THE COMÉDIE FRANÇAISE--THE OPÉRA--SOME FAMOUS CAFÉS--CONCLUSION
As early as 1341 the Rue des Jongleurs was inhabited by minstrels, mimes
and players. They were men of tender heart, for in 1331 two jongleurs,
Giacomo of Pistoia and Hugues of Lorraine, were touched by beholding a
paralysed woman forsaken by the way, and determined to found a refuge
for the sick poor: they hired a room and furnished it with some beds,
but being unable to provide funds for maintenance, their warden
collected alms from the charitable. In 1332, at a meeting of the
Jongleurs of Paris, Giacomo and Hugues were present, and urged the
claims of the poor upon their fellows. The players decided to found a
guild with a hospital and church dedicated to St. Julian of the
Minstrels,[177] but the Bishop of Paris, doubting their financial
powers, required a certain sum to be paid within four years, in order to
endow a chaplaincy and to compensate the _curé_ of St. Merri. The
players more than fulfilled their promise; their capitulary was
confirmed by pope and king, and in 1343 they elected William the Flute
Player and Henry of Mondidier as administrators; the servants of the
Muses were therefore of no small importance in the fourteenth century.
As early as 1398 the Confraternity of the Passion is known to have
existed, and so charmed the people of Paris by its Passion Plays that
the hour of vespers was advanced to allow the faithful time to attend
the representations, which lasted from 1.30 to 5 o'clock without any
interval. In 1548 the Confraternity was performing at the Hôtel de
Bourgogne, the old mansion of Jean Sans Peur, for it was then forbidden
to play the mystery of the Passion any more, and limited to profane,
decent and lawful pieces, which were not to begin before 3 o'clock. From
1566 to 1676 the Comedians of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, as they were then
called, continued their performances, and many ordinances were needed to
purify the stage, to prevent licentious pieces and the use of words of
_double entente_. Competitive companies performed at the Hôtel de Cluny,
and in the Rue Michel le Comte, in those days a narrow street which
became so blocked by carriages and horses during the performances that
the inhabitants complained of being unable to reach their houses, and of
suffering much from thieves and footpads. It was at the Hôtel de
Bourgogne that the masterpieces of Corneille and Racine--_Le Cid_,
_Andromaque_ and _Phèdre_--were first performed.
[Illustration: THE POND.
ROUSSEAU.]
[Illustration: ARCHES IN THE COURTYARD OF THE HÔTEL CLUNY.]
At No. 12 Rue Mazarine an inscription marks the site of the Tennis Court
of the Métayers near the fosses of the old Porte de Nesle, where in 1643
a cultured young fellow, Jean Baptiste Poquelin, better known as
Molière, son of a prosperous tradesman of Paris, having associated
himself with the Béjart family of comedians, opened the _Illustre
Théâtre_. The venture met with small success, for soon Molière crossed
the Seine and migrated to the Port St. Paul. Thence he returned to the
Faubourg St. Germain and rented the Tennis Court of the Croix Blanche.
Ill fortune still followed him, for in 1645, unable to pay his
candlemaker, the illustrious player saw the inside of the debtors'
prison at the Petit Châtelet, and the company must needs borrow money to
release their director. In 1646 the players left for the Provinces and
were not seen again in Paris for twelve years.
The theatre of those days was innocent of stage upholstery, the exiguous
decorations being confined to some hangings of faded tapestry on the
stage and a few tallow candles with tin reflectors. A chandelier holding
four candles hung from the roof and was periodically lowered and drawn
up again during the performance; any spectator near by snuffed the
candles with his fingers. The orchestra consisted of a flute and a drum,
or two violins. The play began at two o'clock; the charges for entrance
were twopence half-penny for a standing place in the pit, fivepence for
a seat. On 24th October 1658 Molière, having won distinguished
patronage, was honoured by a royal command to play Corneille's
_Nicodème_ before the court at the Louvre. After the play was ended
Molière prayed to be allowed to perform a little piece of his own--_Le
Docteur Amoureux_--and so much amused Louis XIV. that the players were
commanded to settle at Paris and permitted to use the theatre of the
Hôtel de Bourbon three days a week in alternation with the comedians of
the opera. Here it was that the first essentially French comedy, _Les
Précieuses Ridicules_, was performed with such success that after the
second performance the prices were doubled. During the first performance
an old playgoer is said to have risen and exclaimed, "_Courage! Molière,
voilà de la bonne comédie!_"
After the demolition of the Hôtel de Bourbon, the players were settled
in Richelieu's theatre at the Palais Royal, where they performed for the
first time on 20th January 1661. During this period of transition
Molière was again invited to play before the king in the Salle des
Gardes (Caryatides) at the Louvre, and so keen was the interest in the
new _bonne comédie_ that the almost dying Mazarin had his chair dragged
into the hall that he might be present.
In 1665 the king appointed Molière _valet du roi_ at a salary of a
thousand livres, subsidised the company to the amount of seven thousand
livres a year, and they were thenceforth known as the "Troupe du Roi."
Free from pecuniary anxiety, the great dramatist wrote his masterpieces,
_Le Misanthrope_, _Tartuffe_, _L'Avare_, _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_, and
_Les Femmes Savantes_.
[Illustration:
MILLET.
THE BINDERS.]
In 1673, after Molière's death, the Troupe du Roi joined the players of
the Marais and rented the famous Théâtre Guénégaud in the old Tennis
Court of La Bouteille which had been fitted up for the first
performances of French opera in 1671-1672. The united companies played
there until 1680, when the long-standing jealousy which had existed
between the Troupe du Roi and the players of the Hôtel de Bourgogne was
finally dissipated by the fusion of the two companies to form the
Comédie Française. For nine years the famous Comédie used the Théâtre
Guénégaud, whose site may be seen marked with an inscription at 42 Rue
Mazarine. In 1689 the players were evicted from the Théâtre Guénégaud,
owing to the machinations of the Jansenists at the Collége Mazarin, and
rented the Tennis Court de l'Etoile near the Boulevard St. Germain, now
No. 14 Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie, which they opened on 18th April
1689 by a performance of _Phèdre_ and _Le Médecin malgré lui_. Here the
Comédie Française remained until 1770. In 1781 they were playing at the
Théâtre de la Nation (now Odéon.)[178] In 1787 a theatre was built in
the Rue Richelieu for the _Variétés Amusantes_, or the _Palais
Variétés_, where the new Théâtre Français[179] now stands, a little to
the west of Richelieu's theatre of the Palais Cardinal, whose site is
indicated by an inscription at the corner of the Rues de Valois and St.
Honoré.
Soon the passions evoked by the Revolutionary movement were felt on the
boards, and the staid old Comédie Française was rent by rival factions.
The performance of Chenier's patriotic tragedy, _Charles IX._, on 4th
November 1789, was made a political demonstration, and the pit acclaimed
Talma with frantic applause as he created the _rôle_ of Charles IX., and
the days of St. Bartholomew were acted on the stage. The bishops tried
to stop the performances, and priests refused absolution to those of
their penitents who went to see them. The Royalists among the Comedians
replied by playing a loyalist repertory, _Cinna_ and _Athalie_, amid
shouts from the pit for _William Tell_ and the _Death of Cæsar_, and
Molière's famous house became an arena where political factions strove
for mastery. Men went to the theatre armed as to a battle. Every couplet
fired the passions of the audience, the boxes crying, "_Vive le roi!_"
to be answered by the hoarse voices of the pit, "_Vive la nation!_"
Shouts were raised for the busts of Voltaire and of Brutus: they were
brought from the foyer and placed on the stage. The very kings of shreds
and patches on the boards came to blows and the Roman toga concealed a
poignard. For a time "idolatry" triumphed at the Nation, but Talma and
the patriots at length won. A reconciliation was effected, and at a
performance of the _Taking of the Bastille_, on 8th January 1791, Talma
addressed the audience saying that they had composed their differences.
Naudet, the Royalist champion, was recalcitrant, and amid furious shouts
from the pit, "On your knees, citizen!" at length gave way, embraced
Talma with ill-grace, and on the ensuing nights the Revolutionary
repertory, _The Conquest of Liberty_, _Rome Saved_, and _Brutus_ held
the boards. The court took their revenge at the opera where the boxes
called for the airs, "O Richard, O mon roi," and "Règne sur un peuple
fidèle," while the king, queen and dauphin appeared in the box amid
shouts of "_Vive le roi!_" On 13th January of the same year the
restrictions on the opening of playhouses were revoked, and by November
no less than seventy-eight theatres were registered on the books of the
Hôtel de Ville. The Théâtre Français became the Théâtre de la
Republique, and during the early months of '93, when the fate of the
monarchy hung in the balance, the most popular piece was _Catherine_, or
_The Farmer's Fair Wife_ (_La belle Fermière_). _Fénelon_, a new
tragedy, was often played, and on 6th February citizen Talma acted
Othello for his benefit performance.
In the stormy year of 1830, when the July Revolution made an end for
ever of the Bourbon cause in France, the Comédie Française was again a
scene of fierce and bitter strife. _Hernani_, a drama in verse, had been
accepted from the pen of Victor Hugo, the brilliant and exuberant master
of a new Romantic school of poets, who had determined to emancipate
themselves from the traditions, which had long since hardened into
literary dogmas, of the Classical school of the siècle de Louis
Quatorze. On the night of the first performance each side, Romanticists
and Classicists, had packed the theatre with their partisans, and the
air was charged with feeling. The curtain rose, but less than two lines
were uttered before the pent-up passions of the audience burst forth:--
"DONA JOSEFA--'Serait-ce déjà lui? C'est bien à l'escalier
Dérobé----'"
[Illustration: THE TROCADERO.]
The last word had not passed the actress's lips when a howl of
execration rose from the devotees of Racine, outraged by the author's
heresy in permitting an adjective to stray into the second line of the
verse. The Romanticists, led by Théophile Gautier, answered in withering
blasphemies, and soon the pit became a pandemonium of warring factions.
Night after night the literary sects renewed their contests, and the
representations, as Victor Hugo said, became battles rather than
performances. The year 1830 was the '93 of the Romantic school, but the
passions it evoked have long since been calmed, and _Hernani_ and _Le
Roi s'Amuse_, which latter was suppressed by the Government of Louis
Philippe after the first performance, have taken their place in the
classic repertory of the Théâtre Français beside the tragedies of Racine
and Corneille.
