SOME HISTORICAL BUILDINGS.
Abailard and Héloise--Fulbert’s House in the Rue des Chantres--The
Philip Augustus Towers--The Hôtel Barbette--The Hôtel de Sens.
[Illustration: RUE DES CHANTRES, LOOKING TOWARDS NOTRE DAME.]
“To look for history in the streets of Paris,” said M. Edouard Fournier,
some twenty-five years ago, “when so much of the city has been
destroyed, especially during the last ten years, is to arrive rather
late in the field; it is like harvesting after the gleaners, picking up
blades of grass instead of ears of corn.” And this, from the author of
“L’Esprit dans l’Histoire” and of “Le Vieux-Neuf,” concerning whom Jules
Janin once wrote: “_Cet homme sait tout; il ne sait que cela; mais il le
sait bien_.” Where Edouard Fournier despaired of finding anything it
would be vain to seek for much. Something, however, may, even by
following in his footsteps, yet be gleaned in the very field which he
regards as bare. In the socalled “city”--the germ of that capital to
which the name of Paris is now given--may still be seen the house in the
Rue des Chantres which passes for that of the odious Fulbert, villain of
the love story of Abailard and Héloise. That of Abailard, which was on
the other side of the street, was pulled down early in 1849. Its final
association was with a law-suit, brought by lodgers in the house against
the proprietor, who, as they alleged, had dispossessed them without due
notice. The former abode of Fulbert, the terrible uncle of Héloise, must
itself be on the point of disappearing, even if it has not been already
demolished. The house of Abailard was at one time connected by a narrow
bridge with the house where the unnatural Fulbert dwelt with his
charming niece. But after the separation of the lovers their respective
houses were no longer to remain united, and the stone bridge which
joined them together--like the Bridge of Sighs of the Venetian Palace
and Prison--soon fell into ruins. Two medallions, in which their
features were said to be reproduced, formed the last record of their
loves. These have been reproduced above the ground-floor of the new
house on the Quai Napoleon, with the famous distich: “_Abailard,
Héloise, habitèrent ces lieux_,” etc. Those who love history for its
romance, those who have been touched by the tale of the lovers, will
gaze with interest on these two faces; and if they are not satisfied
they may go to Père Lachaise to continue their devotions in presence of
the monument to their memory. If, however, they should have consulted M.
Edouard Fournier beforehand, they will have been warned that the
medallions of the Quai Napoleon and the statues of the tomb are anything
but authentic. “The medallions,” says this unerring critic, “in costumes
of the time of Henry IV. represent lovers of the twelfth century. As to
the statues, M. de Guilhermy has already shown that the one of Héloise
was seen until the time of the Revolution on the tomb of the Dorman
family in the chapel of the Beauvais College, Rue Jean de Beauvais. The
statue of Abailard is probably of equal authenticity.”
If, to pursue the subject historically, we were to look for remains of
the great wall with innumerable towers which Philip Augustus built
before his departure for the Crusades, in order not to leave his dear
city of Paris without defence, we should find it difficult to discover
even traces; though the most imposing of the towers were destroyed not
more than twenty or thirty years ago. They were brought to light by
preceding demolitions, themselves in turn to be laid in ruins. At the
foot of one of these towers a treasure, dating from Gallo-Roman times,
was dug up. It was valued, according to the weight of the gold, at
30,000 francs, though its artistic and historical worth was a hundred
times greater. Most of the medals found their way to England. In the
Cour de Rouen, close to the Passage du Commerce, is, or was until
lately, to be seen a well-preserved fragment of a Philip Augustus tower,
standing, half-smothered with ivy, on a piece of wall, broad enough to
serve as terrace to the adjoining house, where a girls’ school had been
established. “It is a joyful sight,” says M. Edouard Fournier, “to see
children of the present day leaping and bounding on this remnant of
antiquity.” Further on, in the Rue Clovis--which the reader may remember
as figuring in Eugène Sue’s “Wandering Jew”--is another relic of this
same wall. In the Rue Dauphine, at the back of the house numbered 34, is
a tower almost in its original form; and close by, in the Rue Guénégaud,
the body of another, which stood on the edge of the wall that from this
point went on in a straight line to the celebrated Tour de Nesle. The
ruined tower of the Rue Guénégaud served some years ago as background to
a blacksmith’s forge, whose flames cast a lurid light on this obscure
reminder of a past age.
