king was expiating at Madrid the loss of the battle of Pavia, the Cour
des Miracles was in all its splendor, and those who inhabited it were a
sufficiently lively cause of anxiety to the _prévôt_ of the merchants
and to the bishop-governor.
"On the 22d of May, 1525, the Assemblée des Vingt adopted a resolution
to arrest a certain number of fraudulent beggars who were strongly
suspected of being marauders of the worst kind, but, having been
notified in time, they decamped.... The enterprises of the vagabonds,
the thieves, and the _mauvais garçons_ became more and more audacious;
they had for chiefs three bandits, Esclaireau, Barbiton, and Jean de
Mets, who spread such terror that the archers who were sent against them
preferred to advise them to fly, through fear of being killed by them;
however, the salt barges having been robbed on the 7th of June, near the
Célestins, the _prévôt_ of the merchants sent the night-watch against
them; they defended themselves with arquebuses, drove the watch back as
far as the Port Saint-Landry, and all but killed the _prévôt_.
"On the 14th, a troop of these rogues traversed the city, crying: '_Vive
Bourgogne! À sac! à sac!_'
"Immediately the watch turned out, there was a fight, and some thirty
men were killed or wounded on both sides. Presently, the disbanded
soldiers and the _routiers_, coming from no one knew where, joined
forces with the truands and spread terror among the inhabitants. One of
the officers of the quarters, charged to take proceedings against them,
asserted that there were eighty of them who frequented the hostelry de
la Coquille, situated in the Rue Saint-Martin, and that there was a
still greater number in the Faubourg Saint-Denis. Every one was quite
convinced that these were soldiers who had not been paid their hire, and
it was resolved that some sixty persons, honorable and of divers
conditions (one of them was a president of the court), with twenty
sergeants, should be sent against them, to seize all these adventurers
and bring them to justice.
[Illustration: CAPTURE OF THE BASTILLE, JULY 14, 1789.
After a contemporary engraving by Duplessis-Bertaux.]
"This was a mission sufficiently disagreeable to fulfil, and one which
was not exempt from danger; the vagabonds, forewarned, joined the
Italian and Corsican bands commanded by the Comte de Belle Joyeuse, who
had been authorized by the regent 'to live upon the people,' and who
gave themselves up to all the excesses which were compatible with such
an authorization, quite in consonance with the manners of the times;
when it was desired to raise soldiers for a campaign and there was no
money with which to pay them, they were permitted to live upon the
people, that is to say, to exact from the unhappy inhabitants of the
town or the country whatever they pleased, to ransom them, to rob them,
to pillage them, free to beat them unmercifully or to spit them like
chickens, if they took it into their heads to complain. This was what
was called the necessities of the troops.
"Presently, these adventurers, French or foreign, formed an effective
force of four thousand men.
"If one imagine these four thousand armed bandits falling unexpectedly
upon the inhabitants of Saint-Cloud, of Sèvres, of Montreuil, ravaging,
destroying, robbing all, ransoming the nuns of Longchamps, threatening
to pillage Le Landit, it can readily be believed that the merchants were
so uneasy that they hastened to place their goods upon carts and to flee
with them.
"There was certainly sufficient here to frighten the Parisians...."
All this took place in a period of general prosperity, of unexampled
ease and comfort compared with what had gone before. "Bodin assures us,"
says Duruy, "that, from 1516 to 1560, there was more gold in France than
had ever been collected there before in two hundred years. 'The
bourgeois,' as the Venetian ambassador so well said, 'have become the
masters of wealth.' Ango had amassed, like Jacques Coeur in another
century, the fortune of a prince," And this was in full Renaissance. "It
is the radiant awakening of human reason, the spring-time of the mind.
After a long and rude winter, now behold the earth reanimating under
the sunshine of the new birth! A generous sap circulates in her bosom;
she adorns herself with a vegetation capricious, yet fruitful, which
re-covers and conceals the old soil, while sustaining itself by it, like
those vigorous plants which, born at the foot of an antique oak, embrace
it and kill it in the clasp of their younger tendrils. Everything is
renewed, art, science, philosophy; and the world, arrested for two
centuries in the lower levels which it had found at the end of its
passage through the Middle Ages, resumed its progress that it might
mount into the light and the purer air. 'Oh! age!' exclaims Ulrich von
Hutten, 'letters flourish, minds awaken;--it is a joy to live!' Even the
least philosophical experience the sentiment of this renaissance of the
mind. 'The world laughs at the world,' said Marot;--'therefore is it in
its youth!'"
The question of the social evil had been taken up in this city as early
as the time of Charlemagne. That great lawmaker had endeavored to banish
from his capital all public women, but they defied even his imperial
authority. He ordained that they should be punished with the lash, and
that all those who had lodged them, or had been found in their company,
should carry them around their necks to the place of execution. But the
number of these whippings, and of these singular processions, was so
great that a policy of toleration was, perforce, substituted.
Philippe-Auguste also undertook to regulate this disorder, as the number
was constantly increasing of these _femmes amoureuses_, or _filles
folles_, as they were called; they were grouped in a corporation,
honored with a special tax, and with special judges to consider their
delinquencies; they were given the liberty of certain streets, the names
of which have been preserved, in each of which they were furnished with
a building (_clapier_, a sort of hutch, or retreat), which they were to
keep clean and "render agreeable and comfortable." Here they were to
confine themselves from ten o'clock in the morning till curfew--six
o'clock in the evening in winter, and between eight and nine in summer,
and nowhere else whatever. Every year they walked in solemn procession
on the day of Saint Mary Magdalen. "Those of them who followed the
Court were obliged during the month of May to furnish the bed of the
_roi des ribauds_."
[Illustration: THE CRYING EVIL. WOMAN OF THE PEOPLE CARRYING THE CHURCH
AND THE STATE.
Reproduction of one of many contemporary engravings issued to excite the
people against the clergy and nobility.]
This functionary had been established by Philippe-Auguste for the double
purpose of policing these offenders, and of forming a body-guard of
resolute men for the monarch himself. "The ribauds were armed with
maces, and watched night and day over the person of the king, who feared
the assassins of the Old Man of the Mountain and the bravoes of Richard
of England. The _roi des ribauds_ was an important personage, in the
enjoyment of very considerable prerogatives and privileges. He mounted
guard at the sovereign's door, and saw that no one entered without
authority. He was the judge for crimes committed within the enclosure of
the royal residence, and carried out himself the sentences which he
pronounced; he was thus at once judge and executioner. We find him in
the exercise of his office as late as the fifteenth century."
Under Saint Louis, there was further legislation against these women,
_les ribaudes_, and renewal of the edicts forbidding any citizen to let
his house to them under penalty of confiscation. Thus early do we find
in use one of the least ineffective of modern measures for correcting
this evil. This king, who had a weakness for cruel and excessive
punishments, notwithstanding (or, perhaps, because of) his sanctity,
also commanded that these disturbers of public morals should be stripped
of all their property, wherever found, and imprisoned at hard labor.
This being found impracticable, he modified his ordinance, and directed
that they should be restricted to certain streets, that they should not
be allowed to wear embroideries, or silver or other ornaments
appertaining to honest women. Three of these streets being in turn
denied them under Charles VI, in 1387, the proprietors appealed to
Parliament, which by a decree restored to them the Rue de Baillehoé. In
1367, in 1379, in 1386, and in 1395, there were further ordinances
forbidding them numerous other streets; in 1446, the week before
Ascension, proclamation was made by the public crier of the furs, silver
girdles, reversed collars, and other articles of feminine adornment
which were forbidden them. There were at this date between five and six
thousand of them in Paris, and all classes of society, ecclesiastics,
monks, magistrates, openly paraded their immoral mode of life. The very
churches and bath-houses were used as rendezvous. Henry VI, King of
England and France, had, in 1424, forbidden the sergeants and the
archers of the municipality to confiscate to their own use the girdles,
jewelry, or vestments of the _fillettes et femmes amoureuses ou
dissolues_, but this regulation seems to have been no better enforced
than all the others.
Under Louis XI, we find the same bold Cordelier, Olivier Maillard, who
had not hesitated to preach against the king himself, denouncing all the
sins of the Parisians at once from his pulpit. He reproached them with
their games of chance, their playing cards, their taking the name of God
in vain in their oaths, their turning their houses into dens of
prostitution, their selling their daughters to the seigneurs; he accused
their wives of deceiving their husbands for the sake of fine gowns,
embroidered and furred. "Is it not true, mesdemoiselles," he cried,
"that there are to be found among you, here in Paris, more debauched
women than honest women? Is it not fine to see the wife of an advocate
who has bought his office, and who has not ten francs of income, dress
herself like a princess, display the gold on her neck, on her head, on
her girdle? She is dressed according to her station in life, she says.
Let her go to all the devils, she and her station! And you, Monsieur
Jacques, you give her absolution? Doubtless she will say: 'It is not my
husband who has given me such fine clothes, but I have earned them with
the labor of my body!' To thirty thousand devils with such labor!"
In the following reign, the Court and Parliament took extraordinary
measures to prevent the spread of the contagious disease which was
called _le mal de Naples_, because it was said to have been first
brought into France by the soldiers of Charles VIII on their return from
the Italian campaigns. This statement, however, is very doubtful. An
ordinance was drawn up, with the approval of the _prévôts_ of Paris, the
merchants and the _échevins_, by which all those affected with this
malady, and having no regular residence in the city, were directed to
leave it within twenty-four hours under penalty of the halter, and in
order to facilitate their return to their own homes, they were directed
to rendezvous at the Portes Saint-Denis or Saint-Jacques, where they
would give their names in writing to an official stationed there for
that purpose and receive each four sous parisis. Those who possessed
houses in the city were requested to immediately shut themselves up in
them and remain in them; the curés and churchwardens of their parishes
were to see that they were furnished with food. The homeless poor were
to congregate in the Faubourg Saint-Germain-des-Près, where they would
be lodged, fed, and cared for; they were expressly forbidden to leave
until they were cured. The _prévôt_ of Paris gave orders that those
affected with disease were not to be suffered to go about the city, but
were to be driven from it, or put in prison; the _prévôt_ of the
merchants and the _échevins_ put guards at the city gates to prevent any
of these persons entering the capital.
In 1560, during the short reign of François II, the States-General
issued a positive prohibition of all prostitution,--which was as
ineffective as all the preceding regulations had been. Under Charles IX
and Henri III, the evil constantly increased,--the example offered by
the corrupt court not being conducive to the growth of a sound public
opinion. Those persons who were convicted of bigamy were condemned to be
publicly flogged, and, sometimes, to be afterward hanged,--in the latter
case, they were executed between two distaffs. Those convicted of the
crime of bestiality were usually burned at the stake, the animal
undergoing the same penalty. The _filles de mauvaise vie_ were more
numerous than ever, and all the streets formerly assigned to them were
still occupied by them. In 1619, a new decree of the Parliament against
them forbade all persons to let them houses or lodgings, under penalty
of confiscation of their property for the benefit of the poor, and
directed all _vagabonds_ and _filles débauchées_ to quit _la ville et
faulxbourgs de Paris_ within twenty-four hours, under pain of
imprisonment. Every bourgeois and citizen of Paris was required to aid
the first huissier, or sergeant of the Châtelet, or any other officer of
justice, who called upon him to do so, in enforcing this regulation,
under penalty of a fine of a hundred livres parisis.
