_From a coloured engraving of the eighteenth century_]
Balls were held on the site of the Bastille. Wine flowed, fiddles were
scraped, and printed calicoes of that period show us the ruins of the
old Parisian citadel surmounted with this inscription: "Dancing here."
The huge space left vacant by the demolition had to be filled up.
Napoleon I., whose artistic conceptions were sometimes disconcerting,
had constructed there, in 1811, by Alavoine, a strange sort of fountain
of bizarre appearance: it was a colossal elephant, twenty-four metres
high, which spouted water from its trunk. Built temporarily in plaster
and mud, the elephant quickly crumbled away under the action of weather
and rain; and soon became a lamentable débris surrounded with disjointed
planks. The urchins of the district made it the scene of Homeric
struggles; but the real familiars were the rats that had made their home
inside the structure, so that, when the demolition began, regular
_battues_ had to be organised with men and dogs; and, for months, these
dreaded rodents infested the terrorised quarter. In 1840, the present
column was erected; since then, the genius of Liberty has poised over
Paris his airy foot, and Barye's fine lion watches over the repose of
the victims of 1830 that are interred within the crypt of the monument.
[Illustration: THE SENS MANSION ABOUT 1835
_From a lithograph by Rouargue_]
The Rue Saint-Antoine contains certain handsome mansions: the Cossé
mansion, where Quélus died; the Mayenne and Ormesson mansion, built by
du Cerceau on the remains of the Saint-Paul mansion and Germain Pilon's
studio; the Sully mansion, whose noble front was not long ago mutilated.
Hard by, at the corner of the Rue du Figuier and the picturesque Rue de
l'Hôtel de Ville, which latter used to be the Rue de la Mortellerie,
stands what is left of the Sens mansion, the only specimen, together
with the Cluny Museum, of what private architecture was in the fifteenth
century. After being inhabited by Princes of the Church, Bishops,
Cardinals, and also by Marguerite de Valois (Queen Margot), the Sens
mansion fell on evil days. It became the "Diligence Office"; and from
its courtyard is said to have started the famous courier whose murder
was attributed to Lesurques, the unfortunate Lesurques popularised by
the well-known drama performed at the Ambigu, which caused so many tears
to flow.
In more recent times, the Hôtel de Sens derogated further still. It
became a manufactory of sweets!
At No. 5 of the Rue du Figuier, we meet with a draw-well, the top of
which is finely sculptured; the spot brings back the memory of Rabelais,
the admirable Rabelais, who died quite near, in the Rue des Jardins. At
No. 15, opened the sixteenth-century door through which the actors of
the illustrious theatre established on the ancient site of the Jeu de
Paume de la Croix-Noire, proceeded to their private stage-room. It was
before this door that Molière was arrested and taken to the Châtelet,
because he owed "142 livres to Antoine Fausseur, master-chandler, his
purveyor of light."
Let us cross the Place de la Bastille and go down the Rue du
Faubourg-Saint-Antoine. There, at No. 115, in front of an old
eighteenth-century house, the Deputy Baudin was killed against a
barricade, on the 3rd of December 1851. At No. 303, in the reign of
Napoleon I., stood Dr. Dubuisson's private hospital, where General Malet
was confined. There he hatched the prodigious plot the disconcerting
history of which we intend shortly to relate. Farther on, near the Rue
de Montreuil, we pass by the remains of Réveillon's wall-paper stores,
pillaged on the 17th of April 1789; it was one of the preludes of the
Revolution.
Last of all, at No. 70, in the Rue de Charonne, Dr. Belhomme's private
hospital stood, which was used as a special prison under the Revolution.
Only those were admitted who could pay and pay well. The irrefutable
memoirs of Monsieur de Saint-Aulaine reveal to us a Belhomme familiar,
cynical, exacting his fees and thouing Duchesses short of money who
haggled with him on the question of their life. The most amiable of
historians, my excellent friend G. Lenôtre, whom it is always necessary
to quote when facts of the Revolutionary epoch are in question, has
reconstituted the terrible and surprising story of the Belhomme
institution where they laughed, danced, or even flirted under the dread
eye of Fouquier-Tinville; and has related, with his habitual
documentation, the bizarre liaison of the Duchess of Orléans, widow of
Louis-Philippe Egalité, with Rouzet, the Conventional, buried later at
Dreux under the name of the "Count de Folmon" in the Orléans family
vault.
Pursuing our way and passing by the Church of Sainte Marguerite, in
which Louis XVIII. was interred ... or his double, we reach the barrier
of the Throne (the Throne overthrown, people said in 1793). The
scaffold, which had temporarily quitted the Revolution Square, was put
up here during the most terrible period of the Terror, and the "great
batches" were executed upon it. In six weeks, 1300 victims perished,
among them, André Chénier, the Baron de Trenck, the Abbess of
Montmorency, Cécile Renaud, Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe, the poet
Roucher, and many others. The bodies of these unfortunate people,
stripped of their clothing, were loaded each evening on covered waggons,
with their severed heads between their legs; and the horrible vehicle,
dripping with blood along the road, was tipped into some pit dug at the
bottom of the Picpus Convent Gardens, where still exists the cemetery of
those that were executed during the Revolution.
Retracing our steps, we arrive at No. 9 of the Rue de Reuilly; here was
once the Hortensia Tavern, kept in 1789 by the famous Santerre, a major
in the National Guard. The house has not much changed; at present,
however, it is a girls' boarding-school which occupies the large rooms
where the thundering General organised those terrible descents on Paris
and launched those dreadful battalions of the faubourg that terrorised
even the Convention itself.
On the other side of the Place de la Bastille, in the Rue Saint-Antoine,
near Saint Paul's Church, is the Charlemagne Passage, most picturesque
by reason of the old souvenirs it contains and the strange population it
harbours: chair-menders, mattress-carders, milk-women, open-air
flower-women gather round the ruin of the charming mansion which, under
Charles V., was the sumptuous abode of the provost, Hugues Aubryot.
The front, which is still remarkable and fine-looking, is an astonishing
contrast to the poor, low houses that huddle round it. Fowls peck at the
foot of the fifteenth-century turrets, which enclose a handsome
staircase; and patched linen dries on iron wire stretched between the
caryatide windows of the seventeenth century, replacing those behind
which once mused the Duke d'Orléans and the Duke de Berri, as also, in
1409, Jean de Montaigu, beheaded for sorcery! who were formerly
illustrious guests in this elegant dwelling.
[Illustration: THE PROVOST HUGUES AUBRYOT'S MANSION
CHARLEMAGNE'S COURTYARD AND PASSAGE IN 1867
_Drawn by A. Maignan_]
And now, let us stop at the Vosges Square on the other side of the
Bastille. It is another rare nook of our old City, which, through the
centuries, has preserved its ancient character very nearly intact. The
houses there, in Louis XIII. style, have not changed. The scenery has
remained the same. The _Précieuses_ could take their favourite walks
there; and those punctilious in honour might draw their sword, as in the
time of Richelieu and the Edict-malcontents; only the public of
spectators would be quite different. The fine ladies of the country
hight Tender, the Cydalises and Aramynthas, the lords once living in
those noble dwellings, they who, on the 16th of March 1612, were present
at the tournament given by the Queen Regent, Marie de Médici, in honour
of the peace concluded with Spain, or they who proceeded in grand
coaches to the fair Marion de Lorme's or to Madame de Sévigné's, are
to-day replaced by petty annuitants, modest shopkeepers retired from
business and pensioned-off officers. Humble charwomen work at their
tasks in the spots where Mazarin's nieces paused in their sedan-chairs;
and the numerous Jews that live in the quarter meet there on Saturdays.
It is a curious spectacle to see these men and women of strongly marked
type betaking themselves to the Synagogue, which is near a partially
subsisting eighteenth-century mansion still bearing delicate
decorations, but at present occupied by a butcher, in the Rue du
Pas-de-la-Mule. Not a few old men wear the long gaberdine, their hair in
corkscrew curls, and earrings in their ears. Velvet-eyed girls coifed
with bands, wonderfully handsome and peculiarly dressed, assemble there
on certain religious feast-days. It is a strange evocation; 'twould seem
that in these peaceful quarters biblical traditions have been preserved
in some Jewish families.
[Illustration: THE PLACE ROYALE ABOUT 1651 (NOW THE VOSGES SQUARE)
_Israël, del._]
The old-time animation, however, is an exception. The Vosges Square,
once the Place Royale, where Richelieu lived and Fronsac, Chabannes,
Marshal de Chaulnes, Rohan-Chabot, Rotrou, Dangeau, Canillac, the
Prince de Talmont and Mademoiselle du Châtelet, where Madame de Sévigné
was born, where the tragic actress Rachel dwelt, and Théophile Gautier
and Victor Hugo, is to-day completely neglected; and this delightful
Paris nook, where so much wit was spent, such fine ladies rivalled in
grace and elegance and so many exquisites drew their swords, is now
nothing but a large, lonely garden, provincial and melancholy,
frequented almost exclusively by the pupils of neighbouring
boarding-schools, who play there at prisoners' base, and leap-frog,
beneath the debonair shadow of Louis XIII.'s statue, with its
philosophic frame of a Punch-and-Judy show and a chair-woman's stall.
