THE STREETS.
The Arrangement of the Streets--System of Numbering the Houses--Street
Nomenclature--Street Lamps--The Various Kinds of Vehicles in Use.
We have already searched the streets of Paris for types of character.
Let us proceed to look at one or two characteristic street objects,
after first taking a general view of the streets themselves.
The streets of Paris divide themselves into two categories: those
parallel to the Seine and those at right angles to it. In the first the
numbers follow the course of the stream, in the second they begin from
that end of the street which is nearest to the river. The traveller,
however, finding himself in any particular street, cannot in the present
day tell at once to which category it belongs, inasmuch as the old
distinction of colour is no longer preserved, by which the parallel
streets used to be numbered in red, and those at right angles in black.
All the Paris streets are lit up throughout the night. Early in the
morning, before daylight, companies of scavengers collect the city
refuse in heaps which, some hours afterwards, are carted away into the
neighbouring country to fertilise the soil. During the day other
scavengers clear the highways of whatever dust or mud they may have
accumulated.
Every day in summer water-carts sprinkle the principal thoroughfares.
These carts carry behind them an apparatus which flings the water over
the whole width of the street. In streets which are rather narrow, or
when the cart cannot keep exactly to the middle, the pedestrians come in
for a part of the municipal spray, as also do vehicles which are low or
open. It is prudent, therefore, to keep one’s eye on the water-cart,
unless a gratuitous shower-bath is absolutely desired.
Every public way bears a distinctive name. Extended thoroughfares are
not infrequently divided up into portions, each named separately; this
is due sometimes to local circumstances, sometimes to the fact that in
the olden days it was a caprice of the citizens frequently to change the
title of the street in which they resided. It was not until the
seventeenth century that the municipal administration officially
intervened in this matter. Then, however, the titles were less often
derived from local circumstances, adulation lavishing on the highways
and byways the names of princes and other personages of wealth or power.
Under Louis XIV. a certain proportion of street names were also drawn
from royal victories or from those officers who had achieved them. The
Revolution inscribed with the names of its heroes, its martyrs, its
triumphs, its principles, not only the new streets which it opened, but
even the old ones from which it wished to efface monarchical titles. The
Empire followed the same system. The Restoration returned to the
Royalist traditions; and the monarchy of July united those of the
Revolution and the Empire, mingling the ancient glories of France with
the modern, and illustrious foreigners with natives of renown.
To pass, however, from streets to street-illumination. Parisians of
to-day, accustomed to the brilliancy of gas, which turns night almost
into day, can scarcely believe that two centuries ago their town knew no
other light than that of the moon and stars. It was the case,
nevertheless; previously to 1667 not a public lamp existed. The
necessity of street illumination had already, however, been recognised
by a civic regulation which required householders, in those localities
where garrotting had become too frequent, to place beneath their
first-floor window, at 9 p.m., a lantern which might cast its beams into
the street. It was M. de la Reynie, lieutenant of police for Paris, who
first, in 1667, instituted public lamps. At the outset a lamp was placed
at the end of each street, with a third in the middle. Then, after a
time, the number of lamps was increased in streets of exceptional
length. Each containing a candle, these “lanternes” were suspended by a
rope from a crooked iron bar in the form of the gallows.
The lamps introduced by La Reynie marked a certain progress in
civilisation. They at least diminished in a remarkable manner the number
of night attacks. La Reynie’s lanterns lasted until 1776, when they were
replaced by so-called reverbères, or reflecting lamps. In a few months
more than half the streets in Paris were illuminated by the new lamps,
which, with some modifications, remained in use until the introduction
of gas.
[Illustration: PARISIAN TYPES--IN SEARCH OF CIGAR-ENDS.]
The most celebrated of all the lamps in Paris was the lamp or
“lanterne” of the Place de la Grève, which on the outbreak of the
Revolution was made the instrument of several summary executions, the
first victims being two retired soldiers and Major de Losme, accused of
firing on the people at the capture of the Bastille. The cry of “À la
lanterne!” was now constantly raised; and when the emigration began a
number of aristocrats were dragged to the fatal lamp, but saved at the
last moment by the intervention of Bailly and La Fayette. The notorious
Foulon, detested by everyone, was really hanged from the fatal lamp. His
son-in-law, Bertier, was also dragged beneath the lamp, but he defended
himself, snatched a musket from one of his guards, and fought until he
was shot down. On the 5th of October the brave Abbé Lefèvre d’Ormesson,
a member of the Commune, was half hanged by a number of wild women.
