HISTORICAL PARIS--THE CITÉ--THE UNIVERSITY QUARTER--THE VILLE--THE
LOUVRE--THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE--THE BOULEVARDS
[Illustration: NOTRE DAME, SOUTH SIDE.]
There are few spots in Europe where so many associations are crowded
together as on the little island of the Cité in Paris. In Gallo-Roman
times it was, as we have seen, even smaller, three islets having been
incorporated with it since the thirteenth century. Some notion of the
changes that have swept over its soil may be conceived on scanning
Félibien's 1725 map, where no less than eighteen churches are marked,
scarce a wrack of which now remains on the island. We must imagine the
old mediæval Cité as a labyrinth of crooked and narrow streets, with the
present broad Parvis of Notre Dame of much smaller extent encumbered
with shops and at a lower level. Thirteen steps led up to the Cathedral,
and the Bishop's gallows stood facing them. Against the north tower
leaned the Baptistry (St. Jean le Rond) and St. Denis du Pas against the
apse. St. Pierre aux Boeufs, whose façade has been transferred to St.
Severin's on the south bank, stood at the east corner, St. Christopher
at the west corner of the present Hôtel Dieu which covers the site of
eleven streets and three churches. The old twelfth-century hospital,
demolished in 1878, occupied the whole space, south of the Parvis
between the present Petit Pont and the Pont au Double. It possessed its
own bridge, the Pont St. Charles, over which the buildings stretched,
and joined the annexe (1606), which still exists on the opposite side of
the river. Behind Notre Dame in mediæval times was an open space of
waste land, the Motte aux Papelards, where the servants of the
Cathedral disported themselves. To the east and north-east stood the
cloisters and canons' dwellings, a veritable city within a city, with
four gates and fifty-one houses. Canon Fulbert's house stood on the site
of No. 10 Rue Chanoinesse, and at No. 9 Quai aux Fleurs an inscription
marks the site of the house of Heloise and Abelard. The Rue and Pont
d'Arcole have cleared away the old church of St. Landry and the port of
that name, where up to the reign of Louis XIII. a market was held, at
which foundling children from the hospital on the Parvis could be bought
for thirty sous. The scandal was abolished by the efforts of the
gentle St. Vincent de Paul, Anne of Austria's confessor. Until
comparatively recent times the church of St. Marine was used as a
joiner's workshop, and one of the chapels of the Madeleine, the parish
church of the water-sellers, served as a wine merchant's store! And
where are the Sanctuaries of Ste. Geneviève des Ardents, St. Pierre aux
Liens, St. Denis de la Chartre, St. Germain le Vieux, St. Aignan, Ste.
Croix, St. Symphorien, St. Martial, St. Bartholomew, and the church of
the Barnabites, which replaced that of St. Anne, which replaced the old
abbey church of St. Eloy, all clustering around their parent church of
Our Lady, like nuns under their patroness' mantle? Some remains of the
pavement of St. Aignan's, with the almost effaced lineaments and
inscriptions on the flat tombstones of those, now forgotten, who in
their day were doubtless famous churchmen, may be seen in the court of
No. 26 Rue Chanoinesse; but the only ancient buildings that rest on the
old Cité are Notre Dame and some portions of the Palais, including the
Sainte Chapelle. Not a street retains its old aspect. The clock tower of
the Palais dates from 1849, and the face of Germain Pilon's famous clock
has been re-carved. The Quai de l'Horloge, once named of the _morfondus_
(chilled), because of its cold, northern, sunless aspect, where Madame
Roland spent her childhood in her father's house, has been widened and
lowered. There, at least, is a fine relic of old Paris, the picturesque,
mediæval towers of the Conciergerie, in olden times the principal
entrance to the Palace. A fifteenth-century tower called of Dagobert, in
the Rue Chanoinesse, is shown to travellers by the courtesy of Messieurs
Allez Frères, and marks the site of the old port of St. Landry.
[Illustration: VERSAILLES--BASSIN DE NEPTUNE.]
If the traveller will place himself on the Pont Royal or on the Pont du
Carrousel, and look towards the Cité when the tall buildings, the spire
of the Sainte Chapelle and the massive grey towers of Notre Dame are
ruddy with the setting sun, he will enjoy a scene of beauty not easily
surpassed in Europe. Across the picture, somewhat marred by the unlovely
Pont des Arts, marches the procession of the arches of the Pont Neuf
with their graceful curves. Below is the little green patch of garden
and the cascade of the weir; in the centre the bronze horse with its
royal rider, almost hidden by the trees, stands facing the site of the
old garden of the Palais, now the Place Dauphine, where St. Louis sat on
a carpet judging his people, and whence Philip the Fair watched the
flames that were consuming the Grand Master and his companion of the
Knights Templars. To the left are the picturesque mediæval towers of the
Conciergerie and the tall roof of the belfry of the Palais. Around all
are the embracing waters of the Seine breaking the light with their
thousand facets. The island, when seen from the east as one sails down
the river, is not less imposing, for the great mother church of Notre
Dame, with the graceful buttresses of the apse like folded pinions,
seems to brood over the whole Cité.
* * * * *
As we turn southwards from the Cité across the Petit Pont we see the old
Roman road, now Rue St. Jacques, rising before us, and on the annexe of
the Hôtel Dieu, in the Place du Petit Pont, are inscribed their
names[167] who nearly twelve centuries ago dared--
"For that sweet motherland which gave them birth,
Nobly to do, nobly to die."
[Illustration: ST. SÉVERIN.]
[Illustration: THE OBSERVATORY.]
To left and right are two of the most interesting churches in Paris--St.
Julien le Pauvre, where the University held its first sittings, and St.
Séverin, built on the site of the oratory of Childebert I., where St.
Cloud was shorn and took his vows. Both churches were destroyed by the
Normans. The former was rebuilt in the twelfth century, the latter from
the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. The portal of St. Séverin
has been, as we have already mentioned, transferred from the
thirteenth-century church of St. Pierre aux Boeufs, in the Cité. Two
small lions in relief, between which the _curés_ of the church in olden
times are said to have exercised justice, have been replaced on either
side of the north door of the tower. This beautiful Gothic temple, with
its magnificent stained glass, was used during the Revolution as a
powder magazine. Hard by, in the picturesque old Rue de la Parchmenerie,
two houses, Nos. 6 and 7, were once the property of the canons of
Norwich Cathedral, who maintained a number of scholars there. Turning
out of this street, the Rue Boutebrie, was in olden times the Rue des
Enlumineurs (illuminators), famous for those who practised the art "_che
alluminare chiamato è in Parisi_." A street (Rue Dante), which bears the
name of the great poet, from whom this line is taken, leads to the Rue
du Fouarre (Straw Street), in one of whose colleges the author of the
_Divina Commedia_ probably sat as scholar. The houses are all
modernised, and the name alone remains. Southwards again, the Rue des
Anglais reminds us that there the English scholars lived; and to the
east is the Place Maubert, of dread memories, for there were burnt many
a Protestant martyr, and the famous printer-philosopher, Etienne Dolet,
whose statue in bronze stands on the Place. Yet further south, near the
site of the old Carmelite monastery in the Rue des Carmes, stood, at No.
15, the Italian College (Collége des Lombards). Much of this "hostel of
the poor Italian scholars of the charity of Our Lady," as rebuilt in
1681 by the efforts of two Irish priests, Michael Kelly and Patrick
Moggin, still remains, including the chapel, and is occupied by a
Catholic Workmen's Club. It formerly gave shelter to forty Irish
missionary priests and an equal number of poor Irish scholars. Some idea
of the vast extent of the ancient foundation will be gained by walking
round to the Rue de la Montagne, where the principal portal may be seen.