In the ancient Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine (at present called the Rue
de Sévigné) on the site now occupied by No. 11, formerly stood the
Marais theatre, built with money provided by Beaumarchais. In 1792, the
_Guilty Mother_ was performed there, for the benefit, said the
play-bill, "of the first soldier who shall send citizen Beaumarchais an
Austrian's ear." The modern building is a modest private-bath
establishment, with a small garden in front in which grow some
spindle-trees--in boxes, and which is adorned with silvered balls. The
huge wall, all grim and grey, backing the slightly-built bath
establishment, is the old wall of the Force Prison, where, on a post at
the corner of the Rue des Balais, Madame de Lamballe was executed, where
also Madame de Tallien was transferred, and Princess de Tarente was
confined, the latter, the grandmother of the kind, courteous and learned
Duke de la Trémoïlle, who had only to dip into his incomparable family
archives to give us the most precious documents of French history, and
to whom we are indebted for those picturesque and exciting "Souvenirs of
Madame de Tarente," one of the most valuable narrations by an
eye-witness of the Revolutionary period.
The Carnavalet mansion, Madame de Sévigné's "dear Carnavalette," is
close by, as also the ancient Le Peletier-Saint-Fargeau mansion, to-day
the City of Paris Library. It is a fine, large building of noble
appearance, which contains wonderful books, maps, plans and manuscripts.
The written history of Paris is there; and all workers know the pretty,
sculpture-ornamented room of Monsieur le Vayer, the erudite, obliging
Curator of these fine collections. Messieurs Poète, Beaurepaire, Jacob,
Jarach and Wilhem, in the Library; Messieurs Pètre and Stirling in the
History room are the wise and welcoming hosts of this admirable Parisian
Library.
All this Marais quarter, indeed, contains sumptuous mansions, not one of
which, alas! has been respected. All are given over to business and
manufacturing. The Lamoignon mansion is occupied by glass-polishers and
garden-seatmakers; the Albret mansion by a bronze lamp-dealer; those of
Tallard, Maulevrier, Sauvigny, Brevannes, Epernon, &c., are still
standing, but in what a state! The Rue des Nonnains-d'Hyères offers us
its curious bass-relief, in painted stone, representing a knife-grinder
in eighteenth-century costume. In 1748, a Madame de Pannelier kept a
"wit-office" in this same street; Lalande, Sautereau, Guichard, Leclerc
de Merry used to attend meetings there. They were held on Wednesdays,
and were preceded by an excellent dinner. The tradition has happily been
preserved in Paris.
In the Rue François-Miron, one sees a spacious, handsome mansion with
circular pediment, escutcheons and garlands. It is the Beauvais mansion,
built by Le Pautre in 1658.
To look at it now, old and in a dull street, one would hardly think that
the coaches of Louis XIV.--King Sun--had passed under the dark vault of
the entrance gate and that, from the top of the central pavilion
balcony, Queen Anne of Austria, in company with the Queen of England,
Cardinal Mazarin, Marshal de Turenne and other illustrious nobles, had
watched her son Louis XIV. and her daughter-in-law, the new Queen
Marie-Thérèse of Austria, go by as they made, through Saint-Antoine's
Gate, their solemn entry into Paris on the 26th of August 1660![3]
On account of its picturesque aspect and the fine mansions it contains,
the Rue Geoffroy-l'Asnier is one of the most curious in Paris. At No. 26
stands the Châlons-Luxembourg mansion, with its monumental door and
wonderful knocker. At the bottom of the courtyard is an exceedingly
elegant Louis XIII. pavilion in brick and stone, and of delicate
proportions. The mansion was built for the second Constable of
Montmorency, and though it is quite lost in this gloomy quarter, it
maintains its proud bearing.
After the Revolution, this street, whence nearly all the owners of
houses had emigrated, if they had not been guillotined, was completely
stripped of its former splendour. Petty annuitants, small clerks, and
poor people took up their abode in the abandoned buildings. Grass grew
in the streets; many of the dwellings had been sold as national
property; and the Rue Geoffroy-l'Asnier underwent the common fate; it
became democratic.
[Illustration: THE RUE GRENIER-SUR-L'EAU IN 1866
_Drawn by A. Maignan_]
Between this street and the neighbouring Rue des Barres, one is
surprised to see a sort of fissure so narrow that two persons would find
it difficult to walk abreast through it, a sort of corridor along which
the wind sweeps past dilapidated, leaning houses on either side. It is
the Rue Grenier-sur-l'Eau, wretched and dirty enough, but quaint, with
the glorious tower of Saint-Gervais-Saint-Protais in the background,
rising and standing out against the sky.
The proper moment to take a look at the sinister little Rue des Barres
is on a stormy night, behind the church of Saint-Gervais. It is then
easy to imagine what this quiet quarter must have been like when, on the
9th of Thermidor, about eleven in the evening, 'mid torch-lights, calls
to arms, the noise of the tocsin and shouts of the multitude, the dead
body of Lebas was brought thither, and, on a chair, Augustin
Robespierre, who had broken his thighs in leaping from one of the Town
Hall windows. The dead man and the dying man were dragged to the Barres
mansion transformed into a Sectional Committee Tribunal. On the morrow
Lebas was buried, and Robespierre was carried before the Committee of
Public Safety, who sent him to the scaffold.
[Illustration: THE SAINT-PAUL PORT
_Water-colour by Boggs_ (G. Cain Collection)]
The Rue des Barres descends to the Seine, near the old Town Hall Quay,
where the big, flat boats laden with apples, stones, or sand take their
moorings. Into it opens one of the exits of the charming Church of
Saint-Gervais, whose fine painted windows, masterpieces of Pinaigrier
and Jean Cousin, were almost totally destroyed twenty years ago by an
explosion of dynamite. Against the church walls, in the laicised ruins
of an ancient chapel, a sweet manufacturer has installed his alembics
and copper pans; and it is a curious sight to see the lighted fires of
this strange kitchen beneath these antique Gothic arches, between these
blackened pillars still bearing traces of the candles that once burned
in front of the holy images, on a ground formerly used for burying and
even now concealing bones. The out-offices of the old church still
remain, wonderfully picturesque, and open into the Rue François-Miron,
No. 2, on the left of the entrance portal of the church, between a
laundress's establishment and a furniture-remover's premises!
[Illustration: THE BARBETT MANSION
The Rue Paradis-des-Francs-Bourgeois and the Rue Vieille-du-Temple in
1866
_Drawn by A. Maignan_]
On one side, the little Rue de l'Hôtel-de-Ville brings us to the Rue
Vieille-du-Temple, where we can admire, at No. 47, what is left of the
quaint mansion of the Dutch Ambassadors, where "Monsieur Caron de
Beaumarchais and Madame his spouse," as an almanac of 1787 called them,
established in 1784 a Provident Institution for poor nursing mothers.
Indeed, it was for the benefit of this undertaking that the fiftieth
performance of the _Mariage de Figaro_ was given. Farther on, to the
right, at the corner of the Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, stands the pretty
turret built about 1500 for Jean Hérouet; and, last of all, the fine
Rohan palace, which to-day is the National Printing House. This last is
a noble and spacious building which the elegant Cardinal that once lived
in it took pleasure in sumptuously decorating. A masterpiece may be seen
there, "the Horses of Apollo," in a wonderful bass-relief by Pierre Le
Lorrain. The saloon of the Apes, by Huet, is charming, and the private
room of Monsieur Christian, the witty and learned Director of the
National Printing House, contains a beautiful Caffieri time-piece. Why
must, alas! this fine palace be condemned soon to disappear? The Rohan
mansion is to be demolished, and the State will commit the sacrilege!
May the endeavours of lovers of Paris succeed in preserving for us this
precious vestige of a past that each day removes farther from us!
A cabman whose astonishment must have been great was a certain George
who, on the 22nd of October 1812, at half-past eleven in the evening,
amid a driving rain that turned the miry soil of Saint-Peter's
pudding-bag (now the Villehardouin blind alley) into a veritable bog,
saw get out of his cab, near the Rue Saint-Gilles, a completely naked
man, with his uniform under his arm--a soldier whom, twenty minutes
before, he had picked up in the Louvre Square. This strange passenger
was Corporal Rateau, proceeding to the appointment made with him by
General Malet, inside Dr. Dubuisson's private hospital and asylum, 303
Faubourg-Saint-Antoine, where the latter was confined by the
authorities. In his haste to put on the fine uniform of an orderly
officer, which was ready for him in exchange for his own, Rateau had
undressed in the cab; and up the dark staircase of the gloomy house in
the gloomy street he rushed with absolutely nothing on.
The little house still exists, wretched and dingy-looking, where Malet
appointed to meet his accomplices, on the third floor in the abode of
the Abbé Cajamanos, an old bewildered Spanish priest who had quitted the
Bicêtre asylum.
This adventure of General Malet's is both prodigious and disconcerting.
