Paris was born in the Isle of the Seine, whose shape is that of a
cradle, and of which Sauval speaks so picturesquely: "The isle of the
City is fashioned like a great ship sunk in the slime and stranded at
the surface of the water, in the middle of the Seine."
This particularity must certainly have struck the heraldists of every
age, and from it comes the vessel that is blazoned on the old escutcheon
of Paris.
So the City presents itself with its prow to the west and its poop to
the east.
[Illustration: VIEW OF THE PONT-NEUF, TAKEN FROM AN OVAL WINDOW IN THE
COLONNADE OF THE LOUVRE
_Water-colour by Nicolle_ (Carnavalet Museum)]
The poop is Notre-Dame, and the prow, joined to the two banks by two
ropes of stone, is the old Pont-Neuf, raised on the extreme end of what
was formerly the islet of the Cow-Ferryman, where, on the 11th of March
1314, were burnt Jacques de Molay, Grand-Master of the Templars, and
Guy, Prior of Normandy,--the Pont-Neuf, the foundation of which was laid
by Henri III. on the 31st of May 1578, and was decorated with the
coats-of-arms of the King, the Queen-Mother, and the Town of Paris. When
the first pile emerged from the water, on the side of the Quay of the
Augustines, the King betook himself thither from the Louvre in a
magnificent barque, accompanied by the Queen-Mother, Catherine de
Medici, and by Queen Louise de Vaudemont, his wife. Henri III. looked
melancholy; on the same morning, he had interred, in the Church of St.
Paul Quélus, the dearest of his favourites, who had died from wounds
received, some weeks before, in the famous duel of the Minions.
The irreverent Parisians did not hesitate to declare that, out of
respect for the Royal sadness, the new bridge ought to be called "the
Bridge of Tears." But this opinion did not last; and, as soon as Henri
IV. had inaugurated it, in June 1603, "still unsafe" and unachieved, the
Pont-Neuf became the gayest place in Paris. Mondor sold his balsam
there, and Tabarin spouted his idle talk; there it was that the ape
of Brioché amused the passers-by; there that the Mazarinades were
hummed; there that duellists unsheathed their swords, and the bands of
Cartouche and Mandrin gallantly relieved pedestrians of their purses. On
the merry Pont-Neuf all Paris took their airings, enjoyed themselves,
made appointments; Loret went there to gather information for the
_Rhyming Gazette_:--
"If I this week had been the man
To visit the Samaritan,
From Jack and Tom I should have heard
Everything that has occurred...."
From the seventeenth century, it was asserted to be impossible to cross
the twelve arches of the popular bridge without meeting a monk, a white
horse, and two obliging women. It was the official route for Royal
processions proceeding to the Parliament; and, at the Pont-Neuf, rioters
assembled when going to burn in effigy, on the Dauphine Square, such
Presidents as were suspected of rendering more services than judicial
decisions. Here also, in 1789, the people compelled those who were in
carriages to stop and bow low to the effigy of good King Henri, whose
statue, supported at the four angles by the four figures of slaves that
Richelieu had had placed there, stood in the middle of the raised space
where, in 1792, were signed the voluntary enlistments, and where the
cannon resounded, calling to arms, at tragical moments of the
Revolution. The whole history of Paris has to do with the wonderful old
Pont-Neuf, celebrated throughout the world, the masterpiece of Androuet
du Cerceau and of Germain Pilon--the Pont-Neuf which was the main
thoroughfare of ancient Paris.
[Illustration: WORKSHOPS AND FOUNDATIONS OF THE CITY BARRACKS
IN 1864-1865
_Photographed by Richebourg, 29 Quai de L'Horloge_]
It is therefore by the Old City that our walks should commence. We shall
come across some rare vestiges of the primitive Lutecia. On several
occasions, behind the apse of Notre-Dame, fragments of ramparts have
been found, and some of the stones forming these antique defences are
discovered to have been taken from the arenas constructed by the Romans.
The benches of the circus had contributed to check the Norman invasion;
does not the wall of Pericles on the Acropolis contain broken fragments
of antique marble statues?...
But the glory of the City is Notre-Dame! Let us follow the winding,
picturesque Rue Chanoinesse, where the great Balzac lodged Madame de la
Chanterie, and, at No. 18, let us climb the tottering staircase of the
Dagobert Tower, an old and precious débris of the canonical buildings
that once enclosed the Cathedral of Paris. A few dozen worn-down steps
will bring us to a narrow platform whence we shall behold an admirable
sight.