If we turn westwards by the Rue des Ecoles, we shall pass the famous
Collége de France, and soon reach the Hôtel de Cluny, and the remains of
the Roman palace and baths. The ruins and ground were purchased by
the Abbots of Cluny in 1340, and the present beautiful late Gothic
mansion was completed for them in 1490. It was often let by the abbots,
and was occupied by James V. of Scotland when he came to Paris in 1536
to celebrate his marriage with Magdalen, daughter of Francis I. In the
frigidarium of the baths are the remains of the altar to Jupiter found
under Notre Dame, a statue of the Emperor Julian, and many a relic of
Roman Paris.
[Illustration: TOWER AND COURTYARD OF HOTEL CLUNY.]
The abbots' delightful old mansion is filled with a rich collection of
mediæval statues, altar paintings, wood carvings, ivories, reliquaries,
stained glass, tapestries (among them the Lady and Unicorn series, the
finest ever wrought), embroideries and textile fabrics, enamels and
goldsmiths' work--all of wondrous beauty and interest. The rooms
themselves, with their fine Renaissance chimney-pieces, where on winter
days wood fires, fragrant and genial, burn, are not the least charming
part of the museum. Many of the objects (about 11,000) exhibited are
uncatalogued, and the old catalogue, long out of date, might well be
classed among the antiquities.
South of the Cluny are the vast buildings of the new Sorbonne, the
modern University of Paris, where some 12,000 students are gratuitously
taught. The vestibule, grand staircase and amphitheatre are of noble and
impressive architecture, and adorned with mural paintings, among which
Puvis de Chavannes' great decorative composition in the amphitheatre is
of chiefest interest. The paintings of the vestibule illustrate scenes
in the history of the University of Paris. Of Richelieu's Sorbonne, the
chapel alone exists to-day: all the remainder has been swept away,
together with the north cloister and church of St. Benoist, where
François Villon assassinated his rival Chermoyé.
We are now on Mont St. Genevieve, crowned by the Panthéon, below which,
at No. 14 Rue Soufflot, an inscription marks the site of the Dominican
monastery, where Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas taught. To the
north is the extensive library of St. Genevieve, on the site of the
Collége Montaigue. Behind are the church of St. Etienne du Mont the
burial-place of Racine and Pascal, with its beautiful _jubé_, or choir
screen, and the Lycée Henri IV., enclosing the tower of Clovis, all that
remains of the fine old abbey church of St. Genevieve. Hard by is the
Rue Descartes, where stood the college of Navarre, which was demolished
to give place to the Ecole Polytechnique. Farther south, the Rue de
Navarre leads to the ruins of the great Roman amphitheatre.
[Illustration: OLD ACADEMY OF MEDICINE.]
West of the Boulevard St. Michel are the fine modern buildings of the
Ecole de Médecine, which, from 1369 to the times of Louis XV., was
situated further eastwards in the Rue de la Bûcherie, where (No. 13)
some remains of the old hall of the Faculty may yet be seen. It was here
that an anatomical and surgical theatre was built in 1617. The old
Franciscan refectory (No. 15 Rue de l'Ecole de Médecine) is all that
remains of the great monastery of the Cordeliers. Here the body of Marat
was laid on an altar, after his assassination by Charlotte Corday in a
house on whose site his statue stands. The refectory is now used as a
pathological museum for medical students. The famous revolutionary club
of the Cordeliers, where the gentler rhetoric of Camille Desmoulins vied
with the thunderous declamation of Danton to stir Republican fervour,
met in the Hall of Theology. At No. 5 are some remains of the school of
surgery, or Guild of St. Cosimo and St. Damian, founded by St. Louis;
adjacent stood the church of St. Cosimo (St. Cosme), famous for the
fiery zeal of its _curé_ during the times of the League.
The surgeons were by their charter compelled to give professional
assistance to the poor every Monday, and in 1561 the _curé_ and
churchwardens of St. Cosme obtained a papal bull authorising them to
erect in their church a suitable consulting hall for the accommodation
of poor patients. In 1694 the surgeons built an anatomical theatre of
their own at St. Cosme, which was enlarged in 1710. The buildings are
now used as a school of decorative art. The magnificent Franciscan
church, where many a queen of France lay buried, stood on the site of
the present Place de l'Ecole de Médecine.
South of these is the Luxembourg Palace, whose charming Renaissance
gardens, unhappily, owing to the erection of the Observatory in 1672,
reduced by more than one-third of their former extent, are the delight
of the Parisians of the south bank of the Seine. The old Orangery,
restored and enlarged, is used as a public museum of contemporary French
art, chiefly painting and sculpture. Here are exhibited the works of
modern artists which have been deemed worthy of acquisition by the
State. They display great talent and technical skill, but the visitor
will leave, impressed by few works of great distinction. The English
traveller will, however, be envious of a collection whose catholicity
embraces examples of the work of two great modern masters, Londoners by
option--Legros and Whistler. Any impression of modern French painting
that may be left on the mind of the visitor by an inspection of the
examples hung in the Luxembourg should however be supplemented and
corrected by a visit to the decorative works in the great public
edifices, such as the Hôtel de Ville, the Sorbonne, the Panthéon, and
the churches of Paris.
North of the Museum loom the massive gloomy towers of the church of St.
Sulpice, which contains, among much mediocre painting, a chapel to the
right of the entrance adorned by some of Delacroix's finest work. Still
further northward is the old abbey church of St. Germain des Prés. But
before entering we may cross the Rue de Rennes and visit (No. 50) the
picturesque Cour du Dragon, so-called from the eighteenth-century figure
of the dragon over the portal. At the end of this curious courtyard,
paved as old Paris was paved, with the gutter in the centre of the
street, will be seen two interesting old towers enclosing stairways.
[Illustration: COUR DU DRAGON.]
[Illustration: THE LOUVRE FROM THE SOUTH-EAST.]
The grey pile of St. Germain des Prés, the burial-place of the
Merovingian kings, once refulgent with gold and colour, has been wholly
restored; but on the west porch, over the main entrance, a
well-preserved, Romanesque relief of the Last Supper may be noted. The
admirable frescoes in the interior by Flandrin are among the noblest
achievements of modern French art. Part of the Abbots' Palace of the
sixteenth century is left standing in the Rue de l'Abbaye, but of all
the fortress-monastery, with its immense domain of lands and cloisters,
walls and towers, over which those puissant lords held sway, only a
memory remains: the walls were razed in the seventeenth century and
replaced by artizans' houses. The Rue du Four recalls the old feudal
oven. Lower down the Rue Bonaparte is the little visited but most
interesting Ecole des Beaux Arts, once the monastery of the Petits
Augustins, now rich in examples of early Renaissance architecture and
other artistic treasures. It is a great teaching centre, and trains some
fifteen hundred students in sculpture, painting and architecture.
Westward of this, the artists' quarter of Paris, is the select and
aristocratic, but dull Faubourg St. Germain--the noble Faubourg--where
many of the descendants of the noblesse who escaped from the wreck of
their order during the Revolution, dwell in petulant isolation and
haughty aversion from the Third Republic and all its ways. Further
westward are the great hospital and church of the Invalides, with
Napoleon's majestic monument, and the military school of the Champ de
Mars.