[Illustration: SITE OF THE HOUSE OF ABAILARD AND HÉLOISE, RUE DES
CHANTRES.]
Passing to the other side of the water (where our subject inevitably
leads us, though it is on the left bank that Paris antiquities are
chiefly to be sought), we find several houses ancient themselves, or at
least closely connected with ancient associations. In the former Rue des
Jardins Saint-Paul--now Rue Charlemagne--where Rabelais died, and where
Molière passed the first years of his dramatic apprenticeship, may be
seen, in the courtyard of the neighbouring barracks, remains of one of
the two towers which Charles X. gave in 1485 to the nuns of the Ave
Maria convent, whose cloister the barracks have now replaced. At No. 20
of the Rue Rambuteau some twenty metres of the old wall, here in the
form of a terrace, are to be found; and finally, in the very heart of
Paris, in the Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau, where the General Post Office
is established, is preserved at the back of No. 12 a tower which has
still two-thirds of its original height. It stands twenty-four feet
above the soil. In its entirety it was, like all the other towers,
thirty-nine feet high.
These remains of the old girdle-wall, whose existence by many persons is
scarcely suspected, are all that survives of the constructions of the
sixteenth century. The thirteenth is still more imperfectly represented;
though some forty years ago might be seen in the quarter of
Saint-Marcel, at some paces from the river Bièvre, substantial remains
of one of the lodges of St. Louis.
In the Rue des Gobelins and the Rue des Marmousets are still extant
relics, in the shape of a façade and the fragment of a wall, of the
royal lodge where Queen Blanche listened beneath the willows of the
Bièvre to the verses of Thibault de Champagne; where Charles VI. went
mad one terrible night, which, beginning with a masquerade, ended with
a conflagration; where Francis I. had secret rendezvous, to which
playful reference is sometimes made in the pages of Rabelais.
In the Rue Vieille du Temple, at the corner of the Rue des Francs
Bourgeois, stands a graceful turret--bright relic of that sombre Hôtel
Barbette which the Duke of Orleans, brother of Charles VI., was just
leaving when he was killed at the very door by the followers of John the
Fearless. A lamp, whose light was never to be extinguished, was placed
there by one of the assassins, in expiation of the crime. Tradition says
that “la belle Ferronnière” lived close by, and that it was by the light
of the lamp, fixed beneath the turret, that the husband saw Francis I.
escape one night from his wife’s house.
After adorning a feudal mansion, subsequently to be transformed into the
rich abode of a financier of the time of Louis XIV., what has this
turret now become? Without losing anything of its graceful exterior, not
even the grating, so finely worked, of its little window, it marks the
corner of the bedroom occupied by the grocer who has his shop below!
[Illustration: RUE DES CHANTRES, LOOKING TOWARDS THE QUAI.]
John the Fearless was not troubled by the remorse experienced by his
accomplice, whose repentance was for ever to be proclaimed by his votive
lamp. The blow having been struck, his only thought was to guard against
the consequences. Withdrawing to the Hôtel d’Artois, which afterwards
took from him the name of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, he there constructed a
stone room, or what was then called a donjon--not to be confounded with
the English word obviously derived from it. The little fortress of John
the Fearless was solidly built, for it exists even to this day. The
square tower, at least eighty feet high, is indeed in perfect condition.
Its walls are still crenellated, and it has lost nothing of its original
physiognomy, except as regards the roof with which it has been covered
in.
An old building of very different character is the house of Nicholas
Flamel, at No. 50, Rue Montmorency, near the Rue Saint-Martin. Just
above the ground floor a touching inscription in Gothic characters may
still be read, from which it appears that “poor labouring men and women
dwelling beneath the porch of this house,” said the Paternoster and the
Ave Maria for the dead. This was the sole condition of the hospitality
extended to them by Flamel. He had ideas on the subject of property
which can never have been widely spread in any age, and which are
certainly not entertained in the present day. He let out his numerous
houses in such a way, that with the money gained from lodgers on the
lower floors he supported lodgers without means on the upper ones. “Gens
de mestier,” says Guillebert de Metz, “demouroient en bas, et du loyer
qu’ils payoient estoient soutenus povres laboureurs en hault.”