All these legal penalties, necessarily inefficient in themselves, were
rendered doubly so by the dissolute code of morals, _les moeurs
Italiennes_, as they were called under Mazarin, that obtained in all
classes of society. Under Louis XIV, an ordinance of 1684, drawn up by
Colbert, was especially directed against those unfortunate women who
were afflicted with disease: on entering the hospital they were first
whipped, and then subjected to hard labor and the most rigorous
confinement. Under the Regency, in 1720, Paris was greatly outraged by
the tragic death of the Comtesse de Roncy, a very pretty young wife,
who, justly suspicious of her husband, courageously went to seek him one
day at the house of a certain charmer whom he was in the habit of
visiting. On this occasion, he was not there, but the unhappy wife
recognized his portrait on the bracelet which her rival was wearing; the
controversy soon became heated, the neighbors of this Rue Gît-le-Coeur
flocked in and took sides against the intruder, who, in the end, was
thrown out the window and died on the following day. The murderesses
were all sent to the Châtelet. Under Louis XV, the prodigal luxury
displayed by the actresses and opera-dancers, the _femmes à la mode_,
who were called _des impures_, and the effrontery of the grand seigneurs
and rich bankers who maintained them in this state, became, if possible,
more scandalous than ever; it was said, for example, that the minister
Bertin, who had lived for fifteen years with Mlle. Hus, of the Comédie
Française, had given her a set of furniture that was valued at five
hundred thousand livres.
"Mlle. Grandi, of the Opéra, a dancer of mediocre talent and with a very
commonplace face, was complaining one evening at the theatre of having
lost the good graces of a protector who had given her a thousand louis
in five weeks; one of those present said to her that she would readily
find some one to take his place. Mlle. Grandi replied that it was not so
easy as might be supposed, but that, in any case, she was firmly decided
not to accept any new liaison excepting on the condition that she
received a carriage and two good horses, with at least a hundred louis
of income assured to maintain this equipage. The conversation then
ended, but the next day there arrived at Mlle. Grandi's lodging a
magnificent carriage drawn by two horses and followed by three others
led behind it, and in the carriage was found one hundred and thirty
thousand livres in specie."
Sometimes these scandalous chronicles took another turn. Mlle. Guimard,
also of the Opéra, "a celebrated dancer, who was openly protected by
the Maréchal de Soubise, did not shine by any excessive faithfulness to
her protector; she accepted a rendezvous in one of the faubourgs of
Paris, and saw that there was so much misery in this quarter that she
distributed a portion of the two thousand écus which she had received as
the price of her complaisance among the poor people whom she encountered
and carried the rest to the curé of Saint-Roch, requesting him to have
the goodness to distribute it among the poor."
The gardens of the Palais-Royal figure largely in the history of Paris
as the scene of many of the more important incidents of the constantly
changing social life of the capital. In the latter part of the
eighteenth century, this locality was so much the favorite resort of the
_femmes galantes_ that the honest bourgeois and their wives were finally
compelled to abandon it altogether; in the latter part of 1771, the
former were accordingly all expelled, but by the summer of 1772 they had
all returned. It is related that the Duc de Chartres, walking here one
day, passed one of these ladies and was so much struck by her appearance
that he turned to the gentlemen accompanying him and said: "Ah! how ugly
she is!" To which the offended fair promptly replied: "You have much
uglier ones in your seraglio." The prince did not judge it expedient to
discuss the subject, but he related the incident to the lieutenant of
police, and the next day these promenaders were more rigorously expelled
than ever. In consequence, "to-day," relates a chronicler of the period,
"excepting on days of the opera, the Palais-Royal is nothing but a vast
solitude." In 1784, the streets back of it, inhabited by a dissolute and
degraded population of both sexes, had become "veritable cloacæ." On the
evening of the 31st of October, 1785, at a moment when the evening
promenade was more crowded even than usual, a dragoon, having one of
these _filles_ on his arm, pushed by the throng, happened to step on the
foot of the Abbé de Lubersac, walking near him; the latter made use of a
strong expression, to which the soldier replied in kind; the young woman
endeavored to make peace by saying: "After all, it is only an abbé, who
is not worth stopping for." The churchman, still further forgetting
himself, permitted himself to kick the young woman quite as if she were
a man; the dragoon took him by the collar; the _Suisses_ of the palace
hastened to quell the riot, but their numbers were quite insufficient;
the Duc de Chartres, seeing the tumult, but not daring to show himself
because of his great unpopularity, summoned the city guard to what by
this time had become a "regular field of battle," and the disturbance
was finally quelled. Among the wounded who were carried off was a
Chevalier de Saint-Louis, "disemboweled;" and thereafter the Suisses
prohibited the entrance of the gardens to all women of doubtful virtue.
It may be remembered that, in the celebrated affair of the diamond
necklace, the young person who was persuaded by the adventuress, Madame
de la Motte, to personify the queen, Marie Antoinette, and to meet the
duped Cardinal Rohan in the park of Versailles at ten o'clock in the
evening for the purpose of giving him the fictitious authority to
purchase the necklace, was a _fille du monde_ who lived in the Rue du
Jour at Paris, and was known as "la d'Oliva." For playing this part, the
young woman was promised fifteen thousand livres. The _mémoire_ that was
afterward drawn up by the avocat of Madame de la Motte "excited the
interest of all sensitive souls by relating that the demoiselle,
enceinte at the moment of her arrest, had been delivered in the Bastile,
and was nursing her infant herself."
[Illustration: PILLAGE OF THE ARCHBISHOP'S DWELLING, FEBRUARY 15, 1831.
Engraved from an unpublished drawing by Raffet.]
One of the most celebrated resorts of the ladies of the monde and the
demi-monde, the cabaret of Ramponneau at Belleville, was closed a few
years before the outbreak of the Revolution of 1789. Its renown seems to
have been established, in the early days of the Regency, by the fact
that wine was there sold at three sous six deniers the pint, that is to
say, at one sou less than the usual price. "It was so crowded that there
were as many persons outside, waiting their turn to enter, as inside,
although the accommodations were very considerable in size. This crowd
excited the curiosity of persons of distinction, who wished to see for
themselves this prodigy." It is described as a species of cellar,
decorated on the exterior with a vine painted on the wall, and with a
sign bearing the legend, "_Au Tambour Royal_," and a picture of the
proprietor astride of a cask. It was furnished in the interior with
wooden benches and crippled tables, around which crowded a multitude
drawn from all classes of society, high and low.
The fame of the proprietor became so great that he was offered by the
two managers, Gaudon and Nestre, of a theatrical establishment on the
Boulevard du Temple, in 1758, ten livres a day if he would consent to
show himself on their stage daily for the space of three months. The
contracts were all signed, the songs prepared for him, when Ramponneau,
worked upon by the Jansenists, suddenly refused to appear. In a
statement drawn up before a notary, we read: "To-day appeared before me,
the Sieur Jean Ramponneau, cabaretier, living in the basse Courtille,
who has of his own free will and volition declared that the serious
reflections which he has made upon the dangers and the obstacles to the
salvation of those persons who appear upon the stage of a theatre, and
upon the justness of the censures which the Church has pronounced upon
these individuals, have determined him to renounce, as in these
presents, through scruples of conscience and for the purpose of so
contributing, on his part, to the purity of manners which it becomes a
Christian to maintain, and in which he prays God always to maintain him,
he renounces appearing, and promises to God never to appear, on any
stage, nor to perform any function, profession, or act which is in the
nature of those performed by those individuals who appear on the
theatrical stage, whoever they may be," etc. The case was conducted on
both sides by the most eminent avocats, and finally compromised by
Ramponneau paying a large sum to have the agreement cancelled. He still
had left one hundred thousand livres, with which he established himself
at the Porcherons, and purchased from the Sieur Magny the cabaret de la
Grande-Pinte, on which he expended sixty thousand livres more, and where
he had the same success as at the Courtille. The court and the city
thronged his establishment, which became the restaurant _à la mode_.
A very celebrated wine-shop, known as the Petit-Ramponneau, was
established, in 1859, at Montmartre, and was the last in which wine was
served in little crocks or jugs. The proprietors, MM. Lallemand, made a
fortune in thus dispensing _vin bleu_ and portions at six sous the
plate.
"It had long been said that the third estate paid with its property, the
nobility with its blood, the clergy with its prayers. Now, the clergy of
the court and of the salon prayed but very little, the nobility no
longer constituted in itself the royal army; but the third estate,
remaining faithful to its functions in the State, still paid, and each
year more. Since its purse was the common treasury, it was inevitable
that the more the monarchy expended, the more would it place itself in
a condition of dependency upon the bourgeoisie, and that a day would
arrive when the latter, weary of paying, would demand its accounts. That
day is called the Revolution of 1789."
[Illustration: A MAID'S DUTY IN FRANCE.]
The engraving on page 245 is a reproduction of one of the many that
appear at this day of settlement, with the object of exciting the people
against the clergy and the nobility, and of illustrating forcibly the
two principal vices of society as then constituted,--the privileges and
the inequality of taxation. To suppress these privileges, and to make
this inequality disappear,--this was the task of the Revolution. In the
engraving, from the collection of M. le Baron de Vinck d'Orp, of
Brussels, we see a woman of the people bending under the double burden
of a nun and a lady of the nobility; the title is "_Le Grand Abus_."
As to the origin of the famous phrase, the sans-culottes, the following
statement is made by some historians. Two ladies of the nobility, but
favorably inclined toward the new ideas, were one day present at a
session of the Assembly, and were commenting very audibly and very
critically upon a speech which the Abbé Maury was delivering. The
orator, finally losing his patience, interrupted his discourse, and,
indicating his unappreciative hearers with his forefinger, turned to the
presiding officer:
"Monsieur le President," he said, "make these two
_sans-culottes_--unbreeched, trouserless--keep quiet."
This appellation, applied to the two ladies, naturally turned the laugh
against them, and the phrase, repeated from mouth to mouth, was adopted
by the people of the faubourgs as a title glorifying their miserable
condition and their aspirations.
Another of these Revolutionary prints, from the _National Almanac_ for
1791, engraved by Debucourt, and preserved in the collection of M.
Muhlbacher of Paris, gives an ingenious and picturesque presentation of
one of the numberless sources of supply of that literature of journals
and pamphlets on which the Revolution was so largely fed. This
_marchande de journaux_, who adorns a page in the calendar, sits between
two benches covered with papers and pamphlets, and set off with ribbons,
flowers, and patriotic emblems mounted on rods; her costume and her
attitude are also patriotic and a trifle dishevelled, and she is shrilly
proclaiming the new decree concerning the value of the assignat which
she holds out. Behind her, a couple of elderly aristocrats are about to
come into collision with two younger citizens, representatives of the
newer ideas, and absorbed in reading some catechism for patriots. On the
sidewalk are two boys in the costumes of their elders, one of whom is
supposed to be pointing to the date of July 14th in the calendar. This
plate is referred to in the _Art du 18e siècle_, by Edmond and Jules
de Goncourt.
[Illustration: CHEZ LES HÉTAIRES.
Caricature from _La Journée du Poëte Décadent_.]
It is worthy of remark that even this sacred date of the 14th of July,
that of the national fête, is nowadays not exempt from that curious
self-criticism which in every tone of mockery, semi-seriousness, and
grave apprehension occupies so considerable a proportion of contemporary
French literature, from the _Siècle_ to the _Bulletin de la Société
d'Economie Sociale et des Unions de la Paix Sociale_. So persistent had
this criticism become that the national authorities this year (1898) in
the capital thought it fit to tack on to the national and municipal
celebration of a great political event, in order to give it greater
weight and dignity, the commemoration of the birth of a not very
important literary man! M. Gaston Deschamps, in the usually ribald
_Figaro_, claimed much of the credit of this innovation for himself. In
a long leading editorial on the _Sanctification du 14 Juillet_, he thus
lays sacrilegious hands on the taking of the Bastile itself: "Last year,
I demonstrated, very readily, that our fête of the 14th of July, already
discredited by the desertion of the wealthy classes, by the scepticism
of the public functionaries, and by the frivolousness of the populace,
was destitute of that character, national, republican, and humanitarian,
which should be in a democracy, the characteristic of every solemnity.