A curious development of dramatic art runs parallel to the movement we
have traced. One of the earliest Corporations of Paris was that of the
famous Basoche,[180] or law-clerks and practitioners, at the Palais de
Justice, who were organised in a little realm of their own, subject to
the superior power of the Parlement. The Basoche had its own king (_roi
de la Basoche_), chancellor, masters, almoners, secretaries, treasurers
and a number of minor officials, made its own laws and punished
offenders. It had its own money, seal, and arms composed of an
escritoire on a field _fleur-de-lisé_, surmounted by a casque and
morion. It had, moreover, jurisdiction over the _farces_, _sottises_ and
_moralités_ played by its members before the public. The clerks of the
Basoche organised processions and plays for public festivals, and were
compensated for out-of-pocket expenses if for any reason the
celebrations were cancelled by the Parlement. If the date, 6th January
1482, of one of these performances in the Grande Salle of the Palais de
Justice, so vividly described by Victor Hugo in _Notre Dame_, be
correct, the prohibition by the Parlement in 1477, renewed in 1478, of
any performances of _farce_, _sottise_, or _moralité_ by the king of the
Basoche in the Palais or the Châtelet, or elsewhere in public, under
pain of a whipping with withies and banishment, must have been soon
withdrawn. In 1538 the Basoche was ordered to deliver to the Parlement
any plays they proposed to perform, that they might be examined and
emended (_visités et reformés_) and to act in public, only such plays as
had been approved by the court.
The clerks of the Basoche were clothed in yellow and blue taffety, and,
on extraordinary occasions, in gorgeous costumes varying according to
the company to which they belonged. Each captain had the form and style
of his company's dress painted on vellum, and whoso desired to join
signed his name beneath, and agreed to be subject to a fine of ten
crowns if he made default. In 1528 a famous trial took place before the
Parlement on the occasion of an appeal by one of the clerks against the
chancellor of the Basoche, who had seized his cloak in payment of a fine
and costs. After many pleadings by celebrated lawyers, the case was
referred back to the king of the Basoche, with instructions that he was
to treat his subjects amiably.
The treasurers of the Basoche were charged with the cost of the annual
planting of the May tree in the Cour du Mai of the Palais. Towards the
end of May the procession of the Basoche wended its way to the Forest of
Bondy, where halt was made under the _Orme aux harangues_ (elm of the
speeches). Here their procureur made an oration, and demanded from the
officer of woods and forests two trees of his own choice in the king's
name, which were carried to Paris amid much playing of drums and fifes
and trumpets. On the last Saturday in May the ceremony of the planting
took place in the court of the palace, the preceding year's tree,
standing to the right of the entrance, was felled and removed, and the
more flourishing of the two brought from the forest was planted in its
stead.
Anne of Austria, to whom Molière dedicated one of his plays, was so
devoted an admirer of the theatre that even during the period of court
mourning for her royal husband she was unable to renounce her favourite
pleasure and witnessed the plays at the Palais Royal concealed behind
her ladies. Mazarin, courtier that he was, flattered her passion for the
drama by introducing a company of Italian opera-singers, who in 1647
performed _La Finta Pazza_ at the Hôtel de Bourbon.
The new entertainment met with instant success, and the French were
spurred to emulation by the music and voices of the foreign performers.
Anne's music masters, Lambert and Cambert, set to music a piece written
by the Abbé Perrin, who was attached to the court of the Duke of
Orleans, and this musical comedy was performed with brilliant success
before the young king at Vincennes. Encouraged by Mazarin, Perrin and
Cambert joined the Marquis of Sourdeac, a clever mechanician, and
obtained permission in 1669 to open an Academy of Music, for so the new
venture was called, and works were performed which vied in attraction
with those of the Italians. Perrin now obtained the sole privilege of
producing operas in Paris and other French towns, and in 1671-1672 we
find the _entrepreneurs_ giving performances of _Pomone_ among other
"_Comédies Françaises en Musique_" in the theatre of the Hôtel de
Guénégaud. Perrin having disagreed with his partners, the privilege of
performing opera was next transferred to a young Italian musician named
Lulli, who had entered the service of Mademoiselle (daughter of the Duke
of Orleans) as a kitchen boy, but having developed an extraordinary
aptitude for the violin was put under a master, and became one of the
greatest performers of the day. He entered the king's service, won the
protection of Madame de Montespan, and so charmed Louis by his talents
that his fortune was assured. Lulli's works were first given at the
Tennis Court of Bel-air, in the Rue Vaugirard, and a clause having been
inserted in the charter permitting the nobles of the court to take part
in the representations without derogation, a performance of _Love and
Bacchus_ was given before the king in which the Duke of Monmouth was
associated with seven French nobles.
When Molière's company of comedians left the theatre of the Palais Royal
in 1673, Lulli's "Academy" was established in their place, and the
Palais Royal Theatre became the Royal Opera House until 1787, with an
interval caused by the rebuilding after the fire of 1763. In 1697 the
Italians were forbidden to perform any more in Paris, and French opera
enjoyed a monopoly of royal favour, until the Regent recalled the
Italians in 1716.
The Académie de Musique, or French Opera, subsequently migrated to the
Salle d'Opéra, at the Hôtel Louvois, on the site of the present Square
Louvois. It was in this house that the Duke of Berri was assassinated in
1820. The Government decreed the demolition of the building, and an
opera house was hurriedly erected in the Rue Lepelletier. This
inconvenient, stuffy Hall of the Muses, so familiar to the older
generation of opera-goers, was at length superseded by the present
luxurious temple in 1874.
[Illustration: ARC DE TRIOMPHE.]
The early French operas were of the nature of elaborate ballets, based
invariably on mythological subjects, and, indeed, the ballet up to
recent times, when the reforming influence of Wagner's music-dramas made
itself felt, has always formed the more important part of every operatic
performance. Only when the curtain rose on the _scènes de ballet_ did
chatter cease, for as Taine remarked, "_Le public ne se trouve
émoustillé que par le ballet_" ("The public only brightens up at the
ballet"), and the traditional habit of Society was expressed in the
formula, "_On n'écoute que le ballet_" ("One only listens to the
ballet"). Molière wrote a tragédie-ballet, a pastorale heroique, a
pastorale comique, and eight comédies-ballets, in one of which, _Le
Sicilian_, the king himself, the Marquis of Villeroi and other courtiers
performed with Molière and his daughter. In 1681 the permission already
given to the princes and other nobles to take part in the ballets
without derogation was extended to the ladies of the court, who in
that year performed the _Triomphe de l'Amour_. The innovation proved
most successful, and soon affected the public stage, where, as at the
court, up to that period male performers alone were tolerated. Mdlle. de
la Fontaine was the first of the famous _danseuses_ of the Paris opera,
and her portrait, with those of some score of her successors, still
adorn the _foyer de la danse_. The opera was a social rather than a
musical function, and the old _foyer_, until the fall of the Second
Empire, was the favourite meeting-place during the season of royal and
distinguished personages, courtiers, ministers, ambassadors, and,
indeed, of all French society of the male persuasion. Such was the
passion for the opera during the reign of Louis XVI. that fashionable
devotees would journey from Brussels to Paris in time to see the curtain
rise and return to Brussels when the performance was over, travelling
all night.
* * * * *
"In fair weather or foul," says Diderot in the opening lines of the
_Neveu de Rameau_ "it is my custom, towards five in the evening, to
stroll about the Palais Royal, where I muse silently on politics, love,
taste or philosophy. If the weather be too cold or wet, I take refuge in
the Café de la Régence, and there I amuse myself by watching the chess
players; for Paris is the one place in the world, and the Café de la
Régence the one place in Paris, where chess is played perfectly." The
Café Procope and the Régence have been termed the Adam and Eve of the
cafés of Paris. The former was the first coffee-house seen there, and
was opened by one Gregory of Aleppo and a Sicilian, Procopio by name,
shortly before the Comédie Française was transferred in 1689 to its new
house in the present Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie. The famous café, where,
too, ices were first sold, was situated opposite the theatre, and at
once became a kind of ante-chamber to the Comédie, crowded with actors
and dramatic authors, among whom were seen Voltaire, Crébillon and
Piron.
The Café de la Place du Palais Royal, the original apellation of the
Régence, was founded shortly after the Procope, and became the favourite
haunt of literary men, and especially of chess-players. Here the author
of _Gil Blas_ beheld, in a vast salon brilliant with lustres and
mirrors, a score of silent and grave personages, _pousseurs de bois_
(wood-shovers), playing at chess on marble tables, surrounded by others
watching the games, amid a silence so profound that the movement of the
pieces could alone be heard. If, however, we may credit a description of
the famous hall of the chequer-board published in _Fraser's Magazine_,
December 1840, the tempers of the players must have suffered a
distressing deterioration since the times of Le Sage, for when the
author of the article entered the café, in the winter of 1839, his ears
were assailed by a "roar like that of the Regent's Park beast show at
feeding-time." So great was the renown of the Parisian players that
strangers from the four corners of the earth--Poles, Turks, Moors and
Hindoos--made journeys to the Café de la Régence as to an arena where
victory was esteemed final and complete. Not even on the Rialto of
Venice, says the writer in _Fraser's_, in its most famous time, could so
great a mixture of garbs and tongues be met. Here, among other literary
monarchs who visited the café, came Voltaire and D'Alembert. Jean
Jacques Rousseau, dressed as an Armenian, drew such crowds that the
proprietor was forced to appeal for police protection, and the eccentric
philosopher, while absorbed in play, was furtively sketched by St.
Aubin. Here came, _incogniti_, the Emperor Joseph of Austria, brother of
Marie Antoinette, and Emperor Paul of Russia, the latter betraying his
imperial quality by tossing to the waiter a golden louis he had won by
betting on a game. The café was the favourite resort of Robespierre, a
devoted chess-player, who lived close by in the Rue St. Honoré (No.
398), and of the young Napoleon Bonaparte when waiting on fortune in
Paris. The latter is said to have been a rough, impatient player, and a
bad loser. Hats were kept on to economise space, and on a winter Sunday
afternoon a chair was worth a monarch's ransom: when a champion player
entered, hats were raised, and fifty challengers leapt from their seats
to offer a game. So proud was the proprietor of the distinction
conferred on his café, that long after Rousseau's and Voltaire's deaths
he would call to the waiter, "Serve Jean Jacques!" "Look to Voltaire!"
if any customers sat down at the tables where the famous philosophers
had been wont to sit. While the big game of political chess was being
enacted in the streets of Paris during the three days of July 1830, the
players of the café are said to have calmly pushed their wooden pieces
undisturbed by the fighting outside, during which the front of the
building was injured. The original café no longer exists, for in 1852
the Régence was removed from the Place du Palais Royal to the Rue St.
Honoré. Last year the writer was startled by an amazing exuviation of
the somewhat faded café, which had assumed a new decoration of most
brilliant and approved modernity; it now vies in splendour with the
cafes of the Boulevards. A few chess-players still linger on and are
relegated to a recessed room.
Shortly after the foundation of the Régence another café was opened by
Widow Marion on the old Carrefour de l'Opéra, where the Academicians
gathered and discussed of matters affecting the French language. At
Guadot's, on the Place de l'Ecole, was heard the clank of spur and
sabre. Soon every phase of Parisian social life found its appropriate
coffee-house, and by the end of the eighteenth century some nine hundred
cafés were established in the city.