For, in 1812, at the moment when Napoleon seemed to be at the summit of
his power, Malet, in a sort of dungeon, with the help of five or six
obscure assistants, an old priest with hardly any knowledge of French, a
half-pay officer, an almost illiterate sergeant and a few other
hare-brained people, had been able, even while confined, watched and
suspected, to combine everything, prepare everything, so that the report
of the Emperor's death might be believed--the Emperor being absent in
the icy steppes of Russia, and no news arriving from him. And his
calculations were justified. All the Imperial functionaries, from
Savary, the head of the police, down to Frochot, the Prefect of the
Seine, accepted General Malet's allegations, without testing or
discussing them. Especially, all believed his fine promises; and it is
hard to say where the hoaxer would have stopped if an officer, simply
obeying his orders, had not refused to be gained over with fine words,
and asked for proofs. Malet, being taken aback, grew impatient, and
replied with a pistol-shot. Major Doucet forthwith arrested him, and the
comedy ended in a tragedy.
All the more haste was made to get rid of the organisers of this plot,
which had so nearly succeeded, as it was necessary to suppress as
quickly as possible their awkward testimony to such cowardice, lying,
and compromise.
The poor dwelling in the Villehardouin blind alley was searched by all
the Paris police; papers, uniforms, cocked hats, and swords were fished
out of the little well, still existing, into which they had been wildly
thrown. In a few hours, Malet, Lahorie, Rateau, and Guidal were tried,
condemned, and executed. The replies of the General to the Tribunal that
so summarily judged him were home-thrusts. Asked (somewhat late) who
were his accomplices: "All of you," he said, "if I had succeeded!"
Taken to the wall of evil memory in the plain of Grenelle, he insisted
on giving the firing-order to the execution-platoon; and, as if he had
been on the drill-ground, made the soldiers repeat the aiming movement,
which had not been carried out with military precision. Rateau, who, as
a matter of fact, had understood nothing of this strange drama, in which
he had been one of the most picturesque confederates, is said to have
died in crying: "Long live the Emperor!"
Between the Archives and the Rue Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie, there
was once a large monastery, which, in 1631, became the property of the
Carmelite Billettes,--the name being derived from an ornament worn by
these monks on their gowns. The Revolution suppressed the monastery; but
the small cloister has come down to us with its charming proportions and
its monastic cosiness. To-day, it is a Town School, and the neighbouring
church is devoted to Protestant worship.
[Illustration: THE RUE DE VENISE
_Water-colour by Truffaut_ (Carnavalet Museum)]
The Rue de Venise, one of the most ancient Paris streets, is not far
away. It is now a low, bad-smelling lane inhabited by vagabonds of both
sexes. Women, whose age it is impossible to tell, trail and traipse in
front of alleys within which loom greasy, black staircases. Mended linen
hangs from the windows; acrid smoke issues from between thick bars
protecting old mansions now degenerated into mere dens, defended,
however, by heavy doors studded with rusty nails.
It is hideous, yet quaint, as indeed all this quarter, which is made up
besides of the Rue Pierre-au-Lard, the Rue Brise-Miche, and the Rue
Taille-Pain; not forgetting Saint-Merri's cloister, the name being that
of the old church whose tocsin so often sounded the alarm during the
riots in the reign of Louis-Philippe.
At the least popular excitement, this inextricable labyrinth of small
streets used to bristle with barricades. At the crossing of the Rue
Saint-Martin and the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher was raised the terrible
barricade defended by Jeanne and his intrepid companions. Following on
the burial of General Lamarque, who died while pressing to his lips the
sword offered to him by the Bonapartist officers of the Hundred Days, an
immense revolutionary movement had galvanized Paris. The old soldiers of
the Empire, the survivors of the Terror and those of 1830, allied in
their common hatred of Louis-Philippe's government, had joined the
malcontents of all parties and the members of the then numerous secret
societies. In the evening of the 5th of June 1832, the centre of Paris
was covered with barricades; and both troops and National Guard had been
obliged to reconquer, one by one, the positions that had been lost.
Slaughter had been going on the whole night. When the dawn of the 6th of
June tinged the house-roofs with pink, the large Saint-Merri barricade
was seen to be holding out; its defenders, a handful of heroic men, had
sworn to bury themselves under its ruins. Already they had repulsed ten
furious assaults; now they were awaiting death; and the loud tones of
the Saint-Merri tocsin, unceasingly sounding above their heads, seemed
to be tolling their funeral knell! Part of the Paris army had to be
utilised to vanquish these dauntless insurgents. Firing went on from
windows, cellars, the pavement. Round the barricades, dead bodies of
National Guards and soldiers, riddled with balls, crushed beneath blocks
of stone hurled from roof-tops, testified to the frightful savagery of
this intestine struggle. For long afterwards, the ground was red with
blood! What numbers of balls and bullets, what quantities of grapeshot
all these old house-fronts have received in the haphazard of riots,
frequent during the reign of Louis-Philippe.
The drums no sooner beat than the citizens armed and hurried to defend
order ... or to attack it; anxious women, cowering behind closed
shutters, watched for the biers.
Things resumed their ordinary course immediately the disorder was over;
the insurgent hobnobbed with the honest National Guard whom he had aimed
his gun at on the day before. Sometimes, however, grudges remained.
[Illustration: THE RUE DU RENARD-SAINT-MERRY
_Etching by Martial_]
My parents knew an old woman, living in the Rue Saint-Merri, who, for
forty years after 1836, never passed without trembling by the door of
the tenant underneath her flat. As people were surprised at this
persistent apprehension, she said: "If you only knew what happened to
me!" and she related that, one evening when there was a riot and her
husband had been absent all day firing in the ranks of the National
Guard, she was in the house alone, mad with anxiety; suddenly, at the
corner of the street, she saw a stretcher appear, covered with sacking,
which the bearers deposited at her door. Was it her husband that they
were bringing home dead? She rushed out, raised the edge of the cover
and recognised in the person lying with smashed jaw, haggard eyes,
bleeding from a ball in the cheek, the tenant underneath: "Ah, what a
good thing!" she cried; "it's you, Monsieur Vitry!"
Since that day Monsieur Vitry had given her the cold shoulder.
In the reign of Charles VI., under pretext of purifying the quarter--the
pretext and the Vicar of Saint-Merri's complaint being only too well
grounded--these "hot streets" were cleared of the majority of low, lewd
people who had taken up their domicile in them. But, if morality had its
claims, business also had its interests; and the worthy shopkeepers of
the neighbourhood, deeming these of more importance than decency,
energetically protested against the measure so prejudicial to their
petty commerce. They gained the day, and, on the 21st of January 1388,
Parliament reversed the Provost's decision, the result being that the
merry band returned in triumph to their old haunts, celebrating the
event with feasting and banqueting.
[Illustration: THE RUE DES PROUVAIRES AND THE RUE SAINT-EUSTACHE ABOUT
1850
_Water-colour by Villeret_ (Carnavalet Museum)]
In his _Chronicle of the Streets_, our learned friend, Beaurepaire,
librarian of the City of Paris, asserts that the Rue Pirouette, near
Saint-Eustace's Church, owes its singular name to the "Market Stocks
that stood at this spot. It was an octagonal tower with lofty ogival
windows, in the centre of which was an iron wheel pierced with holes for
the head and arms of vagabonds, murderers, panders, and blasphemers, who
were exposed thus to public derision. On three consecutive market-days,
for two hours each day, they were fastened in the stocks and turned
every half-hour in a different direction. In other words, they were
forced to 'pirouette,' whence the name of the street."
After doing penance there, in the olden times, malefactors betake
themselves thither to-day to sup. The "Guardian Angel," a thieves'
restaurant, exhibits its signboard almost at the corner of the street:
in it rogues laugh, drink and sing, and hatch their morrow's
exploits. The Staff of the army of vice make it their meeting-place. It
is the fashionable resort, a sort of burglars' "Maxim-restaurant," where
Paris hooligans deem it elegant to appear. Casque-d'or and his pals
reign there, and the scoundrel who has just committed an evil deed is
certain to secure good lodging within, and all else he requires. But it
is not only knights of the blood-letting industry who inhabit this noble
dwelling; other lords come there to eat snails and drink champagne:
suspicious-looking young men with plastered hair, who noisily spend
their money gained by blackmailing or some other reprehensible action.
The place is a disgrace to the Capital. The landlord affirms that there
are honest folk among his customers. The thing is possible--anyway, they
must find themselves in very bad company.
Quite close, almost next door, at No. 5, is the "Helmet Courtyard,"
which gives us a striking impression of what ancient dwellings were. It
was, in fact, once a sumptuous fourteenth-century mansion; to-day, it is
only a hand-cart repository, where shafts point up to the old ceilings
with their projecting beams, shafts shiny with use, and a fishmonger's
warehouse, in which Burgundy snails, and cooked or raw lobsters are
sold. The nook is a quaint one, and the quarter also, with its remains
of the Rue de la Grande-Truanderie, where, on the 10th of May 1797, one
of the ancestors of Communism, Baboeuf, was arrested.
[Illustration: THE CENTRAL MARKET FOOT-PAVEMENT, NEAR THE CHURCH OF
SAINT-EUSTACHE, IN 1867
_Drawn by A. Maignan_]
Not far away used to be the Rue de la Tonnellerie, where Molière lived.