* * * * *
Two parallel historic roads named of St. Martin and St. Denis cut
northwards through the masses of habitations that crowd the northern
bank of the Seine. The former was the great Roman street, leading to the
provinces of the north: the latter, the Grande Chaussée de Monseigneur
St. Denis, led to the shrine of the patron saint and martyr of Lutetia.
Along this, the richest and finest street of mediæval Paris, the kings
of France and Henry V. of England passed in solemn state to Notre Dame.
Four gates, whose sites are known in each of these two streets, mark the
successive stages of the growth of the city. In 1141 a sloping bank of
sand (_grève_), a little to the east of the Rue St. Martin and facing
the old port of the _Naut_ at St. Landry on the island of the Cité, was
ceded by royal charter to the burgesses of Paris for a payment of
seventy livres. "It is void of houses," says the charter, "and is called
the _gravia_, and is situated where the old market-place (_vetus forum_)
existed." This was the origin of the famous Place de Grève where
throbbed the very heart of civic, commercial and industrial Paris. Here
Etienne Marcel purchased for the Hôtel de Ville the Maison aux Piliers
(House of the Pillars), a long, low building, whose upper floor was
supported by columns. Here every revolutionary and democratic movement
has been organised from the days of Marcel to those of the Communes of
1789--when the last Provost of the Merchants met his death--and of 1871,
when Domenico da Cortona's fine Renaissance hotel was destroyed by
fire.
[Illustration: ST. GERVAIS.]
The place of sand was much smaller in olden times, and from 1310, when
Philip the Fair burned three heretics, to July 1830, when the last
murderer was hung there, has soaked up the blood of many a famous enemy
of State and Church and of innumerable notorious and obscure criminals.
A permanent gibbet stood there and a market cross. Every St. John's
eve--the church and cloister of St. Jean stood behind the Hôtel de
Ville--a great bonfire was lighted in the Place de Grève, fireworks were
let off, and a salvo of artillery celebrated the festival. When the
relations between Crown and Commune were felicitous the king himself
would take part in the _fête_ and fired the pile with a torch of white
wax which was decorated with crimson velvet. A royal supper and ball in
the Grande Salle concluded the revels. Not infrequently the ashes at the
stake where a poor wretch had met his doom were scarcely cool before the
joyous flames and fireworks of the Feu de St. Jean burst forth. The very
day after the execution of the Count of Bouteville the people were
dancing round the fires of St. John. The Place was often flooded by the
Seine until the embankment was built in 1675. The present Hôtel de
Ville, completed in 1882, is one of the finest modern edifices in
Europe.
[Illustration: PLACE DES VOSGES, MAISON DE VICTOR HUGO.]
To the east of the hotel stands the church of St. Gervais, whose façade
by Debrosse (1617) "is regarded," says Félibien (1725), "as a
masterpiece of art by the best architectural authorities" ("_les plus
intelligens en architecture_"). The church, which has been several times
rebuilt, occupies the site of the old sixth-century building, near which
stood the elm tree where suitors waited for justice to be done by the
early kings. "_Attendre sous l'orme_" ("To wait under the elm") is still
a proverbial expression for waiting till Doomsday. To the east of the
Rue St. Martin is the quarter of the Marais (marsh) at whose eastern
limit a group of street names recalls the royal palace-city of St. Paul.
At the south of the Rue du Figuier, on the Place de l'Ave Maria, stands
the Hôtel of the Archbishops of Sens, and near by, in the Passage
Charlemagne, is the Hôtel of the royal Provost of Paris. As we cross the
Rue St. Antoine to the old Place Royale (des Vosges), we may note at No.
21 the Hôtel de Mayenne--where the chamber still exists in which the
leaders of the League met and decided to assassinate Henry III.--and at
No. 62, the Hôtel de Sully, where Henry the Fourth's great minister
and, later, Turgot dwelt. The Place Royale occupies the site of the
palace of the Tournelles built for the Duke of Bedford during the
English occupation, near which Henry II. lost his life in the fatal
tournament. The palace became hateful to Catherine de' Medici, and she
had it demolished. The site was subsequently used as a horse market,
and there three mignons of Henry III. fought their bloody duel with
three bullies of the Duke of Guise. The architecture of Henry IV. Place
is little changed; the king's and queen's pavilions stood south and
north; Richelieu occupied the present No. 21, and at No. 6 dwelt Marshal
Lavardin, who was sitting in the coach when his royal master, Henry IV.,
was stabbed. Later this house was occupied by Victor Hugo, and is now
maintained as a museum of much interest to lovers of the darling poet of
nineteenth-century Paris. A little to the west, in the Rue des Francs
Bourgeois, is the Hôtel Carnarvalet, built in 1544 by Jean Bullant, the
architect of the Tuileries, to the design of Pierre Lescot. Jean Goujon
carved, among other decorative works, the fine reliefs of the four
Seasons in the quadrangle where now stands a bronze statue of Louis XIV.
by Coyzevox, brought from the old Hôtel de Ville. In this noble
Renaissance mansion, enlarged by F. Mansard and others, lived for twenty
years Madame de Sévigné, queen of letter writers, and her
_Carnarvalette_, as she lovingly called it, is now the civic museum of
Paris, devoted to objects illustrating the history of the city. It is
especially rich in exhibits bearing on the Great Revolution. Passing
along the Rue des Francs Bourgeois we may note (No. 38) an old
inscription which marks the scene of the assassination of the Duke of
Orleans by Jean sans Peur. At the north corner of the Rue des Archives
is the entrance to the National Archives, housed in the fine
pseudo-classical Hôtel de Soubise, constructed in 1704 on the site of
the Hôtel of the Constable de Clisson, of which the old Gothic
(restored) portal exists in the Rue des Archives. It was at the Hôtel de
Clisson that Charles VI., after his terrible vengeance on the revolted
burgesses, agreed to remit further punishment, and for a time the
mansion was known as the Hôtel des Grâces.
[Illustration: ARCHIVES NATIONALES IN HÔTEL SOUBISE, SHOWING TOWERS OF
HÔTEL DE CLISSON.]
Lower down the Rue des Archives are the Rue de l'Homme Armé and the
fifteenth-century cloisters of the monastery of the Billettes, founded
at the end of the thirteenth century to commemorate the miracle of the
sacred Host, which had defied the efforts of the Jew Jonathan to destroy
it by steel, fire and boiling. The chapel, built in 1294 on the site of
the Jew's house, was rebuilt in 1754, and is now used as a Protestant
church. The miraculous Host was preserved as late as Félibien's time in
St. Jean en Grève, and carried annually in procession on the octave of
Corpus Christi. At the north end of the Rue des Archives is the site,
now a square and a market, of the grisly old fortress of the Knights
Templars, whose walls and towers and round church were still standing a
century ago. The enclosure was a famous place of refuge for insolvent
debtors and political offenders, and sheltered Rousseau in 1765 when a
_lettre de cachet_ was issued for his arrest. In the gloomy keep, which
was not destroyed until 1811, were imprisoned the royal family of France
after the abandonment of the Tuileries on 10th August 1792. The old
market of the Temple, the centre of the _petites industries_ of Paris,
is being demolished as we write. West of this is the huge Museum of the
Arts and Crafts (Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers), on the site of the
abbatial buildings and lands of St. Martin of the Fields, still
preserving in its structure the beautiful thirteenth-century church and
refectory of the Abbey. As we turn southwards again by the Rue St.