But this new development was regarded with small favour by the
Government, always suspicious of any form of social and intellectual
activity. Politics were forbidden, and spies haunted the precincts of
the chief cafés. Ill fared the man, however distinguished, whose
political feelings overmastered his prudence, for an invidious phrase
was not infrequently the password to the Bastille. It was difficult even
to discuss philosophy, and the lovers of wisdom who met at Procope's
were reduced to inventing a jargon for its principal terms--Monsieur
l'Etre for God, Javotte for Religion and Margot for the Soul--to put
spies off the scent, not always with success. No newspapers were
provided until the Revolutionary time, when the _Gazette_ or the
_Journal_ became more important than the coffee: the cafés of the Palais
Royal were then transformed into so many political clubs, where every
table served as a rostrum of fiery declamation, for the agitated and
eventful summer of 1789 was a rainy one, to the good fortune of the
Palais Royal houses. No. 46 Rue Richelieu stands on the site of the Café
de Foy, the senior and most famous of them, founded in 1700. It extended
through to the gardens of the Palais Royal, and in early times its
proprietor was the only one permitted to place chairs and tables on the
terrace. There, in the afternoon, would sit the finely-apparelled sons
of Mars, and other gay dogs of the period, with their scented perukes,
amber vinaigrettes, silver-hilted swords and gold-headed canes, quizzing
the passers-by. In summer evenings, after the conclusion of the opera at
8.30., the _bonne compagnie_ in full dress would stroll under the great
overarching trees of the _grand allée_, or sit at the cafés listening to
open-air performers, sometimes remaining on moonlight nights as late as
2 a.m. Between 1770 and 1780 the favourite promenade was the scene of
violent conflicts between the partisans of Gluck and Piccini, and many a
duel was recorded between the champions of the rival musical factions.
[Illustration: IN THE GARDEN OF THE TUILERIES.]
It was from one of the tables of the Café Foy that Camille Desmoulins
sounded the war-cry of the Revolution. Every day a special courier from
Versailles brought the bulletins of the National Assembly, which were
read publicly amid clamorous interjections. Spies found their office a
perilous one, for, if discovered, they were ducked in the basins of the
fountains, and, when feeling grew more bitter, risked meeting a violent
death. Later the Café Foy made a complete _volte-face_, raised its ices
to twenty sous and grew Royalist in tone. Its frequenters came armed
with sword-sticks and loaded canes, raised their hats when the king's
name was uttered, and one evil day planted a gallows outside the
café, painted with the national colours. The excited patriots stormed
the house, expelled the Royalists and disinfected the salon with gin.
During the occupation of Paris by the allies many a fatal duel between
the foreign officers and the Imperialists was initiated there. Later,
Horace Vernet painted a swallow on the ceiling, which attracted many
visitors; the dramatists and artists of the Théâtre Français freely
patronised the house, and among them might be often seen the huge figure
of the most prodigious master of modern romantic fiction, Alexandre
Dumas.
The extremer section of the Revolutionists frequented the Café Corazza,
still extant, which soon became a minor Jacobins, where, after the club
was closed, the excited orators continued their discussions: Chabot,
Collot d'Herbois and other terrorists met there. The Café Valois was
patronised by the Feuillants, and so excited the ire of the Fédérés, who
met at the Caveau, that one day they issued forth, assailed their
opponents' stronghold and burned the copies of the _Journal de Paris_
found there. The old Café Procope in the south of Paris became the Café
Zoppi, where the "zealous children of triumphant Liberty" assembled, and
where the "Friends of the Revolution and of Humanity," on the news of
Franklin's death, covered the lustres with crape and affixed his bust,
crowned with oak leaves, outside the door. A legend told of the great
American's death, and the words "_vir Deus_" were inscribed beneath the
bust. Every day at five o'clock the _habitués_ formed themselves into a
club in the salon decorated with statues of Mucius Scevola and Mirabeau,
passed resolutions, sent protesting deputations to Royalist editors, and
every evening made _autos da fé_ of their publications outside the café.
When war was declared they subscribed to purchase a case of muskets as
an offering to the Fatherland. Self-regarding citizens, the _Société des
Amis de la Loi_, who desired to eat and drink in peace far from
political storms, met in the Café de Flore, near the Porte St. Denis,
until the Jacobins applied the scriptural maxim--He who is not for us
is against us--and they were forced to take sides. Every partizan had
his café; Hebertists, Fayettists, Maratists, Dantonists and
Robespierrists, all gathered where their friends were known to meet.
In the early nineteenth century on the displacement of the favourite
promenade of Parisian _flaneurs_ from the Palais Royal to the Boulevard
des Italiens, the proprietors of cafés and restaurants followed. A group
of young fellows entered one evening a small _cabaret_ near the Comédie
Italienne (now Opéra Comique), found the wine to their taste and the
cuisine excellent. They praised host and fare to their friends, and the
modest _cabaret_ developed into the Café Anglais, most famous of
epicurean temples, frequented during the Second Empire by kings and
princes, to whom alone the haughty proprietor would devote personal
care.
The sumptuous cafés Tortoni founded in 1798 and de Paris opened 1822
have long since passed away. So has the Café Hardy, whose proprietor
invented _dejeûners à la fourchette_, although its rival and neighbour,
the Café Riche, still exists. "One must be very Hardy to dine at
Riche's, and very Riche to dine at Hardy's," was the celebrated _mot_ of
an old gourmand of the First Empire. During the early times of the Third
Republic the Café Fronton was crowded almost daily by prominent
politicians, Gambetta, Spuller, Naquet and others, while the
Imperialists, under Cassagnac, met at the Café de la Paix in the Place
de l'Opéra, which was dubbed the Boulevard de l'Isle d'Elbe. Many others
of the celebrated cafés of the boulevards have disappeared or suffered a
transformation into the more popular Brasseries or Tavernes of which so
many, alternating with the theatres, restaurants and dazzling shops that
line the most-frequented evening promenade of Paris, invite the thirsty
or leisurely pleasure-seeker of to-day.
Nowhere may the traveller gain a better impression of the essential
gaiety and sociability of the Parisian temperament than by sitting
outside a café on the boulevards on a public festival and observing his
neighbours and the passers-by--their imperturbable good humour; their
easy manners; their simple enjoyments; their quick intelligence, alert
gait and expressive gestures; the wonderful skill of the women in dress.
The glittering halls of pleasure that appeal to so many travellers, the
Bohemian cafés of the outer boulevards, the Folies Bergères, the Moulins
Rouges, the Bals Bullier, with their meretricious and vulgar
attractions, frequented by the more facile daughters of Lutetia, "whose
havoc of virtue is measured by the length of their laundresses' bills,"
as a genial satirist of their sex has phrased it--all these
manifestations of _la vie_, so unutterably dull and sordid, are of small
concern to the cultured traveller. The intimate charm and spirit of
Paris will be heard and felt by him not amid the whirlwind of these
saturnalia largely maintained by the patronage of foreign visitors, but
rather in the smaller voices that speak from the inmost Paris which we
have essayed to describe. Nor can we bid more fitting adieu to our
readers than by translating Goethe's words to Eckermann: "Think of the
city of Paris where all the best of the realms of nature and art in the
whole earth are open to daily contemplation, a world-city where the
crossing of every bridge or every square recalls a great past, and where
at every street corner a piece of history has been unfolded."
INDEX
A
Abbey Lands, their extent, 34
Abbeys, their need of reform, 56
Abbo, his story of the siege of Paris, 38-43
Abbots, their varied powers, 34
Abelard, comes to Paris, 87;
his school at St. Denis, 88;
death of, 89
Abelard and Heloise, their house, 282
Académie Française, origin of, 200
Adam du Petit Pont, 90
Aignan's, St., remains of, 283
Amboise, Cardinal d', employs Solario, 149
Amphitheatre, Roman, 288
Anagni, humiliation of Boniface VIII. at, 107
Angelico, Fra, painting by, at Louvre, 306
Angelo's, Michael, slaves, 305
_Année terrible_, the, 261
Anselm, St., his moral force, 54
Antheric, Bishop, his courage, 42
Antoinette, Marie, her courage, 249;
her sinister influence, 253, 254
Arches, triumphal, 224, 277, 278
Aristotle, his works at Paris, 99
Armagnac and Burgundian factions, their origin, 127
Armagnacs, massacre of, 129
Assembly, National, the, its patriotism, 248, 256
Attila, 13, 15
Austrasia, kingdom of, 21
Austria, Anne of, her regency, 202
Averroists at Paris, 100
B
Ballet, importance of the, 330
Bal Mabille, site of, 319
Baptistry, the, 281
Barbarian invasions, 12
Barrère, 270
Barry, Mme. du, 232, 248, 302
Bartholomew, St., massacre of, 168-172
Basine and Childeric, story of, 19
Basoche, Corporation of, 327;
players of, 327
Bastille, foundation of, 123;
banquet at, 158;
captured by the Parlement, 204;
story of, 250-252
Bazoches, Guy of, his impression of Paris, 66
Bedford, Duke of, Regent at Paris, 130
Bernard, St., his commanding genius, 55;
denounces Abelard, 89;
draws up Rule of Knights-Templars, 108
Bernini, his design for the Louvre, 221
Billettes, monastery of, 299
Bishops and abbots, their administrative powers, 23, 24, 46
Boniface VIII., his contest with Philip the Fair, 106, 107;