This street disappeared when the Rue Turbigo was cut.
[Illustration: THE CENTRAL MARKET IN 1828
_Canella, pinxit_]
In the Central Market quarter, where every one works, where each shop
offers to Paris gourmands the best victuals, the freshest vegetables,
the daintiest fruits, where, every night, long files of market
gardeners' carts bring in loads of provisions of all sorts, each street
has, so to speak, its speciality. Housewives know where to find their
poultry, crayfish, cheese, or oranges. All the little streets, skirting
the Halles, are full of astonishing shops contrived in door-corners, or
cellar-corners, all of which for generations have been kept by worthy
husbandmen, petty dealers, hucksters, or basket-hawkers, having their
own line, their own customers. In the curious Rue Montorgueil, old
abodes that amaze one are still to be found; for instance, between Nos.
64 and 72, the ancient Golden Compass Inn, which was the calling place
for so many generations of carriers. Its double entrance, blocked up
with small butchers', tripe-dealers', and poulterers' stalls, opens on a
huge yard, where fowls peck on heaps of golden dung, where ducks quack,
and goats bleat under the eyes of some thirty horses, peaceful tenants
of the ground floor, with their inquisitive heads thrust over the
half-doors, through the low windows or open air-holes. At the back,
beneath the spacious shed, the carriages and carts are put up, 'midst a
healthy country smell of verdure and hay; and it really is a curious
sight to see such a silent nook, with its farmyard, at the back of the
noisy, populous, crowded street, full of workmen, pedlars, and shouts or
cries of bubbling life and movement.
[Illustration: THE CENTRAL MARKET IN 1822
_Canella, pinxit_]
What is left of the Rue Quincampoix, behind the old Tower of
Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie, emphasises the strangeness of this
neighbourhood, in which the exterior, though renewed, has been partly
preserved, but which has been more modified and transformed as regards
inhabitants and customs than perhaps any other quarter. It was, in fact,
in the Rue Quincampoix that the famous Law established his offices of
the Mississippi Bank. There, all Paris suffered the fever of
speculation. The madness was general. For months nothing but folly and
ruin reigned. All gambled--duchess, priest, philosopher and courtier,
shopkeeper and ballet-actress, peer and lackey, excise-farmer and his
clerk. In order to profit by proximity to the celebrated stock-jobber,
each shop, room and cellar even, rented at foolishly high prices, was
turned into a gaming establishment; and the case is quoted of a cobbler
who hired for a hundred livres a day his stall stinking with wax and old
leather; the gold mania had broken down all distinctions. And then
the fatal crisis came, the panic, the crash. In the Rue Quincampoix one
saw none but despairing faces. Every day there was a series of murders,
suicides, attacks of lunacy. On one single occasion, twenty-seven bodies
of suicides or murdered people were fished out of the river at the nets
of Saint-Cloud. To speculate still, money at any price was needed.
Highway robbery was practised, and the footpads were of all classes of
society. One of these, the young Count de Horn, a relative of the
Regent, and already notorious through his follies, hired two rascals of
his own kind, enticed a rich young stock-jobber into an inn of the Rue
de Venise, stabbed him and took his money. The scandal was enormous!
Both Court and City lost their heads. Would justice at last act and
severity be shown? There was a good deal of intriguing and excitement;
but, finally, the Lieutenant for criminal affairs, acting on the orders
of the Regent, arrested the Count de Horn, on the 22nd of March 1720;
and, four days after, the latter was broken on the wheel and executed in
the centre of the Grève Square, amidst the applause of all Paris.
[Illustration: MOLIÈRE'S HOUSE IN THE RUE DE LA TONNELLERIE
_Water-colour by Hervier_]
The Rue Quincampoix likewise contains some few old mansions now
inhabited by certain "medical specialists," cheese-dealers, eau-de-seltz
makers, &c. At Nos. 58, 28, 14, 15, and, notably, at No. 10, are seen
remnants of forged iron, broken balconies, chipped grotesque masks of
stone.... But the whole is tumbling to pieces, and to ruin, and only by
a strong effort of the imagination can one reconstitute, out of these
wretched fragments, the life of luxury, fever and stock-jobbing that
once filled this old street, now foul with chemical smells and rancid
odours of fried potatoes.
Collé's prophecy has been fulfilled: "One no longer belongs to Paris
when one belongs to the Marais!"
Trade has laid hold of the fine mansions of yore; druggists have set up
their distilleries in them, toy-makers sell their puppets in them, and
the hawker with his Paris article is the monarch that governs them.
The population at present is poor, laborious, yet intelligent and
active; and the contrast between it and the transformed dwellings
wherein it dwells is not without interest and grace. A visit to the
Archives, Marais and Saint-Merri quarters is certainly something no one
should omit.
The picturesque line of central boulevards extends from the Bastille to
the Madeleine Church. There Paris life may be studied under the most
varied aspects, as well as the most elegant.
To speak of there being a general characterisation of the boulevards
would be hardly correct, inasmuch as each of them has its special
physiognomy.
[Illustration: THE TOWER OF SAINT-JACQUES-LA-BOUCHERIE ABOUT 1848
_Lithographed by A. Durand_]
The Beaumarchais Boulevard has an atmosphere of middle-class
tranquillity about it. Nothing has survived of the fine mansion,
surmounted with a feather-shaped weather-cock and flag, which was
built there by the author of the _Mariage de Figaro_, nor yet of the
famous gardens, once the wonder of Paris, which could only be visited
with a special card signed by Beaumarchais himself and given but to few.
Yet some one of our own generation has known them, and penetrated into
what for a while remained of the gorgeous abode; and that some one is
Victorien Sardou. Did he have a presentiment that, in talent and wit, he
would one day be the successor of the Beaumarchais whose property he
thus intruded on? Anyway, in 1839, Victorien Sardou, aged seven, was
living with his parents in the Place de la Bastille. With his little
companions he used to play at ball or with hoop round the elephant and
the canal banks. At the entrance to the Beaumarchais Boulevard of to-day
some long, worm-eaten palisades bordered a piece of waste ground. On the
palisades were hung halfpenny pictures of actors, actresses, and
soldiers; and no one was fonder of looking at them than the little
Sardou.
One day, while enjoying his open-air picture-gallery, he caught a
glimpse of a huge garden through the interstice between two of the
palings. "What was this garden?" "Suppose he entered!" So he and another
urchin of his own age wrenched away a paling with the sticks of their
hoops, and in a delight of terror slipped into the unknown domain. What
an amazement! They found themselves in a Sleeping Beauty's realm.
Weeds, lianes, branches, trees had grown over everything. It was a flora
and fauna of the virgin forests; rabbits, birds and butterflies were its
denizens; and Robinson Crusoe was not more surprised in exploring his
island than these two youngsters in wandering about this jungle.
Sardou vaguely remembers there being a ruined pavilion and some
tumble-down old walls; what he recollects better are the banks, ditches,
and slopes where he and his companion had such delightful escapades; and
nothing is more interesting than to hear this witty and charming talker
relate his stories of the bygone Paris which he regrets so much and
remembers so well.
The old dwellings have disappeared. A single one still exists at the
corner of the Rue Saint-Claude, No. 1. It is the celebrated abode in
which the talented charlatan, Cagliostro, installed his furnaces, his
crucibles, his alembics, his transformation machines, all the weird
utensils that served for his magic sittings.
The house has not been much altered. It remains, as always, strange,
enigmatical, mysterious, with its staircases constructed in the body of
the walls, its secret corridors, its mechanical ceilings, its cellars of
many exits. The greatest lords, the noblest dames frequented this abode.
Cardinal de Rohan was a familiar guest. The report ran that gold was
made there, and that Cagliostro, the great Copht, had discovered the
secret of the philosopher's stone! He offered, continued the legend,
repasts of thirteen covers at which the guests were enabled to call up
the dead, which was why Montesquieu, Choiseul, Voltaire and Diderot had
taken part at Cagliostro's last supper.
All that made a stir; there were murmurs; the thing was proclaimed a
scandal. Louis XVI. shrugged his shoulders and Marie Antoinette forbade
any one to "speak to her of this charlatan." But every one tried to
obtain entrance into the "divine sorcerer's house," and Lorenza, his
wife, was obliged to open a class of magic for the benefit of the ladies
of the upper circles.
Then came the affair of the necklace. Cagliostro, being compromised with
Cardinal de Rohan and Madame de Lamotte, was arrested and thrown into
the Bastille; and it was not until ten months later, on the 1st of June
1787, that he was able to return to the house in the Rue Saint-Claude,
escorted by a crowd of eight to ten thousand persons, blocking the
Boulevard, the courtyard of the house and the staircases. He was
cheered, embraced, carried in triumph. This grand day was a climax. A
few hours after it, a King's order banished him from France, and the
house was shut up. Only in 1805 were its doors reopened for the sale of
the furniture; and the sight must have been a curious one! In 1855, the
building was repaired; the leaves of the entrance gate were changed;
those to-day opening into the Rue Saint-Claude came from the ancient
buildings of the Temple; so that the gates of Louis XVI.'s prison give
access now to the mansion where Cagliostro once performed his marvels.