Martin we shall pass on our left one of the most curious remains of old
Paris, the narrow Rue de Venise, a veritable mediæval street formerly
known as the Ruelle des Usuriers, the home of the Law speculators where
men almost rent each other in pieces in their mad scramble for fortune.
At No. 27, the corner of the Rue Quincampoix, is the famous old inn of
the Epée de Bois, now A l'Arrivée de Venise, where De Horn, a member of
a princely German family, and two gentlemen assassinated and robbed a
financier in open day, and were broken alive on the wheel in the Place
de Grève. Marivaux and L. Racine are said, with other wits, to have
frequented the old inn, and Mazarin granted letters-patent to a company
of dancing masters, who met there under the management of the Roi des
Violins. From these modest beginnings grew the National Academy of
Dancing.
At the south end of the Rue St. Martin rises the beautiful flamboyant
Gothic tower, all that remains of the great church of St. Jacques de la
Boucherie. This fine monument of the past was saved by the good sense of
the architect Giraud, who, when it was sold to the housebreakers during
the Revolution, inserted a clause in the warrant of sale exempting the
tower from demolition; it was used as a lead foundry, and twice narrowly
escaped destruction by fire. Purchased later by the city it seemed safe
at last, but in 1853 the prolongation of the Rue de Rivoli again
threatened its existence; luckily, however, the line of the new street
passed by on the north. The statue of Pascal, under the vaulting,
reminds the traveller that the great thinker conducted some of his
barometrical experiments on the summit, and the nineteen statues in the
niches mostly represent the patron saints of the various crafts that
settled under its shadow. On the Place du Châtelet, at the foot of the
Pont au Change, stood the massive Grand Châtelet, originally built by
Louis the Lusty near the site of the old fortress, which, during the
Norman invasions defended the approach to the Grand Pont as the Petit
Châtelet did the approach to the Petit Pont on the south. The Grand
Châtelet, demolished in 1802, was the official seat and prison of the
Provost of Paris, where he held his criminal court and organised the
city watch. The Column and Fountain of Victory which now stand in the
Place commemorate the victories of Napoleon in Egypt and Italy.
[Illustration: S. EUSTACHE.]
Nowhere in Paris has the housebreaker's pick been plied with greater
vigour than in the parallelogram enclosed by the Boulevard de
Sebastopol, the Rues Etienne Marcel and du Louvre, and the Seine. The
site of the immense necropolis of the Innocents[168] is now partly
occupied by the Square des Innocents adorned by Lescot's fountain.
A curious early fifteenth-century story is associated with this charnel
house. One morning the wife of Adam de la Gonesse and her niece, two
_bourgeoises_ of Paris, went abroad to have a little flutter and eat two
sous' worth of tripe in a new inn. On their way they met Dame Tifaigne
the milliner, who recommended the tavern of the "Maillez," where the
wine was excellent. Thither they went and drank not wisely but too well.
When fifteen sous had already been spent, they determined to make a day
of it and ordered roast goose with hot cakes. After further drinking,
gauffres, cheese, peeled almonds, pears, spices and walnuts were called
for and the feast ended in songs. When the "bad quarter of an hour" came
they had not enough money to pay, and parted with some of their finery
to meet the score. At midnight they left the inn dancing and singing,--
"Amours au vireli m'en vois."
The streets of Paris, however, at midnight were unsafe even for sober
ladies, and these soon fell among thieves, were stripped of the rest of
their clothing, then taken up for dead by the watch and flung into the
mortuary in the Cemetery of the Innocents; but to the terror of the
gravedigger were found lying outside the next morning singing,--
"Druin, Druin, ou es allez?
Apporte trois harens salez
Et un pot de vin du plus fort."
The huge piles of skulls and human remains that grinned from under the
gable roof of the gallery painted with the Dance of Death were in 1786
carted away to the catacombs under Paris, formed by the old Gallo-Roman
quarrymen as they quarried the stone used to build Lutetia. An immense
area of picturesque Halles and streets:--the Halle aux Draps; the Marché
des Herboristes, with their mysterious stores of simples and healing
herbs and leeches; the Marché aux Pommes de Terre et aux Oignons; the
butter and cheese markets; the fish market; the queer old Rue de la
Tonnellerie, under whose shabby porticoes, sellers of rags, old clothes,
iron and furniture, crowded against the bread market; the Marché des
Prouvaires, beloved of thrifty housewives--all are swallowed up by the
vast modern structure of iron and glass, known as Les Halles. The Halle
au Blé, or corn market, last to disappear, was built on the site of the
Hôtel de la Reine which Catherine de' Medici had erected when frightened
from the Tuileries by her astrologer Ruggieri. The site is now occupied
by the Bourse de Commerce. One curious decorated and channelled column,
however, which conceals a stairway used by Catherine and her Italian
familiar when they ascended to the roof to consult the stars, was
preserved and made into a fountain in 1812. It still stands against the
new Bourse in the Rue de Viarmes. North of the Halles the small Rue
Pirouette recalls the old revolving pillory of the Halles, and yet
further north, between Nos. 100 and 102 Rue Réamur, a dingy old passage
leads to the Cour des Miracles, which Victor Hugo has made famous in
_Notre Dame_. There, too, was the gambling hell kept by Jean Dubarry,
paramour of Jeanne Vaubernier, who was the daughter of a monk and became
the famous mistress of Louis XV. She was married by Louis to Guillaume,
brother of Jean Dubarry, to give her some standing at court.
[Illustration: WINGED VICTORY OF SAMOTHRACE.]
[Illustration: ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON.
MICHEL COLOMBE.]
At the south angle of the Rue Montmartre the majestic transitional
church of St. Eustache towers over the Halles. We descend the Rue
Vauvilliers, formerly of the Four (oven) St. Honoré, in which two of the
houses still display old painted signs: others retain their quaint
appellations--The Sheep's Trotter, The Golden Sun, The Cat and Ball.
Turning westward by the Rue St. Honoré, we shall find at the corner of
the Rue de l'Arbre Sec the fine fountain of the Croix du Trahoir erected
in the reign of Francis I. and rebuilt by Soufflot in 1775: here
tradition places the cruel death of Queen Brunehaut. Lower down, where
the street intersects the Rue de Rivoli, an inscription on the corner
house to the left marks the site of the Hôtel de Montbazan, where
Coligny was assassinated, and yet lower down the Rue de l'Arbre Sec we
note the Hôtel des Mousquetaires, the dwelling of the famous D'Artagnan
of Dumas' _Trois Mousquetaires_, opposite the apse of the church of St.
Germain l'Auxerrois. After examining the interior of the church,
especially the beautiful fifteenth-century Chambre des Archives, and the
porch of the same date, we are brought face to face with the principal
entrance to the Louvre.
[Illustration: NEAR THE PONT NEUF.]
No other edifice in the world forms so vast a treasure house of rich and
varied works of art as the great Palace of the Louvre whose growth we
have traced in our story. The nucleus of the gallery of paintings was
formed by Francis I. and the Renaissance princes at the palace of
Fontainebleau, where the canvases at the beginning of the seventeenth
century had reached nearly 200. Colbert, during the reign of Louis XIV.
by the purchase of the Mazarin and other collections, added 647
paintings and nearly 6000 drawings in ten years. In 1681 the Cabinet du
Roi, for so the collection of royal pictures was called, was transferred
to the Louvre. They soon, however, followed their owner to Versailles,
but some hundred were subsequently returned to Paris, where they might
be inspected at the Luxembourg Palace by the public on Wednesdays and
Saturdays. In 1709 Bailly, the keeper of the king's cabinet, took an
inventory of the paintings and they were found to number 2376. In 1757
all were again returned to Versailles, and it was not until 1793, when
the National Convention, on Barrère's motion, took the matter in hand,
that they were restored to the Parisians and, together with the works of
art removed from the suppressed churches and monasteries, formed the
famous picture gallery of the Louvre, which was formally opened to the
public on the first anniversary of the memorable 10th of August.