his grandeur of soul, 107, 109
Booksellers at Paris, 190
Bordone, Paris, 152
Botticelli, frescoes at Louvre, 307
Boucher, 313
Boulevards, the, 320
Bourbon, Hôtel de, 186, 192;
plays at, 323
Bourg-la-Reine, 60;
English at, 119
Bourgogne, Hôtel de, comedians of, 322
Bouvines, victory of, its consequences, 62
Bridges, approaches to, fortified, 36
British sentries at Louvre, 304
Brosse, Pierre de la, his death, 103
Broussel, arrested and set free, 203, 204
Brunehaut, her career and death, 21, 23, 24
Brunswick, Duke of, his proclamation, 257
Bullant, Jean, builds Tuileries, 186
Burgundians, the, 12
Burgundy, Dukes of, 125
Burke, his political nescience, 262
Bury, Richard de, at Paris, 101
Bussy, the island of, 6
C
Cafés at Paris, their introduction and growth, 331-333;
their importance in revolutionary times, 334-336
Calvin, 94;
at Collége de France, 156
Campan, Mme., her memoirs, 233, 245
Capet, Hugh, his coronation, 45;
founds Capetian dynasty, 45
Capets, growth of Paris under, 47
Carlyle, his history of the Revolution, 246, 247
Carmelites, their establishment at Paris, 72
Carnarvalet, Hôtel de, 297
Carnot, 261
Carrousel, the, 211;
arch of, 277
Carthusians, their establishment at Paris, 72
Caryatides, Salle des, 164
Castiglione, Rue de, 316
Castile, Blanche of, 67
Catacombs, the, 302
Catholic hierarchy re-established in Paris, 273
Cellini, Benvenuto, at Paris and Fontainebleau, 152-154
Cerceau, Baptiste du, continues Lescot's Louvre, 186
Champaigne, Phil. de, 312
Champeaux, William of, 87
Champs Elysées, 319
Chardin, 314
Charlemagne at Paris, 33;
the Northmen, 35;
his patronage of learning, 35
Charles of Burgundy, his defeat by Swiss, 142
Charles I., effect of his trial on the revolutionists, 257-259
Charles V., builds the Hôtel St. Paul, 121;
his library, 121;
his love of gardens, 121;
his wise statesmanship, 121;
wall of, 122
Charles VI., his minority, 123;
his madness, 124;
saved from fire, 125;
his death and burial, 130
Charles VII., his acclamation as king at Melun, 131;
his death, 138
Charles VIII., his Italian campaign, 148
Charles IX., 166, 167;
his vacillation, 169;
doubtful story of his firing on Huguenots, 173;
his death, 174
Charonton, attribution of paintings to, 309
Chateauroux, Mme. de, her appeal to Louis XV., 230
Châtelet, the Grand, 147, 300
Châtelet, the Petit, 146, 300
Chavannes, Puvis de, 246, 288
Chénier, M. J., the revolutionary dramatist, 270
Chess players at Paris, 331-333
Chilperic, marriage with Galowinthe, 21;
his murder, 22;
his reformed alphabet, 25
Chramm, his defeat and death, 20
Christian hierarchy, its efforts to purify the Church, 54
Church, the, its civilising genius, 24;
its growing civil power, 34
Church building, expansion of, 47
Cinq-Mars, his execution, 195
Cité, the island of, 2;
two islets joined to, 187;
its associations, 281
Clement, Jacques, assassinates Henry III., 177
Clement V., Pope, and the Templars, 110
Clergy, attempted taxation of, 231;
non-jurors, their expulsion, 272
Clisson, Hôtel de, 297
Clock tower, the, 283
Clodomir, murder of his sons by Childebert and Clothaire, 19, 20
Clothaire, his escape from assassination, 20;
his death, 21
Cloud, St., foundation of monastery of, 20
Clouet, François, 310
Clouet, Jean, 310
Clouet de Navarre, 310
Clovis, 13, 15;
conversion of, 17;
baptism of, 18;
his cruelty, 18;
makes Paris his capital, 19;
tower of, 288
Cluny, college of, 94
Cluny, Hôtel de, 151, 287, 322
_Code civil_, the, 264, 269
Colbert, his administrative genius, 209
Colbert, Hôtel, 316
Coligny, Admiral, his attempted assassination, 168;
his murder, 170;
site of his house, 303
Colleges, decadence of, 101
Collége de France, foundation of, 155
Colombe, Michel, 305
Comèdie Française, the old, 324;
its origin, 324;
political factions at, 325;
literary factions at, 326
Commune, the, 293
Conciergerie, the, 106, 283
Concini, 192; his death, 193
Concorde, place de la, 317, 318
Condé the Great, his insolence, 205, 206
Condé, Prince of, his plot to destroy the Guises, 165;
his death, 166
Condorcet, 269
Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, 52, 299
_Contrat Social_, the, its influence, 268
Convention, the, abolishes slavery, 264;
its constructive measures, 263, 264
Cordeliers, refectory of, 288
Corot, 315
Coryat, his impressions of Paris, 189
Cosme, St., 290
Cosme, St., _curé_ of, his revolutionary zeal, 180, 181
Crown, the, its absolutism, 206
Cruce slays 400 Huguenots, 172
D
Dagobert the Great, 27, 28, 29
Damiens, his attack on Louis XV., 232;
his horrible torture, 232
Danes, invasions of, 35
_Danseuses_, their introduction into opera, 331
Dante, his use of _artista_, 86;
at Paris, 100
Danton, 261;
his trial, 241
D'Artagnan, his dwelling, 303
Daubigny, 315
Dauphin, origin of title, 117, _note_
David, his genius, 314
Delacroix, paintings of, at St. Sulpice, 291;
and Louvre, 314
Delaroche, 314
Denis, St., abbey of, 28
Denis, St., church of, 15;
building of new church of, 79
Denis, St., de la Chartre, 31
Denis, St., du Pas, 281
Denis, St., story of, 7;
body of exposed, 51
Denis, St., Rue, 293
Deputies, Chamber of, 318
Desmoulins, Camille, his revolutionary oration, 249
Diaz, 315
Diderot at Café de la Régence, 331
Dimier, his views on French School of Paintings, 307
Dionysius and his companions, their mission to Paris, 5
Discipline, collegiate, 93, 94
Dix-huit, College of, 92
Dolet, Etienne, his statue, 286
Domenico da Cortona, 148;
designs Hôtel de Ville, 151
Dominicans, their establishment at Paris, 73
Dragon, Cour du, 291
Dubois, Abbé, his wealth and depravity, 227
Duke of Orleans, his murder, 126
E
Ebles, Abbot, his courage, 38, 41
Ecclesiastical architecture, development of, 47
Ecole des Beaux Arts, 291
Edict of Nantes, 182;
revocation of, 214;
approved by eminent Churchmen, 215;
effect in Europe, 215
Education, state of, before Revolution, 264
Egalité, Philip, 199;
his vote, 259
Eloy, St., abbey of, 31, 56, 57
Eloy, St., bishop and goldsmith, 28
Elysée, the, 319
_Émigrés_, the, 254, 256
Empire, the Second, streets of, 278
Encyclopedists, their aims, 267
English, the, at Paris, 120, 135, 136;
evacuate Paris, 137;
expelled from Calais, 162
Estampes, Madame d', 153, 154
Estiennes, the, 143, 144
Estrées, Gabrielle d', 181
Etienne du Mont, St., 17, 151, 288
Etoile, arch of, 277, 278
Eudes, Count, 38, 41, 42
Eugene III., Pope, at Paris, 57
Eustache, St., church of, 151, 303
Evelyn, witnesses torture of accused prisoners, 262
F
Ferronnerie, Rue de la, 185
Feudalism, origin of, 44
Flamboyant, not a debasement of Gothic, 145, _note_
Flandrin, frescoes by, at St. Germain des Prés, 291
Fleury, Cardinal, his honest administration, 229
Flore, Pavilion de, 186
Fontainebleau, school of, 152
Fontaine des Innocents, 164
Fouarre, Rue du, 100
Fouquet, 310
Foy, Café, 249
Fragonnard, 313
France, her greatness under Richelieu, 195
Francis I., his entry into Paris, 150;
the Renaissance, 150;
his magnificent hospitality, 157;
life at Paris under, 157;
his access of piety, 158, 159;
his death, 160
Francis II. at Amboise, 165
Francis, St., his love of the French tongue, 99
Franciscans, their establishment at Paris, 73
Franklin, Benjamin, at Versailles, 254
Franks, the, 13
Fredegonde, her cruelty and death, 21-23
French language, its universality, 99
French people, their desire for peace, 274
Fromont, Nicholas, 309
Fronde, the, 204
Fronde, the second, 205;
defeat of, 206
Fulbert, Canon, his house, 282
Fulrad, Abbot, completes Church of St. Denis, 33
G
Galilée, the island of, 6
Genevieve, St., her story, 14, 15;
monastery of, 17;
shrine of, 17;
abbey of, 30;
Templars at, 111
Geneviève, Ste., la Petite, 60
Gericault, his Raft of the Medusa, 314
Germain, St., of Auxerre, 14, 27
Germain, St., l'Auxerrois, 31, 303
Germain, St., of Autun, 24, 25
Germain, St., des Prés, 23;
captured by Henry IV., 178;
church of, 291
Germain, St., Faubourg, 293
Gervais, St., church of, 31, 295
Gibbon at Paris, 242
Giocondo, Fra, rebuilds Petit Pont and Pont Notre Dame, 148
Girondins, their condemnation, 241
Goethe, his speech at Valmy, 246;
his description of the revolutionary army, 262
Goldoni assisted by the Convention, 264
Gothic art of the thirteenth century, 84
Goths, the, 12, 13
Goujon, Jean, his work at the Louvre, 164, 306;
decorates the Fontaine des Innocents, 164;
reliefs by, at the Carnavalet, 297
Gozlin, his patriotism and courage, 37, 38, 40, 41
Grande Galerie, the, 186, 191
Gregory, St., of Tours, 13, 22
Greuze, 314
Grève, Place de, 293
Guénégaud, Théâtre, 324
Guise, Duke Francis of, shot by a Huguenot, 165
Guise, Duke Henry of, his popularity at Paris, 176;
his assassination, 177
Guises, rise of the, 161
H
Halles, les, 59, 148, 302
Halle aux Vins, 60, _note_
Hawkers, 259, 270
Heine and the Venus de Milo, 305
Héloïse and Abelard, loves of, 88;
their grave at Paris, 89
Henry I., son of Robert the Pious, his accession, 51
Henry II., his death, 162
Henry III., his coronation, 175;
his assassination, 177
Henry IV., his conversion, 181;
his patriotism, 181, 184;
his divorce, 182;
his assassination, 185;
his architectural achievements, 187;
his statue, 197
Henry V. of England, 128;
death and burial of, 130
Henry V. and Charles VI., entry into Paris, 131
Heretics, first execution of, 49
Hervé and his eleven companions, their heroism, 40, 41
Hierarchy, the, its unpopularity, 272
Holbein, 307
Homme Armé, Rue de l', 135, 297
Horloge, Pavilion de l', 198
Host, miracle of sacred, 299
Hôtel Dieu, foundation of, 31;
rules of, 76;
site of, 281
Hôtel St Paul, 121
Hôtel des Tournelles, 140, 146
Hôtel de Ville, 279, 293, 295
Hugh (Eudes), Count, his heroism, 38, 41, 42
Hugo, Victor, his exile and return, 274;
his house, 297
Huguenots, hostility of Parisians to, 167
I
Infanta, Garden of, 229;
betrothed to Louis XV., 229
Ingres, 314
Innocent II., Pope, at Paris, 59
Innocents, Cemetery of, 148
Innocents, Square des, 301
Institut, the, 207
Invalides, Hôpital des, 223
Irish College, 286
Italian College, 286
Ivry, battle of, 179
J
Jacobins, 197;
their aims, 267;
their supreme service to France, 268
Jacquerie, the, 118
Jacques de la Boucherie, St., 60, 300