Fortunately for him, the rope was cut before it had done its work. About
the same time the mob, perishing from hunger, hung to the lamp a baker
named François, accused of hoarding up his bread. François is said to
have been the “last man tied up to the illuminated gallows” of the Place
de la Grève. Camille Desmoulins published, some eighty years before
Henri Rochefort made use of the title, a pamphlet called “La Lanterne,”
or, to quote the title in full, “Discours de la Lanterne aux Parisiens.”
It bore this epigraph: “Qui male agit odit lucem,” which he translated
thus: “Only rogues fear the light.”
If, however, the public lamps of Paris are the most conspicuous street
objects by night, those which first strike the eye by day are
unquestionably the vehicles.
In France, as in other countries, carriages are comparatively of modern
invention; and when they were first introduced they were generally
condemned as calculated to do away with a taste for equitation and to
produce habits of effeminacy. The condition of the streets and public
thoroughfares would, in ancient times, have rendered the employment of
vehicles impossible, and thus persons who did not go on foot went on
horseback until the sixteenth century, when the use of the so-called
“Sedan-chairs” became general. Wheeled carriages were not absolutely
unknown, but in Francis I.’s reign there were but two, one belonging to
the king, the other to the queen. The privilege of constructing and
letting out Sedan-chairs, or “chaises à bras,” was granted by Louis
XIII. at the beginning of the seventeenth century to one of the officers
of his body-guard; and towards the end of the reign, after many other
inventions in the way of vehicles had been tried, two-wheeled chaises,
called “brouettes,” or “wheelbarrows,” were introduced by a Monsieur
Dupin, who received the king’s support in the shape of a formal
authorisation. There was now a great dispute between the privileged
makers of Sedan-chairs and the privileged makers of “wheelbarrows,”
which ended in this compromise--that the new wheelbarrows were not to be
allowed unless drawn exclusively by men. In the reign of Henry IV. the
carriage, or “carrosse,” was introduced: a heavy, lumbering vehicle,
whose windows were hung with leather curtains. The use of glass in
carriage windows had not yet been adopted. Henry IV. was himself driving
in one of these carriages when Ravaillac thrust his hand through the
window and struck the fatal blow.
The first coach with glass windows--“glass-coach,” as the new vehicle
was called when, many years later, it was introduced into England--was
seen in Paris in 1630, brought there from Brussels by the Prince de
Condé. Up to the middle of the seventeenth century no wheeled vehicles
were seen in the streets of Paris except those belonging to private
persons. In 1650, however, it occurred to a man named Sauvage, living in
an hotel in the Rue Saint-Martin, which bore the sign of “Saint-Fiacre,”
to let out horses and carriages to anyone who wanted them; and in time
the name of fiacre was given to all hired carriages. Soon afterwards,
about the middle of the seventeenth century, so-called “diligences” were
established for conveying “with diligence” passengers in common from one
part of France to another; and from the idea of conveying a number of
passengers in the same vehicle from town to town was derived that of the
omnibus, doing a like service within the walls of the capital. The
invention of the omnibus is attributed to Pascal, the author of so many
“Pensées” of a finer type. The original Parisian omnibus was called the
“five sous carriage”--“carrosse au cinq sous”--five sous being required
from each passenger. It held six persons, and carried as a distinctive
sign a lantern at the end of an iron pole, which was fixed on the top,
to the left of the driver.
Until the time of the Revolution the right of letting out carriages was
always made the subject of a privilege or concession, accorded to some
court favourite, male or female. After the Revolution, however, when all
privileges were abolished, those connected with the letting out of
public vehicles came to an end. A few years afterwards, in 1800, a
tariff regulating the prices payable to the drivers of hackney carriages
was drawn up, when, as now, the cost of a drive, or “course,” inside
Paris, was fixed at something above a franc, two francs being chargeable
per hour if the vehicle were hired by time. Originally private carriages
had now become public, so that at last a demand arose for carriages
which might be taken by the month, the week, the day, or the half-day.