Napoleon's spoils from Italian and other European galleries, which
almost choked the Louvre during his reign, were reduced in 1815 by the
return of 5233 works of art to their original owners, under English
supervision. During the removal of the pictures British sentries were
stationed along the galleries, and British soldiers stood under arms on
the Quadrangle and the Place du Carrousel to protect the workmen.
Subsequent gifts and private legacies have since added priceless
collections, the latest, that of Thomy-Thierry, endowing the Museum with
numerous examples of the Barbizon school.
[Illustration: CARDINAL VIRTUES.
GERMAIN PILON.]
[Illustration: _Diana and the Stag._]
The ground floor, devoted to the plastic arts, contains in its
antique section many excellent Greco-Roman works, but relatively few of
pure Greek workmanship. Among those few are the beautiful reliefs in the
Salle Grecque and, in the Salle de la Vénus de Milo, the best-known and
most-admired example of Greek statues in Europe, which gives its name to
the hall. It was to this exquisite creation of idealised womanhood that
the poet Heine dragged himself in May 1848 to take leave of the lovely
idols of his youth, before he lay, never to raise himself again, on his
mattress-grave in the Rue d'Amsterdam. "As I entered the noble hall," he
writes, "where the most blessed goddess of beauty, our dear Lady of
Milo, stands on her pedestal, I well-nigh broke down and lay at her feet
sobbing so piteously that even a heart of stone must be moved to
compassion. And the goddess gazed at me compassionately, yet withal so
comfortless as who should say, 'Dost thou not see that I have no arms
and cannot help thee?'" It was a God with arms that poor Heine needed.
An early work of a nobler and more virile type meets the visitor as he
mounts the staircase to the Picture Gallery--the Victory of Samothrace,
one of the grandest examples of pure Greek art in its finer period.
Magnificent as the collection of antique sculpture is, the
little-visited Musée des Sculptures du Moyen âge, et de la Renaissance
will be found of greater importance to the student of French art. Here
are examples, few but admirable, of the growth of French sculpture from
the tenth to the sixteenth century contrasted with some masterpieces of
the Italian sculptors, including Michael Angelo's so-called Slaves,
being actually two of the Virtues wrought for the tomb of Pope Julius
II. An interesting thirteenth-century coloured statue of Childebert from
St. Germain des Prés, and a beautiful Death of the Virgin from the St.
Jacques de la Boucherie, later in style, are especially interesting.
Michel Colombe's fine relief of St. George and the Dragon; Germain
Pilon's Theological Virtues from the church of the Célestins, and the
Cardinal Virtues in wood from St. Etienne du Mont; Jean Goujon's Nymphs
of the Seine, and Diana and the Stag, will illustrate the stubborn
resistance made by the characteristic native school of sculpture
against, and its gradual yielding to, the foreign influence of the
Italian Renaissance. The gradual decline of French sculpture during the
seventeenth century, its utter degradation in the reign of Louis XV.,
and signs of its recovery in the revolutionary epoch, may be traced in
the Musée des Sculptures modernes.
[Illustration: _The Burning Bush._]
The last edition (1903) of the _Summary Catalogue_ of the pictures in
the Louvre contains the titles of 2984 works, apart from decorative
ceiling and mural paintings. The visitor must therefore needs make
choice of his own favourite schools or masters, for, if he were to
devote but one minute to a cursory examination of each exhibit,
twenty-five visits of two hours each would be needed to view the whole
collection. The pictures bear evidence of the period during which they
were amassed, for they are rich in examples of the later Italian and
Netherland schools and relatively poor in those of the pre-Raphaelite
masters. But among the latter is Fra Angelico's Coronation of the
Virgin, which Vasari declared must have been painted by the hand of one
of the blessed spirits or angels represented in the picture, so
unspeakably sweet and delightful were their forms, so gentle and
delicate their mien, so glorious their colouration. "Even so," he adds,
"and not otherwise, must they be in heaven, and never do I gaze on this
picture without discovering fresh beauties, and never do I withdraw my
eyes from it sated with seeing." Every phase in Raphael's development,
from the Peruginesque to the Roman periods, may be studied in the
Louvre. No gallery in Europe--not excepting the Accademia of Venice--can
approach the Louvre in the wealth of its Titians, and the same might
almost be said of its Veroneses. It contains the most famous portrait in
the world--Da Vinci's Monna Lisa--and some exquisite examples of Luini's
fresco and easel works. Among the rich collections of Tuscan and
other Italian masters, we may mention two charming frescoes by
Botticelli. In no gallery outside Spain are the Spanish artists,
especially Murillo, so well represented, and magnificent examples of the
later Flemings, Rubens and Van Dyck, adorn its walls. Among the latter
master's works is the Charles I. (No. 1967), bought for the boudoir of
Madame Dubarry by Louis XV. on the fiction that it was a family picture,
since the page holding the horse was named Barry. Michelet, in his
_History of the Revolution_, says that he never visited the Louvre
without staying to muse before this famous historic canvas.[169] Among
the later Dutch masters, most of whom are adequately represented, are
some masterpieces by Rembrandt; of the Germans, Holbein is seen at his
best in some superb portraits.
But the student of French history and lover of French art will
infallibly be drawn to the works of the native French schools, and
especially to those of the earlier masters. For the extraordinary
collection of French Primitifs of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, exhibited at Paris in 1904, and the publication of
Dimier's[170] uncompromising and powerful defence of those critics, who,
like himself, deny the existence of any indigenous French school of
painting whatsoever, have concentrated the attention of the artistic
world on this passionately debated controversy. The writer well
remembers, some twenty years since, being impressed by certain
characteristic traits in the few examples of early French painting hung
in the Louvre, and desiring the opportunity of a wider field of
observation. Such opportunity has at length been given. Now, while it
is quite true that most of the examples of the so-called Franco-Flemish
school exhibited in the Pavilion de Marsan would pass, and have passed,
unquestioned when seen among a collection of Flemish paintings, yet when
massed together, they do display more or less well-defined extra-Flemish
and extra-Italian characteristics--a modern feeling for nature and an
intimate realism in the treatment of landscape, a freer, more supple and
more vivacious drawing of the human figure--that produce a cumulative
effect which is almost irresistible, and may be reasonably explained by
the theory of a school of painters expressing independent local feeling
and genius. We include, of course, the illuminated MSS. exhibited in the
Bibliothèque Nationale and the Books of Hours at Chantilly by Fouquet
and by Pol de Limbourg and his brothers. The latter, by some
authorities, are believed to have been the nephews of Malouel, and to
have studied their art at Paris. The theory of the existence of a
national French school, analogous to the _post_-revolutionary school of
painting, is, of course, untenable, for France, as a nation, can
scarcely be said to have existed, in the wider sense of the term, before
the end of Louis XI.'s reign. When that monarch came to the throne Paris
and North France had been sorely exhausted by the century of the English
wars; Burgundy was an independent state; Provence, with its capital Aix,
and Avignon were independent counties, ruled by the Counts of Provence
and the Pope. A more rational classification into schools would perhaps,
as Dimier has hinted, follow the lines of racial division--French and
Teutonic. For many of the Flemish artists were French in race, as, for
instance, Roger Van der Weyden, who was known to Italians as Rogerus
Gallicus, and called himself Roger de la Pasture.