Jacques, St., Rue, 5, 284
Jansenists and Jesuits, 218, 230
Jardin des Plantes, 200
Jean, St., Feu de, 295
Jean sans Peur, 125;
tower of, 127;
his assassination, 130;
inscription, 297
Jeanne d'Arc, saviour of France, 131, 132;
wounded at siege of Paris, 132;
her capture, trial and execution, 132, 133;
her rehabilitation at Notre Dame, 134
Jefferson and Marie Antoinette, 253
Jesuits, their suppression, 232
Jews at Paris, their treatment, 34, 49, 59
John the Good, 104, 117;
at Paris, 119
Jongleurs, their charity, 321
Judicial penalties at Paris, 159
Juifs, les, the Island of, 6
Julian, the Emperor, his love of Paris, 10
Julian, St., of the minstrels, 321
Julien le Pauvre, St., 27;
rebuilding of, 81;
church of, 284
Jupiter, altar to, 9, 287;
temple of, 7
K
Knights-Templars, their foundation, 108;
their heroism, 109;
their arrest and torture, 110, 111;
their destruction, 112, 116;
site of their fortress, 299
L
Lafayette, his loyalty, 256
Landry, St., fair of, 98;
gifts by scholars, 98;
port of, 282, 283
Latini Brunetto, 99
Laurens, J. P., paintings at Luxembourg and Panthéon, 48, _note_, 240
Law, John, his financial scheme, 227, 228
League, the, 175;
its ecclesiastical army, 179
Leaguers, their triumph, 176;
their violence, 181
Lebrun, 312
Leczynski, Marie, her marriage to Louis XV., 229;
her death, 233
Legros, 290
Lemercier continues the Louvre, 198;
designs Palais Cardinal, 199
Lemoine, Cardinal, college of, 93
Lescot, Pierre, designs new Louvre, 157;
designs Fontaine des Innocents, 164
Lesueur, 311
Levau, his suspension, 221
Lorrain, Claude, 312
Lorraine, Cardinal of, 177
Louis VI. chastises rebellious vassals, 54;
pioneer of the monarchy, 58
Louis VII., 60;
birth of an heir, 61
Louis VIII. invades England, 62
Louis XI., his shabby dress, 138;
his policy, 139;
at Paris, 139, 140;
meets Edward IV. of England, 140;
institutes the Angelus, 140;
his death, 142
Louis XII. invites Leonardo da Vinci to France, 149;
his wise rule, 149, 150
Louis XIII., his accession, 192;
his _coup d'état_, 193
Louis XIV., his accession, 209;
his small attainments, 211;
his hatred of Paris, 212;
court of, 210, 211, 219;
secret marriage with Mme. Scarron, 213;
death of his heirs, 219;
his death, 220;
state of France and Paris at end of his reign, 226;
his vandalism, 236
Louis XV., his majority, 228;
his sickness and recovery, 231;
his vicious life, 231;
his disastrous reign, 233, 234;
his death, 233
Louis XVI., his accession, 243;
state of Paris under, 243;
his vacillation, 253;
intrigues with foreign courts, 254;
his trial and sentence, 259, 260;
execution of, 261
Louis Philippe, 273
Louis, St., his early youth, 67;
his love of justice, 67, 77;
redeems the crown of thorns, 68;
his views on the treatment of Jews and infidels, 69;
builds the Sainte Chapelle, 69;
his hatred of blasphemy, 71;
his death, 77
Louviers, the island of, 6
Louvois and Vauban, inventors of bayonet, 210
Louvre, building of, 62;
its position, 65;
demolition of keep, 156;
west wing completed, 164;
continued by Lemercier, 198;
continued by Levau, 220;
Perrault, base of, 222;
neglect of, by Louis XIV., 223;
and by Louis XV., 234;
repair of, 235;
during the Revolution, 275;
under Napoleon I., 276;
under Napoleon III., 276;
paintings in, 304;
sculpture in, 305, 306
Loyola, Ignatius, founds Society of Jesus at Paris, 156
Luini, 307
Lulli, his musical genius, 329
Lulli, Hôtel, 316
Lutetia, its origin, 3
Lutetius, hill of, 4
Lutherans, their violence and iconomachy, 158;
persecution of, 159, 160
Luxembourg, palace and gardens of, 197, 290;
museum of, 290
Luxor, Column of, 278
Luynes, his rise and fall, 193, 194
M
Madeleine, the, 277
Maillotins, the, 123
Maintenon, Mme. de, her ascendency over Louis XIV., 213, 214, 216, 217;
the Protestants and, 214
Malouel, 309
Manége, Salle du, 259
Mansard, François, extends Palais Royal, 199
Marais, the, 7, 65, 295
Marat, his body at the Cordeliers, 288;
site of his house, 289
Marcel, Etienne, buys the Maison aux Piliers, 117;
his power at Paris, 118;
accused of treachery, 119;
his statue, 117;
his death, 118, 119
Marcel, Etienne, Rue, 127
Marlborough, Duke of, his victories, 216
Marly, hermitage of, 213
Marmoutier, monastery of, 9
Mars, Champ de, 252
Martel, Charles, birth of, 29
Martin, St., des Champs, rebuilding of, 52
Martin, St., story of, 8
Martin, St., Rue, 293
Mary Stuart, at Amboise, 165
Massacres of September, 258
Maur, St., des Fossés, 34
May Tree, planting of, in Cour du Mai, 328
Mayenne, Hôtel de, 295
Mazarin, Cardinal, his cautious policy, 202;
his unpopularity, 205;
his triumph, 206;
his death, 207
Mazzini, his teaching, 268
Medici, Catherine de', her rise to importance, 165;
her plot against the Huguenots, 168, 169;
her death and unpopularity, 178;
remains of her hôtel, 302
Medici, Marie de', marriage with Henry IV., 182;
her coronation, 184;
her disgrace and death, 195
Médicine, Ecole de, 288
Merri, St., church of, 151
Meuniers, Pont des, collapse of, 188
Michel le Comte, Rue, plays in, 322
Mignard, 312
Millet, 313, 315
Miracles, Cour des, 302
Molay, Jacques de, 109-111
Molé, President, his courage, 204
Molière, imprisoned for debt, 323;
opens _l'Illustre Théâtre_, 323;
his success at court, 323
Monasteries, their increase, 24;
suppression of, at Paris, 272
Monastic settlements, 34
Monks and nuns, their declining morals, 55, 56
Monks, their science and learning, 24
Montaigne, College of, 94
Montfaucon, 103;
its "fair gallows," 189
Montgomery, Duke of, kills Henry II., 162
Montmartre, 7;
nunnery of, 60
Montmorency, his execution, 195
Morris, Governor, his estimate of Louis XVI., 253
Moulins, Maître de, 309, 310
N
Nain, Le, the brothers, 311
Napoleon I., his policy, 265;
his raids on Italy, 266;
crowns himself at Notre Dame, 266;
his genius, 267;
secret of his power, 268;
his plans for the Louvre, 276;
his new streets, 277;
his tomb, 293
Napoleon III., his _coup d'état_, 274
Nautæ, guild of the, 9
Navarre, college of, 93
Navarre, Henry of, affianced to Princess Marguerite, 167;
his marriage festivities, 167
Navarre, Jeanne de, 166;
her death at Court, 167
Necker, Mme., her salon, 269
Nemours, Duke of, executed at Paris, 141
Neustria, kingdom of, 21
Nicholas, St., chapel of, 31, 33;
scholars of, 92
Nobles, the, their rapacity, 192
_Noces Vermeilles_, the, 168
Nogaret, Guillaume de, 107
Normans, the, settle in France, 43
Notre Dame, church of, 9, 26, 281;
rebuilding of, 81;
English envoys at, 157;
clerical iconoclasts of, 236;
worship of Nature at, 272
Notre Dame, the island of, 6
O
Odéon, Théâtre de l', 325
OEil de Boeuf, the, 248
Oiseaux, Pont aux, consumed by fire, 189
Opera, French, rise of, 329
Opera house, the, 279, 330
Opera, Italian, introduced to Paris, 329
Orders, the reformed, 55
Oriflamme, the, its first use as royal standard, 58;
its disappearance, 128
Orleans, Philip of, his regency, 227
Orme, Philibert de l', 186
P
Paine, Thomas, his votes for mercy, 259, 260
Paix, Rue de la, 316
Palais Cardinal, Théâtre du, its site, 325
Palais of the Cité rebuilt, 104;
surrendered to Parlement, 121
Palais de Justice injured by fire, 240;
booksellers at, 240, 241;
Revolutionary tribunal at, 241
Palais Royal, 199, 200, 315;
revolutionists at, 249;
theatre of, 324
Palissy, Bernard, his grotto, 186
Panthéon, its vicissitudes, 238-240
Paraclete, the, 89
Paris, its geographical situation, 1, 2;
its capture by the Romans, 4;
the White City, 4;
arms of, 9;
Julian proclaimed emperor at, 10;
siege of, by Childeric, 15;
the market of the peoples, 34;
siege of, by Normans, 37;
a city of refuge, 46;
under interdict, 57;
growth of, under Louis VI., 59;
under English rule, 135;
in the fifteenth century, 145;
crafts of, 146, 147;
siege of, by Henry III. and Henry of Navarre, 177;
siege of, by Henry IV., 179;
under Richelieu, 196, 197;
made an archbishopric, 202;
Turenne and Condé fight for, 206;
misery at, 217;
under Louis XIV., 220;
Louis XVI. and court returns to, 249;
an armourer's shop, 261;
life at, during the Revolution, 269;
school of, at Louvre, 309
Parisian women at Versailles, 249
Parisians, their chastisement by Charles VI., 123, 124;
their fidelity to the revolutionary ideals, 273
Parisii, the, 3
Parlement, the, 104, 106;
councillors of, hanged by the sections, 180;
councillors arrested, 203;
its public spirit, 203;
its humiliation by Louis XIV., 206;
suppression of, 233
Pascal, his statue, 300
Passion, confraternity of, 321
Passion plays, their success, 322
Paul III., Pope, his humane protest against persecution of Lutherans, 160
Pavia, defeat of, 154
Pepin of Heristal, 29;
of Landen, 29;
the Short, becomes king of France, 30
Père la Chaise, 206
Peronne, peace of, 141
Perrault, Claude, his design for the Louvre accepted, 221;
his east façade, 222, 276
Perréal, 310
Petite Galerie, the, 173, 187
Petit Pont, the, 6;
Place du, 284
Philip Augustus, his birth and accession, 61;
his conquests, 62;
pavement of, 63;
wall of, 63-65;
his wisdom, 65
Philip I., his depravity and adultery, 52, 53;
his excommunication and death, 53, 54
Philip III., 103
Philip VI., 117
Philip le Bon, Duke of Burgundy, sides with the English, 130
Philip the Fair, 104;
conflict with Boniface VIII., 106-108;
destroys Templars, 110-115;
his death, 115
Picpus, village of, 189
Pierre aux Boeufs, St., 60, 281
Pierre, St., des Fossés, 34
Pilon, Germain, 305
Place Royale, 187, 296, 297
Playing cards, revolutionary, 271
Poitiers, Diane de, 144, 162
Pol, St., Count of, executed at Paris, 141
Pompadour, Mme. de, her power, 231, 232
Pont au Change rebuilt, 189
Pont Marie, 201
Pont Neuf, 197, 284
Pont Notre Dame, 7
Pont Royal, 224
Portes Cochères, corps of, 204
Port Royal, destruction of, 218
Poussin, 311
Prés aux Clercs, the, 97
Primaticcio, 152, 153, 311
Primitifs, at Louvre, 308
Printing, introduction of, at Paris, 143;
at the Louvre, 200
Provost of Merchants, 9;
last of, 293
Provost of Paris, his hotel, 295
Public good, league of, 139
Q
Quatre Nations, the, 95
Quinze-vingts, establishment of, at Paris, 74
R
Radegonde, St., her piety, 25;
nuns of, at Cambridge, 25
Raphael, 306
Ravaillac, assassin of Henry IV., his cruel torture, 185