In the Filles-du-Calvaire Boulevard stands the Winter Circus, still
unchanged, with its Icarian Games and its equilibrists, its smiling
horse-women who for so many years have leaped through the same
paper-filled hoops and made the same pleased bow to the worshipping
crowd. But, if the spectacle is not much varied, the public of
youngsters is constantly renewed, and the laughs we heard in our
childhood still welcome the same clowns' grimaces. Only Monsieur Loyal
is no longer there, the admirable, imposing Monsieur Loyal,
tight-buttoned in his fine blue coat, who, with such noble gesture and
slashing whip, restrained the mocking clown's quips and quirks or the
shyings of the mare Rigolette exhibited at liberty.
[Illustration: ALEXANDER'S GRAND CAFE ROYAL ON THE TEMPLE BOULEVARD
_Water-colour by Arrivet_]
Would any one now believe that for more than a century the Temple
Boulevard was the centre of Paris gaiety? A charming engraving by
Saint-Aubin shows us it joyous, smart, and full of life. Coaches, cabs,
and other vehicles pass and repass; grand ladies and fashionably dressed
women rival with each other in grace, manners and toilet, the latter of
the strangest names; and the draughtsman Briou can write below a fashion
engraving of the period: "The provoking Julia reposing on the Boulevard,
while awaiting a stroke of good fortune; she is in morning gown with a
Diana hat that flying hearts adorn." At Alexander's Cafè Royal, there
is supper and dancing; people crowd to listen to Nicolet's patter; and a
circle of hearers surround Fanchon, the hurdy-gurdy player. On the same
Boulevard, Curtius sets up his luxuriously arranged wax-work saloons;
and, later, the parades of Bobèche and Galimafré will be the joy of
Paris; for a long time, the fair will continue.
[Illustration: FANCHON, THE HURDY-GURDY PLAYER
_Original drawing_ (Ch. Drouet Collection)]
The Ambigu, the Historic Theatre, the Gaiety, the Funambules, the
Olympic Circus, the Little-Lazari, the Délassements Comiques,--ten
theatres or so will add to the excitement with their strange, nervous,
grandiloquent, noisy companies of actors. The gay apprentices, at all
times fond of plays, will cheer as they go by the heroes of all these
dramas and melodramas, so numerous that popular slang had nicknamed as
Crime Boulevard the thoroughfare where, at twelve each evening, so much
blood flowed on the boards of these theatres. There were Madame Dorval,
Mademoiselle George, Mademoiselle Déjazet, Messieurs Bocage, Mélingue,
Bouffé, Dumaine, Saint-Ernest, Boutin, Colbrun, Lesueur, Deburau--the
ideal Pierrot--and also Gobert, so like Napoleon I., as was Taillade,
who, thin and nervous, was incarnating Bonaparte. It was the period when
the Bonapartist epopee turned people's heads to such an extent that the
poor comedian Briand, who, in one of the many Napoleon plays, was acting
the ungrateful part of Sir Hudson Lowe, said: "I shall never have a
similar success. Yesterday, I was waited for at the theatre door and
thrown into the Château-d'Eau canal basin!"
[Illustration: VIEW OF THE AMBIGU-COMIQUE ON THE TEMPLE BOULEVARD
_Lallemand, del._ (Carnavalet Museum)]
All the quarter waxed enthusiastic about its favourite actors, espoused
their quarrels, repeated their witticisms or their adventures: Frédéric
Lemaitre especially, a tragic, dare-devil, drinking, extravagant yet
talented artist, decking himself in private life, as well as on the
stage, in the frayed-out plumes of Don Cæsar de Bazan, had his own
story. People went into ecstasies over his amours with Clarisse Miroy,
interwoven with thrashings and fond tenderness. On the day after one of
these noisy quarrels, Frédéric is said to have rung at his lady-love's
door, which was opened by Clarisse's mother. The good dame, frightened
at the brutal actor's appearance, raised her arm instinctively as if to
ward off a blow.... "I beat you, I!" thundered Frédéric in Richard
d'Arlington's tones, "I beat you! Why?... Do I love you?"
[Illustration: THE FUNAMBULES THEATRE ON THE TEMPLE BOULEVARD
_Water-colour by Martial_ (Carnavalet Museum)]
The Historic Theatre subsequently became the Lyric Theatre, and the
wonderful Madame Miolan-Carvalho, the queen of song, was there to
create, with her magnificent art, _Faust_, _Mireille_, _Jeannette's
Wedding_, _Queen Topaz_, &c. About 1861, the celebrated composer
Massenet, yet a pupil at the Conservatory and on the point of obtaining
his Rome prize, discharged in the theatre orchestra the duties of
kettle-drummer, for the modest salary of forty-five francs a month.
[Illustration: THE AMBIGU THEATRE AND BOULEVARD ABOUT 1830
_Canella, pinxit_]
Others to perform there were the Davenport brothers and the conjurer
Robin, with their amusing séances of hypnotism and white magic. On this
always-to-be-remembered Temple Boulevard were to be met the various
fashionable authors: Dennery, Théodore Barrière, Victor Séjour, Paul
Féval, Gounod, Berlioz, A. Adam, Clapisson, Saint-Georges, the Cogniard
brothers, Clairville; and the great Dumas used to pass in triumph,
shaking hands with everybody as he went. The coffee-houses had to turn
customers away; orange-sellers made fortunes, while boys sold checks,
conveyed nosegays to pretty actresses, and hailed cabs. People called to
each other, shouted, disputed, laughed above all, under the indulgent
eye of the police and to the noise of liquorice-water-seller's bell: it
was the golden age!
In 1862, a regrettable decision of Baron Haussmann, the Prefect of the
Seine, suppressed this bit of Paris, so lively and gay; and, on the
ruins of all these theatres, which brought money and mirth to the
quarter, were built Prince Eugène's barracks, the ugly Hôtel Moderne,
and the wretched monument of the Republic Square. Of all this fine,
artistic past nothing is left except the tiny Déjazet Theatre, at the
corner of the Vendôme Passage, and the Turkish Coffee-house; the latter
different far from what it was when Bailly depicted it under the
Directory. Elegant dames, the Merveilleuses, the Incroyables used to
frequent it for the purpose of nibbling an ice or sipping little pots of
cream, while listening to cithern concerts. Young Savoyards made their
marmots dance in presence of "sensitive souls," and thrifty burgesses of
the quarter took their family to get an idea of the high Parisian life
which made the Turkish Coffee-house one of its favourite meeting-places.
Restaurants were numerous, being souvenirs of coffee-houses formerly
renowned, like the Godet and Yon cafés. There one found singing and
dancing, and, now and again, plotting. It was at the Burgundy Vintage
Restaurant in the Temple faubourg, the ordinary rendezvous of Paris
wedding-breakfasts or National Guard love-feasts, that--on the 9th of
May 1831, at the end of a banquet given to celebrate the acquittal of
Guinard, Cavaignac, and the Garnier brothers, charged with plotting
against the State--Évariste Gallois, with a knife in his hand,
proposed in three words this threatening toast: "To Louis-Philippe!"
The great Flaubert lived on the Temple Boulevard at No. 42. There, on
Sundays, he gathered his disciples at noisy lunches--Zola, Goncourt,
Daudet, de Maupassant, Huysmans, Céard, George Pouchet--a few yards away
from a building of tragic fame. No. 50, in fact, was the wretched house
whose third-story Venetian blinds concealed Fieschi and the twenty-five
pistol barrels loaded with bullets which constituted his infernal
machine. A train of powder passed over twenty-five lights. The discharge
of grapeshot to be vomited by this dreadful instrument of death was
terrible. The grocer Morey, who had helped to prepare the monstrous
crime, had even taken the useful precaution to damage four of the
gun-barrels, whose explosion was to suppress Fieschi himself.
Pépin, another accomplice, had been careful to walk his horse several
times past the fatal window; and from behind the Venetian blinds,
Fieschi, who was an excellent shot, had been able at his ease to
regulate the aim of his horrible slaughtering-machine. It was intended
that Louis-Philippe, who had ten times escaped the assassin's hand,
should, on this occasion, be struck by it. The conspirators, however,
had not calculated that the King, when reviewing the National Guard,
would avoid the middle of the Boulevard, which sloped down towards the
sides for draining purposes, and would keep to the lower portions, along
which the troops were stationed. The rain of bullets therefore passed
over the King's head, touching only the top of his cocked-hat, and mowed
down women, children, officers and other spectators that were on the
King's left. It was a frightful butchery; the Boulevard streamed with
blood. More than forty victims lay on the road, among them being the
glorious Marshal Mortier, who expired on one of the marble tables in the
Turkish Coffee-house, whither the dead and wounded had been transported.
Fieschi, who was wounded, was arrested in the backyard of the next
house, while trying to fly through the Rue des Fossés-du-Temple. On the
19th of February 1836, he ascended the scaffold with his accomplices,
Pépin and Morey.
At the corner of the Temple Boulevard, to the right, in front of the
first house in the Voltaire Boulevard, the barricade was raised where
Delescluze was killed in May 1871. At this spot, formerly stood the
Gaiety Theatre; while the Lyric Theatre opened its doors on the present
site of the Metropolitan railway station in the Republic Square.