[Illustration: AN ADMIRER OF "L'INTRANSIGEANT."]
"This fête seems to have been instituted for the special aggravation of
those Frenchmen who believe that the history of France did not begin
with the 14th of July, 1789. It is no longer, to employ the energetic
expression of Gambetta, anything but 'a rag of the civil war.' It
glorifies an event which, according to the testimony of contemporaries
the least suspected of moderation in politics (Marat, Saint-Just), had
not the importance nor, above all, the beauty which our present system
of primary instruction attributes to it. Historical research has
verified the opinion of these witnesses. It is impossible to relate the
taking of the Bastile Saint-Antoine without recognizing the silliness or
the unworthiness of the citizens who were the principal actors in this
enterprise. This old prison had just been put out of commission by a
royal ordinance which decreed its demolition. Very many of the
'conquerors of the Bastile' cried '_Vive le Roi!_' as they went down the
Faubourg Saint-Antoine. The number of prisoners at that time confined in
this jail reduced itself to seven, to wit: four forgers, two lunatics,
and a crapulous old gentleman. The Bastile was garrisoned by the French
_invalides_ and by the Swiss guards. The assailants swore to injure no
one if they were permitted to enter. The gates were opened. The French
_invalides_, who had trusted in the promise given, were massacred
without being able to defend themselves. The Swiss guards were taken for
'captives' (because of their uniform). They were carried off in triumph.
The brewer Santerre (at that time demagogue, and later monopolist in
national property) proposed to set the edifice on fire with poppy oil.
His friends preferred the demolition pure and simple, which had the
effect of turning out in the street the poor devils whose shops were
built against the walls of the 'monument of tyranny.'" And he cites the
works of a number of modern historical writers to prove the truth of his
statements.
"The taking of the Bastile was an act of anarchy, which, if it were
repeated to-day, would be immediately suppressed by our Minister of the
Interior, Monsieur Brisson. The Republican police no longer permits, God
be thanked, this particular form of diversion. This was very evident the
other day when several hundred gentry, intoxicated, perhaps, by the
approach of this untoward anniversary, wished to sack Mazas prison.
"No, I cannot bring myself to consider this killing of Frenchmen as the
most glorious event of the French Revolution. There is too much of
fratricidal murder in this affair. I cannot rejoice to thus see the
blood of our nation flow. Every time that it is wished to make an
apology for this excess of contagious folly, we find ourselves reduced
to invoking the approbation of foreigners. It appears that Kant was so
well satisfied with this outbreak that he forgot, for the first time in
his life, the hour of his luncheon. The English ambassador wrote to his
Gracious Majesty that he was very well pleased. The Venetian ambassador
judged it to be a 'noble revolt.' So be it. But neither the Prussian
Kant, nor this Englishman, nor that Venetian, had the same reasons that
we have for grieving over an incident that divided France against
herself....
"Last year I succeeded in stirring up a very sufficient number of
protestations for having ventured to deduce, from a collection of
self-evident facts, a judgment which I still maintain. It may well be
believed, moreover, that I was not wrong, since the Government and the
Municipal Council have, this year, taken the initiative of adding to the
ceremonies and to the diversions usual on the 14th of July, the
celebration of an illustrious memory, which will heighten the dignity of
the official fête, and which should give to the French people the
opportunity to reunite in the unanimity truly national of a common
admiration.
"On the white posters which the administration has just placarded I read
as follows:
"'FÊTE NATIONALE,'
and underneath:
"'_Fêtes du centenaire de Michelet._'
"This coincidence is intentional. It is significative.
"Michelet was born on the 21st of August, 1798; the date of his
centennial therefore falls regularly in the coming month. It has been
decided to celebrate to-morrow the commemoration of his birth. It has
been desired, by means of this addition, to purify, to sanctify the 14th
of July by a sort of pious eve.... If these fêtes contribute toward
fixing in the souvenirs of the populace an idea of the life and of the
work of Michelet, this 14th of July, ennobled, embellished, will not
have been misplaced. A hateful date will justly have been transformed
into a fête of union and of fraternity."
Lamartine says of the murder of M. de Launey, Governor of the Bastile,
hacked to pieces by the crowd in the street after he had surrendered: "A
victim of duty, he yielded only with his last breath the sword which had
been confided to him by his master. The court, the army, the royalists,
the people, basely endeavored to throw upon him the responsibility for
their want of forethought, their cowardice, their blood shedding."
The _vainqueurs de la Bastille_ took upon themselves such airs of
superiority and claimed so many privileges over their fellow-citizens
that the municipal authorities finally, wearied with their arrogance,
issued a proclamation in the latter part of December, forbidding them to
assemble and to deliberate, and directing the procureur of the commune
to prosecute any author, printer, or distributor of decrees which the
aforesaid "conquerors" issued without any legal authority.
[Illustration: VERY'S RESTAURANT, BOULEVARD MAGENTA, DYNAMITED BY
ANARCHISTS IN 1892.]
Michelet gives some details of one of the most celebrated of the
innumerable murders of the Terror, that of the pretty Princesse de
Lamballe, which may serve to illustrate the quality of the populace.
She was confined in the prison de la Force, where during the night of
the 2d of September, 1792, a Revolutionary tribunal condemned the
prisoners to death after a mock trial. In the morning, two of the
National Guards came to tell her that she was to be transferred to the
Abbaye, to which she replied that she would as soon stay where she was.
Taken before the tribunal, she was ordered to take the oath of liberty
and equality, of hatred of the king, the queen, and royalty. "I will
willingly take the first two oaths," she said; "I cannot take the last,
it is not in my heart." A voice cried to her: "Swear; if you do not
swear, you are dead." "Cry '_Vive la Nation!_'" said several others,
"and no harm will be done thee." "At that moment, she perceived at the
corner of the little Rue Saint-Antoine something frightful, a soft and
bloody mass upon which one of the participants in the massacres was
trampling with his iron-pegged shoes. It was a heap of corpses,
stripped, quite white, quite naked, which they had piled up there. It
was upon this pile that she was required to lay her hand and take the
oath;--this trial was too much. She turned around and uttered a cry:
'_Fi! l'horreur!_'"
"Release madame," said the president of the improvised tribunal. This
was the signal for her execution. A little peruke-maker, Charlat, a
drummer of the volunteers, struck off her cap with a blow of his pike,
but in doing so he wounded her in the forehead; the sight of the flowing
blood produced its usual effect upon the mob; they precipitated
themselves upon her, "her breasts were cut off with a knife, she was
stripped quite naked, Charlat opened her chest and took out her heart,
then he mutilated her in the most secret part of her body." A certain
Sieur Grison cut off her head; then the two wretches, taking on the ends
of their pikes, one her head and the other her heart, set off down the
Rue Saint-Antoine in the direction of the Temple, followed by an immense
crowd, "dumb with astonishment." They carried the head into the shop of
a coiffeur, who washed, combed, and powdered the blond hair. "Now," he
said, "Antoinette will be able to recognize her." Then the procession
proceeded in the direction of the Temple again; but by this time it
began to be feared that, carried away by their excitement, the
cut-throats might inflict the same fate upon the royal family confined
there, and the Commune sent hastily some commissioners, girded with
large tricolored sashes. When Grison and Charlat arrived, they demanded
permission to promenade under the windows of the apartments occupied by
the king and queen, which was immediately granted them, and the king was
even requested to go to the window at the moment when the livid head of
the princess was elevated in front of him. "The march was continued
throughout Paris, without any one interposing any obstacle. The head was
carried to the Palais-Royal, and the Duc d'Orléans, who was then at
table, was obliged to rise, to go to the balcony, and to salute the
assassins."
The only relief to be found in the perusal of these chronicles is in
some incident in which the executioners turn on each other. Among the
most vociferous of the "citizenesses" was the _belle Liégeoise_, called
also la belle Théroigne de Méricourt, and the _première amazone de la
Liberté_. From the garden of the Tuileries, the usual scene of her
orations, she one day ascended to the terrace of the Feuillants, where
she fell into the hands of the women of the party of the Montagne, who
surrounded her, trussed up her petticoats, and gave her a public
whipping. The "first amazon of Liberty" screamed, shrieked, but no one
came to her rescue, and when her persecutors finally released her, it
was found that she had lost her reason, and it was necessary to
conduct her to an insane asylum in the Faubourg Saint-Marceau.
[Illustration: A CONCIERGE. From a drawing by Ludovico Marchetti.]
All the chronicles of the times devote a paragraph to the "Furies of the
Guillotine," the terrible women who habitually occupied the front places
among the spectators at all the executions, and who interrupted their
knitting only to hurl insults at the victims who mounted the scaffold.
These _tricoteuses_ affected an exalted Revolutionary sentiment, they
wore the red cap of liberty, and one day presented themselves at the
Convention with an address in which they offered to mount guard while
the men went off to combat in the armies on the frontier.
At the great gate of the Tuileries, between the two marble horses of
Coustou, was a café-restaurant, painted a lively red, and which bore the
sign: "_À la Guillotine._" "Needless to say, that the establishment was
always full of customers." During the two years in which the instrument
of public executions stood permanently on the Place de la Revolution, on
the site of the present obelisk in the Place de la Concorde, so much
blood was shed there that, it is said, a herd of cattle refused to cross
the Seine on the bridge, terrified at the stale odor of slaughter. By
the side of the scaffold was a hole destined to receive the blood of the
victims, but this diffused such an infection through the air that "the
citizen Coffinet thought it would be advantageous to establish, on a
little two-wheeled barrow, a casket lined with lead to receive the
blood, which might then be transported to the _fosse commune_."
On the 16th of September, 1797, the Central Bureau, "justly indignant at
the debauchery and at the offences constantly committed against the
public morality, whether by the impudent exhibition of books and
pictures the most obscene, or by the prodigious multiplicity of women
and girl prostitutes, or by the indecent masquerading of a great number
of women in men's garments," issued a rigorous decree against all women
who were found disguised as men, and very many arrests were made in
consequence.
When Louis XVIII made his solemn entry into Paris on the 3d of May,
1814, it was in the midst of the popular acclamations; a numerous and
very enthusiastic crowd swarmed in the Carrousel, the court of the
château, the garden and the terraces, "this same crowd which, on the
10th of August, 1792, filled the air with its imprecations against
Capet, which, on the 2d of December, 1804, acclaimed the Emperor and the
Empress, and which, on this occasion, welcomed with cries of joy the
orphan of the Temple after having applauded the decapitation of his
father and his mother." When this same populace, turned Republican
again, thronged along the boulevards and into the Place Vendôme in 1831,
singing the _Marseillaise_, Maréchal Lobau, unwilling to fire on them,
contented himself by ordering the hose of the fire-pumps turned on them,
and deluging indiscriminately conspirators, orators on the public place,
and spectators. "The Republicans had demonstrated on many occasions that
they did not fear fire. But, like all Parisians, they detested water.
Surprised at these unexpected douches, they fled in every direction, and
the Place Vendôme was immediately cleared."
Well might Napoleon declare, repeating Rabelais's word, on one of the
many occasions of popular manifestation: "This is not the first time
that I have had occasion to remark that the population of Paris is only
a _ramas de badauds_."