[Illustration: VIEW OF NOTRE-DAME
_J. C. Nattes, del._]
Notre-Dame, radiantly beautiful, rises, like a large stone flower, from
a mass of flat roofs, grey or blue, and the majestic outlines of its
towers stand out in their immensity against the horizon. Beneath every
caprice of the hour or light, whether the sun gilds this splendour or
its carvings are mantled in snow, while a carpet of spotless flakes
stretches below, whether the flaming sky frames its violet bulk in
melting gold or the storm wraps it in its copper clouds, ever the noble
Cathedral appears in its shining beauty and unsurpassed grandeur. The
elegant spire that completes it shoots clearly and proudly into the air,
and flights of crows whirl, with shrill cawings, round the blossoming
roofs of the Paris Basilica. Over there, above a dazzling view of
carvings, chimneys, gables, bridges, steeples, and streets, the far-off
azures melt into soft tints, and finally mingle, on the horizon, in a
vague colouring; the beasts of the Apocalypse, which the talented
artists of times gone by poised on the tower balustrades, bend
grimacingly and jeeringly over the vast Paris that feverishly lives and
moves below! It is one of the noblest sights of the Tower that our
enchanted eyes have just gazed upon.
On the other side, it is the Seine, a silver streak furrowed with boats
and barges; then, further on, the noble outlines of the old Paris, and,
marking its profiles on the low clouds, in the foreground, Saint-Gervais
and Saint-Protais, an antique and precious sanctuary of the sixteenth
century, one of the few remaining that preserve the secret charm of
those country churches in which the soul feels itself, within the
demi-obscurity of their chapels, more devout, more touched, and closer
to the infinite, beneath the painted windows darkened by the dust of
centuries and the smoke of incense.
In the prolongation of Notre Dame and behind the Hôtel-Dieu, before
reaching the Palais de Justice, one formerly came across a labyrinth of
winding, narrow, evil-smelling streets--the Rue de la Juiverie, the Rue
aux Fèves, the Rue de la Calandre, the Rue des Marmousets; for centuries
this quarter had been the haunt of the lowest prostitution; there, too,
dyers had established their many-coloured tubs; and blue, red, or green
streams flowed down these streets with their old Parisian names. Humble
chapels nestled under the eaves of Notre-Dame,--Sainte-Marine,
Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs, and Saint-Jean-le-Rond, in which last
d'Alembert was buried. The Hôtel-Dieu opened on the right of the
Cathedral, and formed, with the close of Notre-Dame, a really imposing
setting for it. On this site, the Second Empire built the new Hôtel-Dieu
and the Prefecture of Police; and these two ugly structures, without
taste or originality, seem to be the natural foils of France's national
glory, Notre-Dame-de-Paris.
In the Rue Massillon, at the back of a stone porch which time has
covered with moss, a tiny courtyard opens, at No. 6, over whose damp
pavement occasionally passes a Sister of Charity in her white cap; an
old, monumental, wooden staircase, dating back to Henri IV., leads there
to some poor dwellings in a building up this courtyard. Within this
humble, provincial-looking house, half monastic in appearance, who would
believe himself in the heart of Paris, a few yards away from the Town
Hall and the Prefecture of Police? Gone the "Cloister," whose gardens at
the bottom were still in existence seven years ago. A huge, hideous
structure, resembling a barracks, to-day hides all the apse of
Notre-Dame, and the antique "Motte-aux-Papelards," the ordinary
meeting-place for the staff of the Metropolis, is replaced by a square,
a sort of open-roofed museum, where the bits of carving are arranged
that time, or regrettable though necessary restorations, have detached
from the Cathedral.
[Illustration: THE "PETIT-PONT"
_Etching by Meryon_]
Along the Rue de la Colombe passed the Gallo-Roman belt of the City,
near the house inhabited by Fulbert, the uncle who employed such cruel
arguments with the unfortunate Héloïse, Abelard's friend. In the Rue des
Ursins, at No. 19, may still be perceived the remains of a chapel of the
twelfth century, by name Saint-Aignan; St. Bernard is said to have
preached in it. It was one of the numerous sanctuaries in which, during
the Terror, refractory priests, under the most singular
disguises--water-carriers, national guards, waggoners, masons--came, as
they passed through the town, to say mass almost regularly to the
faithful, who were frightened neither by the guillotine, nor Fouquier's
trackers, nor the Revolutionary Committees' order-bearers. It is an
astonishing thing that not for a single day or hour was religious
ministration wanting to those who called for it, not even in the
Terror's most terrible period. At this time, the Bishop of Agde,
disguised as a costermonger, with a long beard, and carrying the
sacrament under his carmagnole, scoured Paris, officiating, and
confessing people in lofts, outhouses, and back-shops. In the Rue
Neuve-des-Capucins, mass was said in a chamber above the very dwelling
occupied by the terrible Conventional Baboeuf.