[Illustration: THE PORTE SAINT-MARTIN
_Houbron, pinxit_ (G. Cain Collection)]
The Saint-Martin Boulevard, where Paul de Kock took up his abode, in
order to study from his windows, which were on the first story, near the
Porte Saint-Martin, the seething life of the Capital, now has no
animation except in the evening. Four theatres--the Folies-Dramatiques,
the Ambigu, the Porte Saint-Martin, and the Renaissance--add life and
movement to it then; and nothing is more amusing than the hour
following the end of the performances. The coffee-houses fill with
visitors, cigarettes are lighted, newspaper-vendors shout the latest
news; people hustle, and touts run after carriages, in which one sees a
rapidly passing vision of pretty women in light-coloured dresses and
opera-cloaks. Afterwards issue the actors, with blue chins and turned-up
collars, and often looking cross. Last of all, come the handsome
actresses, who quickly step into their brougham, inside which may
frequently be seen, dimly outlined behind the red point of a cigarette,
the form of an expectant friend.
[Illustration: THE RUE SAINT MARTIN (1866)--THE GREEN-WOOD TOWER
_Drawn by A. Maignan_]
Near the Porte Saint-Denis, at the entrance to the narrow Rue de Cléry,
there was formerly a rise in the road, which was the scene of a tragic
occurrence. There, on the 21st of January 1793, the intrepid De Batz had
appointed to meet a few companions. It was determined that a forlorn
hope should be led with a view to snatch Louis XVI. from the shame of
the guillotine. The plan was to force the line of soldiers, to overpower
the escort surrounding the carriage, and to carry off the King.
But, already, on the day before, the Committee of Public Safety had been
warned "by a well-known private individual," say the police reports, of
the mad plot that was in preparation, and every necessary precaution was
taken. During the night all the persons denounced in the warning as
suspicious were placed under arrest. De Batz, who thought to find a
hundred and fifty confederates at the meeting-place, only found seven.
Notwithstanding their small number, they did not hesitate, and rushed at
the horses' heads. The Guards cut them down. Three were killed. De Batz
managed to escape.
[Illustration: THE RUE DE CLÉRY
_Lansyer, pinxit_]
This strange, winding Rue de Cléry, whose thin edge stands out so
curiously against the sky, was the scene of another drama. The father of
André and Marie-Joseph Chénier lived at No. 97. There, on the 7th of
Thermidor, he was anxiously waiting for the liberation of his son André,
who for long months had been a prisoner at Saint-Lazare. The poor man
had foolishly taken it into his head to appeal to Collot d'Herbois'
heart(!) and to ask him to free his son. Collot d'Herbois had once been
an actor; and now, on another sort of stage, revenged himself for
having been hissed. He had not forgotten the lines in which André
Chénier had satirised him in such masterly fashion, but he did not know
in what prison his enemy was confined. Marie-Joseph, the brother,
himself an object of suspicion, had been able to lengthen out the
proceedings and to keep as a secret the place where André was confined.
At this supreme hour of the Terror, it was the only possible chance
Collot d'Herbois had to satisfy his vengeance; and the information thus
unadvisedly but innocently given by the prisoner's father was utilised
by the revengeful actor. "To-morrow," Collot assured the unhappy father,
"your son shall quit Saint-Lazare." He kept his word; and, on the 7th of
Thermidor, just at the hour when the guest was so impatiently expected,
André got into the cart to go to the scaffold, erected that day at the
barrier of the Throne Square.
Round about the picturesque Rue de Cléry, the quarter is an odd medley
of little streets, lanes, and alleys: the Rue Notre-Dame-de-Recouvrance,
the Rue Sainte-Foy, the Rue des Petits-Carreaux, the Rue de la Lune, in
which last Balzac lodged his Lucien de Rubempré watching over Coralie's
dead body, and composing libertine songs, in order to gain the money
required for his mistress's funeral.
In these tortuous, sombre, narrow streets it is easy to reconstitute the
physiognomy of the older Paris; ancient dwellings are still numerous
enough; but, as in the Marais, are given over to petty trade and
industry. After the Egyptian campaign, the Consulate cut a certain
number of new streets bearing the names of victories: the Rues de
Damiette, d'Aboukir, du Nil. On the site of the Cairo Square, once stood
the mansion of the Temple Knights, or Knights Templars. A portion of an
old Gothic Chapel, in which were preserved the helmet and armour of
Jacques Molay, founder and Grand Master of the Order, was used in 1835
as a meeting-place by surviving adepts of this rite; and Rosa Bonheur's
father, who was a Knight Templar, had his daughter baptized there
beneath an "arch of steel" made by the crossed swords of the Order, clad
in white tunics, with a red cross embroidered on their breasts, booted
in deer-skin, and coifed with a white cloth square cap surmounted by
three feathers--one yellow, one black, and one white!
[Illustration: THE POISSONNIÈRE BOULEVARD IN 1834
_Dagnan, pinxit_ (Carnavalet Museum)]
A delightful picture by Dagnan, which is now in the Carnavalet Museum,
shows us the Poissonnière Boulevard in 1834. Most of the houses remain
to-day; but, alas! the tall, thick-foliaged trees that made the
Boulevard a sort of park avenue have long since disappeared. That lover
of Paris, Victorien Sardou, who was born in it, and who is cheered,
loved, and honoured in it, very well remembers seeing the trees as they
used to be, and his long saunterings in front of the Gymnase Theatre.
Did he foresee the successes he was to gain with _les Ganaches_, _les
Vieux Garçons_, _les Bons Villageois_, _Andréa_, _Féréol_,
_Séraphine_, _Fernande_, &c.?
[Illustration: THE GYMNASE THEATRE
_Etching by Martial_]
Further on, we come across the ancient Variety Theatre, whose antique
front speaks of a glorious past; Duvert, Lauzanne, Bayard, Scribe,
Meilhac, Ludovic Halévy, and, above all, Offenbach, whose haunting music
bewitched Paris for twenty years.
Ludovic Halévy, who was a charming chronicler of Paris life, has left us
an interesting sketch of the Montmartre Boulevard towards 1810: "The
Variety actors had been obliged to quit the Montansier hall; their
vaudevilles had more success than the tragedies at the Théâtre Français.
The Emperor made a decree depriving them of the Palais-Royal premises;
but they were allowed to move to new premises on the Montmartre
Boulevard!... A frightful quarter for a theatre!... It was almost in the
country; not one of the large houses existed which you see there!
Nothing but little single-story shops, wretched wooden stalls, and the
two small panoramas of Monsieur Boulogne.... No foot-pavements, a road
simply of beaten earth between two rows of tall trees.... A few old cabs
and carriages passed now and again.... In fine, the country.... It was
the country!!.."
[Illustration: THE VARIETY THEATRE ABOUT 1810
_From a sepia of the period_ (Carnavalet Museum)]
With the Variety Theatre began what was called, without epithet, _The
Boulevard_. For idlers, saunterers, wits, clubmen, writers, journalists,
under the second Empire, it was a sort of sacred ground.
Grammont-Caderousse, the Prince of Orange, Khalil-Bey, Paul Demidoff,
Aurélien Scholl, Roqueplan, Aubryet, Jules Lecomte, Auguste Villemot
were kings there. The Café Anglais, the Maison Dorée, Tortoni's were
frequented by the fashionables of society and literature. The gas
flared, champagne corks flew, and one had only to open pianos for them
to play automatically the Evohe of _Orpheus in Hades_! An apropos
witticism stopped a quarrel. The princes of intelligence held their own
with princes of the blood or of money; as, for instance, on the day
when, at Tortoni's, the Duke de Grammont-Caderousse flung a packet of
goose-quills in the face of Paul Mahalin, who, the day before, in a
small newspaper had severely animadverted on the diva S----, she being
under the Duke's protection.
"From Mademoiselle S----," said the Duke.
Making his grandest bow, Mahalin retorted: "I was aware, Monsieur, that
Mademoiselle S---- feathered her lovers, but I did not dare hope it was
for my benefit."