The _poissardes_, or fish-women of the Halles, those "_commères fortes
en gueule_" (shrill-voiced gossips), appear almost as frequently in
these police and scandalous chronicles as the courtesans. They are
frequently mentioned in the mediæval records; under Louis XIII, they and
their resort were considered worthy of the following description: "You
will see at the Halles a multitude of rascals who amuse themselves only
by pillaging and robbing each other, sellers as well as buyers, by
cutting their purses, searching in their _hottes_ and baskets; others,
in order to better secure their prey, will sing dishonest songs and
dirty ones, sometimes one and sometimes the other, without any regard
for either Sundays or fête days,--things deplorable in a city of Paris!
In the Halles and other usual markets, you may see women who sell
provisions; if you offer them less than they want, were you the most
renowned person in France, there you will be immediately blazoned with
every possible insult, imprecation, malediction, dishonor, and the whole
with an accompaniment of oaths and blasphemies."
(The same author, speaking of the shop-keepers of Paris at this epoch,
says: "They will damn themselves for a liard, gaining on their
merchandise the double of what it has cost them, selling bad goods, and
blaspheming and swearing by God and the Devil that they are excellent.")
In 1716, Jean-François Gruet, inspector of police and mounted _huissier_
of the Châtelet, was condemned to the pillory of the Halles for
malversation of funds, and the _poissardes_ manifested themselves on
this occasion in front of him in great shape: "_Huissier du diable!
Gueule de chien! jardin à poux, grenier à puces, sac à vin, mousquetaire
de Piquepuce, aumônier du cheval de bronze, poulet dinde de la Râpée_,"
etc., until they were too hoarse to continue. In 1784, the winter began
by heavy frosts, which were followed by a sudden thaw which flooded the
city. "Paris has become a sewer; communication has been absolutely
interrupted between the inhabitants, and for several days past there
have been on foot only those who were compelled to it by necessity, by
their occupation, or by their duty. Arms and legs broken, and many other
accidents, have been the results of this intemperance of the season. In
the midst of this species of public calamity, there are those who find
entertainment in it, occasion for mirth, and much laughter. In the first
place, there have been unlimited opportunities for sled races, and,
also, there has been offered to the amateurs a more novel and more
piquant spectacle. You went to the Halles to see the _poissardes_ in
boots, in breeches, their under-petticoats trussed up to their navels,
and exercising their trade in this species of masquerade while
redoubling their quirks and their scandalous jests."
Nevertheless, so important was their corporation, that, on the birth of
the dauphin, in 1781, they were admitted in a body to compliment the
king, to whom they were formally presented by the Duc de Cossé, Governor
of Paris. The spokeswoman had her discourse written out on her fan, and
read it to his Majesty. They were all dressed in black, and they were
all, to the number of a hundred and fifty, invited by him to dinner and
to present their compliments also to the queen. They had at first
manifested some reluctance to accepting these royal hospitalities; the
last time they had been to Versailles on a similar mission, some
evilly-disposed person had inserted in the tarts and pâtés some
indigestible substances "and dishonest things." The lieutenant of
police, however, assured them that this time nothing of the kind would
occur, and they were, in fact, treated sumptuously.
But, "the _émeute_ had established itself permanently in Paris, and its
effects were disastrous. This condition of intermittent political fever
which threatened to become continuous, paralyzed business, ruined
commerce, and filled all minds with keen anxiety." "The people became
accustomed to substituting sudden overturnings for the regular action of
institutions," says another historian, "...a habit which has cost us
twenty revolutions in eighty years. England has proceeded differently.
Since 1688, she has had, instead of bloody revolutions, only changes in
the ministry;--everyone, high as well as low, has, with her, manifested
respect for the law, and everything has been left to free
discussion,--force is never used." And a later student of the _Mouvement
Social_, M. Jules Roche, quoted in the issue of _La Réforme Sociale_ for
May 16, 1898: "Every country well governed develops from an economical,
industrial, commercial, financial, and political point of view. All
those projects necessary to the grandeur and the prosperity of the
nation are conceived, decided upon, carried out. At this time, France,
so munificently endowed, enriched by all the favors of nature, inhabited
by the race the most intelligent, the richest in resources of the mind
and the imagination, is delivered over to hazards the most unforeseen
and the most dangerous. No one knows in the evening what will happen the
next morning, nor in the morning how the day will finish. There is no
doctrine, no method whatever, in the direction of public affairs. A
Chamber possessed by the electoral epilepsy; charlatans without shame
abandoning themselves before the electors to every contortion, to the
grossest declamations, to the most shameful manoeuvres, in order to
lead public opinion still further astray, instead of enlightening
it,--this is the spectacle she presents to the universe. And there is no
one to speak out aloud, frankly, and clearly! Silence, envy, cowardice,
imbecility, where there should be courage, living reason, and action!"
It might be thought that this gloomy presentation lacked in
consistency,--this method of government could scarcely be practised by
"the most intelligent race."
The street revolutions of 1831 and 1848, which finally expelled from
power the royal houses of Bourbon and Orléans, presented the usual
characteristics of these popular uprisings in the capital, in the result
of which the nation always acquiesced meekly. One of the most senseless
of the acts of excess in the former is illustrated in our engraving of
the pillage of the archbishop's house, February 15, 1831, from an
unpublished design by Raffet, in the possession of M. Cain, the
sculptor. The mob had, the evening before, sacked the church and the
presbytère of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, and on this day, incited to
higher game, they broke into the residence of the archbishop, adjoining
Notre-Dame. Everything was broken, overturned, flung out of the windows
and into the Seine, rare books, precious manuscripts, rich crucifixes,
missals, chasubles,--"that which was, on this day of folly, lost for art
and science is incalculable." The heart of Louis XVI, which the doctor
Pelletan had placed in a leaden box, sealed with his own seal, and
presented to Monseigneur Quélen, was thrown into the river. Louis Blanc,
in his _Histoire de dix ans_, relates that Monsieur Thiers,
sous-sécretaire d'État in the ministry of finance, was seen walking
about amidst this ruin with a satisfied countenance and a smile upon his
lips.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE MOULIN DE LA GALETTE, RUE DE NORVINS.
From a photograph.]
The bodies of the first victims of the revolution of February, 1848,
killed in a collision with a detachment of the 14th regiment of the
line, were placed in an open car and paraded through the streets at
night by the light of torches, to excite the fury of the populace. "They
are assassins who have struck us down; we will avenge ourselves! Arms!
give us arms!" The death-chariot, escorted by the crowd, proceeded to
the office of the _National_, where the procession was harangued by
M. Garnier-Pagès, and then to the Rue Montmartre, to the office of
another liberal journal, _La Réforme_. "A man standing in the cart, his
feet in the blood, lifted from time to time in his arms the body of a
woman, showed it to the people, and then deposited it again on the heap
of dead which made for it a gory couch." About two o'clock in the
morning, this funeral cortége deposited the corpses at the Mairie of the
IVth Arrondissement, and the rest of the night was spent in preparation
for the combat of the morrow.
After the revolution of 1831 came the cholera, and as though the
pestilence in itself was not a sufficient evil, the ignorant populace,
surprised by its sudden outbreak and not comprehending the possibility
of such an epidemic, conceived the idea that it was a fiction concocted
to cover a system of wholesale poisonings by the police. The préfet de
police, Gisquet, in his _Mémoires_, gives a detailed account of the
various methods employed by organized bands of from fifty to a hundred
men to scatter perfectly harmless substances in the wells, in the
streets, in articles of food and drink, in order to increase this panic.
"A young child was accosted on the Pont-Neuf by an individual who handed
to her a vial containing some liquid and gave her twenty sous to go and
empty it into the fountain of the Place de l'École, recommending her to
use every precaution to avoid being seen doing so. The child, instead of
executing this commission, went and related the story to her mother.
Immediately the whole quarter was in an uproar. Crowds assembled in the
streets, but some good citizens succeeded in calming the excitement. The
flask was carried to the préfecture de police, and it was discovered
that its contents were nothing but melissa." In eighteen days, more than
twenty thousand persons had been attacked by the malady and more than
seven thousand had perished; every one that could, fled the city; there
were not enough coffins, not enough hearses, not enough grave-diggers
for the dead. The streets were filled with the dying and with corpses;
riots broke out, and "the authorities, on the 5th of May, massacred the
youths who had crowned with immortelles the Imperial eagles of the Place
Vendôme. The police, for their part, instigated an _émeute_ and
smothered it in blood." Among the more illustrious victims of the plague
were the Minister Casimir-Périer and General Lamarque; the funeral of
the latter was made the occasion of a formidable popular manifestation
and insurrection which was only put down after hard fighting and the
declaration of a state of siege at the instigation of M. Thiers.
Even in the very first days of the new Republic of 1848 the popular
discontent broke out afresh. Clubs were formed all over the city; the
most violent harangues were made against the bourgeoisie; the words
"communism" and "socialism" began to replace "fraternity"; numerous
failures occurred in all the business quarters, and all the strangers
left the city. Crowds paraded the streets crying, "_À bas les aristos!_"
the last being a new word invented to designate the bourgeoisie, and the
latter, strengthened by the workmen in blouses, to the number of a
hundred thousand men, made a counter-demonstration, singing the
_Marseillaise_. In 1850, on the eve of the _Coup d'État_, "a profound
discouragement prevailed among the bourgeoisie. The sudden fall in
public securities, the rise in the premium on gold, the significant
increase in the purchase of foreign bonds, the departure of the numerous
strangers who had come to Paris to pass the season, the diminution, more
marked even than in the preceding month, in all industrial and
commercial transactions,--such were the symptoms of that confidence
which was to effect the conciliation of the electors."
The events of the first three or four days of December, 1851, justified
only too well these apprehensions, and have been but too frequently
related by indignant historians. "It was a sinister and inexpressible
moment," says the author of _Napoléon le Petit_,--"cries, arms lifted
toward Heaven, the surprise, the terror, the crowd flying in every
direction, a hail of bullets, from the pavements even to the roofs, and
in a minute the dead strewing the street, young men falling, their
cigars still in their mouths, ladies in velvet dresses killed by the
musketry, two booksellers shot on the threshold of their shops without
even knowing what was wanted of them, bullets fired into cellar-windows
and killing no matter whom, the _Bazar de l'Industrie_ riddled with
shell and balls, the Hôtel Sallandrouze bombarded, the _Maison-d'Or_
mitrailleused, Tortoni taken by assault, hundreds of corpses on the
Boulevard, a stream of blood in the Rue Richelieu!"
Under the new Empire, Paris saw itself almost transformed by the opening
of wide and direct avenues of communication, the suppression of gloomy
and insalubrious quarters, the completion of the Louvre, the
construction of the Halles, the erection of churches, schools, mairies,
and the laying out of public gardens and promenades. Six hundred
kilomètres of sewers were provided for the drainage of the capital, and
the Bois de Boulogne and de Vincennes greatly embellished. The
working-classes were still disturbed by vague discussions over social
questions, and by souvenirs of the Republic; but the bourgeoisie,
enriched by the public security and liberty of trade, desired only the
continuance of order and a somewhat more liberal administration of
public affairs. The condition of many parts of the city, as revealed by
a number of official investigations after the Revolution of 1848, was
indeed deplorable. "A third only of the working-classes live under
conditions approaching hygienic ones, the remainder are in a frightful
state; forty thousand men and six thousand women are lodged in Paris in
furnished houses which are for the greater part nothing but damp hovels,
scarcely ventilated, badly kept, containing chambers in which are eight
or ten beds pressed one against another, and in which several persons
sleep together in the same bed." The immediate effects of the opening of
Baron Haussmann's magnificent new boulevards were in many cases
disastrous for the workmen and for the poorer classes, who found
themselves compelled, by the destruction of their old lodgings, and the
increase in rents and daily expenses, to seek shelter in the suburbs,
and in the _quartiers eccentriques_; the Expositions Universelles also
served to increase permanently the cost of living, as they have always
done since, and in other cities than Paris. On the other hand, the cost
of clothing was considerably diminished, and the workingman was never so
well arrayed as in the first years of the Second Empire.