Did not the Abbé Emery, the Superior of Saint-Sulpice, from the depths
of his dungeon, where he strengthened the courage of the prisoners ("he
prevents them from crying out," said Fouquier-Tinville), organise
throughout the Paris prisons a ministry of monks that visited all the
sinister gaols, disguised as porters, old clothes-dealers, laundrymen,
wine-sellers? Even on the way to the scaffold, the unfortunates that
were being led to execution received the aid of religion: as the
death-carts passed by, from certain windows indicated beforehand,
priests, placed there, wafted to the condemned the absolution pronounced
over the dying.
Let us go to the other side of the close of Notre-Dame, where the
Hôtel-Dieu and its dependencies used to stand. There, once was the Tower
of the Foundlings, and the Cagnards, that old den of debauch of which
Meryon has left us such powerful etchings, and before which, as a child,
we were accustomed to stop with dread, while we watched the huge rats
that hid and roamed there, appearing in broad daylight and eating the
heaps of offal.
[Illustration: THE OLD PREFECTURE OF POLICE
(Formerly Jerusalem Street)
_Drawn by A. Maignan_]
Between Notre-Dame and the Palais de Justice, there once existed a
network of small streets round the Sainte-Chapelle and the Prefecture of
Police, with gardens that ran nearly down to the water's edge. At the
Pont Saint-Michel, some old houses still remain which witnessed the
riots of 1793, 1830, and 1848; another is to be found on the Quai des
Orfèvres, where the celebrated Sabra worked; he was a popular dentist
who modestly called himself the "people's tooth-drawer." To-day it is
one of the spots dear to lovers of old books, with its open-air
book-stalls, and also to anglers, who, in the sun and out of the way of
the river passenger-boats, can practise their tranquil sport.
Before describing the Conciergerie, let us cross the Cour du Mai; there
it was, in front of the steps leading to the Palais de Justice, on the
right, that every day the death-carts came during the Terror, and took,
at 4 o'clock, their dismal batch of those doomed to death, while, from
his office-window, Fouquier-Tinville coldly counted, as he picked his
teeth, the number of the victims who were going over there.
From this courtyard of blood, on a foggy day of November 1793, poor
Madame Roland, with hair cut and hands tied, started for the scaffold.
Her joyous childhood had been spent in a red-and-white brick house
which stood at the angle of the Quai de l'Horloge and the platform of
the Pont-Neuf, a few yards from the Conciergerie!
[Illustration: THE SAINTE-CHAPELLE IN 1875
_Etching by Toussaint_]
The charming landscape in which she had dreamed so fondly of glory and
liberty, she saw once more as she was being led to the guillotine amid
the shouts of infuriated men and women. Sanson had taken his ghastly
procession along the usual road--the Pont-au-Change, the Quai de la
Mégisserie, the Trois-Marie Square; and so, turning her eyes to the
further bank of the Seine, the poor woman, before she died, was able to
give a last look at the scenery she had been familiar with in happier
years, scenery over which rose the massive walls of the French
Panthéon--it was the new name of Sainte-Geneviève's Church which the
Convention had just re-baptized and devoted to the worship of our
national glories.
The Conciergerie was entered by a large arched door, containing a triple
wicket as protection, at the further side of a gloomy, narrow courtyard,
with mouldy paving-stones, which now is found on the right of the large
staircase of the Palais de Justice.
The nine steps that put it on a level with the Cour du Mai were mounted
by all the condemned victims of the Revolution. The Queen and Charlotte
Corday, Madame Elizabeth and Hubért's widow, the virtuous Bailly and
Madame du Bailly, Fouquier-Tinville and Monsieur de Malesherbes, Danton,
Robespierre, Camille Desmoulins, the Abbess of Montmartre, Madame
de Monaco and Anacharsis Clootz: princesses and Conventional, dukes
and Hébertists, generals of the Republic and "Fouquiers sheep," the
noblest, purest, bravest, the maddest and most miserable crossed this
fateful threshold.