Another historic house, in the very centre of what may still be looked
upon as mediæval Paris, the Hôtel de Sens, stands in an open space
enclosed by the Rues Figuier, de la Mortellerie, du Fauconnier, and des
Barrés; in an admirable position, that is to say, and at two paces from
the ancient Hôtel Saint-Paul. John the Good, after his imprisonment in
London, lived there for some time as the guest of the Archbishop of
Sens. Charles V. attached more value to it, for in 1369 he purchased
it, and for some time it was only an adjunct to the Hôtel Saint-Paul.
Towards the middle of the fifteenth century it reverted to the
Archbishop of Sens, Tristan de Salazar, who had it rebuilt in the form
it still preserves, with the exception of the embellishments added by
the famous Duprat, one of his successors.
[Illustration: PORTION OF THE FAÇADE, MUSÉE CARNAVALET.]
Under Henri IV. it was the abode of La Reine Margot, as Marguerite de
Valois, the king’s divorced wife, was popularly called. “Queen Venus,”
as will afterwards be seen, was another of her familiar names. This
legendary heroine of the Tour de Nesle had scarcely taken possession of
her new mansion, in August, 1605, when a placard was affixed to her
door, inscribed with a quatrain in which her licentious life was
satirised. The evil reputation brought to the house by Queen Margot
remained attached to it as long as she lived there. In a previous sketch
of the locality the story has already been told of the tragic event
which caused Queen Margot to abandon the Hôtel de Sens for ever. She had
been there scarcely a year when one of her pages, whose professions of
love she had accepted, finding another page preferred to him, shot his
rival almost beneath the queen’s eyes. Marguerite’s cry for vengeance,
her offer of her own garter to anyone who would use it to strangle the
assassin, his arrest, and her vow neither to eat nor drink until he had
been executed, have already been told. Two days after (or, as some
authorities have it, only one) the page Vermond, who had fled but was
duly captured, lost his head beneath the axe of the executioner, when
Queen Margot fainted away, and, on recovering herself, left the place
for ever.
She had scarcely quitted Paris when this murder of her lover before her
door and the speedy gratification of her desire for vengeance on the
assassin were thus set forth in verses sung freely in the public
streets:--
_La Royne Vénus demi-morte_
_De voir mourir devant sa porte_
_Son Adonis, son cher Amour,_
_Pour vengeance a devants a face_
_Fait défaire en la mesme place_
_L’assassin presque au mesme jour_.
The Hôtel de Torpane, in the Rue de Bernardins, was the mansion of the
Bignon family, which has produced so many illustrious men in literature
and in law. It was demolished in 1830, but remains of it still subsist.
Some years ago a stone, bearing the motto of the Bignon family--“_Multa
renascentur_”--was found (what irony!) in the midst of the ruins.
Nothing of a fallen house lives again except, perhaps, certain ornaments
which, like the sculpture of the Hôtel de Tortonne, are carried
elsewhere--in this particular case, to a back room in the École des
Beaux-Arts. The statues which once adorned the Hôtel de Torpane are
said--but probably without foundation--to be from the hand of Jean
Goujon.
Mention has already been made of the Hôtel Carnavalet, where the genius
of Jean Goujon may really be studied. It owes its name to the widow of
M. Kernevenoy, whose Breton name had become softened into that of
Carnavalet, and who in his lifetime had been the worthy friend of
Ronsard and of Brantôme. Madame “Carnavalet” bought the house for
herself and her son. She maintained it in its original beauty, which it
was impossible to increase. She did, however, add some ornaments,
especially the sculptured masks which figure here and there on the
façade, and which, according to the ingenious idea of M. Fournier, may
have been intended to suggest, through the “Carnival,” her husband’s
family name.