The dubious antecedents of the third Napoleon exposed him to even more
than the usual hatreds and perils of crowned heads, and the number of
plots against his life rivalled even those of the attempted
assassinations of Louis-Philippe, one of the most unlucky of sovereigns
in this respect. The Emperor has been accused of having been a member of
the Italian secret society of the Carbonari in his youth; the Italian
war of 1859 has been said to have been rendered imperative by his former
oaths, and the frightful affair of the Opera-house on the evening of
January 14, 1858, appears to have been the work of this political and
revolutionary society. On this gala night, Massol was to bid adieu to
the stage, and Madame Ristori was to appear in three acts of _Marie
Tudor_, followed by an act of _Guillaume Tell_ and a scene from the
_Muette_. The house was brilliantly illuminated, both the exterior and
the interior, and thronged by an eager audience waiting for the arrival
of the Emperor and the Empress; at half-past eight the Imperial cortége
appeared, descending the boulevards at a trot and turning into the Rue
Le Peletier. In the first two carriages were seated the chamberlains and
officers of the crown, and in the third the Imperial couple, escorted by
a _peloton_ of lancers of the Guard, the lieutenant commanding which
rode close by the right side of the coach, while a maréchal des logis
chef rode on the left side. The three vehicles slackened their speed to
turn into the vaulted passage, under the marquise, which conducted to
the stairway newly constructed for the use of the sovereign, and at this
instant a bomb fell in the midst of the cortége and exploded. All the
lights were extinguished by the concussion, the glass of the marquise of
the theatre and that of the windows of the neighboring houses, from the
cellars to the mansards, flew in splinters, the street was covered with
the dead and wounded, and the terrified horses of the lancers, bolting
in every direction, added to the confusion and terror. A few seconds
later, a second bomb fell under the horses of the Imperial carriage,
killing them, and a third, directly under the carriage itself.
At the first explosion, the Emperor had attempted to leave his carriage
by the door on the right, on the side of the peristyle of the Opéra, but
this door, jammed in its frame by the terrible shock, refused to open.
While he was hesitating to attempt to descend by the other door, which
opened on the street in which the assassins were probably stationed, a
haggard and bloody countenance presented itself at the opening. It
proved to be that of a brigadier of the secret police, Alessandri, one
of the most devoted of the Imperial agents; beside it presently showed
themselves the faces of M. Lanet, commissaire of the section of the
Opéra, a police officer, Hébert, MM. Royer and Vaëz, directors of the
Opéra, and General Roguet. The latter, who had been seated on the box of
the Imperial carriage, had received a violent contusion on the neck,
from which an enormous quantity of blood escaped. The lieutenant
commanding the escort hastily assembled those of his men whom the flying
projectiles had spared, and behind this friendly human wall the Emperor
and the Empress finally ventured to leave their vehicle, and hastened
into the Opera-house. Neither of them were injured, though the former
had a hole through his hat, and his forehead was lightly cut by a piece
of flying glass. His carriage was riddled by seventy-six projectiles,
and he owed his life only to the fact that the panels were all lined
with iron.
A hundred and fifty-six persons were killed and wounded by the three
bombs; the pavement, the sidewalks, and the front of the Opera-house
were pitted with holes and splashed with blood. All the issues of the
Rue Le Peletier were closed almost immediately after the explosions, and
a prompt descent was made on the restaurant and little garden,
immediately opposite the Opera-house, which was kept by an Italian named
Broggi. Here those of his companions who were at odds with fortune were
in the habit of assembling, and here a waiter named Diot found on a
table a pistol and beside it a man who was ostentatiously weeping. When
questioned, he gave his name as Swiney, declared he was the servant of
an Englishman named Allsop, a brewer, who lived at No. 10, Rue du
Mont-Thabor, and that he wept because he feared his master had been
killed. The real name of Swiney was Gomez, and that of his master,
Allsop, was Orsini; the latter, who had been wounded by his own bomb,
was arrested as he was walking peacefully away. He had the assurance to
write a long letter to the Emperor from Mazas prison, after his trial,
in which, while making no appeal for his own life, he interceded for the
independence of Italy, without which, he asserted, "the tranquillity of
Europe and that of your Majesty will be but chimeras." He admitted
having brought the bombs from England and charged them with fulminating
powder, but denied having thrown any of them; he was guillotined on the
13th of March, with his accomplice, Pieri,--Orsini crying with his last
breath: "_Vive l'Italie! Vive la France!_" Gomez was condemned to hard
labor for life.
[Illustration: TYPE OF BOURGEOISE. From a drawing by L. Marold.]
"In 1867," says a historian, "France believed herself invincible. The
capital of capitals surpassed the splendors of all other cities, ancient
and modern. It was a bedazzlement, a fairy spectacle. But a time was
approaching when a bloody and funereal vail was to be suddenly thrown
over so many more than Babylonian magnificences, and in which the great
city, so proud of her riches and her glory, was to have no other
ceremonial than the overthrow of the Vendôme column by French hands in
the face of the Prussians."
By the 18th of September, 1870, the siege of Paris by the Germans was
formally opened, and yet, on that date, the author of the _Journal du
Siège_ declares the capital to be "the most strange and the most
marvellous city. On the eve of combat she still preserves her
unalterable gaiety, still sings, and strews flowers in front of the
soldiers. It is because her resolution is firmly taken, and that she
awaits the attack with a firm stand and a valiant heart. To-day, it is a
festival Sunday indeed;--on every side is animation, enthusiasm, life.
We have made the tour of the boulevards; we have traversed the
Champs-Élysées, the Rue de Rivoli, the quais. Everywhere there are
tranquil countenances, and everywhere the Sunday crowd, gay, in no way
impressed, nowise dejected, as the despatches to foreign journals
assert.... The little street industries have not ceased; the tight-rope
dancers continue their performances tranquilly in the midst of the
military groups. If the Prussian spies were there, they could have
heard, as we did, the converse of this valiant and joyous population,
which waits only for a signal to hasten to the ramparts, and which has
lost nothing of its complete self-assurance of the great days."
[Illustration: YOUNG BOURGEOISE AT TOILETTE.
From a drawing, in colors, by Maurice Bonvoison, called "Mars."]
Two months later, the picture had become somewhat more sombre. M.
Edouard Dangin writes: "Paris has become a veritable city of war. At
seven o'clock in the morning, before all the gates of the city, the
guard is under arms, the drum beats _aux champs_, the portcullis is
lowered. It is the opening of the gates. At eight o'clock, in all the
quarters of the city, the rappel is beaten, all the citizen soldiers who
are to relieve the guard on the ramparts and on the minor posts are
called to arms. Others are called out for the drill; there are, however,
some quarters in which there is no drill in the mornings. The crowd
commences to form in line before the butcher-shops in which beef and
horse-flesh are sold, even before the doors are opened, then it becomes
more numerous; the housekeepers press against each other, crowd and
jostle. The men hasten to the different kiosques and purchase the
newspapers, to learn the news of the morning. At noon, the distributions
are all made; calm reigns, Paris is taking its déjeuner.... Toward
half-past three the rappel is heard again in various quarters,--it is
the evening drill. From all the houses issue the national guards, their
muskets on their shoulders. At five o'clock, the drums beat _aux champs_
again before all the gates and the portcullis is raised. Paris is
closed. The Parisians return home for dinner. The greater number of them
go to bed early. Some of them go in the evening to take a little
promenade, whilst others, who have not lost their café habits, commence,
by the light of gas, games of dominoes which they finish by
candle-light. In the streets, there are no cries, no drunkards, almost
no more _petites dames_, nor others who lodge in houses and accost the
passer-by too much preoccupied to reply to them. After eleven o'clock,
silence prevails in the streets and the darkness deepens, because it is
necessary to save gas."
Finally, the Germans entered the capital, and the population became more
patriotic than ever. "The vanquishers, enclosed in their restricted
zone, looked with astonishment at the grand city indomitable, whose
superb monuments were seen in profile against the horizon. Those who
showed themselves at the windows were hooted.... Women accused of having
smiled on the enemy were whipped. Those unfortunate honest women who
were wrong enough to inhabit the quarters occupied, or, perhaps, to be
curious, were subjected to the same fate as the street-walkers. The
ferocity of the populace began to manifest itself."
"It was much remarked that the German officers had all new uniforms, and
that they all held in their hands plans of Paris. Their soldiers,
frightfully dirty, prepared their meals in the open air, whilst the
noisy fanfares of their military music were greeted by the hootings and
hissings of the spectators. The stone statues of the Place de la
Concorde, veiled in black by unknown hands, did not see the soiling of
Paris. The Arch of Triumph of the Place de l'Étoile had been barricaded
and obstructed in such a manner that the Germans could not pass under
it. The triumphal monument remained virgin of this defilement. In the
evening, Paris assumed the aspect, strange and prodigious, of a city
asleep. Nowhere were there any lights, rare pedestrians, no omnibuses,
no carriages. The footsteps of a patrol which resounded rhythmical and
sonorous in the distance, and the _qui vive?_ of the sentinels, alone
came to break the mournful silence which hung over the capital. The long
line of boulevards, black and sombre, displayed the mourning of the
city. Paris was superb in her suffering."
[Illustration: A "LOGE" AT THE PALAIS-ROYAL THEATRE.
From a drawing, in colors, by L. Sabattier.]
[Illustration: LADY AT TOILETTE.]
It may be remembered that the number of German troops admitted into the
city was restricted by the terms of the capitulation to thirty thousand,
the entrance to be made at ten o'clock on the morning of the 1st of
March, 1871, and the district occupied by them to be limited to the
space between the Seine and the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine, from the
Place de la Concorde to the Quartier des Ternes. The evacuation was to
take place immediately after the ratification of the preliminaries of
the treaty of peace by the Assemblée Nationale. On the appointed morning
all the public edifices, even the Bourse, were closed, as well as the
great majority of the cafés and restaurants. All the battalions of the
National Guard were under arms in their various quarters, their
standards draped in crape, in the streets and on the various mairies
black flags were displayed, and on many shutters might be read
inscriptions: "Closed on account of the national mourning," or, "because
of the public grief." On the boulevards, opposite the new Opera-house,
and on all the streets leading down to the Place de la Concorde and the
Champs-Élysées, detachments of the National Guard were stationed who
prevented from passing any person wearing a uniform, or even a képi or
pantaloons with a red stripe. The Rue Royale, from the Madeleine to the
Place de la Concorde, was barred in the middle of its length by
artillery caissons, and the Rue and the Faubourg Saint-Honoré were
patrolled by strong detachments of the Chasseurs d'Afrique and mounted
gendarmes. But in the afternoon the sun came out, and, according to M.
Claretie, "the appearance of Paris, alas! became quite different from
that of the morning. The population, carried away by an unwholesome
curiosity, and aware that the entrance of the enemy had occasioned no
disorder, decided to come out in the streets." The next day the Germans
wished to visit the Louvre and the Invalides, but the sight of Prussian
uniforms under the colonnade of the Louvre produced such an effect on
the populace, it is said, that the French general Vinoy informed the
German general von Kammecke that if his soldiers entered the Invalides
he would not be responsible for the public peace,--and the Prussian
officer abandoned the attempt.