Sanson, with his death-lists in hand, waited at the top of the
staircase, in front of the carts.
[Illustration: OPENING UP OF THE SPACE IN FRONT OF THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE
_Meunier, pinxit_]
The guillotine "tricoteuses" and criers thronged the top-steps of the
Palace and leaned forward, with shouts and abuse, and often with hand
that cast filth, over the unhappy prisoners. The melancholy toilet of
the condemned had been effected in the rotunda where the concierge had
his quarters, near the small whitewashed room in which the clerk
registered the arrival of the newcomers, and to which Sanson came to
give his receipt for the successive deliveries of those that he conveyed
to execution.
The clerk's arm-chair, and his table laden with registers, took up about
half of the narrow room. Sorts of desks placed along the wall sufficed
to receive the things which prisoners left behind, their sad relics, the
hair that had been cut off. A wooden railing separated the clerk's
office, properly so called, from a back portion of it, where these
prisoners spent the weary hours that intervened before the fatal
summons, so that those entering could talk with them. Fierce dogs came
smelling round to recognise a master, mistress, or acquaintance, and
friends or relatives could try to obtain from the gaoler's pity bits of
news concerning dear ones still shut up in the dark prison.
"On the day of my arrival," wrote Beugnot in his Memoirs, "two men were
waiting for the coming of the headsman. They were stripped of their
garments, and already had their hair thinned out and their neck
prepared. Their features were not changed. Either by accident or with
design, they held their hands in the position ready to be tied, and were
essaying attitudes of firmness and disdain. Mattresses down on the floor
revealed that they had spent their night in the place, had already
undergone this long punishment. By their side, were seen the remains of
the meal they had eaten. Their clothes were flung here and there; and
two candles that they had forgotten to extinguish cast back the daylight
and seemed to be the sole funereal illumination of the scene."
In the hundreds of "Prison Souvenirs" which were published immediately
after the fall of Robespierre, one may gain an idea of what sort of
existence prisoners led, deprived of every necessity, devoured by
vermin, brutally treated by drunken or cruel keepers; and one should see
the gloomy courtyard where they came to get a breath of fresh air, a
narrow triangular space of ground between the walls of the prison and
the women's yard. This arrangement had one compensation; a simple iron
railing separated the two enclosures, so that friends could exchange
looks and language, and even the last kiss and embrace.
[Illustration: THE COUR DES FILLES IN THE CONCIERGERIE
_Schaan, pinxit_]
This railing still exists, black, rusty, and ill-looking, creaking as of
yore; and it is not difficult to conjure up the images of those that
bent over it. Madame Elizabeth, Madame Roland, Cécile Renaud, Lucile
Desmoulins, Madame de Montmorency, and Charlotte Corday touched it with
their dresses; and Du Barry, one of the few women who trembled at the
prospect of death--"A minute longer, headsman"--also clung to it!
This railing, the so-called chapel of the Girondins, the passage called
the "Rue de Paris," the small infirmary, and the Queen's dungeon are,
together with the barred cell in which women awaited execution, the sole
vestiges of the ancient prison. Farther on, a big wall, newly raised,
shuts off the dismal route along which the condemned passed, and closes
up the former entrance to the registrar's office in the Conciergerie.
Let us take a hasty walk round the Prison, alas! modified and
rearranged. Let us pause, however, before the door of the dungeon in
which Marie Antoinette was confined during the last thirty-five days of
her life.
The Restoration, which assumed the task of sweeping away many things,
began with this melancholy place. Abominable coloured panes have been
put in the more than half-blocked up and carefully barred window from
behind which the Queen, whose eyes had suffered from the damp prison and
want of care, tried to obtain a little air and light.
Only the flooring of this room, three yards by five, is intact. A low
screen once divided it off from the chamber where two prison gendarmes
were continually on guard. There, the unfortunate woman pined, in lack
of everything, a prey to anxiety, without news of her family, reduced to
borrow the linen she required from the kindness of Richard, the porter.
Her last tire-woman was the humble servant Rosalie Lamorlière, who, "not
daring to make her a single curtsey for fear of compromising or
afflicting her," threw over her shoulders a white linen handkerchief, an
hour before her departure to the scaffold.
In striking contrast, this dungeon is separated only by a thin partition
from the apothecary's room, whither Robespierre--with fractured, hanging
jaw, his stockings down over his ankles on account of his varicose
sores, still clad in the fine, blue suit that, a few weeks previously,
at the Fête of the Supreme Being, had made so many jealous--was hustled,
all over blood and mud, like a hideous bundle.
