One of the most complete departments of the Préfecture de Police is that
of the _sommiers judiciaires_, in which are preserved the _fiches_ or
records of every person brought before the tribunals, giving his name,
age, place of birth, etc., and the date, the cause, and the nature of
his sentence. The récidivistes, the hardened offenders, have each a
regular bulletin, sometimes a variety of fiches if they have various
aliases. These archives of crime are contained in thousands of boxes,
filling a number of rooms, and are constantly consulted; their
inspection is strictly forbidden to private individuals. This bureau
contains records, systematically arranged, of all the sentences
pronounced by the courts and the civil and military tribunals of France;
the number of ordinary bulletins exceeds eight millions. In addition to
these judicial archives, the Préfecture de Police preserves a personal
record of every prominent personage. Less closely connected with affairs
of State, the bureau of lost articles is more appreciated by the
public; it was opened in 1804, but became generally known only after
1848. The number of these objects found in the streets and public places
and deposited here has exceeded twenty-six thousand, and every one of
them is carefully numbered, catalogued, and ticketed. After remaining
here till all attempts to find the rightful owner have failed, they may
be restored to the _inventeur_, the finder, on his demand, after a
period of three months for garments, furs, and woollen stuffs, of six
months for other articles capable of deterioration, umbrellas, books,
and opera-glasses, and of a year for all others.
* * * * *
The first well-organized attempt to light the streets of Paris at night
seems to have been made under Louis XIV. The Abbé de Caraffe had
previously undertaken to establish a force of link-boys and
torch-bearers, but the bureau which he opened in the Rue Saint-Honoré
was soon closed, to the great regret of the honest bourgeois who
scarcely dared to stir out of his house after dark without a lantern.
Thieves abounded, and even the lackeys of good houses, sword in hand,
made a practice of insulting and striking the unlucky commoner who fell
in their way. The lieutenant of police, La Reynie, undertook to
establish a regular system of illumination,--at the end of each street
and in the middle, he hung an iron and glass lantern, some two feet in
height, enclosing a candle weighing a hundred and twenty-five grammes,
the whole suspended from a rope, and hoisted and lowered by means of a
pulley. The malicious breaking of these lanterns was punished by the
galleys. This illumination at first was given only from the 1st of
November to the 1st of March, but later, an ordinance of May 23, 1671,
extended the period from the 20th of October to the 1st of April, and,
still later, it was lengthened to nine months, with the exception of
the week in which the moon shone. For the period of six months, the cost
was a million and a half of francs, it is said.
This innovation excited universal enthusiasm. The king was so well
pleased with it, that he caused a medal to be struck bearing the
inscription: "_Urbis securitas et nitor_ [security and lighting of the
city]." In a passage in _Saint-Evremoniana_, we find: "The invention of
lighting Paris during the night by an infinity of lamps is worthy of
attracting the most distant peoples to come and contemplate that which
the Greeks and the Romans never imagined for the policing of their
republics. The lights, enclosed in glass lanterns suspended in the air
at an equal distance from each other, are arranged in an admirable order
and give light all the night; this spectacle is so handsome and so well
planned, that Archimedes himself, if he were still living, could add
nothing more agreeable and more useful."
As late as the end of the eighteenth century, the vegetable and animal
oils and fats furnished the only means of artificial illumination. The
tallow-candle dates from the eleventh century, and was an humble partner
for the much more aristocratic wax taper. In 1791, Philippe Lebon
commenced a series of experiments upon the extraction from wood of a gas
for illuminating purposes; and in the following year, Murdoch, in
England, succeeded in extracting it from pit-coal. A manufactory of gas,
constructed by the Comte de Chabrol, served to light the Hôpital
Saint-Louis, in 1818; and, two years later, another furnished
illumination for the Palais du Luxembourg and the Odéon. Chevreul's
experiments in the saponification of fatty substances and the extraction
of oleic, stearic, and margaric acids, undertaken in 1823, led to the
manufacture and general use of stearic candles by 1831. In the previous
year, the introduction of mineral oils and petroleums had begun; the
very extensive importation of the coal-oil of Pennsylvania commenced in
1859, and has been supplemented of recent years by that of the produce
of the oil-wells of the Caucasus. Both these are largely imported in the
crude state, and are distilled and refined in France. The _huile de
colza_, extracted from the colewort, is still very largely used, and is
an excellent oil for lamps; and acetylene is beginning to take the place
of coal-gas as an illuminator.