Rectors, their power, 95, 98
Reformation, the, 164
Rembrandt, 307
Rémi, St., 13
Republic, the second, 274
Republic, the third, its patriotism, 274;
architecture of, 278
Restoration, the, architecture of, 277
Retz, Cardinal de, 203;
joins the insurrection, 204, 205
Revolutionary, Committee of the League, 180
Revolution, the, its triumph, 262;
its results, 275;
Place de la, 317
Revolutionists, their attitude towards England, 265
Richelieu, his rise to fame, 193, 194;
his firmness, 194;
his death, 195;
second founder of Sorbonne, 200;
his tomb at the Sorbonne, 200
Rigaud, 313
Robert the Pious, his excommunication, 48;
his charity, 48;
repudiates his queen, 47, 48;
marries Constance of Aquitaine, 48
Robert the Strong, 37
Robespierre and the Terror, 246, 247;
his feast of the _Etre Suprème_, 273;
at chess, 333
Rochelle, la, capture of, 194
Roland, 270
Roland, Mme., 283
Rollo, 37, 43
Roman amphitheatre, the, 5
Roman aqueduct, the, 5
Roman Empire, exhaustion of, 12
Rosso, 152, 311
Rousseau, his impressions of Paris, 226;
his journey from Paris to Lyons, 244
Rousseau, Théodore, 315
Royalty, abolition of, 258
Royale, place, 187, 296, 297
Rubens, 307
Ryswick, peace of, 215
S
Sacre Coeur, church of, 240, 279
Sainte Chapelle, the, 69, 82, 83
Samaritaine, la, 198
Sarto, Andrea del, 152
Saxe, Marshall, his victories, 231
Scholars, their lack of discipline, 90;
their festive meetings, 91;
their depravity, 92;
poor, at Paris, 92;
defence of, by king, 97
Schoolman, the, 100
Sculpture, Greek, at Louvre, 305;
mediæval and renaissance, at Louvre, 305
Sections, the, 176, 180;
their defeat, 180
Sens, Archbishop of, and Templars, 112;
his palace, 295
Serfdom, 49
Serfs, their condition, 49, 50
Séverin, St., church of, 284, 286
Sévigné, Mme. de, 297
Siegbert, marriage with Brunehaut, 21
Siéyès, Abbé, 269
Siger, at Paris, 100
Signs, old, at Paris, 303
Simon, St., Duke of, his memoirs, 210
Soissons, the vase of, 13
Sorbon, Robert of, founds the Sorbonne, 92
Sorbonne, introduction of painting at, 143;
Greek lectureship at, 145;
the new, 288
Soubise, Hôtel de, 297
Soufflot builds Panthéon, 238;
mutilates west front of Notre Dame, 238
Staël, Mme. de, 270
States-General, establishment of, 104;
convoked by Dauphin, 117;
meet at the Louvre, 180;
at the Hôtel de Bourbon, 192;
at Versailles, 247
Stephen, St., church of, 31
Stephen III., Pope, at Paris, 30
Street names, revolutionary, 271
Streets, old, at Paris, 286, 299
Suger, Abbot, 58;
builds new St. Denis, 79
Sully, Duke of, 182, 184;
his enforced retirement, 192;
Hôtel de, 295
Sully, Maurice de, builds cathedral of Notre Dame, 81
Sulpice, St., church of, 241, 242, 291
Surgery, school of, 290
Swiss Guards, their devotion and courage, 257
T
Talleyrand, Bishop, 270
Talma, Julie, 270
Talma, 326
Tax farmers, their brutality, 245
Tennis-court oath, 248
Terror, the white, 247, _note_
Terror, the, at Paris, 262
Theatre, the early, 323
Thermæ, the, 9, 10
Tiberius Cæsar, discovery of altar to, 9
Tiers Etat, at Notre Dame, 106;
its humiliation, 192
Titian, 306
Trône, place du, 189
Troyes, treaty of, 130
Troyon, 315
Truce of God, 98
Tuileries, the, 186;
secret flight of royal family from, 255;
attack on, 257;
palace and gardens of, 315, 316
Turenne, his defeat at Paris, 205, 206
U
University, first use of term, 95
Ursins, Mme. des, her power in Spain, 216
Utrecht, peace of, 219
V
Vaches, isle des, 6
Val de Grâce, church of, 223
Vallière, Mme. de la, 212
Van Dyck, 307
Vasari, his appreciation of Fra Angelico, 306
Vauban, his military science, 210;
his estimate of the national resources, 215
Vendôme, Duke of, his depravity, 216
Vendôme, place and column of, 316
Venetian merchants at Paris, 34;
their sympathy with Jeanne d'Arc, 133
Venise, Rue de, 299
Vergniaud, 260, 270
Veronese, 306
Versailles, château of, 212;
cost of, 213, _note_;
opera house, scene at, 248;
the revolution at, 247
Victoires, Notre Dame des, 194, _note_
Victor, St., prior of, stabbed, 57;
abbey of, 60
Ville, the, 146, 147
Vinci, da, his Monna Lisa at Louvre, 306
Viollet le Duc, his love of Gothic, 278
Voltaire, his solvent wit, 269, 270
Volterra, Daniele da, his statue of Louis XIII., 187
Vosges, Place des, 187
Vouet, 311
W
Wall, the Roman, 6
Watteau, his manner of painting, 313;
works by, at Louvre, 313
Whistler, 290
THE END
_Colston & Coy., Limited, Printers, Edinburgh._
* * * * *
FOOTNOTES:
[1] "_Faudra recommencer_" ("We must begin again"), said, to the
present writer in 1871, a Communist refugee bearing a great scar on
his face from a wound received fighting at the barricades.
[2] _Inf._ XXIX. 121-123. A French commentator consoles himself by
reflecting that the author of the _Divina Commedia_ is far more
vituperative when dealing with certain Italian peoples, whom he
designates as hogs, curs, wolves and foxes.
[3] Cobbett, comparing the relative intellectual culture of the
British Isles and of France between the years 1600 and 1787, found
that of the writers on the arts and sciences who were distinguished by
a place in the _Universal, Historical, Critical and Bibliographical
Dictionary_ one hundred and thirty belonged to England, Scotland and
Ireland, and six hundred and seventy-six to France.
[4] "Nous cuisinons même l'amour."--TAINE.
[5] The Seine takes five hours to flow through the seven miles of
modern Paris.
[6] "_Cesare armato con gli occhi grifani._"--_Inferno_, iv. 123.
[7] Of some 10,000 ancient inscriptions found in Gaul, only twenty are
in Celtic, and less than thirty words of Celtic origin now remain in
the French language.
[8] The water supply of Paris is even now partly derived from these
sources, and flows along the old repaired Roman aqueduct.
[9] Traces of the Gallo-Roman wall have been discovered, and are
marked across the roadway opposite No. 6 Rue de la Colombe.
[10] The Isle de Galilée was joined to the Cité during the thirteenth
century.
[11] In 1848 some remains were found of the old halls of this
building, and of its columns, worn by the ropes of the boatmen who
used to moor their craft to them.
[12] The exact position of this bridge is much disputed by
authorities, some of whom would locate it on the site of the present
Pont au Change. The balance of probabilities seems to us in favour of
the position given in the text.
[13] "_Jovem brutum atque hebetem._"
[14] Not to be confounded with the Royal Provost, a king's officer,
who replaced the Carlovingian counts and Capetian viscounts.
[15] The present writer recalls a similar glacial epoch in Paris
during the early eighties, when the Seine was frozen over at Christmas
time.
[16] By the law of 350 A.D. it was a capital offence
to sacrifice to or honour the old gods. The persecuted had become
persecutors. Boissier, _La Fin du Paganisme_.
[17] "He soon hugs himself in unconditioned ease."
[18] To protect home producers against the competition of the Gallic
wine and olive growers, Roman statesmen could conceive nothing better
than the stupid expedient of prohibiting the culture of the vine and
olive in Gaul.
[19] The favourite arm of the Franks, a short battle-axe, used as a
missile or at close quarters.
[20] Her figure was a favourite subject for the sculptors of Christian
churches. She usually bears a taper in her hand and a devil is seen
peering over her shoulder. This symbolises the miraculous relighting
of the taper after the devil had extinguished it. The taper was long
preserved at Notre Dame.
[21] If we may believe Gregory of Tours, her arguments were
vituperative rather than convincing. "Your Jupiter," said she, "is
_omnium stuprorum spurcissimus perpetrator_."
[22] Merovée, second of the kings of the Salic Franks, was fabled to
be the issue of Clodio's wife and a sea monster.
[23] The palace in the Cité, where now stands the Palais de Justice.
[24] Roads in the Arrondissement of Amiens and Mondidier in Picardy
are still known as Chaussées Brunehautes.
[25] The works of art traditionally ascribed to St. Eloy are many. He
is reported to have made a golden throne set with stones (or rather
two thrones, for he used his material so honestly and economically).
He was made master of the mint and thirteen pieces of money are known
which bear his name. He decorated the tombs of St. Martin and St.
Denis, and constructed reliquaries for St. Germain, Notre Dame, and
other churches.
[26] Five of them died between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six.
[27] It was during this struggle that St. Leger, bishop of Autun,
whose name is dear to English sportsmen, one of the most popular of
saints in his time, was imprisoned, blinded and subsequently beheaded
by Ebrion's orders in 678.
[28] The term Cité (_civitas_) was given to the old Roman part of many
French towns.
[29] The Carlovingians had been careful to abolish the office of mayor
of the palace.
[30] St. Pierre was subsequently enriched by the possession of the
body of St. Maur, brought thither in the Norman troubles by fugitive
monks from Anjou, and the monastery is better known to history under
the name of St. Maur des Fossés. The entrails of our own Henry V. were
buried there. Rabelais, before its secularisation, was one of its
canons, and Catherine de Medicis once possessed a château on its site.
Monastery and château no longer exist.
[31] The villa of those days was a vast domain, part dwelling, part
farm, part game preserve.
[32] The remains of the great Viking's castle are still shown at
Aalesund, in Norway.
[33] When Allan Barbetorte, after the recovery of Nantes, went to give
thanks to God in the cathedral, he was compelled to cut his way, sword
in hand, through thorns and briers.
[34] It must be admitted, however, that the poet's uncouth diction is
anything but Virgilian.
[35] Abbo's favourite epithet. They were without a head, for they knew
not Christ, the Head of Mankind.
[36] In the Middle Ages and down to 1761 Montfaucon had a sinister
reputation. There stood the gallows of Paris, a great stone gibbet
with its three rows of chains, near the old Barrière du Combat, where
the present Rue de la Grange aux Belles abuts on the Boulevard de la
Villette.