Hitherto all the hackney vehicles of Paris had been of one pattern and
furnished with four wheels. They seated either two or four passengers,
and were drawn by one or two horses. In the year 1800 the two-wheeled
“cabriolet” was introduced, containing seats for two, one of which was
occupied by the driver, to whose intimate society the unfortunate
passenger was thus condemned. From this period until 1830 the public
vehicles of Paris were, according to a French writer, “a disgrace to the
capital.” They were drawn by ruined beasts which looked unlikely to
reach any given destination, and they were many of them good for nothing
but firewood.
The Paris hackney vehicle largely excited at this time the ridicule of
wits and song-writers, although, irrespectively of its condition, it has
always figured almost exclusively in literature. In a great city like
Paris the cab is the witness, the auxiliary, or the accomplice in nearly
every event which takes place--it is a mute confidant in most of the
scenes of human life. The song-writer, Desaugiers, has left in verse a
curious history of a cab, supposed to be written by itself, and in which
it relates how one day it conveyed a widow to the altar, another day a
husband to Chantilly without his wife, and a third day the wife to
Gros-Bois without her husband.
Coming to modern times, we find the driver of the fiacre as interesting
a personage as he must frequently find his fare to be. The question
whether, as is asserted, ruined aristocrats are at present earning their
bread as cab-drivers has already been discussed. But it is
unquestionable that many members of what are called the “better” classes
turn to the cab as their last resource, even as Dr. Johnson’s
“scoundrel” was said to turn to politics. Priests, devoid in two senses
of a living, bachelors of arts and sciences, old professors and worn-out
notaries, may be seen plying the whip of the “cocher” in the Paris
streets.
[Illustration: A PARIS OMNIBUS.]
That the London cab--of which the name, as probably everyone knows, is
simply a contraction of “cabriolet”--surpasses the cab of Paris is
admitted even by patriotic Frenchmen. One able writer on the subject of
the French capital says that “the London cabs, which we have vainly
tried to acclimatise in Paris, are, if not comfortable, at least rapid
and well-managed. Our neighbours can boast two elements of incontestable
superiority. These are the drivers and the horses. Despite these causes,
it is probable that the English ‘cab’ would be found less attractive if,
instead of being paid by the mile, it were taken by the journey or by
the hour.” This writer, it should be explained, complains bitterly that
the Parisian cabman, engaged by the hour, proceeds at a crawl, knowing
that he will be paid just as much as if he drove with the celerity of
his London brother, who simply wants to get to his journey’s end and
receive his fare--or as much beyond it as he possibly can.
As regards the omnibuses of Paris, they resemble in many respects those
of London. For instance, they are painted different colours according to
their particular route. When the vehicle is quite full a board or card
announcing the fact is fixed up over the door; and each vehicle is
numbered so that in case of complaint it can be identified by the
passenger.
The private carriages let out on hire--those which can be taken by the
month or for the season--are not permitted to ply in the streets of
Paris like the fiacre. They take up their passenger at his own door, and
can be hired by the year, month, day, or half-day. The form of these
vehicles varies, according to the caprices or the fortune of the hirer,
from plain to magnificent. In France, as in England, rich families
accustomed to winter in the capital leave their own carriages in the
country and hire others by the month. Even wealthy Frenchmen, who reside
altogether in the capital, have of late years shown themselves more and
more disposed to escape in this way the trouble and annoyance connected
with the maintenance of personal equipages. Nor do those Englishmen who
have tried both methods feel a less marked preference for that of hire,
which relieves them from the numerous anxieties associated with the
stable. It will be remembered how Henry J. Byron’s coachman came to that
comedy-writer one day and said that the mare was ill. “What’s to be
done?” asked Byron. “I shall have to give her a ball, sir,” was the
reply. “Very well,” said Byron with a sigh of resignation, “but don’t
ask too many people.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration: NOTRE DAME. THE MORGUE. PONT ST. LOUIS AND HÔTEL DE VILLE.
EASTERN END OF ÎLE DE LA CITÉ]
[Illustration: THE PONT DE BERCY.]