[Illustration: THE BOULEVARDS, THE HOTEL DE SALM, AND WINDMILLS OF
MONTMARTRE
View taken from the hanging gardens of the Rue Louis-le-Grand
_Water-colour of the eighteenth century_ (Carnavalet Museum)]
Since the dark days of 1870, the elegant Boulevard has become more
democratic. The old dwellings themselves have changed their uses; and
electro-plate is sold in the beautiful pavilion built by Marshal de
Saxe--after the Hanoverian wars--at the corner of the Boulevard and the
Rue Louis-le-Grand. In the eighteenth century, some one took it into his
head to decorate with flowers the roofs of the houses in the vicinity of
this fine mansion; so that it was possible to dine merrily--under the
shade of hornbeams--while watching the windmills of Montmartre turn in
the distance. The example has been imitated in our own times--people
cried that it was an innovation; this is only another error; there is
nothing new under the sun. What is done is merely a modification, and
generally the alteration is for the worse! Tortoni's flight of steps has
disappeared. Taverns, with their onion soup and their sourcrout and
sausage, replace the aristocratic restaurants of yore. The features are
different; but still it is a Paris nook, really gay, amusing, and
original. A walk in it is delightful, though nothing, alas! can be said
to vividly recall the past, since the terrible fire of 1887 destroyed
the Comic Opera of our fathers; the Opera of Grétry, Dalayrac, Méhul,
Boïeldieu, and Hérold; the Opera whose façade does not open on the
boulevard, according to the desire formally expressed in 1782 to
Heurtier, the architect, by the King's Comedians refusing to be confused
with the "Boulevard Comedians"; the Opéra-Comique where, every evening,
in the spacious _foyer_ adorned with busts of dead musical celebrities
and composers that had contributed to the theatre's fame, the habitués
met whose attendance was a protest against modern music: Auber, Adam,
Clapisson, Bazin, Maillard; later, and with another æsthetic doctrine,
G. Bizet, Léo Delibes, V. Massé, J. Massenet, Carvalho, Meilhac, Halévy,
and old Dupin, the last an astonishing centenarian who, one evening,
with rancorous eye looked at Hérold's bust and grumbled: "How that
urchin used to rile me!" In presence of the general bewilderment he
explained: "I was his school companion, in 1806, at Saint-Louis'
College!" we were then in May 1885! This was the obstinately reactionary
Dupin who once drew from a contradictor the threatening retort: "We
missed you in '93. When the next Revolution comes, we'll take good care
not to!"
[Illustration: THE RUE DE LA BARRE, AT MONTMARTRE
_Houbron, pinxit_]
The amiable chats, the agreeable meetings which brought together so many
witty people, clever talkers, artists, men of the world, those of the
Comic Opera _foyer_, of the Grand Opera, or the Comédie Française are
now hardly anything but a memory. Not that the practice itself is
abolished. Art gatherings are quite as frequent and as well attended;
but they have emigrated,--many of them to Montmartre, to the "Butte
Sacrée," the holy mound, "the teat of the world," yelled the astonishing
Salis in his _Chat Noir_ patter; and truly the spot is one of the
Capital's curiosities.
Gay, industrious, cynical, flippant, and yet religious, this composite
quarter offers the most singular mingling of poets, painters, sculptors,
lemonade-makers and pilgrims. On the Clichy and Batignolles Boulevards,
the revolving lights of the Moulin Rouge illuminate a population of
rakes, dandies, artists, lemans and bullies. Each wine-shop--and there
are many--harbours one or several poets, more or less comic, but always
railers and _rosses_,[4] as the witty Fursy says, one of the best
performers in these "music-boxes." In these latter the great ones of the
earth, politicians, ministers, are unmercifully berhymed, as also the
events of the day; a minister's latest speech, Pelletan's elegance, Le
Bargy's cravats, Santos-Dumont's ascent, the Pope's latest Encyclical
letter, the automobile tax, the divorce of the moment, the King of
Spain's recent visit, or that of the Prince of Bulgaria, all put into
couplets.
[Illustration: A STREET IN MONTMARTRE
_Houbron, pinxit_ (Carnavalet Museum)]
Montmartre is the Capital's pot-house; it is all good-humoured laughter
and chaff. People enjoy themselves at night and work in the day, for it
has always been a favourite abode for artists of every kind: Henri
Monnier, the Duchess d'Abrantès, Madame Haudebourg-Lescot, Mademoiselle
Mars, Horace Vernet, Berlioz, Ch. Jacque, Reyer, Victor Massé, Vollon,
Manet, André Gill, Steinlen, Guillemet, Willette, Jules Jouy, Mac-Nab,
Xanrof, Maurice Donnay. Their memory there is alive and respected, the
legend of their prowess is preserved. It is Montmartre's _Iliad_.
[Illustration: THE RUE DES ROSIERS
_Etching by Martial_]
A few yards from these noisy streets, the "Butte" begins, on which, at
the close of the 1871 siege, the Parisians had hoisted the National
Guards' cannons. In vain the Government tried to regain possession of
them; and the rest is known:--the resistance, the troops disbanded,
Generals Clement Thomas and Lecomte arrested, dragged into a small house
in the Rue des Rosiers and shot against a garden wall.
Part of the wall still stands; and though the house has disappeared in
which this tragedy of the 18th of March was played, a little of the
garden itself remains, behind the modern buildings of the _Abri
Saint-Joseph_, vast sheds used as refectories by the crowds of pilgrims
attracted to the basilica of the Sacré-Coeur.
Indeed, all this quarter is melancholy-looking, silent, quaint, and
monastic. Chaplet, scapulary, candle, missal, and pious picture-dealers
have their shops in it. The spot is a sort of religious fair; even the
streets have liturgical names: Saint-Eleuthère, Saint-Rustique, near the
Rue Girardon, and the Calvary cemetery, overlooked by the awkward
outlines of the old Galette Windmill, the ordinary rendezvous for
idlers, boulevard inquisitives, artists' models, lemans and bullies of
the neighbourhood. The ancient Montmartre, with its picturesqueness, is
again met with in the Rue Saint-Vincent, in the Rue des Saules
containing the "Lively Rabbit" tavern, and in the Rue de la
Fontaine-du-But, sordid streets, bordered with sorry habitations whose
windows are hung with linen drying, and which seem at each story to
harbour a different poverty; strange streets, running for the most part
between a crumbling old house and a hoarding mossy with rain and covered
with inscriptions. As a matter of fact, these palisades serve as an
outlet for the confidences of the "pals" and their "gals" of the
quarter. Amorous effusions may be read side by side with threats, and
the great ones of the earth are sometimes severely dealt with. The
epithet is always a bitter one. It savours of debauch, vice and crime.
[Illustration: THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE IN 1829
_Canella, pinxit_ (Carnavalet Museum)]
And yet, in this corner of Paris, which modern embellishments will soon
have made unrecognisable, bits of admirable scenery are to be met with,
exquisite lanes of verdure, birds, tame pigeons, whistling blackbirds;
and one might fancy one's self far away in some peaceful country-place,
if, at the end of all these streets, were not seen the huge
violet-coloured mass of the Capital, in fairy panorama, an ocean of
stone, whence heave, like masts, the bell-towers of palaces, the
turrets, belfries and steeples of churches, with domes, roofs and
gardens--an incomparable vision of art, grandeur and beauty.
The great Balzac informs us that César Birotteau was ruined by
speculations he engaged in on the "waste ground round about the
Madeleine church." He lost in them the profits realised by his "Eau
Carminative" and by the "Double Pâte des Sultanes." His "Rose Queen"
perfumery was swallowed up in them....
And, however, César Birotteau was right in his reasoning. To-day, the
Madeleine building ground is the highest quoted in Paris.
In 1802, the surface was occupied by foundation works and scaffolding,
showing the pillars of the church so long since commenced and still in
the building.
[Illustration: INGENUOUS BENEVOLENCE
_Duplessis-Bertaux, inv. et del._]
There took place the charming episode depicted by Duplessis-Bertaux,
under the pleasing title: "Ingenuous Benevolence" (an historic fact of
the 5th Messidor, anno X.). A long notice, beneath the picture, tells us
that Pradère, Persuis, Elleviou and "his spouse," walking one evening
along the Magdalene Boulevard, met a blind street-singer, who "by the
strains of his piano was soliciting public charity." The receipts were
wretched; so our kind artists improvised a little open-air concert and
remedied the ill-fortune of the poor fellow. After delightfully singing,
Madame Elleviou, her husband and Pradère made a collection, and poured
the proceeds, thirty-six francs, into the blind man's hands trembling
with emotion!
[Illustration: THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE (Second View)
_From a sepia of the eighteenth century_]
Along the Rue Royale, we reach the Champs-Elysées, after stopping for a
moment at the "Cité Berryer," a strange alley in which once stood the
hotel of the King's Musketeers. It is a sort of poor market lost in this
rich quarter.
[Illustration: THE ENTRANCE TO THE TUILERIES, OVER THE SWING-BRIDGE, IN
1788
_Original water-colour of the eighteenth century_ (Carnavalet Museum)]
Then comes the Place de la Concorde, the finest Square in the world,
with its unrivalled perspectives of the Champs Elysées, the Seine, the
Tuileries, the Garde-Meuble, the Crillon mansion, and the charming house
of Grimod de la Reynière, to-day the Cercle de l'Union artistique, at
the corner of the Rue de "la Bonne Morue"--at present the Rue Boissy
d'Anglas--in front of which still stood, until the second Empire, one of
the corner pavilions erected by Gabriel. What souvenirs! the raising of
Louis the Fifteenth's statue; the festivities in honour of the Dauphin's
marriage to Marie Antoinette, so tragically terminated by a
catastrophe--the crowd that had come to witness the fireworks being
crushed in the moat--which was the beginning of the hatred against the
"Austrian woman"; the reviews of the Swiss Guards; the military charges
of Lambesc; the people's storming of the swing-bridge, the gates forced,
the ditches crossed, and then the sinister scaffold, smoking in front of
the statue to Liberty, and the Conventionals terrified, stopping before
they entered their hall and taking a close look at the death which, each
day, hovered over them. "Yesterday, as I was proceeding to the Assembly
with Pénières," writes Dulaure in his Memoirs, "we perceived, as we
passed through the Revolution Square, preparations being made for an
execution. 'Let us pause,' my colleague said to me; 'let us accustom
ourselves to the sight. Perhaps we shall soon need to make proof of our
courage by calmly ascending this scaffold. Let us familiarise ourselves
with the punishment.'"