[Illustration:
LE MAITRE DE MOULINS.
TRIPTYCH OF MOULINS.]
[Illustration: JUVENAL DES URSINS.
FOUQUET.]
The two great schools of Christian painting in Europe were born, grew
and flourished in the free cities of Flanders in the north, and in the
free cities of Italy in the south. French masters, working in the
provincial centres of Tours, Dijon, Moulins, Aix and Avignon, were
inevitably subdued by the dominant and powerful masters of the north and
south, and how far they succeeded in impressing a local and racial
individuality on their works is, and long will be, a fruitful theme for
constructive artistic criticism. The famous triptych of Moulins, now
with many other works attributed to the painter of the Bourbons, known
as the Maître de Moulins, who was working between 1480 and 1500, has
long been accepted as a work by Ghirlandaio. The well-known painting at
the Glasgow Museum, a Prince of Cleves, with his patron saint, St.
Victor of Paris, now assigned to the Maître de Moulins, was recently
exhibited among the Flemish paintings at Bruges, and has long been
attributed to Hugo Van der Goes. The Burning Bush, given to Nicolas
Fromont, has been with equal confidence classed as a Flemish work, and
even ascribed to Van Eyck; and the Triumph of the Virgin, from
Villeneuve-les-Avignon, now on irrefragable evidence assigned to
Enguerrand Charonton, has been successively attributed to Van Eyck and
Van der Meire. Even if all the paintings which the patriotic bias of
enthusiastic critics has attributed to French masters, known or unknown,
be accepted, the continuity is broken by many gaps, which can only be
filled by assuming, after the fashion of biologists, the existence of
"missing links." Further researches will doubtless elucidate this
fascinating controversy.
Among the French Primitifs[171] possessed by the Louvre may be mentioned
the Martyrdom of St. Denis, and a Pietà, Nos. 995 and 996, attributed
wholly or in part to Malouel, who was working about 1400 for Jean sans
Peur at Dijon. A Pietà (No. 998), now attributed to the school of Paris
of the late fifteenth century, contains an interesting representation of
the Louvre, the abbey of St. Germain des Prés and of Montmartre, and has
been ascribed to a pupil of Van Eyck, and later to an Italian painter
named Fabrino. By Fouquet (about 1415-1480), the best known of the early
French masters, there are portraits of Juvenal des Ursins and Charles
VII. Two works (Nos. 1004 and 1005), the portraits of Pierre II., Duke
of Bourbon, and of Anne of Beaujean, catalogued under unknown masters,
are now assigned by many critics to the Maître de Moulins.[172] Nicholas
Froment, who was working about 1480-1500, is represented by admirable
portraits (No. 304 _a._), of Good King René and Jeanne de Laval, his
second wife. Jean Perréal, believed by M. Hulin to be identical with the
Maître de Moulins, is also represented by a Virgin and Child between two
Donors (No. 1048).
The later master, of Flemish birth, known as Jean Clouet, a painter of
great delicacy, simplicity and charm, who died between 1540 and 1541,
having spent twenty-five years as court painter of France; his brother,
Clouet of Navarre; and his son, François Clouet, who was his assistant
during the ten later years of his life, are all more or less doubtfully
represented. Nos. 126 and 127, portraits of Francis I., are attributed
to Jean Clouet, or Jehannet as this elusive personality is sometimes
known; Nos. 128 and 129, two admirable portraits of Charles IX. and his
queen Elizabeth of Austria, to François Clouet; No. 134, a portrait of
Louis de St. Gellais, is ascribed to Clouet of Navarre. Other portraits
executed at this period will be found on the walls, and are of profound
interest to the student of French history.
[Illustration: SHEPHERDS OF ARCADY.
POUSSIN.]
The two years' sojourn in France of Solario, at the invitation of the
Cardinal d'Amboise, of Da Vinci at the solicitation of Louis XII., and
the foundation of the school of Fontainebleau by Rosso and Primaticcio,
mark the eclipse of whatever schools of French painting were then
existing, for the grand manner and dramatic power of the Italians,
fostered by royal patronage, carried all before them. Of Rosso, known to
the French as Maître Roux, the Louvre has a Pietà and a classical
subject--The Challenge of the Pierides (Nos. 1485 and 1486). Primaticcio
is represented by some admirable drawings. But the sterility of the
Fontainebleau school may be inferred from the fact that when Marie de'
Medici desired to have the Luxembourg decorated with the events in the
life of Henry IV., her late husband, she was compelled to apply to a
foreigner--Rubens.
Of Vouet (1590-1649), who is important as the leader of the new French
school of the seventeenth century, the Louvre has some dozen examples,
among them being his masterpiece (No. 971)--The Presentation at the
Temple. Bestowing a passing attention on the lesser masters, and pausing
to appreciate the works of the three brothers Le Nain, who stand
pre-eminent for the healthy, sturdy simplicity of their peasant types
and scenes of lowly life, we turn to Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), the
greatest of the seventeenth-century masters, who spent the whole of his
artistic career in Rome save two unhappy years (1640-1642) at the French
court, which his simple habits and artistic conscience made intolerable
to him. His exalted and lucid conceptions, admirable art and fertility
of invention may be adequately appreciated at the Louvre alone, which
holds nearly fifty examples of his work. The beautiful and pathetic
Shepherds of Arcady (No. 734) is generally regarded as his masterpiece.
A group of shepherds in the fulness of health and beauty are arrested in
their enjoyment of life by the warning inscription on a tomb--"_Et in
arcadia ego_" ("I, too, once lived in Arcady"). Equally rich is the
Louvre in works of Vouet's pupil, Lesueur (1617-1655), one of the twelve
ancients of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. No greater
contrast could be imagined to the frank paganism of Poussin than the
works of this fervently religious and tender artist, whose famous series
from the life of St. Bruno is now placed in Room XII. His careful
application to this monumental task may be estimated by the fact that
146 preliminary studies are preserved in the cabinet of drawings in the
Louvre. The decorative skill, fertility and industry of his contemporary
and fellow-pupil Lebrun (1617-1690), whom Louis XIV. loved to patronise,
may perhaps be better appreciated at Versailles, but the Louvre displays
the celebrated series of the Life of Alexander, executed for the
Gobelins, and some score of his other works. His less talented rival,
Mignard (1612-1695), also a pupil of Vouet, is seen at his best in the
frescoes of the dome[173] of the Val de Grâce, but the oppressive
influence of the Italian eclectics is all too evident in his style. He
excelled in portraiture, and the visitor will not fail to remark the
portraits of Madame de Maintenon, and of the Grand Dauphin with his wife
and children. Louis XIV., who sat to him many times, one day, towards
the end of his life, asked, "Do you find me changed?" "Sire," answered
the courtly painter, "I only perceive a few more victories on your
brow." We may now observe the more grave and virile style of Philippe de
Champaigne of Brussels (1602-1674), who settled in Paris at nineteen
years of age, and may fairly be classed among the French school. His
intimate association with the austere and pious Jansenists of Port Royal
is traceable in the Last Supper (No. 1928), and in his masterpiece, the
portraits of Mother Catherine Agnes Arnauld and his own daughter, Sister
Catherine (No. 1934), painted for the famous convent. He is perhaps
better known for his portraits of Richelieu. Claude Lorrain (1600-1682),
the best known and most appreciated of the seventeenth-century masters,
and the greatest of the early landscape painters, is seen in sixteen
examples.