If the Prussians had remained in Paris, the public peace would have been
much better preserved. On the heels of their withdrawal came the
Commune, and within three weeks the condition of the city had become
such that the following is the official report of a quiet night, made to
the Comité Central by "a Sieur Garnier d'Aubin, 'général de brigade,
commandant de place du 18e arrondissement'":
"REPORT OF THE 20TH AND 21ST OF MARCH.
"Nothing new.
"I have received the reports of the different chiefs of the posts. The
night has been calm and without incident.
"At five minutes past ten, two sergents de ville, disguised as
bourgeois, were brought in by the francs-tireurs and immediately shot.
"At twenty minutes past midnight, a police officer, accused of having
fired his revolver, was shot.
"At seven o'clock, a gendarme, brought in by the guard of the 28th, was
shot."
"'The night was calm and without incidents,'" comments M. Gourdon de
Genouillac, from whom we borrow many of these details, "and only four
men were shot!"
The quality of the officers of this inchoate government may be judged
from another contemporary document, inserted in _L'Officiel_ of the 18th
of May:
"Those officers of the general staff of the National Guard who have
neglected their duties to banquet with _filles de mauvaise vie_, at the
restaurant Peters, were arrested yesterday by order of the Committee of
Public Safety. They have been sent to the Bicêtre, with spades and
picks, to work in the trenches. The women have been sent to Saint-Lazare
to make sacks for containing earth."
One of the strongest characteristics of the Commune was its hatred and
persecution of the clergy, manifested in a hundred acts, and culminating
in the murder of the archbishop and the hostages. On the morning after
the arrest of all the clergy of Montmartre, the following notice was
posted on the doors of the church of Saint-Pierre:
"_Whereas_, the priests are bandits, and the haunts in which they have
morally assassinated the masses, by bowing France under the claws of the
infamous Bonaparte, Favre, and Trochu, are the churches,
"The civil delegate of the Carrières of the ex-prefecture of police
orders that the church of Saint-Pierre (Montmartre) shall be closed and
decrees the arrest of the priests and the Ignorantins."
On the preceding day, the cathedral and the church of Saint-Laurent had
been closed, and in the crypt of the latter were found a great number of
human bones; some of these were arranged so as to constitute the
skeletons of fourteen women which, it was asserted, had been sequestered
by the priests of the church, outraged, and murdered. Great was the
virtuous indignation, the bones were officially photographed by the
photographer Carjat, all Paris went to see them, and the affair made
such a noise that after the capture of the city by the Versailles troops
and the restoration of order, it was officially investigated by a
scientific commission, which reported through its chairman, M. Tardieu,
that the bones were those of persons who had been buried for at least a
hundred and fifty years.
Of the women of the Commune, M. Maxime du Camp draws the following
unflattering picture: "They were wicked and cowardly. Utilized by the
police of the Rigaults and the Ferrés, they were pitiless in the search
for refractory citizens who hid themselves that they might not have the
shame of serving the Commune.... From the heights of the pulpits of the
churches, converted into clubs, they poured out all the corruption of
which their ignorance was full; with their shrill and yelping voices, in
the midst of the smoke of pipes, to the accompaniment of vinous
hiccoughs, they demanded 'their place in the sun, their rights as
citizens, the equality which was refused them,' and other vague claims
which concealed, perhaps, the secret dream which they put into practice
shamelessly,--the plurality of husbands.
"They disguised themselves as soldiers; ... they 'manifested'; they
assembled in bands, and, like the Tricoteuses, their grandmothers, they
wished to go to Versailles '_chambarder la parlotte_ and hang Foutriquet
the first.' They were all there, rushing about and squalling, the
boarders of Saint-Lazare in vacation, the natives of the little Pologne
and the great Bohemia, the sellers of tripe _à la mode de Caen_, the
seamstresses for messieurs, the shirt-makers for men, the instructors
for elder students, the maids of all work, the vestals of the temple of
Mercury, and the virgins of Lourcine. That which was the most profoundly
comic was that those escaped from the Dispensaire delighted in alluding
to Joan of Arc and in comparing themselves to her.
[Illustration: IN THE LATIN QUARTER. AU CINQUIÈME. From a drawing by
Lucien Simon.]
"The Commune, without concerning itself about it, aided in this feminine
uprising which emptied the houses with big street-numbers [houses of
ill-fame] to the detriment of the public health and to the profit of
the civil war. It knew how to resolve--this good Commune, composed of
the sensible men that we know--it knew how to resolve, with one sole
blow, the social problem which had troubled, for so many years, the
administrators, the economists, the moralists, the philosophers, the
doctors, and the legislators. It caused a paper to be pasted on the
walls of Paris, and the great difficulty was solved forever. By a
poster, well and duly stamped, it forbade prostitution. It was not any
more difficult than that! The poor creatures liberated from all
administrative regulation, from all sanitary control, did not wait to
have it repeated; they spread themselves like a leprosy through the
city, and when, reduced to poverty by the men who exploited them, they
no longer had anything to eat, they donned the great-coat of the
foot-soldier and went to the advance posts, where they were as
formidable to their friends as to their adversaries.
"In the last days, all these belligerent viragoes fired from behind the
barricades longer than did the men; very many of them were arrested,
their hands black with powder, their shoulders bruised by the recoil of
the musket, all excited still with the fever of battle. A thousand and
fifty-one of them were conducted to Versailles, among whom were to be
counted, according to the euphemism of the statistics, 'two hundred and
forty-six celibataires under police surveillance.' As in the case of
children, no undue severity was exercised, and eight hundred and fifty
decisions of _non-lieu_ were rendered in their favor; among the female
prisoners, four were sent to insane asylums,--that was very little! For
any student of _possession_, there is scarcely any room for doubt;
nearly all the unfortunates who combatted for the Commune were that
which science calls 'patients.'"
The last stand of the insurgents before the constantly advancing forces
of Marshal MacMahon was made in the last days of May in the quarters
Ménilmontant and Popincourt and in the cemetery of Père-Lachaise. The
Buttes Chaumont were taken on the evening of the 27th; through the
cemetery, around the tombstones, in the rain, the combat was waged with
the bayonet, and without quarter. The marine infantry pursued the
Communards into the vaults and killed every one they found. On the gray
stones of the tombs could be seen for days afterwards the imprint of
hands blackened with gunpowder and red with blood. In the quarries of
Amérique, many of the last survivors killed themselves in despair. "The
Seine for many days was filled with corpses, and the streets of Paris
were only a slaughter-house." Two hundred and thirty-four buildings were
destroyed, and the losses in property were estimated at a hundred and
fourteen million francs.
The hideous virgins of the Commune are no longer in evidence, but they
have been succeeded by a variety of their sex, in the idle and
fashionable society of the present day, which, if we may believe a
modern romancer, is sufficiently numerous to constitute a still more
formidable menace. His story is put forth as a serious psychological
study of Parisian manners and customs in certain walks of life; the
interest, if not the approval, with which it has been received has been
very marked, and the volume from which we quote is of the hundred and
sixty-first edition. It is in much such a salon as M. Montzaigle has
endeavored to paint that the explanation of these _demi-vierges_ is
furnished to his friend from the provinces by the critical Parisian man
of the world:--"There have happened in Paris, within the last fifteen
years, two grave events,--two _kracks_, as my brother the banker would
say.... Firstly, the krack of modesty. Our epoch may be compared to the
Latin decadence or to the Renaissance, in the matter of love. Our young
girls (I refer to those of the idle world of pleasure) no longer serve
naked at the table of the Médicis; they do not wear necklaces of
representations of the generative organs; but they are as knowing in
matters of love as those Florentines and those Roman women. Who troubles
himself to refrain from speaking before them of the last scandal? To
what theatrical representations are they not taken? What romances have
they not read? And yet conversation, books, the theatre, these are only
words.... There are at Paris, in the world of society, professors of
defloration, men on the hunt for innocence: ... the first lesson is given
to young girls on the evening of their first ball; the course is
continued through the season; when the summer comes, the promiscuousness
of the watering-places or the sea-beach will permit the professional
deflorator to put the finishing touch to his work....
"The second krack is that of the _dot_, as pernicious for the modern
virgin as that of modesty. There are no longer any innocent young girls,
but there are, also, no more rich young girls. The millionaire gives two
hundred thousand francs of dot to his daughter, that is to say, six
thousand francs of income, that is to say, nothing, not even enough to
hire a coupé by the month. Hence, in this respect, the young girl has
never been dependent upon the man, and as she has but one weapon with
which to conquer him--love--the mothers allow them to learn love as soon
as possible, through maternal devotion.... Yes, through maternal
devotion. In my opinion, the universal alteration in the type of the
young girl of former times may be imputed, first of all, to the mothers
of the present generation." ...M. Marcel Prevost justifies his
unpleasant discourse on the plea that modern education tends more and
more to develop the type "_demi-vierge_," and that, if the education of
the young girl be not greatly modified, "Christian marriage will
perish."
There has been no successful street revolution in Paris since the days
of the Commune, but the terrible under-strata ever and anon break
through the thin upper crust of society with some such outburst as that
of the dynamite explosions of 1892 in the Boulevard Saint-Germain, in
the caserne Lobau, and in the Rue de Clichy. On this occasion, the Paris
_Matin_ published the result of the official researches as to the
locality of the various groups of anarchists in the city, from which it
appeared that they were to be found in associations of greater or lesser
numbers in the quartiers of the Bourse, of the Temple, of the Panthéon,
of the fashionable Champs-Élysées, among the _valets de chambre_, the
cooks, and the coachmen, and in the fourth, ninth, tenth, eleventh,
twelfth, thirteenth, fifteenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth
arrondissements. In the quartiers of the Louvre, of the Luxembourg, and
in the seventh, sixteenth, and seventeenth arrondissements, no organized
groups existed. Their titles varied: _L'Avant-garde cosmopolite_, _Le
Réveil du quinzième_ (arrondissement), _La Bibliothèque socialiste_, _La
Jeunesse anarchiste du vingtième_ (arrondissement), _La Jeunesse
révolutionnaire_ and _La Ligue des antipatriotes_; their publications
ranged from _Le drapeau rouge_ [the red flag] to _La Révolte_ and Henri
Rocheforte's _Intransigeant_. The arrest of the chief dynamiter,
Ravachol, was effected through the intelligence of a waiter named Lhérot
in the restaurant Véry, on the Boulevard Magenta, of which we give a
view, on Victor Hugo's authority that it is always interesting to look
at a wall behind which we think something is happening.
[Illustration: COCOTTES IN A BRASSERIE. PERIOD OF THE SECOND EMPIRE.
From a water-color by Constantin Guys.]
Their haunts, or those of the desperate poverty and misery which tend to
swell their ranks, may be represented by the _Cabaret_ or _Buvette du
Père Lunette_ or the _Château Rouge_, both of them threatened with
demolishment for the last nine years, but still standing. The first,
situated in one of the worst streets of old Paris, the Rue des Anglais,
in the quartier of the Place Maubert, has been famous for forty years,
having succeeded, as it were, to the evil renown of the _Lapin blanc_,
in the Rue aux Fèves, celebrated by Eugène Sue and believed to have
dated from the reign of Pepin le Bref, and the cabaret of Paul Niquet,
in the Rue aux Fers. The founder of the Père Lunette, a Sieur Lefebvre,
is said to have made a fortune by it. Its name is derived from a
gigantic pair of spectacles (_lunettes_) hanging over the entrance-door,
and another painted on the small window beside it. The whole small front
of the establishment is of a deep red. Our illustration represents the
inner sanctuary, to which the visitor attained by passing through an
antechamber only slightly less characteristic. The walls are decorated
by ignoble frescoes; on the disbursal of a franc for several litres of a
species of wine, the stranger is admitted to the honors of the
establishment, and there are duly unrolled for him six canvases hanging
on the wall on which are figured various personages, Gambetta,
Cassagnac, Prince Napoleon, and even the Pope, in various situations.