When the permanent street-lamps, burning oil, replaced the ancient
lanterns and candles in the streets of Paris, they excited as much
admiration as the latter had done. "The very great amount of light which
they give," said the lieutenant of police, M. de Sartines, "forbids us
to believe that anything better can ever be found." The introduction of
gas excited much opposition, as late as 1830; the householders feared to
be asphyxiated by sulphuretted hydrogen and adopted the new method with
much hesitation. Philippe Lebon was assassinated on the Champs-Élysées
on the evening of the coronation of Napoleon I, and his invention, "as
is usually the case, made the tour of Europe before returning to benefit
France,--the first companies that undertook to work his invention were
managed by foreigners, Winsor, Pauwel, and Manley-Wilson." The five or
six rival companies that furnished gas to the city, united in 1855 in
one corporation, the _Compagnie parisienne d'éclairage et de chauffage
par le gaz_. At present, the _Compagnie du Gaz_ delivers it to private
houses within the city at an average price of thirty centimes the cubic
mètre, and at varying prices in the suburbs. It cannot refuse to furnish
it to any subscriber, but it has the right of demanding that payments be
made in advance.
Much apprehension was at first excited in the neighborhood of the
companies' works by the enormous metal tanks, or reservoirs, until, as
is related, an Englishman, named Clegg, one day went up to one of these
huge gasometers, drove a hole through the side, and applied a lighted
candle to the aperture. The escaping gas burned in a steady jet, as from
a burner, but did not explode. At the opening of the siege of Paris,
General Trochu was alarmed at the possibility of one of these gasometers
in the suburbs being exploded by a German shell and destroying the
ramparts in its vicinity; the Conseil de Défense, having communicated
these apprehensions to the gas company, were assured by the latter that
the reservoirs would not explode, even though pierced by a projectile.
This statement was soon verified; at the works at Ivry, one of the
enemy's shells fell through one of the iron _cloches_,--a long sheaf of
fire rose in the air, and was extinguished within a few minutes. At La
Villette, a shell burst inside the tank, but the gas escaped without any
further damage. It was the latter usine that furnished the means of
inflating the balloons that, for so long a time, constituted the city's
only method of communication with the outside world.
If the municipality was somewhat slow in adopting the use of gas for its
streets, it claims to be the first to have introduced that of
electricity. This new method of illumination appeared in 1876, and in
the following year the Avenue de l'Opéra was lit up by the Jablochkoff
system. In England, the use of electricity for lighting public streets
and dwellings was inaugurated in the town of Godalming in 1881; and in
America, in New York, in 1882. The Place du Carrousel followed the
Avenue de l'Opéra, using sixteen Mersanne lights; experiments were made
in the Parc Monceau with fourteen arc lights, and in the Parc des
Buttes-Chaumont with fifty arc lights and seventy-nine incandescent.
The tragic burning of the Opéra-Comique, in May, 1887, gave a great
impulse to the adoption of the new method in preference to the use of
gas, and the city north of the Seine was divided into five _secteurs_,
each furnished by its own electrical company. This method still
prevails, the number of secteurs having been increased to seven, one for
the left bank of the river, and the different companies hold their
concessions for the space of eighteen years. The unit of measurement is
the _hectowatt-heure_, the price of which ranges from ten to fifteen
centimes, whilst in other cities, according to statistics of November,
1897, it ranged from five to seven centimes in Brussels, from six to
seven in London, and at about seven and a half in Berlin.
[Illustration: AN "IMMORTAL" AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE INSTITUT DE FRANCE.
After a drawing by Émile Bayard.]
This excessive price has had the natural result of curtailing the use of
electricity as an illuminator; and the usual thrifty habits of the
French householder and municipality contribute to make the capital
anything but a well-lighted city at night,--contrary to the general
impression. The stranger who leaves the main boulevards and enters any
of the minor streets, even such a wide and important one as the
Boulevard Saint-Germain, is struck with the village darkness of these
thoroughfares. Not only is there no other means of illumination
generally but the street-lamps burning gas, which are sufficiently
widely spaced,--and, in the case of the boulevard just mentioned, masked
by trees,--but all the house-fronts are tightly closed and as black as
night. One may cross the Place Vendôme, five minutes from the Opéra, in
the middle of the evening in the middle of the season, and have barely
light enough to avoid other pedestrians. All around the great circle the
houses show no gleam of light in their windows, with two or three
exceptions, and the effect is anything but cheerful. In this Place,
as in so many localities in Paris, the pedestrians take to the middle of
the streets,--in the wide thoroughfares, to cross them, or to avoid
détours, and in the narrow ones, because of the insufficiency of
sidewalks,--and good eyesight becomes of the utmost importance.
Fortunately, the cabs and carriages all carry double lanterns, and even
the bicyclers, those terrors to foot-passengers, are compelled to show a
light of some kind and to sound some kind of warning. Of these, the neat
and efficient little lantern and the bell fixed to the handle-bar are
not yet in general use,--the French cycler mounts any kind of a lamp,
even a paper Venetian lantern, on the front of his machine, and rings a
tea-bell, or sounds a small horn, as he dashes along. If he display no
consideration whatever for the pedestrian, he, in turn, perils his own
neck with the utmost willingness, and the risks he takes in the narrow
and crowded streets, and the coolness and skill with which he avoids the
fate he so justly deserves, are equally remarkable.