[37] William the Conqueror was also known as William the Builder.
[38] The surname Capet is said to have originated in the _capet_
or hood of the abbot's mantle which Hugh wore as lay abbot of St.
Martin's, having laid aside the crown after his coronation.
[39] Carducci. _In una Chiesa gotica._
[40] A dramatic representation of the delivery of the papal bull,
painted by Jean Paul Laurens, hangs in the museum of the Luxembourg.
[41] It must be remembered that heresy was the solvent anti-social
force of the age, and was regarded with the same feelings of
abhorrence as anarchist doctrines are regarded by modern statesmen.
[42] The Rue des Francs Bourgeois in Paris reminds us that there
dwelt those who were free to move without the consent of their feudal
superiors.
[43] It was the conduct of this campaign that won for Robert the title
of Robert the Devil.
[44] The possession of an oven was a lucrative monopoly in mediæval
times. The writer knows of a village in South Italy where this curious
privilege is still possessed by the parish priest, who levies a small
indemnity of a few loaves, made specially of larger size, for each use
of the oven.
[45] He was said to be "kind even to Jews."
[46] The indignant scribe is most precise: they walked abroad _artatis
clunibus et protensis natibus_.
[47] The reformers always discover the nunneries to be so much more
corrupt than the monasteries, but it is a little suspicious that in
every case the former are expropriated to the latter. The abbot of St.
Maur evidently had some qualms concerning the expropriation of St.
Eloy, and wished to restore it to the bishop.
[48] The abbey was suppressed at the time of the Revolution, and the
site is now occupied by the Halle aux Vins.
[49] In the ardour of the fight the king found himself surrounded by
the enemy's footmen, was unhorsed, and while they were vainly seeking
for a vulnerable spot in his armour some French knights had time to
rescue him.
[50] Jeanne de Bourgogne, queen of Philip le Long, lived at the Hôtel
de Nesle, and is said to have seduced scholars by night into the
tower, had them tied in sacks and flung into the Seine. If we may
believe Villon, this was the queen--
"Qui commanda que Buridan
Fust jetté en ung sac en Seine."
Legend adds that the schoolman, made famous by his thesis, that if
an ass were placed equidistant between two bundles of hay of equal
attraction he would die of hunger before he could resolve to eat
either, was saved by his disciples, who placed a barge, loaded with
straw, below the tower to break his fall.
[51] She was wont to say to her son--"I would rather see thee die than
commit a mortal sin."
[52] By a subtle irony, part of the money was derived from the tribute
of the Jews of Paris.
[53] In the catalogue of the Acts of Francis I., quoted by Lavisse, is
an order to pay the Dames des Filles de Joie, which follow the court,
forty-five livres tournois for their payments, due for the month of
May 1540, as it has been the custom to do from most ancient times (_de
toute ancienneté_.)
[54] On account of the cord they wore round their habit.
[55] St. Louis loved the Franciscans, and in the _Fioretti_ a
beautiful story is told how the king, in the guise of a pilgrim,
visiting Brother Giles at Perugia, knelt with the good friar in the
embrace of fervent affection for a great space of time in silence.
They parted without speaking a word.
[56] The sale or the provostship of Paris was abolished and a man of
integrity, Etienne Boileau, appointed with adequate emoluments. So
completely was this once venal office rehabilitated, that no seigneur
regarded the post as beneath him.
[57] It was buried in the church of Monreale at Palermo.
[58] Joinville was a brave and tender knight; he tells us that before
starting to join the crusaders at Marseilles he called all his friends
and household before him, and prayed that if he had wronged any one of
them he would declare it and reparation should be made. After a severe
penance he was assoiled, and as he set forth, durst not turn back his
eyes lest his heart should be melted at leaving his fair château of
Joinville and his two children whom he loved so dearly.
[59] The relics were transferred to a new church of St. Stephen (St.
Etienne du Mont), built by the abbot of St. Genevieve as a parish
church for his servants and tenants.
[60] The early glass-workers were particularly fond of their beautiful
red. "Wine of the colour of the glass windows of the Sainte-Chapelle,"
was a popular locution of the time.
[61] Brunetto Latini, in the thirteenth century contrasted the high
towers and grim stone walls of the fortress-palaces of the Italian
nobles with the large, spacious and painted houses of the French,
their rooms adorned _pour avoir joie et delit_ (to have joy and
delight) and surrounded with orchards and gardens.
[62] Another delusion of moderns is that there was an absence of
personal cleanliness in those ages. In the census of the inhabitants
of Paris, who in 1292 were subject to the Taille, there are inscribed
the names of no less than twenty-six proprietors of public baths: a
larger proportion to population than exists to-day.
[63] Hence the name of _clerc_ applied to any student, even if a
layman.
[64] "Love is quickly caught in gentle heart."
[65] Afterwards bishop of London.
[66] The two churches still existed in the eighteenth century and
stood on the site of the southern Cours Visconti and Lefuel of the
present Louvre.
[67] The actual originator was, however, the queen's physician, Robert
de Douai, who left a sum of money which formed the nucleus of the
foundation.
[68] The Montaigue scholars were called _capetes_ from their peculiar
_cape fermée_, or cloak, such as Masters of Arts used to wear. The
Bibliothèque St. Genevieve occupies the site of the college.
[69] The Rue des Anglais still exists in the Latin Quarter.
[70] This interesting twelfth-century building will be found in the
Rue St. Julien le Pauvre, and is now used as a Uniat Greek church.
[71] Par. X. 136. "Who lecturing in Straw St. deduced truths that
brought him hatred."
[72] Benvenuto was certainly in France and possibly in Paris during
the fourteenth century. At any rate he would be familiar with Parisian
students, many of whom were Italians.
[73] In the seventeenth century the councillors had increased to one
hundred and twenty and the courts to seven.
[74] The term "Parlement" was originally applied to the transaction of
the common business of a monastic establishment after the conclusion
of the daily chapter.
[75] The contemporary chronicler, Villani, says of one of these
scoundrels that he "was named Nosso Dei, one of our Florentines, a man
filled with every vice."
[76] The indictment covers seven quarto pages. The charges may be
briefly classified as blasphemy, heresy, spitting and trampling on the
crucifix, obscene and secret rites, and unnatural crimes.
[77] There is a significant entry on page 273 of the published trial:
_in ista pagina nihil est scriptum_. The empty page tells of the
moment when the papal commissioners, having heard that the fifty-four
had been burned, suspended the sitting.
[78] _Nihil sibi appropriare intendebat._
[79] Or the isle of the Jews, which, with its sister islet of Bussy,
were subsequently joined to the island of the Cité, and now form the
Place Dauphine and the land that divides the Pont Neuf. Philip watched
the fires from his palace garden.
[80] It is to be hoped that some English scholar will do for these
most important records, the earliest report of any great criminal
trial which we possess, what Mr T. Douglas Murray has done for the
Trial and Rehabilitation of Joan of Arc.
[81] During John the Good's reign, the province of Dauphiny had been
added to the French crown, and the king's eldest son took the title of
Dauphin.
[82] So called from the familiar appellation "Jacques Bonhomme,"
applied half in contempt, half in jest, by the seigneurs to the
peasants who served them in the wars.
[83] The bastilles were fortified castles before the chief gates of
Paris.
[84] Howell mentions the locution in a letter dated 1654.
[85] Charles taxed and borrowed heavily. Even the members of his
household were importuned for loans, however small. His cook lent him
frs. 67.50.
[86] The scene is quaintly illustrated in an illuminated copy of
Froissart in the British Museum.
[87] The scene of the assassination is marked by an escutcheon and an
inscription.
[88] They melted down the reliquaries in the Paris churches.
[89] In 1417 Charles, returning from a visit to the queen at the
castle of Vincennes, met the Chevalier Bois-Burdon going thither.
He ordered his arrest, and under torture a confession reflecting
on the queen's honour was extorted. Bois-Burdon was sewn in a sack
and dropped into the Seine. The queen was banished to Tours, and
her jewels and treasures confiscated. Furious with the king and the
Armagnac faction, she made common cause with the Duke of Burgundy.
[90] A portrait of Jean sans Peur exists in the Louvre, No. 1002.
[91] An equestrian statue in bronze stands at the south end of the Rue
des Pyramides, a few hundred yards from the spot where the Maid fell
before the Porte St. Honoré.
[92] The faculty of Theology declared her sold to the devil, impious
to her parents, stained with Christian blood. The faculty of Law
decreed her deserving of punishment, but only if she were obstinate
and of sound mind.
[93] In 1421 and 1422 the people of Paris had seen Henry V. and
his French consort sitting in state at the Louvre, surrounded by
a brilliant throng of princes, prelates and barons. Hungry crowds
watched the sumptuous banquet and then went away fasting, for nothing
was offered them. "It was not so in the former times under our
kings," they murmured, "then there was open table kept, and servants
distributed the meats and wine even of the king himself."
[94] Part of the Rue de l'Homme Armé still exists.
[95] The fifteenth-century goldsmiths of Paris: Loris, the Hersants,
and Jehan Gallant, were famed throughout Europe.
[96] The reader will hardly need to be reminded that this amazing
folly forms one of the principal episodes in Scott's _Quentin Durward_.
[97] Flamboyant windows were a natural, technical development of
Gothic. The aim of the later builders was to facilitate the draining
away of the water which the old mullioned windows used to retain.
[98] One of the façades of this remarkable building may be seen in the
courtyard of the Beaux Arts at Paris.
[99] Brittany was incorporated with the Monarchy 1491.
[100] The good king's portrait by an Italian sculptor may be seen in
the Louvre, Room VII., and on his monument in St. Denis he kneels
beside his beloved and _chère Bretonne_, Anne of Brittany, whose loss
he wept for eight days and nights.
[101] "He was well named after St. Francis, because of the holes in
his hands," said a Sorbonne doctor.
[102] "Ah! me, how thou art changed! See, thou art neither two nor
one."
[103] Travellers to Paris in the days of King Francis had cause to
remember gratefully that monarch's solicitude, for a maximum of
charges was fixed, and an order made that every hotel-keeper should
affix his prices outside the door, that extortion might be avoided.
Among other maxima, the price of a pair of sheets, to "sleep not more
than five persons," was to be five deniers (a penny).
[104] The salamander was figured on the royal arms of Francis.
[105] About £600,000 in present-day value.
[106] For the first offence a fine; for the second, the lips to be
cloven; for the third, the tongue pierced; for the fourth, death.
[107] The image was stolen in 1545 and replaced by one of wood. This
was struck down in 1551, and the bishop of Paris substituted for it
one of marble.
[108] One thousand two hundred are said to have suffered death during
the month of vengeance.
[109] Henry of Guise had succeeded to the dukedom after his father's
assassination.
[110] Suspicions of poison were entertained by the Huguenots. Jeanne,
in a letter to the Marquis de Beauvais, complained that holes were
made in her rooms that she might be spied upon.