The Rue des Anglais, at the present day, very short and narrow and
irregular, is very clean and proper.
A large porte-cochère, surrounded by a red border, near the middle of
the Rue Galande, opens under an arched passage-way into a small court,
badly paved, at the bottom of which a few steps lead up to an entrance
in a wall also painted red, and a glass door opens into the first
apartment of the Château Rouge. This visit should be made between
midnight and two o'clock in the morning, the hours at which the
establishment is in its fullest activity. The first two rooms on the
ground-floor are merely low drinking-places, crowded with both men and
women; the second floor, reached by a narrow staircase, was formerly
known familiarly to the inmates as the _Salle des Morts_ or the
_Bataille de Champigny_; at these hours it is strewn with motionless
bodies, in various attitudes of uneasy slumber, and in various stages of
squalid undress. As the visitor turns to descend, he will find the
stairway blocked by the recumbent forms of late arrivals for whom no
space has been left in this wretched dormitory. At two o'clock in the
morning the establishment closes, and all the sleepers are aroused and
turned out into the street. For this transient hospitality each of them
pays two sous.
Curiously enough, the building seen at the left of the Château Rouge,
with its balustraded stairway under the arch and its arched windows
filled with innumerable little panes, was the residence of Gabrielle
d'Estrées, the _belle amie_ of Henri IV. It may still be seen, but the
railing of the stairway at the present day is a simple iron one.
The Place Maubert, now forming part of the Boulevard Saint-Germain and
ornamented by a statue of Étienne Dolet, was at the period shown in our
illustration, in 1889, a rendezvous for the professionals of that
peculiar street industry who are known as _ramasseux de mégots_,--those
highly unpleasant individuals who slouch about the cafés on the
boulevards and pick up the butts of cigars and cigarettes. They claim to
be several thousand in number, and they have definite hours for the
exercise of their profession, hours in which their harvest is the
greatest and just before the street-sweepers come along, at two o'clock
in the morning, when the establishments close, at noon, and at nine
o'clock in the evening. An industrious man, who has pretty good
eyesight, may pick up a hundred to a hundred and fifty grammes of
tobacco on each round. A good day's work will bring in as much as fifty
sous; a rainy day, not more than twelve or fifteen. The best localities,
which it is, of course, very important to know, are the surroundings of
the Halle aux blés, the Bourse, the Louvre, the cafés on the boulevards,
and in summer the public gardens and the crowds around the military
bands. This tobacco which is thus saved from the street sweepings is--it
is painful to relate--dried, assorted, made over again, and sold to
other smokers. When one reflects on the quality of ordinary French
tobacco at its best, this consideration tends to add another ease to
death. And yet an ingenious chronicler, who extracted these details from
a professional, declares that upon examining, with his eyes and his
nose, a package of the best of this resuscitated weed, a package of
"_théâtre_," these faithful organs gave him no reason to suspect its
origin. The _théâtre_ is made from _londrès_ exclusively, no cigarettes
and no _tabac de chique_ are allowed to enter in its composition; the
two cheaper brands manufactured are _le petit_ and _le gros_. There are
special clients for this merchandise, ranging from the inmates of
asylums for old men and the insane patients at Charenton to military men
on insufficient pensions who make their purchases hurriedly and with
anxious glances around. When the fine season opens, the _ramasseur de
mégots_ who has collected a good winter harvest will issue from the city
to sell his merchandise in the suburbs. In this irregular commerce he
runs the risks of denunciation by the authorized _bureaux de tabac_, and
of six months in prison, although his tobacco has once paid the _régie_,
or tax.
All this world of the people, which ranges from M. Brispot's comfortable
and respectable _Bon Bourgeois_, taking his summer ease in his
court-yard, down to almost unknown depths, has its moments of leisure
and takes its relaxation as well as its betters. Two of M. Vierge's
characteristic sketches may serve to illustrate two of the more popular
and more innocent methods,--the informal manner in which the frequenters
of the Parc de Montsouris, on the line of the southern fortifications,
dispose themselves on the grass, around the kiosque of the military
band, to listen to the music, and a very characteristic feature of the
popular observance of the fête of the 14th of July, the balls in the
open street. At almost every important crossing or open space, not only
in the so-called _quartiers excentriques_, but in such official
neighborhoods as those of the Louvre and the Hôtel de Ville, temporary
bandstands are set up, and around them the people dance cheerfully,
mostly in ungraceful waltzes, all the evening, and frequently all night.
In front of the cafés in the popular quarters, the music of a violin or
a hurdy-gurdy, or even of the dreadful organ of the "merry-go-rounds,"
or _chevaux de bois_, will furnish inspiration enough to perspiring
couples who will repeatedly leave their beer or their _sirop_ to revolve
giddily on the pavement till, quite breathless, they return to their
seats. All this is done with such frank simplicity and good nature, such
a characteristically cheerful French appropriation of the public street
for domestic purposes, that the foreigner, sitting looking on somewhat
scornfully at first, gradually veers round to their point of view, and,
if he be young enough, probably ends by being quite willing to get up
and dance, himself, with some of these slim-waisted, pretty French
maids.
[Illustration: A POCHARD BETWEEN GARDIENS-DE-LA-PAIX.
From a drawing, in colors, by Pierre Vidal.]
As the official fête of 1898 had a new feature added to it, the
celebration of the centennial of Michelet, it naturally took on still
another diversion, that of the election of a Muse of Paris, selected
from among the most beautiful young working-girls of the capital. Her
official functions consisted in being crowned, in presiding at the
ceremony before Michelet's bust, set up in front of the Hôtel de Ville,
and in strewing flowers before it. Then there was chanted before her:
"Good people, Rich and poor, Hasten hither! Come all to admire, The Muse
of Paris! She is a nice little working-girl, Whom the poet-kings of
poverty, Have anointed queen of their chimeras," etc. The election of a
queen of the washerwomen, or, rather, of a _reine des blanchisseuses_,
has long been one of the important ceremonials of the Mi-carême
festivities, and grotesque accounts are given of the intrigues, the
rivalries, the heart-burnings, which this choice entails, of the
adventures of the sovereign and her attendant ladies in assuming their
somewhat unwonted toilettes for this great occasion, and of the still
greater efforts of the _garçons_ of the _lavoirs_ to accoutre themselves
as d'Artagnans and Henri III's. However, everything passes off for the
best; and it is a dull lane that has no turning.
Among the less praiseworthy diversions, neither rat-baiting nor
cock-fighting have much favor in Paris. A pair of game-cocks were
imported from England in 1772, but the "sport" was not appreciated. In
the country parts of France it is more practised; and one of the most
important of the establishments, affected by the Parisians, devoted to
the murderous combats of dogs and rodents, is the Ratier Club of
Roubaix, whose modest wooden façade, rising at the back of a court which
is entered through a sufficiently common-place cabaret, is shown in the
illustration. On the left is a great lantern to light the dingy
approach, and on the right, full of noise and tumult, the office and the
weighing-stand. In the interior, the arrangements are those usually
adopted,--the wooden benches are ranged around the _parc_, or pit, a
large wire cage nearly five mètres long and two and a quarter high,
elevated on a platform about a mètre from the floor. It has no top, but
the upper portions of the walls present a smooth band of metal up which
the rats cannot climb. The dog is introduced through a sliding door on
the floor, and his antagonists are emptied from a box over the top. They
are of three kinds, water-rats, sewer-rats, and granary-rats; the first
are of a placid disposition and are rarely used; the last, in black, are
the fiercest, and consequently the most desirable. The dogs are usually
bull-dogs, fox-terriers, or a species with a scanty hair, called
_griffons_; they are usually pitted against four rats at a time, and
their prowess is according to the brevity of the time in which they
dispose of them. There is a legend that one champion despatched a
hundred rats in seventeen minutes, thirty seconds. A good dog will
finish the four rats in ten or twelve seconds, notwithstanding their
doublings and turnings, the speed with which they climb the wire
trellis, and the fierceness with which they turn on him and fasten on
his jaw. There are various methods of conducting these contests; the
_chasse à excitations_, in which the proprietor of the dog is permitted
to run around the cage and excite his animal by voice and gesture; that
_à la muette_, in which he is strictly forbidden to make a sound or a
sign; that _à obstacles_, in which the rodents are concealed under every
second or third of a number of flower-pots reversed on the floor, or in
which they are furnished with bundles of straw in which to seek refuge,
or favored by an arrangement of partitions about a foot high, arranged
in the manner of a Saint Andrew's cross, and over which the dog has to
leap while they traverse them through small semicircular openings on a
level with the floor. The dogs are classified by weight; the price of
entry varies according to the variety of the _chasse_, and the sum of
the prizes distributed sometimes amounts to as much as fifteen hundred
francs.
[Illustration: A LOW-CLASS BRASSERIE ADVERTISEMENT DURING MI-CARÊME.
From a drawing, in colors, by Pierre Vidal.]
As to the more aristocratic sport of horse-racing, we have already seen
that the annually-recurring _Grand Prix de Paris_ has been elevated to
the dignity of a capital municipal institution. But it was early
recognized that this diversion, which has attained such extraordinary
development in the capital within the last twenty years, owed a very
considerable proportion of its popularity to the facilities which it
offered for gambling. The true sportsman's interest in the improvement
of the equine race was by no means sufficiently widely diffused to
maintain the hippodromes of the Sociétés de Course. This was abundantly
demonstrated when, in the spring of 1887, the government forbade all
betting on the race-course; the indifference of the public was promptly
manifested by the great falling off in the attendance. At the end of a
few weeks, it was found necessary to remove the restriction, but it was
wished at the same time not to encourage the spirit of gambling, which
threatened to affect all classes of society. The _Pari Mutuel_ [mutual
betting], which was accordingly authorized, offers to-day the only legal
method of betting on the race-courses. It consists of a series of
offices established on the tracks, where the public makes its bets on
the horses running. It registers the bets, receives the money, and
divides the winnings among those entitled to them. "A bettor wishes to
stake fifty francs upon a horse which, we will say, is number six on the
list; he goes to one of the five-franc bureaux, and asks for ten tickets
on number six winning, or ten on number six 'placed.' He pays his fifty
francs, receives ten tickets bearing the required number, and with the
stipulation 'winning' or 'placed,' and he has no more to do but to wait
the result of the race. If he win, as soon as the division is made he
has only to present himself at the treasurer's office of the bureau
where he made his bet, and he receives his winnings in exchange for his
ten tickets." On all the operations there is deducted a tax of seven per
cent. in the Parisian Sociétés de Courses,--one per cent. for breeding
purposes, two for local charities, and four for the Sociétés themselves.
The latter portion, which is six, eight, or ten per cent. in the
provinces, is added to the sums gained from the entrance fees, and
employed for the expenses, and to increase the prizes offered the
following year.
[Illustration: PLACE MAUBERT, AS IT APPEARED IN 1889.]
