Chapelle Expiatoire.--Devotees seen there.--Tri-coloured flag
out of place there.--Flower Market of the Madeleine.--Petites
Maîtresses.
Of all the edifices finished in Paris since my last visit, there is
not one which altogether pleases me better than the little "Chapelle
Expiatoire" erected in memory of Louis the Sixteenth, and his
beautiful but ill-starred queen.
This monument was planned and in part executed by Louis the
Eighteenth, and finished by Charles the Tenth. It stands upon the spot
where many butchered victims of the tyrant mob were thrown in 1793.
The story of the royal bodies having been destroyed by quicklime is
said to have been fabricated and circulated for the purpose of
preventing any search after them, which might, it was thought, have
produced a dangerous reaction of feeling among the whim-governed
populace.
These bodies, and several others, which were placed in coffins, and
inscribed with the names of the murdered occupants, lay buried
together for many years after the revolution in a large _chantier_,
or wood-yard, at no great distance from the place of execution.
That this spot had been excavated for the purpose of receiving these
sad relics, is a fact well known, and it was never lost sight of from
the terrible period at which the ground was so employed; but the
unseemly vault continued undisturbed till after the restoration, when
the bodies of the royal victims were sought and found. Their bones
were then conveyed to the long-hallowed shrine of St. Denis; but the
spot where the mangled remains were first thrown was consecrated, and
is now become the site of this beautiful little Chapelle Expiatoire.
The enclosure in which this building stands is of considerable extent,
reaching from the Rue de l'Arcade to the Rue d'Anjou. This space is
lined with closely-planted rows of cypress-trees on every side, which
are protected by a massive railing, neatly painted. The building
itself and all its accompaniments are in excellent taste; simple,
graceful, and solemn.
The interior is a small Greek cross, each extremity of which is
finished by a semicircle surmounted by a semi-dome. The space beneath
the central dome is occupied by chairs and benches covered with
crimson velvet, for the use of the faithful--in every sense--who come
to attend the mass which is daily performed there.
As long as the daughter of the murdered monarch continued to reside in
Paris, no morning ever passed without her coming to offer up her
prayers at this expiatory shrine.
One of the four curved extremities is occupied by the altar; that
opposite to it, by the entrance; and those on either side, by two
well-composed and impressive groups in white marble--that to the right
of the altar representing Marie Antoinette bending beside a cross
supported by an angel,--and that to the left, the felon-murdered
monarch whose wretched and most unmerited destiny she shared. On the
pedestal of the king's statue is inscribed his will; on that of the
queen, her farewell letter to the Princess Elizabeth.
Nothing can exceed the chaste delicacy of the few ornaments admitted
into the chapel. They consist only, I think, of golden candlesticks,
placed in niches in the white marble walls. The effect of the whole is
beautiful and impressive.
I often go there; yet I can hardly understand what the charm can be in
the little building itself, or in the quiet mass performed there
without music, which can so attract me. It is at no great distance
from our apartments in the Rue de Provence, and a walk thither just
occupies the time before breakfast. I once went there on a Sunday
morning with some of my family; but then it was full--indeed so
crowded, that it was impossible to see across the building, or feel
the beauty of its elegant simplicity. The pale figures of the royal
dead, the foully murdered, were no longer the principal objects; and
though I have no doubt that all present were right loyal spirits, with
whose feelings I am well enough disposed to sympathise, yet I could
not read each saddened brow, and attach a romance to it, as I never
fail to do during my week-day visits.
There are two ladies, for example, whom I constantly see there, ever
in the same place, and ever in the same attitude. The elder of these I
feel perfectly sure must have passed her youth near Marie Antoinette,
for it is at the foot of her statue that she kneels--or I might almost
say that she prostrates herself, for she throws her arms forward on a
cushion that is placed before her, and suffers her aged head to fall
upon them, in a manner that speaks more sorrow than I can describe.
The young girl who always accompanies and kneels beside her may, I
think, be her granddaughter. They have each of them "_Gentlewoman
born_" written on every feature, in characters not to be mistaken. The
old lady is very pale, and the young one looks as if she were not
passing a youth of gaiety and enjoyment.
There is a grey-headed old man, too, who is equally constant in his
attendance at this melancholy chapel. He might sit as a model for a
portrait of _le bon vieux temps_; but he has a stern though sad
expression of countenance, which seems to be exactly a masculine
modification of what is passing at the heart and in the memory of the
old lady at the opposite side of the chapel. These are figures which
send the thoughts back for fifty years; and seen in the act of
assisting at a mass for the souls of Louis Seize and his queen,
produce a powerful effect on the imagination.
I have ventured to describe this melancholy spot, and what I have seen
there, the more particularly because, easy as it is of access, you
might go to Paris a dozen times without seeing it, as in fact hundreds
of English travellers do. One reason for this is, that it is not
opened to the public gaze as a show, but can only be entered during
the hour of prayer, which is inconveniently early in the day.
As this sad and sacred edifice cannot justly be considered as a public
building, the elevation of the tri-coloured flag upon it every
fête-day might, I think, have been spared.
Another, and a very different novelty, is the new flower-market, that
is now kept under the walls and columns of the majestic church of La
Madeleine. This beautiful collection of flowers appears to me to
produce from its situation a very singular effect: the relative
attributes of art and nature are reversed;--for here, art seems
sublime, vast, and enduring; while nature is small, fragile, and
perishing.
It has sometimes happened to me, after looking at a work of art which
raised my admiration to enthusiasm, that I have next sought some
marvellous combination of mountain and valley, rock and river, forest
and cataract, and felt as I gazed on them something like shame at
remembering how nearly I had suffered the work of man to produce an
equal ecstasy. But here, when I raised my eyes from the little flimsy
crowd of many-coloured blossoms to the simple, solemn pomp of that
long arcade, with its spotless purity of tint and its enduring majesty
of graceful strength, I felt half inclined to scorn myself and those
around me for being so very much occupied by the roses, pinks, and
mignonette spread out before it.
Laying aside, however, all philosophical reflections on its locality,
this new flower-market is a delightful acquisition to the Parisian
_petite maîtresse_. It was a long expedition to visit the _marché aux
fleurs_ on the distant quay near Notre Dame; and though its beauty and
its fragrance might well repay an hour or two stolen from the pillow,
the sweet decorations it offered to the boudoir must have been oftener
selected by the _maître d'hôtel_ or the _femme de chambre_ than by the
fair lady herself. But now, three times in the week we may have the
pleasure of seeing numbers of graceful females in that piquant species
of dishabille, which, uniting an equal portion of careful coquetry
and saucy indifference, gives to the morning attire of a pretty,
elegant, Frenchwoman, an air so indescribably attractive.
Followed by a neat _soubrette_, such figures may now be often seen in
the flower-market of the Madeleine before the brightness of the
morning has faded either from their eyes, or the blossoms they so love
to gaze upon. The most ordinary linen gown, made in the form of a
wrapper--the hair _en papillote_--the plain straw-bonnet drawn forward
over the eyes, and the vast shawl enveloping the whole figure, might
suffice to make many an _élégante_ pace up and down the fragrant alley
incognita, did not the observant eye remark that a veil of rich lace
secured the simple bonnet under the chin--that the shawl was of
cashmere--and that the little hand, when ungloved to enjoy the touch
of a myrtle or an orange blossom, was as white as either.