In the summer of 1898, the discussion concerning the deficient
_éclairage électrique_, periodically revived, took on new animation in
view of the approaching Exposition of 1900 and the admitted inferiority
of Paris in this respect to other cities. The question was brought up in
the Conseil Municipal in the spring; the various companies made a
proposition to modify their contracts with the city and to effect a
considerable reduction in their price, as much as twenty-five or
thirty-five per cent, to individual consumers, in return for a
prolongation of their contracts to 1930,--the present ones expiring in
1907 and 1908. This prolongation, they said, would allow them to assume
the heavy expense of establishing new plants, and extending their wires,
while at the same time reducing the price,--the near approach of the end
of the present contracts restraining them from doing either in view of
the necessity of securing a speedy return upon the capital already
invested. The municipal councillors replied with another
proposition,--to maintain the _status quo_ until the expiration of the
present contracts, and then, in some ten or fifteen years, when the
condition of the municipal finances would permit, to establish three
great _compagnies fermières_, which should furnish both gas and
electricity at a very moderate price, to be set by the Conseil itself.
The objections to this plan were set forth very freely,--in the first
place, it prolonged an intolerable situation, and just at the moment
when the capital was inviting all the world to visit her. In the second
place, nothing is more doubtful than the future,--it is quite possible
that in the course of fifteen years electricity may be superseded by
some other power, as the utilization of the solar heat; if the Municipal
Council are so convinced of the excellence of their system, why not put
it in practice at once, as they have the power? Moreover, it is very
doubtful if the financial condition of the city will be better in 1907
or 1908 than it is at present; it will be necessary at that date, at the
expiration of the concessions, to purchase the plants of the companies.
The municipal debt, so far from diminishing, has, so far, steadily
increased; it is estimated that the city will have to borrow, in these
ten years, the sum of four hundred and seventy-five millions of
francs,--twenty millions for the conversion of the loan of 1886, forty
millions for the water-supply, a hundred and sixty-five millions for the
Métropolitan railway, fifty millions for education, and two hundred
millions for the opening and maintenance of highways. It is, therefore,
highly probable that the municipal control of the electric lighting, so
far from bringing any amelioration of the lot of the consumer, will only
be considered as another source of municipal revenue, like the State
monopoly of tobacco, powder, etc. It is recalled that these monopolies
always incite the public administration to draw from them the greatest
possible profit,--as in the case of the water-supply, the price of which
has doubled since the city has assumed the management of it. One of the
immediate results of this augmentation has been a great increase in the
number of electric elevators.
In this connection, the experience of the city with the gas company is
recalled. In 1888, the Compagnie parisienne du gaz offered to lower the
price to twenty-five centimes the cubic mètre for lighting and to twenty
for motive power, in return for certain considerations which involved no
pecuniary cost to the city. The Conseil Municipal refused this offer.
The result was somewhat as follows: in 1888, there were consumed in
Paris and in the banlieue, in round numbers, two hundred and
ninety-eight millions of cubic mètres of gas, and in 1897, three hundred
and fifteen; the average consumption for the period 1888-1898 being thus
something over three hundred millions. Consequently, if the terms of the
company had been accepted, the consumers would have had to pay in these
ten years a hundred and thirty-three million francs less,--and the
municipal council had made a present of this sum to the shareholders of
the Compagnie du gaz. In the present case, the acceptance of the offer
of the electrical companies would involve a reduction in the cost to the
consumers, and also to the city, of two or three million francs a year,
that is to say, of thirty or forty-five millions for the fifteen years
of waiting which are proposed,--supposing, which is not at all probable,
that the consumption would not greatly increase with the lowering of the
cost. So that, from every point of view, it is considered that the
necessity is for immediate reform.
* * * * *
All these larger administrative municipal details, and the Third
Republic itself, date from 1870, the most important year in the history
of France, and it may be thought that no record, however brief, of the
machinery of government, of the characteristics, the aspirations, and
tendencies of this modern society, would be approximately correct
without some allusion to its recent origin, to those tremendous
political events which so transformed it, and which still remain for it
an endless and hopelessly bitter source of speculation, of discussion,
and of fierce recrimination. In this overthrow of a nation, it is the
great figure of the Chancellor of the German Empire that fills the
scene, moving apparently at his will kings, emperors, and ambassadors,
and influencing, even at this late day, every measure of the government
of the capital and the nation by an enduring Consternation,--by a fear
that does but increase from year to year. The incompetence of the
Emperor, the folly of the Empress, probably but served to aid or to
accelerate the ruin which Bismarck thought necessary to secure his great
building,--the Confederation of the North German states had been
consolidated by the defeat of Austria at Sadowa, but France, he was
convinced, would never consent to the re-establishment of the German
Empire. Even the vanquished admit that he did not want war for the sake
of war; but, by his own admission, in 1892, he was willing to secure
this necessary result by any trick, even that of the forger.
[Illustration: PRIVATE OF THE LINE ACTING AS POSTMAN DURING AN EPIDEMIC
OF INFLUENZA.