[Illustration: CORNER PAVILION OF THE LOUIS XV. SQUARE
At the angle of the Rue de la Bonne-Morue about 1850 (to-day the Rue
Boissy-d'Anglas)
_Etching by Martial_]
Severed heads were exhibited by the executioner at the four corners of
the huge Square: Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Hérault de Séchelles,
Charlotte Corday, Madame Roland, Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, and
Robespierre. A dreadful pell-mell, a disastrous butchery; the ground was
red with blood. Then followed the soldiers of the Empire, singing as
they defiled, on entering the Tuileries to cheer their triumphant
Emperor at his return from some victorious campaign.
A white head, big golden epaulets, a blue ribbon: such was the
appearance of Louis XVIII., impotent, with paralysed legs, who, in his
carriage surrounded with body-guards, galloped through the Square at
full speed.
It was at the corner of this Place de la Concorde that, on the 28th of
February 1848, Louis-Philippe, broken and vanquished, got into the
humble cab that proved to be the hearse of the Monarchy.
Napoleon III., with his blue dreamy eyes, used to cross it nearly every
day, driving his phaeton; and the boy, whom the Parisians of that time
called "the little Prince," would show his pretty fair head of hair at
the window of the "berline" escorted by the household troops.
[Illustration: VIEW IN THE TUILERIES GARDENS IN 1808
_Drawn by Norblin_ (Carnavalet Museum)]
The gates of the Tuileries were again to open, on the 4th of September
1870, under the pressure of the invaders; and, during the siege of
Paris, artillery were to camp in the vast ruined garden. Finally, the
palace of the kings of France was to disappear in a cloud of fire,
'midst the last convulsions of the expiring Commune; and, to-day, a poor
fellow, in a shabby sun-faded cloak and wearing an old felt hat, spends
his time distributing bread and grain to the Paris pigeons and sparrows,
on the very spot where once stood the rostrum of the Convention, some
yards from the place where the four hoofs of the Emperor Napoleon's
white horse pranced, as his rider reviewed the Guard, before flying his
victorious eagles towards Moscow, Madrid, Rome, Vienna, or Berlin!
The Champs Elysées are of almost modern creation. A decade ago, the fine
avenues surrounding the Arc de l'Etoile--the Avenue Kléber, the Avenue
Wagram, the Avenue Niel, the Avenue de l'Alma--offered most picturesque
contrasts; beside a sumptuous mansion, subsisted wretched little houses,
remains of old hovels that once were scattered all over this luxurious
quarter, where now nothing recalls the waste pieces of land, dangerous
even to cross, of sixty years ago. Under the Directory, Madame Tallien's
cottage (Notre Dame de Thermidor, she was called) to which the
Incroyables and the Merveilleuses dared not go without escort, was
situated as far up as the Avenue Montaigne. Dancing-gardens and open-air
bars occupied the space now filled by restaurants and cafés-concerts. An
engraving by Carle Vernet shows us a Cossack encampment round a humble,
country-looking inn. Now the Le Doyen restaurant stands there!
[Illustration: THE RUE GREUZE IN 1855
_Chauvet, del._]
Under Louis-Philippe, the Champs-Elysées were at length altered: side
avenues were laid out, the main avenue was widened; and Emile Augier
used to relate that, in the hollow of one of the trees numbered for
trimming (No. 116, I believe), the ticket porter belonging to the
Gymnase Theatre deposited the one intended for Balzac at the time of the
rehearsals of _Mercadet_. The great novelist, in order to escape from
his numerous creditors, was lodging at this period in the Rue Beaujon,
under the name of Madame Dupont, widow. Gozlan, who ultimately
discovered his illustrious friend's address, added on the envelopes
he sent to him--"née Balzac."
[Illustration: THE MADRID CHÂTEAU
_L. G. Moreau, pinxit_]
The curious Memoirs of the Abbé de Salamon, a Papal internuncio, give us
a striking picture of the Bois de Boulogne under the Revolution: a sort
of forest, or jungle, in which those took refuge who, being suspected,
were tracked by the Committees and the police, and to whom the precious
citizens' card had been refused. "I continually remained in the thickest
part of the Bois de Boulogne," he says. "It seemed to me that each
person I met read on my face that I was outlawed and was hastening to
deliver me to the headsman. I took up my abode in the loneliest place of
the wood. I lit a fire with a tinder-box and some twigs, and cooked my
vegetables; my soup was excellent.... Later I discovered another fairly
convenient spot, on the side of the Bagatelle Villa, quite near to the
Pyramid and not far from Madrid.
[Illustration: THE BAGATELLE PAVILION
_L. G. Moreau, pinxit_]
"One night, I was wakened in the middle of my dreams by the piercing
cries of two women, who drew back terrified on beholding me through the
darkness of night.
"It was a mother and her daughter, who also were flying from an
arrest-warrant. I called to them: 'Keep silence, whoever you are! You
have nothing to fear.' They asked me what I was doing in the wood so
late: 'The same thing as you no doubt are doing yourselves,' I
answered."
Subsequently it became the ordinary meeting-place for duellists.
Already, in the time of Louis XV., some ladies, the Marchioness de
Nesles and the Countess de Polignac, had exchanged pistol shots in it on
account of the Duke de Richelieu. Under the Revolution, in 1790, Cazalès
and Barnave went there to settle a political quarrel: "I should be sorry
to kill you," exclaimed Cazalès; "but you annoy us considerably, and I
want to keep you away from the rostrum for a while." "I am more
generous," retorted Barnave; "I wish merely to touch you; for you are
the only orator on your side, whereas on mine my absence would not even
be perceived." Afterwards it was Elleviou and Monsieur de Bieville;
General Foy and Monsieur de Corday; Marshal Soult and Colonel
Briqueville; Benjamin Constant and Forbin des Essarts; with this
peculiarity in the last duel that the two adversaries fought at ten
yards' distance, sitting in two armchairs, which were not even grazed!
And how many others!...
[Illustration: A PERFORMANCE AT THE HIPPODROME ON EYLAU SQUARE UNDER THE
SECOND EMPIRE]
Under Louis-Philippe, the Duke d'Orléans, the Duke de Nemours, Lord
Seymour, the Duke de Fitz-James, Ernest Le Roy--the Jockey Club at its
formation--organised races there. The stakes were modest; most often, a
few bottles of champagne were gained and lost. Then fashion took hold of
the thing. More importance was attached to racing; and, to-day, it is
the great Parisian event--in festivities. As early as 1850, the
Hippodrome of the Eylau Square revived the souvenir of Antiquity's
favourite chariot-races.
The Bois de Boulogne became the rendezvous of society. There, was
displayed the luxury of the Second Empire. Its trees and avenues formed
an exquisite framework to elegance and worldly show. In the _Curèe_,
Emile Zola was able to write: "It was four o'clock and the Bois awoke
from its afternoon sultriness. Along the Empress' Avenue, clouds of dust
were flying; and, afar, lawns of verdure could be seen, with the hills
of Saint-Cloud and Suresnes beyond, crowned with the grey of Mont
Valerien. The sun, aloft on the horizon, sailed in an effulgence of
golden light that filled the depths of the foliage, flamed the top
branches, and transformed this ocean of leaves into an ocean of
luminousness.... The varnished panels of the carriages, the flashing of
the copper and steel mountings, the bright colours of the dresses
streamed together with the horses' regular trot, and cast on the
background of the Bois a broad, moving band, a beam from the welkin,
lengthening as it followed the curves of the road. The waved roundness
of the sunshades radiated like metal moons."
The sight has not changed. It is the same triumphal defile, which each
day gathers within these select surroundings the most elegant women in
Paris, fashionable horsemen, vibrating autocars with their _chauffeurs_,
clubmen as well as artists and workmen, who come to enjoy the fair
spectacle, this feast of the eyes, this unique scenery: the Bois de
Boulogne, the Avenue du Bois, the Champs Elysées.
[Illustration: THE ARC DE TRIOMPHE ABOUT 1850]
From the top of the Arc de Triomphe, 'mid the twilight of May, the
vision is a magic one; it is from the terraces of the portico erected to
the glory of the Grand Army that a view is obtained of the sumptuous
quarters of modern Paris.
Some sixty years ago, Balzac showed his hero dreaming on the hill of
Père-Lachaise, and contemplating, as it lay in the valley, the Monster
he intended to tame. To-day Rastignac would have to mount the Arc de
Triomphe, if he wished to threaten Paris. Thence, he might launch his
famous defiance: "It is a struggle between us now!" for, if the aspect
of things has altered, the impression made by the immense City is still
and ever the same: an impression of weight, of imperious conflict, of
hard victory. In verity, no one disembarks without a sort of anguish in
this great Paris,--Paris, so redoubtable to the valiant that attempt its
conquest and so prodigal to the fortunate ones that have known how to
win its favour.