[111] Félibien and Lobïneau, 1725.
[112] "That to show pity was to be cruel to them: to be cruel to them
was to show pity."
[113] The municipality gave presents of money to the archers who
had taken part in the massacre, to the watermen who prevented the
Huguenots from crossing the Seine, and to grave-diggers for having
buried in eight days about 1,100 bodies.
[114] Now known as the Galerie d'Apollon.
[115] _Ugonottorum strages._ Inscription on the obverse of the medal.
[116] Examples of magnificent costumes of the order may be seen in the
Cluny Museum.
[117] The Duke of Guise was so called from his face being scarred by a
wound received at the battle of Dolmans.
[118] The king had premonitions of a violent end. One day, after
keeping Easter at Negeon with great devotion, he suddenly returned to
the Louvre and ordered all the lions, bears, bulls, and other wild
animals he kept there for baiting by dogs, to be shot. He had dreamt
that he was set upon and eaten by wild beasts.
[119] So called derisively, because he was born and brought up in the
poor province of Bearn, in the Pyrenees.
[120] Her majesty, we learn from the _Mémoires_ of L'Estoile, was of
a rich figure, stout, fine eyes and complexion. She used no paint,
powder or other _vilanie_.
[121] The new palace was situated in the parish of St. Germain
l'Auxerrois, the parish church of the Louvre.
[122] The north tower was left only partially constructed, and was
finished by Louis XIII.
[123] By a curious coincidence the widening of the Rue de la
Ferronnerie had been ordered just before the king was assassinated.
[124] They marked the seven resting-places of the saint as he
journeyed to St. Denis after his martyrdom.
[125] The Grande Galerie.
[126] In the Hôtel de Bourbon, east of the old Louvre, sometimes known
as the Petit Bourbon.
[127] The church of Notre Dame des Victoires commemorates the victory.
[128] The Marché St. Honoré now occupies its site.
[129] In 1793 the tomb was desecrated, and the head removed from the
body, but in 1863, as an inscription tells, the head was recovered by
the historian Duruy, and after seventy years reunited to the trunk.
[130] A letter from Paris to Lyons was taxed at two sous: it now costs
three.
[131] The Rue Poulletier marks the line of the old channel between the
islands.
[132] So named from the wooden seat, or _couche de bois_, covered with
rich stuff embroidered with _fleur-de-lys_, on which the king sat when
he attended a meeting of the Parlement.
[133] One of the schemes of Francis I. to raise money had been to
offer the benches to the highest bidders, and under the law of 1604
the office of councillor became a hereditary property on payment to
the court of one-sixtieth of its value. Moreover, the Parlement was
but a local body, one among several others in the provinces.
[134] The added indignity of the whip is an invention of Voltaire.
[135] Louis used, however, to stilt his low stature by means of thick
pads in his boots.
[136] Taine, basing his calculation on a MS. bound with the monogram
of Mansard, estimated the cost of Versailles in modern equivalent at
about 750,000,000 francs (£30,000,000 sterling.)
[137] The writer, whose youth was passed among the descendants of the
Huguenot silk-weavers of Spitalfields, has indelible memories of their
sterling character and admirable industry.
[138] Marshal Luxembourg was dubbed the _Tapissier de Notre Dame_ (the
upholsterer of Notre Dame), from the number of captured flags he sent
to the cathedral.
[139] In a previous campaign the king had taken his queen and
two mistresses with him in one coach. The peasants used to amuse
themselves by coming to see the "three queens."
[140] When the Duke of Orleans was about to start for Spain, the king
asked whom he had chosen to accompany him. Orleans mentioned, among
others, Fontpertius. "What, nephew!" exclaimed Louis, "a Jansenist!"
"So far from being a Jansenist," replied Orleans, "he doesn't even
believe in God." "Oh, if that is so," said the king, "I see no reason
why he should not go."
[141] Among the privileges granted to England was the monopoly of
supplying the Spanish Colonies with negro slaves.
[142] Levau's south façade was not completely hidden by Perrault's
screen, for the roofs of the end and central pavilions emerged from
behind it until they were destroyed by Gabriel in 1755.
[143] Jules Hardouin, the younger Mansard, was a nephew and pupil of
François Mansard, who assumed his uncle's name. The latter was the
inventor of the Mansard roof.
[144] The sixth part of a sou.
[145] Twelve alone were added to the St. Honoré quarter by levelling
the Hill of St. Roch and clearing away accumulated rubbish.
[146] It extended as far as the entrance to the quadrangle opposite
the Pont des Arts. A double line of trees, north and south, enclosed a
Renaissance garden of elaborate design, and a charming _bosquet_, or
wood, filled the eastern extremity.
[147] "By order of the king, God is forbidden to work miracles in this
place."
[148] In 1753 between 20th January and 20th February two hundred
persons died of want (_misère_) in the Faubourg St. Antoine.
[149] Some conception of the insanitary condition of the court may be
formed by the fact that fifty persons were struck down there by this
loathsome disease during the king's illness.
[150] "I have seen the Louvre and its huge enclosure, a vast palace
which for two hundred years is always being finished and always begun.
Two workmen, lazy hodmen, speed very slowly those rich buildings, and
are paid when they are thought of."
[151] The aspect of the west front with Soufflot's "improvements"
is well seen in _Les Principaux Monuments Gothiques de l'Europe_,
published in Brussels, 1843.
[152] Taine estimates the revenues of thirty-three abbots in terms of
modern values at from 140,000 to 480,000 francs (£5600 to £19,200).
Twenty-seven abbesses enjoyed revenues nearly as large.
[153] The score of Rousseau's opera is still preserved in the
Bibliothèque Nationale.
[154] The Excise duty.
[155] Personal and land-taxes paid by the humbler classes alone.
[156] It is difficult, however, to read the sober and irrefutable
picture of their miserable condition, given in the famous Books II.
and V. of Taine's _Ancien Régime_, without deep emotion.
[157] After the Thermidorian reaction in 1795, ninety-seven Jacobins
were massacred by the royalists at Lyons on 5th May; thirty at Aix
on 11th May. Similar horrors were enacted at Avignon, Arles, and
Marseilles, and at other places in the south.
[158] When de Brézé reported this to the king, he seemed vexed, and
answered petulantly, "Well, if they won't go they must be left there."
[159] A whole library has been written concerning the identity of this
famous prisoner. There is little doubt that the mask was of velvet and
not of iron, and that the mysterious captive who died on 19th November
1703 in the Bastille was Count Mattioli of Bologna, who was secretly
arrested for having betrayed the confidence of Louis XIV.
[160] Only five francs were allowed for a bourgeois, a man of letters
was granted ten; a Marshal of France obtained the maximum.
[161] It was composed by one of the _émigrés_, M. de Limon, approved
by the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia, and signed, against
his better judgment, by the Duke of Brunswick.
[162] The numbers have been variously estimated from 100 to 5000
killed on the popular side.
[163] "Sew we, spin we, sew we well, behold the coats we have made for
the winter that is coming. Soldiers of the Fatherland, ye shall want
for nothing."
[164] _Inferno._ XV. 76-78.--"In whom lives again the seed of those
Romans who remained there when the nest (Florence) of so much
wickedness was made."
[165] Mdlle. Curchod, for whom Gibbon "sighed as a lover."
[166] "We could rouse no enthusiasm," said the head of a State
Department to the writer at the time of the Fashoda incident, "even
for a war for the recovery of Alsace and Lorraine, much less against
England."
[167] _See_ p. 41.
[168] According to Sir Thomas Browne, bodies soon consumed there.
"'Tis all one to lie in St. Innocents' churchyard as in the sands of
Egypt, ready to be anything, in the ecstasy of being ever, and as
content with six feet as the _moles_ of Adrianus."--_Urn Burial_, p.
351.
[169] The picture subsequently found its way to the apartments of
Louis XVI., and followed him from Versailles to Paris. The attitude of
this ill-fated monarch towards his advisers, says Michelet, was much
influenced by a fixed idea that Charles I. lost his head for having
made war on his people, and that James II. lost his crown for having
abandoned them.
[170] _French Painting in the Sixteenth Century_, by L. Dimier.
London, 1904.
[171] The picture, Une Dame présentée par la Madeleine, attributed to
the Maître de Moulins at the Exhibition of Primitifs in the Pavilion
de Marsan has now been acquired by the Louvre.
[172] M. Lafenestre, the Director of the Louvre, informs the writer
that he sees no sufficient reason at present for modifying the
traditional attributions of the pictures loaned by the Louvre to the
Exhibition of the Primitifs in the Pavilion de Marsan.
[173] One of the few non-dramatic compositions of Molière is an
eulogistic poem on Mignard's decoration of this dome.
[174]
"O the fair statue! O the fair pedestal!
The Virtues are on foot: Vice is on horseback."
[175]
"He is here as at Versailles
Without heart and without bowels."
[176] A description of this and of other public balls of the Second
Empire will be found in Taine's _Notes sur Paris_, which has been
translated into English.
[177] In 1664 we find _Guilliaume roy des Ménéstriers_, the viol
players and masters of dancing, acting in the name of the foundation
against the usurpations of the Fathers of the Christian Doctrine. In
1720 the title of the church was confirmed by royal decree as St.
Julian of the Minstrels. The church and the street of the minstrels
were swept away to make the Rue Rambuteau.
[178] It became the second Théâtre Français in 1819.
[179] It became the Théâtre Français in 1799, and was burnt down in
1900.
[180] The word is derived from basilica, a law court.
* * * * *
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
the insigna of a president=> the insigna of a president {pg vii}
counseller=> counsellor {pg 58}
sublety=> subtlety {pg 87}
in French story=> in French history {pg 131}
Ville gagneé=> Ville gagnée {pg 137}
facades=> façades {pg 149}
soldier and gentlemen=> soldier and gentleman {pg 156}
statemanship=> statemanship {pg 161}
was flung out of window=> was flung out of a window {pg 172}
chateâu=> château {pg 176}
St. Medard=> St. Médard {pg 230}
la Patrie reconnaisante=> la Patrie reconnaissante {pg 239}
Galerie Merciere=> Galerie Mercière {pg 241}
detention there rather in=> detention there rather than in {pg 251}
sleep well=> sleeps well {pg 253}
Champ du Mars=> Champ de Mars {pg 255}
Place de la Revolution=> Place de la Révolution {pg 260}
north facade=> north façade {pg 276}
joiner's workship=> joiner's workshop {pg 283}
famous D'Artagan=> famous D'Artagnan {pg 303}
Place du Carrouels=> Place du Carrousel {pg 304}
Salle de la Venus de Milo=> Salle de la Vénus de Milo {pg 305}
Sculptures du Moyen age=> Sculptures du Moyen âge {pg 305}
Montmatre=> Montmartre {pg 320}
Le Médecin malgre lui=> Le Médecin malgré lui {pg 325}
Montmarte=> Montmartre {index}