it
had better be on him, and he refused the offer and set about devising
new ways of capturing the hidden coin.
Of building there could not be much at a time when the monarch took no
pride in his own chief city and suffered no expenditures except those
that he saw no way of diverting to his own yawning purse. One of the few
constructions of Louis’ date is the Mint, built on one of the left bank
quays on a part of the site once occupied
[Illustration: ELYSÉE PALACE, RESIDENCE OF PRESIDENT OF FRANCE.]
[Illustration: CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES (PALAIS BOURBON).]
by the ancient Hôtel de Nesle. It contains a museum of coins and medals
as well as the workshops for the making of coins.
Another of the king’s languid interests was the Military School which
looms imposingly across the southeastern end of the Champ de Mars as the
modern tourist sits at luncheon on the first ‘stage’ of the Eiffel
Tower. The Field of Mars itself, now green with lawns and bright with
flowers, was laid out as a drill ground on the very spot where a battle
with the Normans took place during the siege of 885 A.D. Its great size
has frequently made it useful for large gatherings of people, and no
fewer than four World Exhibitions have erected their plaster cities upon
its ample space.
Another open place of impressive size was the present Place de la
Concorde, first called the Place Louis XV. This vast square, now the
center of Paris, was framed on the side of the Tuileries gardens by
balustrades designed by Gabriel, the architect of the Military School,
and was planned as a setting for that colossal statue of the King on
which a wag pinned a placard saying:
“He is here as at Versailles,
Without heart and without entrails.”
The square stood on the western edge of the settled part of the city,
but not too far away for the appropriate erection of the handsome
buildings still standing on the north side restored to their early
dignity. One of these, built as a storehouse for state effects, is now
used by the Ministry of Marine. The other was a private _hôtel_. Between
the two the rue Royale runs a little way northward to the classic church
of the Madeleine, whose cornerstone Louis laid on the site of a former
chapel, but whose construction was long delayed. Standing on its broad
steps to-day the eye follows the vista of the rue Royale across the
square and over the river to the Palace of Deputies, begun as the Palais
Bourbon in the early part of Louis XV’s reign.
It was in the rue Royale that most of the deaths occurred during Louis
XVI’s wedding festivities, and it was through this street that the
tumbrils laden with victims for the guillotine came from the rue Saint
Honoré.
A little way from the _place_ on the west is the Palace of the Élysée,
which the government furnishes as a mansion for the President of the
Republic. It has been rebuilt and restored since its first condition as
a private house which Louis XV bought and gave to Madame de Pompadour.
Not being of a markedly religious turn except when he was ill, it is not
surprising that Louis promoted the construction of very few churches.
One of them, Saint Philippe-du-Roule, replaced a leper hospital. A few
years before the Madeleine was begun, a new church of Sainte Geneviève
was planned as a crown for the Mont Sainte Geneviève. Great difficulties
had to be overcome in providing a firm foundation, for the elevation was
found to be honeycombed with the quarries of Gallo-Roman days. It was
fifty years after its beginning before the adjoining abbey chapel of
Sainte Geneviève, which the new building was to replace, was torn down,
leaving the fine dome-crowned church--now the Pantheon--to stand
uncrowded.
Opposite the Pantheon to the west is the Law School, designed by the
same architect, Soufflot.
In public utilities Paris found herself somewhat richer than before
Louis’ reign. The postal service attained such effective organization
that it made three deliveries a day and was housed in a large and
adequately equipped building. It became usual to number all the houses
as had been done for some two hundred years on the house-laden bridges.
The names of streets were cut on stone blocks and affixed to a corner
building.
In spite of the discomfort of getting about the large city through dirty
streets carriages had been introduced but slowly into the city. As late
as the sixteenth century only the king and ladies of the court used the
heavy coaches which were called “chariots.” In the next century chairs
carried by porters became fashionable among the extravagantly dressed
and bewigged. A cab service, established midway through the hundred
years won instant favor, and was greatly improved in Louis XV’s time,
though Parisians were condemned for many decades longer to traverse the
town through streets unprovided with sidewalks and defiantly dirty.
It is hard for the admirers of twentieth century Paris cleanliness to
realize that an English traveler, writing just before the French
Revolution, complains bitterly of the dirt and disorder and danger of
the streets and compares them most unfavorably with London
thoroughfares.
Another undertaking, this time of scientific interest, was the tracing
of the meridian of Paris from the Observatory of the left bank across
the river to Montmartre on the right of the Seine. In the left transept
of the church of Saint Sulpice is a section of the line, and a small
obelisk on which a ray of sunlight falls from the south at exactly noon.
At the same moment the sun’s rays set off a cannon, placed where the
meridian crosses the garden of the Palais Royal.
That the fire service was not astonishingly competent seems to be
indicated by the disasters
[Illustration: CHURCH OF SAINTE GENEVIÈVE, NOW THE PANTHEON.]
of this century. Twice serious fires destroyed large parts of the Hotel
Dieu, the old general hospital. It had become so crowded in the Sun
King’s time that six and eight patients were put into one bed. Nothing
was done to relieve the situation, however, until it reached such a pass
that even the careless Regent was aroused and provided money for the
building of a new wing by taxing public amusements. The second
conflagration (in 1772) was not extinguished for eleven days. Many
sufferers were burned in their beds, and hundreds of others, turned out
into the December cold, took refuge in near-by Notre Dame.
In the same year with the earlier fire at the hospital (1737) a two-day
conflagration started by prisoners worked havoc with the palace of the
Cité. In 1777 another destroyed the front of the palace. Another fire
earlier in the century had its origin in the efforts of a poor woman to
recover the body of her drowned son through the mediation of Saint
Nicholas. To that end she set afloat in the Seine a wooden bowl
containing a loaf of bread and a lighted candle. The candle set fire to
a barge of hay. Some one cut the boat loose and it was swept by the
current under the Petit Pont which was consumed with all its burden of
houses. The bridge was quickly replaced, but without any buildings on
it, a fashion followed toward the end of Louis XVI’s reign when the
Pont Neuf and the Pont Notre Dame were cleared.
The Pont Neuf’s broad expanse became at once the field for hucksters and
mountebanks of all sorts; here strikers assembled near the statue of
Henry IV; here, according to an old verse-maker, there was much
love-making near the “Bronze Horse;” and here the enlisting officers
plied their activities even up to a quarter of a century ago when army
service became compulsory.