[Illustration: LANDING OF CLEOPATRA AT TARSUS.
CLAUDE LORRAIN.]
[Illustration: A SEAPORT.
CLAUDE LORRAIN.]
Rarely has the numbing and corrupting influence of royal patronage of
art been more clearly demonstrated than in the group of painters who
interpreted the hollow state, the sensuality and the more pleasant vices
of the courts of Louis XIV., of the Regency, and of Louis XV. But
among them, yet not of them, Watteau (1641-1721) stands alone--Watteau
the melancholy youth from French Flanders, who invented a new manner of
painting, and became known as the _Peintre des Scènes Galantes_. These
scenes of coquetry, frivolity and amorous dalliance, with their patched,
powdered and scented ladies and gallants, toying with life in a land
where, like that of the Lotus Eaters, it seems always afternoon, he
clothes with a refined and delicate vesture of grace and fascination. He
has a poetic touch for landscape and a tender, pathetic sense of the
tears in mortal things which make him akin to Virgil in literature, for
over the languorous and swooning air and sun-steeped glades the coming
tempest lours. His success, as Walter Pater suggests, in painting these
vain and perishable graces of the drawing-room and garden comedy of life
with the delicate odour of decay which rises from the soil, was probably
due to the fact that he despised them. The whole age of the Revolution
lies between these irresponsible and gay courtiers in the _scènes
galantes_ of Watteau and the virile peasant scenes in the "epic of toil"
painted by Millet. Among the dozen paintings by Watteau in the Louvre
may be especially noted his Academy picture, the Embarkation for Cythera
(No. 982). His pupils, Pater and Lancret, imitated his style, but were
unable to soar to the higher plane of their master's idealising spirit.
The eminent portrait painter, Rigaud (1659-1743), whose admirable Louis
XIV. (No. 781) has been called "a page of history," is represented by
fifteen works, among them his masterpiece, the portrait of Bossuet (No.
783). A page of history too is the flaunting sensuality of Boucher
(1703-1770) and of Fragonard (1732-1806), who lavished facile talents
and ignoble industry in the service of the depraved boudoir tastes of
the Pompadours and Du Barrys that ruled at Versailles. Productions of
these artists in the Louvre are numerous and important. A somewhat
feeble protest against the prevailing vulgarity and debasement of
contemporary art was made by Chardin (1699-1779) and by the
super-sentimental Greuze (1725-1805) in their portrayal of scenes of
simple domestic life, of which many examples may be noted in the Louvre.
But from the studio of Boucher there issued towards the end of the
century the virile and revolutionary figure of David (1748-1825), who
burst like a thunderstorm from the corrupt artistic atmosphere of the
age, sweetening and bracing French art for half a century. The
successive phases of this somewhat theatrical but potent genius may be
followed in the Louvre from the Horatii (No. 189) and the Brutus (No.
191)--the revolutionary flavour of which saved the painter's life during
the Terror--to the later glorifications of Napoleonic splendours. The
candelabrum in David's best-known work, the portrait of Madame Récamier,
is said to have been painted by his pupil Ingres (1780-1867), a
commanding personality of the _post_-revolutionary epoch. To him and to
his master is due the tradition of correct and honest drawing which ever
since has characterised the modern French school of painting. Besides La
Source, the most famous figure drawing of the school, the Louvre
possesses many of his portraits and subject paintings. To appreciate
duly the artist's power, however, the drawings in the Salle des desseins
d'Ingres should be studied. No master has evoked more reverence and
admiration among students. More than once Professor Legros has told the
writer of the thrill of emotion that passed through him and all his
fellow-students when they saw the aged master enter the Ecole des Beaux
Arts at Paris. Flandrin, the chief religious painter of the school, is
poorly represented in the Louvre, and must be studied in the churches of
St. Germain des Prés and St. Vincent de Paul.
[Illustration: THE EMBARKATION FOR THE ISLAND OF CYTHERA.
WATTEAU.]
A two-fold study of absorbing interest to the artistic mind may be
prosecuted in the Louvre--the development of the modern Romantic school
of French painters from Gericault's famous Raft of the Medusa, painted
in 1819, through the works of Delacroix and Delaroche; and the
revival of landscape painting, under the stimulus of the English artists
Bonnington and Constable, by Rousseau (1812-1867), the all-father of the
modern French landscape school, and the little band of enthusiasts that
grouped themselves around him at Barbizon. Corot, Daubigny, Diaz, Troyon
and the grand and solemn Millet, once despised and rejected of men, have
now won fame and appreciation. No princely patronage shone upon them nor
smoothed their path; they wrought out the beauty of their souls under
the hard discipline of poverty and in loving and awful communion with
nature. They have revealed to the modern world new tones of colour in
the air and the forest and the plain, and a new sense of the pathos and
beauty in simple lives and common things.
The artistic treasures we have thus briefly and summarily reviewed form
but a part of the inestimable possessions of the Louvre. Collections of
drawings; ivories; reliquaries and sanctuary vessels; pottery;
jewellery; furniture (among which is the famous _bureau du roi_, the
most wonderful piece of cabinet work in Europe); bronzes; Greek,
Egyptian, Assyrian, Chaldean and Persian antiquities (including the
unique and magnificent frieze of the archers from the palace of Darius
I.), all are crowded with objects of interest and beauty, even to the
inexpert visitor.
Of the gorgeous palace of the Tuileries, with its inharmonious but
picturesque façade, stretching across the western limit of the Louvre
from the Pavilion de Flore to the Pavilion de Marsan, not one stone is
left on another. We remember it after its fiery purgation by the Commune
in 1871, a gaunt shell blackened and ruined, fitting emblem of the wreck
which the enthroned wantonness and corruption of the Second Empire had
made of France.
[Illustration: GRACE BEFORE MEAT.
CHARDIN.]
[Illustration: MADAME RECAMIER.
DAVID.]
North of the Louvre is the Palais Royal, once the gayest, now the
dullest scene in Paris. This quarter of Richelieu and of Mazarin drew to
itself the wealth and fashion of the city in its migration westward from
the Marais during the times of Louis XIII. and of the Regency of Anne
of Austria. Nearly all the princely hotels that crowded the district
have long since given place to commercial houses and shops. The mansions
of the two great ministers remain as the Conseil d'Etat and the
Bibliothèque Nationale, but all that is left of the immense Hôtel de
Colbert in the Rue Vivienne is a name--the Passage Colbert. The same is
true of the vast area of lands and buildings of the convent of the
Filles de St. Thomas, of which the present Bourse and the Place before
it only occupy a part. At the corner, however, of the Rue des Petits
Champs and St. Anne the fine double façade of the Hôtel erected by Lulli
with money borrowed from Molière may be seen, bearing the great
musician's coat-of-arms--a design of trumpets, lyres and cymbals.
Further west, Napoleon's Rues de Castiglione and de la Paix, the Regent
Street of Paris, run south and north from the Place Vendôme, intended by
its creator Louvois to be the most spacious in the city. A monumental
parallelogram of public offices was to enclose the Place, but Versailles
engulfed the king's resources and the ambitious scheme was whittled
down, the area much reduced, and the site and foundations of the new
buildings were handed over to the Ville. What the Allies failed to do in
1814 the Commune succeeded in doing in 1871, and the boastful Column of
Vendôme, a pitiful plagiarism of Trajan's Column at Rome, was laid in
the dust, only however to be raised again by the Third Republic in 1875.
