The Isle of Saint-Louis is, in some sort, the continuation of the old
City. It is a kind of provincial town in Paris. The streets are silent
and deserted; there are no shops, no promenaders, no business; a few old
aristocratic mansions, with their tall façades, their emblazoned
pediments and their severe architecture, alone tell the glorious past of
this noble quarter.
The finely carved spire of Saint-Louis' Church confers an elegance on
the somewhat melancholy whole. The quays of Orléans and Bethune contain
vast buildings of grand style. In the Rue Saint-Louis, is the admirable
Lambert mansion, that masterpiece of the architect Le Vau, which was
lost at the gaming-table in one night by Monsieur Dupin de Chenonceaux,
the ungrateful pupil of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Le Brun painted the
gallery of the Fêtes in it, and Le Sueur the saloon of the Muses.
At that time, it was the rendezvous of all the wits. Madame du Châtelet
throned there, Voltaire lived in it, and the Lambert mansion radiated
over the length and breadth of dazzled Paris.
Then came darker days. The masterpieces of Le Sueur were sold--most of
them found their way to the Louvre--and nothing survives of this great
painter's work in the Lambert mansion except a grey camaïeu placed under
a staircase, and a few panels scattered here and there.
Last of all--as if to mark its definitive decadence;--the mansion was
occupied by some military-bed purveyors. The fine carvings, sumptuous
paintings and gilded arabesques disappeared beneath a thick white dust
from cards of wool. In the great gallery, so magnificently decorated by
Le Brun and Van Opstaël, mattress-women set up their trestles and
seamstresses began to sew sacking.
Later, Prince Czartorisky bought this noble dwelling and thus saved it
from ruin.
Below the Lambert Hotel, along the river, is the Marie Bridge, at the
foot of which used to moor the famous water-diligence from whose deck
disembarked for the first time in Paris, on the 19th of October 1784, a
pale-complexioned youth of resolute brow, with eyes that gazed from
their depths on the horizons of the immense town. It was Bonaparte, a
pupil from the Brienne School, who had come to continue his studies at
the École Militaire; and the first glimpse the future Cæsar had of the
great Paris which was ultimately to acclaim him was the apse of
Notre-Dame, the old and venerable Notre-Dame in which he was to be
crowned, and round which, in preparation for the coronation day, the 2nd
of December 1804, eighteen houses were pulled down, so that the pomp of
the ceremony might be celebrated without obstacle and in all its
magnificence!
[Illustration: THE PONT MARIE IN 1886
_From a painting by P. Shaan_]
Finally, on the Anjou Quay, we meet with one of the handsomest mansions
of old Paris, that bearing the name of Lauzun, which the generous
initiative of the Municipal Council has saved from destruction, the
Lauzun mansion with its inimitable wainscoting, its ancient gildings,
its glorious past, which is destined to become the museum of all
belonging to the seventeenth century: a fine frame for a fine project.
In this old quarter of the Isle of Saint-Louis, at the confluence of the
Seine's two arms, painters, writers and poets have always dwelt: George
Sand, Baudelaire, Théophile Gautier, Gérard de Nerval, Méry, Daubigny,
Corot, Barye, Daumier, all lived there for a long time. In the Lauzun
mansion, were held the sittings of the hashish smokers' club; and the
chipped Virgin that looks from her niche at the corner of the Rue
Le-Regrattier--formerly known as the street of the Headless Woman--and
saw the passage of the whole Romantic Pleiad, will long continue to
receive visits from lovers of old Paris.
It is from the Bourbon Quay that one of the most beautiful sights
imaginable may best be obtained: a sunset over Paris.
The violet-tinted mass of Notre-Dame stands out with its superbly
imposing silhouette against the purpled gold of the fiery sky. All the
town dies away in a pink dust of light, whilst the broad roofs of the
Louvre, the spire of the Sainte-Chapelle, the pepper-box turrets of the
Conciergerie, the Saint-Jacques Tower, and the campaniles of the Town
Hall, all this landscape alive with history glows in the last rays of
the sinking sun. The Seine flows with a surface of liquid gold.
The spectacle is sublime.
[Illustration: THE ISLE OF SAINT-LOUIS]
[Illustration: BUILDING OF THE PANTHÉON
_Fragment of a water-colour by Saint-Aubin_]