Sinister-looking, silent, showing no signs of life save by the twinges
of pain he was suffering, impassible in presence of the insults of the
cowards who had acclaimed him the day before, the "Incorruptible one"
waited for them to come and tie him, panting, to the top of the cart
that should convey him, amid the cries of a whole population, to the
foot of the guillotine.
Above these dungeons, and connected with them by a narrow, winding
staircase, sat the terrible Revolutionary Tribunal in public audience.
Strangely enough, there is an almost total lack of documents as to this
most interesting corner of the Palace, where such great dramas were
played.
[Illustration: THE TRIUMPH OF MARAT
_Fragment of a picture by Boilly_ (Lille Museum)]
A picture by Boilly--_The Triumph of Marat_--which figures in the Lille
Museum, shows us, however, the entrance to the Revolutionary Tribunal.
The popular tribune, after his acquittal, issues in triumph from the
hall, frantically cheered by his habitual escort of criers and
adherents!
At the back, between two pillars, and underneath a bass-relief
representing the Law, a sort of forepart in boards opens, with an
inscription on it, "Revolutionary Tribunal!" That is the place.
The hall in which the Queen, the Girondins, and Madame Roland were
tried, was called _The Hall of Liberty_. In another, called _The Hall of
Equality_, appeared Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Westermann, Hubert, and
Charlotte Corday. The windows overlooked the Quai de l'Horloge; and
tradition relates that the echoes of Danton's powerful voice, when he
was on trial, penetrated through the open casements to the anxious crowd
massed on the other side of the Seine.
The last alterations carried out in this part of the Palais de Justice
have, alas! disturbed and changed everything; so that, of the
registrar's office, occupied by Richard and de Bault, which ought to
have remained sacred for ever, and of the unique exit from the Prison,
where such heartrending adieux were witnessed, and of the antechamber of
death, whose pavement was trodden by the condemned of all parties,
nothing is left to-day!
Administrative vandals have turned it into the Palace restaurant; and
cold meat, beer, and lemonade are sold in it. A telephone has been
installed, and a "coffee filter"! Gaunt spindle-trees struggle in vain
to thrive in the sombre, narrow courtyard illustrious for its past
scenes of agony! As Paul-Louis Courier used to repeat: _Immane nefas._
[Illustration: THE DAUPHINE SQUARE IN 1780
_Drawing by Duché de Vancy (Exhibition of Painting, Carnavalet Museum)_]
At the rear of the Palais de Justice was formerly the delightful
Dauphine Square, where the first "Public Exhibitions of Youth" were
held, the exhibits being works of artists not belonging to the official
Academies. The Carnavalet Museum possesses a most amusing pencil
drawing, signed "Duché de Vancy," and dated May 1783, which bears this
manuscript inscription: "Picturesque view of the Exhibition of paintings
and drawings, on the Dauphine Square, the day of the lesser Corpus
Christi feast." As a matter of fact, on the Sunday of the Corpus
Christi, "when it did not rain," artists had the authorisation--in the
morning--to submit their works to the public; if it did rain--and this
was the case in 1783--the fête was adjourned to the following Thursday.
The pictures were exposed in the northern corner of the Square, on white
hangings fixed by the shopkeepers in front of their shops; and the
Exhibition extended on to the bridge as far as opposite the good Henri's
statue. Oudry, Restout, de Troy, Grimoud, Boucher, Nattier, Louis
Tocqué, and, last of all, Chardin showed their works there. In an
excellent study devoted to these Exhibitions of Youth, Monsieur Prosper
Dorbec details the works that Chardin took to this ephemeral Salon of
the Dauphine Square. In 1728, when he was twenty-nine, he presented
there two masterpieces, _The Ray-fish_ and _The Side-board_, which
to-day are two of the glories of the French School at the Louvre Museum.
Up to the time of the Revolution, this little artistic manifestation
roused Parisian enthusiasm; and what a pretty sight must have been
offered by the Dauphine Square, and the pink fronts of the two corner
houses and the old Pont-Neuf--an exquisite, picturesque setting--with
the throng of amateurs, saunterers, critics, fine ladies, artists,
amiable models in light-coloured costume, full of mirth and busy talk,
eagerly gazing, on a mild May morning, at the freshly-hung canvases of
the Minor Exhibitors of the Dauphine Square.
[Illustration]