The Rue Castiglione leads down to the Terrace of the Feuillants
overlooking the Tuileries gardens, all that is left of the famous
monastery and grounds where Lafayette's club of constitutional reformers
met. The beautiful gardens remain much as Le Notre designed them for
Louis XIV., and every spring the orange trees, some of them dating back
it is said to the time of Francis I., are brought forth from the
orangery to adorn the central avenue, and the gardens become vocal with
many voices of children at their games--French children with their
gentle humour and sweet, refined play. Right and left of the
central avenue, the two marble exhedræ may still be seen which were
erected in 1793 for the elders who presided over the floral celebrations
of the month of Germinal by the children of the Republic.
The Place Louis XV (now de la Concorde), with its setting of pavilions
adorned with groups of statuary representing the chief cities of France,
was created by Gabriel in 1763-1772 on the site of a dreary, marshy
waste used as a depot for marble. The Place was adorned in 1763 with an
equestrian statue of Louis XV., elevated on a pedestal which was
decorated at the corners by statues of the cardinal virtues. Mordant
couplets, two of which we transcribe, affixed on the base, soon
expressed the judgment of the Parisians:--
"_O la belle statue! O le beau piédestal!_
_Les vertus sont à pied, le vice est à cheval._"[174]
"_Il est ici come à Versailles_
_Il est sans coeur et sans entrailles._"[175]
After the fall of the monarchy the Place was known as the Place de la
Revolution, and in 1792, Louis XV. with the other royal simulacra in
bronze having been forged into the cannon that thundered against the
allied kings of Europe, a plaster statue of Liberty was erected, at
whose side the guillotine mowed down king and queen, revolutionist and
aristocrat in one bloody harvest of death, ensanguining the very figure
of the goddess herself, who looked on with cold and impassive mien. She
too fell, and in her place stood a _fascis_ of eighty-three spears,
symbolising the unity of the eighty-three departments of France. In 1795
the Directory changed the name to Place de la Concorde, and again in
1799 a seated statue of Liberty holding a globe was set up. In the
hollow globe a pair of wild doves built their nest--a futile augury, for
in 1801 Liberty II. was broken in pieces, and the model for a tall
granite column erected in its place by Napoleon I. One year passed and
this too disappeared. After the Restoration, among the other inanities
came, in 1816, a second statue of Louis XV., and the Place resumed its
original name. Ten years later an expiatory monument to Louis XVI. was
begun, only to be swept away with other Bourbon lumber by the July
Revolution of 1830. At length the famous obelisk from Luxor, after many
vicissitudes, was elevated in 1836 where it now stands.
[Illustration: LANDSCAPE.
COROT.]
The Place as we behold it dates from 1854, when the deep fosses which
surrounded it in Louis XV.'s time, and which were responsible for the
terrible disaster that attended the wedding festivities of Louis XVI.
and Marie Antoinette, were filled up, and other improvements and
embellishments effected. The vast space and magnificent vistas enjoyed
from this square are among the finest urban spectacles in Europe. To the
north, on either side of the broad Rue Royale which opens to the
Madeleine, stand Gabriel's fine edifices (now the Ministry of Marine and
the Cercle de la Rue Royale), designed to accommodate foreign
ambassadors. To the south is the Palais Bourbon, now the Chamber of
Deputies; to the east are the gardens of the Tuileries, and to the west
is the stately Grande Avenue of the Champs Elysées rising to the
colossal Arch of Triumph crowning the eminence of the Place de l'Etoile.
As our eyes travel along the famous avenue, memories of the military
glories and of the threefold humiliation of Imperial France crowd upon
us. For down its ample way there marched in 1814 and 1815 two hostile
and conquering armies to occupy Paris, and in 1871 the immense vault of
the Arc de Triomphe, an arch of greater magnitude than any raised to
Roman Cæsars, echoed to the shouts of another exultant foreign host,
mocking as they strode beneath it at the names of German defeats
inscribed on its stones. And on the very Place de la Concorde, German
hussars waltzed in pairs to the brazen music of a Uhlan band, while a
line of French sentries across the entrance to the Tuileries gardens
gazed sullenly on.
To the south of the Champs Elysées is the Cours de la Reine, planted by
Catherine de' Medici, for two years the most fashionable carriage drive
in Paris. The charming Maison François I. brought from Moret, stone by
stone, in 1826 stands re-erected at the further corner of the Cours. To
the north, in the Cours de Gabriel, a fine gilded grille, surmounted
with the arms of the Republic, gives access to the Elysée, the official
residence of the President. It was once Madame Pompadour's favourite
house in Paris, and the piece of land she appropriated from the public
to round off her gardens is still retained in its grounds. In the Avenue
Montaigne (once the Allée des Veuves, a retired walk used by widows
during their term of seclusion) Nos. 51 and 53 stand on the site of the
notorious Bal Mabille,[176] the temple of the bacchanalia of the gay
world of the Second Empire. In 1764 the Champs Elysées ended at
Chaillot, an old feudal property which Louis XI. gave to Phillipe de
Comines in 1450, and which in 1651 sheltered the unhappy widow of
Charles I. Here Catherine de' Medici built a château, but château and a
nunnery of the Filles de Sainte Marie, founded by the English queen,
disappeared in 1790. As we descend the Rue de Chaillot and pass the
Trocadero we see across the Pont de Jéna the gilded dome of the
Invalides and the vast field of Mars, the scene of the Feast of Pikes,
and now encumbered by the relics of four World's Fairs.
[Illustration: LICTORS BRINGING TO BRUTUS THE BODIES OF HIS SONS.
DAVID.]
The Paris we have rapidly surveyed is, mainly, enclosed by the inner
boulevards, which correspond to the ramparts of Louis XIII. on the north
demolished by his successor between 1676 and 1707, and the line of the
Philip Augustus wall and the Boulevard St. Germain on the south. Beyond
this historic area are the outer boulevards which mark the octroi wall
of Louis XVI.; further yet are the Thiers wall and fortifications of
1841. Within these wider boundaries is the greater Paris of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, of profound concern to the
economical and social student, but of minor interest to the ordinary
traveller. The vogue of the brilliant and gay inner boulevards of the
north bank so familiar to the foreigner in Paris is of comparatively
recent growth. In the early nineteenth century the boulevard from the
Place de la Madeleine to the Rue Cambon was almost deserted by day and
dangerous by night--a vast waste, the proceeds of the confiscated lands
of the Filles de la Conception. About the same time the fashionable
cafés were migrating from the Palais Royal to the Boulevard des
Italiens, south of which was built the Theatre of the Comédie Italienne,
afterwards known as the Opéra Comique. Its façade was turned away from
the boulevard lest the susceptible artists should be confounded with the
ordinary "comediens of the boulevard." From the Boulevard Montmartre to
the Boulevard St. Martin followed lines of private hotels, villas,
gardens and convent walls. A great mound which separated the Boulevard
St. Martin from the Boulevard du Temple still existed, and was not
cleared away until 1853. From 1760 to 1862 the Boulevard du Temple was a
centre of pleasure and amusement, where charming suburban houses and
pretty gardens alternated with cheap restaurants, hotels, theatres,
cafés, marionette shows, circuses, tight-rope dancers, waxworks, and
cafés-chantants. In 1835, so lurid were the dramas played there, that
the boulevard was popularly known as the _Boulevard du Crime_. But the
expression of the dramatic and musical genius and social life of the
Parisians in their higher forms is of sufficient importance to merit a
concluding chapter.