At Longchamp there are about one hundred and fifty bureaux of the Pari
Mutuel, and nearly twice as many on the day of the Grand-Prix. No bet
is accepted under five francs, and there are special bureaux for ten,
twenty, fifty, and even one hundred, and five hundred francs at the
weighing-stand; the bets are of two kinds,--first, for the winning
horse, and, second, for the horses "placed" one and two, when there are
at least four horses running; one, two, and three, when there are at
least eight. When two or more horses belong to the same proprietor and
run in the same race, the Pari Mutuel gives the whole stable, that is to
say, that if one of the horses of the stable wins the race the bets made
upon the other horses of the stable, one or several, are paid as though
laid upon the winning animal himself. This rule applies only to bets
made upon _one_ winner; for the places, it is not a question of the
whole stable, and each horse is paid according to his order in arriving
at the winning-post. When all the tickets are collected, the sum total
of the bets is ascertained, the seven per cent. tax is deducted, and the
sum remaining is divided among the winning tickets. For the _placés_,
there are four operations to be performed after the deduction of the
seven per cent.,--first, to subtract from the sum to be divided the sum
total of the bets upon the places. This operation has for its object to
save the stake of the bettor and to guarantee him against the risks of
receiving a sum less than he wagered; second, to divide the new sum thus
obtained by two or by three, according as there are two or three
_placés_; third, to divide each half or each third proportionally to the
number of bets on each _placé_; fourth, to add the amount of the bet
previously subtracted. All the employés of the Pari Mutuel are strictly
forbidden to bet, themselves, under penalty of losing their situations;
and the whole is under the control of the Minister of Agriculture and
the inspectors of finances.
The establishment of this official regulation was speedily followed by
the opening of unauthorized "pool-rooms" all over Paris, in cheap
cabarets, tobacco-shops, coiffeurs' salons, anywhere, in which the
general public were invited to come in and bet on any horse they chose,
without any further concern about attending the races, and with the
deduction of the smallest possible commission for the bureau, in some
cases fifty or twenty-five centimes. These improvised agencies, in a
great majority of cases, hold no communication whatever with the
Sociétés, thus depriving them of their commissions, and offer their
clients only the slightest guarantees of good faith. This abuse became
so flagrant that the law had to be invoked.
The popular cafés, cabarets, buvettes, brasseries, châteaux, moulins,
etc., are so numerous as to be entitled to a special chapter. One of the
most famous, the Moulin de la Galette, of the Montmartre quarter, is
here illustrated, with a touch of the picturesque. It may be reached by
the Rue Lepic, more circuitous and possibly more safe than the acrobatic
ladders which lead directly to its door. Its usual customers vary from
workmen's families through many varieties of painters, strangers,
_filles_, and _marlous_. Its dances are not of a kind to recommend
themselves to the conventional. It is even customary, before each one,
for each couple to pay four sous, and it is usually the lady who pays
for her cavalier. The beer-shops, or _brasseries_,--"more properly
_embrasseries_,"--were invented in the Latin Quarter, but have since
multiplied more on the lower boulevards. It is asserted that they were
better at the beginning; M. Maurice Barres declared at one time: "The
_brasserie à femmes_ is quite truly a salon." He appreciated them for
the severe discipline maintained in them by the proprietor, or, at
least, for the restraint imposed upon the more enterprising clients
and servitors by the example of the others. "There was coquetry and
flirtage, without much more." He considered this institution necessary;
its influence was, in his opinion, beneficent. These superficial
endearments, this amiable tone, this care to please which was there
displayed, "relaxed the mind and restored the neglected faculties of our
sensitiveness." Since then, he has asked himself whether the
_brasseries_ have changed or whether he has grown older. Certainly, the
qualities which he discovered in them no longer exist. The institution
does not seem necessary; the salon is usually a hole; the attendants
appear to be the refuse of those places of entertainment the character
of which is revealed by the unusual size of the house number over the
entrance. Even the Parisian gilding of vice sometimes wears off.
[Illustration: DISTRIBUTION OF HOT SOUPS BY THE SOCIETY OF THE "BOUCHÉR
DE PAIN."]
More of these unfortunates, of various shades, may be seen displaying
themselves in the open streets, in the public fiacres as in their
salons, during the Carnival, and especially on the day of Mardi
Gras,--arrayed as Pierrettes, clownesses, _rosières_ [winners of the
prize of virtue], and avocats with very open robes, their bared arms and
shoulders defying the weather. Their proper establishments are known by
a great variety of appellations, the old word _bordel_ being now
considered gross. More commonly they are designated discreetly as
_Tolérances_ or _Gros Numéros_; in the popular slang they are _claques_
or _boxons_. Many of them have special designations, as the celebrated
_Botte de paille_ mentioned by Edmond de Goncourt in his _Fille Elisa_;
one of the noisiest was known as the _Perroquet gris_; and another, from
its specialty, _Au Télescope_. "But at Paris all these _maisons
chaudes_," says an expert in these matters, Rodolphe Darzens, "have a
special physiognomy,--they are not, as in the provinces, discreet
localities, with an atmosphere of familiar conventionality, in which the
father brings his eldest son to pass the evening with the notary of the
quarter and the pharmacien of the public square, in an interminable game
of billiards or of _piquet voleur_. Houses very _comme il faut_, in
which no incongruity would be tolerated, from which a Parisian was even
chased one day for having pronounced a gross word. Neither do they
resemble those vast establishments in the seaports or in the commercial
cities, in which the rutting assumes a character of savage eagerness and
of primitive fury.
"Excepting in the houses of the exterior quarters of the city which are
frequented by soldiers and by coarse peasants, who quickly recover from
their first bedazzlement at the fine salons ornamented with mirrors and
gilding, illuminated by gas or by electricity, and in which the usual
visitors are composed almost exclusively of workmen, which constitutes
them rather a species of brasserie, the prostitution in Paris has been
refined by luxury. The _viveurs_ enter them, no longer to finish the
night in them, but to pass a few minutes, to yawn and to drink champagne
in the company of some young women lightly clad, indifferent and
passive, pretty sometimes, bestial almost always. You can rarely avoid
hearing confidentially from one of them her story, the eternal story of
love betrayed. There are sometimes to be found among them some who have
received a real education,--these speedily acquire an influence over
their comrades, who listen to them, admire them, ask their advice. They
are the queens of the household, and _Madame_ treats with them on a
footing of equality.
"Frequently an inmate of one of these convents of the Devil will seat
herself at the piano, and then some revery of Chopin will rise,
melancholy, through the air, while the tears will appear in the eyes of
her hearers.
[Illustration: RAMESSEUR DE MÉGOTS. From the painting by Eugène
Girardin.]
"When, 'finally alone,' to fill up their long leisure of waiting, they
play never-ending games of _écarté_, or, indeed, tell each other's
fortunes by the cards, in the hope that the promises they read in them
may be speedily realized, promises of a better life, outside of the
cursed house, of meeting a monsieur very rich, of country parties,
carriages, a little hôtel, who knows? To see, perhaps,--a marriage.
"But a voice, interrupting these dreams, that of the imperious matron,
orders curtly: 'To the salon, ladies!'"
The Parisian winter is an institution of which no good can be said. The
tremendous, arctic cold of the United States is almost unknown, as is
also the beautiful, clear, frosty weather; in their stead come an almost
endless succession of gray, misty, unutterably damp days, with a
searching, raw cold that penetrates even to the dividing asunder of bone
and marrow. The dearness of fuel, and the totally inadequate heating
arrangements in most houses, add to the cruel discomfort of this season,
in which the poor always suffer greatly. The number of unemployed is
always large, and among them are frequently to be found those accustomed
to the comforts and refinements of life. A recent article in a Parisian
journal describing the charitable distribution of hot soups by the
organization of the _Bouchée de pain_ [mouthful of bread] cites the
instance of a lady among these applicants, so well dressed that the
attendant thought it right to say to her: "Have you come through simple
curiosity, madame? In that case, you should not diminish the portion of
those who are hungry." The lady answered simply: "_I_ am hungry." It
appeared that she was an artist, had exhibited twice in the Salon, and
yet was reduced to this necessity. This charitable organization is
distinguished from most others by the fact that it asks no questions and
imposes no conditions on those who come to it for aid. Consequently, its
various points of distribution are crowded with long lines of the
shivering and famished, and the smallest offering from the charitable is
thankfully received.
On the suppression of the recent general strike among the workmen of
Paris, in the month of October, 1898, there appeared, in a number of the
_Matin_, a serious article giving some important details concerning the
wages and the manner of spending them, and presented from the point of
view of a friend of the laboring classes. The writer, M. Manini, had
interviewed one of his friends, an important contractor, whose six
hundred workmen had followed the example of their comrades, gone on
strike, and been compelled to abandon it by the prudent action of the
civil and military authorities in protecting all those who were willing
to labor. "I expressed to my friend my surprise that workmen earning, at
a minimum, six francs, and some of them, masons and rough-casters, eight
and ten francs a day, should have ceased work under pretence of
insufficient pay. I showed him the instructive table published by an
evening journal, and according to which the rough-casters earned from
eleven to twelve francs a day; the stone-cutters, eight francs; the
journeymen masons, eight francs; the apprentice masons, five and a half
francs; the bricklayers, eight francs; the stone-sawyers, nine to eleven
francs,--in a word, as much as a lieutenant in garrison in Paris, and
more than a lieutenant in garrison in the provinces.
[Illustration: QUEEN OF THE WASHERWOMEN AND HER CORTÉGE, DURING
MI-CARÊME.
From a drawing by A. Lozos.]
"'All that is perfectly true,' replied my friend. 'Never have the
workmen on buildings had such a fête. Since Paris has become a vast
ant-hill in which the work of preparation for 1900 goes on without
ceasing, the workmen make magnificent working-days and have no fear of
being "laid off." They have before them three magnificent years. But you
are not aware of the conditions of a workman's life in Paris. They bear
no resemblance to those of the life in the provinces, where similar
wages would insure a comfortable living. In Paris, you see, the workman
lives at a great disadvantage, and, in reality, it may be said that he
is obliged to meet the expenses of two establishments.... Paris is an
immense city, in which the distances are very great. The laborers, the
diggers, and shovellers live, nearly all of them, on the heights of
Clignancourt and of Belleville; the masons, for I know not what reason,
prefer the quarter of the Gobelins. Well, work is carried on in all
parts of Paris, is it not? The laborer from Belleville, the workman
hired by me or by my overseer, arrives at his field of labor at six
o'clock in the morning. This spot is at Auteuil, at the Trocadéro, at
Passy, anywhere. It will be absolutely impossible for him to return to
Belleville for his meals. He will have to eat on the spot, there where
he works.
"'Well, arrived at the _chantier_ at half-past six, and hard at work at
seven, the workmen go at nine o'clock to get some soup and a piece of
cheese. It is to some little eating-house in the neighborhood that they
betake themselves. The cost of this _casse-croûte_ [bread-crust], as
they call it, fifty centimes at the least. At eleven o'clock, the
déjeuner, always at the wine-shop or the little restaurant. When one
works in the open air, and when one propels, by the strength of his
arms, shovelfuls of earth weighing five kilos each a height of two
mètres into the cart, one is hungry. Notwithstanding the utmost
frugality, the déjeuner amounts to thirty sous, thirty-five sous at the
least. We have now expended two francs, twenty-five centimes. About
four o'clock, another mouthful and a glass of wine,--say ten sous,
about. We have now reached fifty-five sous, have we not? In case the
workman should be fatigued, or that the distance home should be too
great,--observe that from Auteuil to Clignancourt there are nine good
kilomètres, that is more than two leagues,--he dines on the spot, say
twenty-five sous more.
"'If the workman earns eight francs, here are his wages reduced more
than one-half. And you will remember that the wife and the brats eat at
home; also, that it is necessary to clothe yourself and to clothe the
little ones, that it is necessary to pay the rent, that, sometimes,
there is an old infirm mother at home, that an illness is readily
contracted.... In fact, the workman, at Paris, who labors at a distance
is obliged to eat away from his own house, and he expends for himself
alone as much as would be required to support the whole family. It may
therefore be said, that he has to provide for two households,--the
outside establishment, himself, and the inside establishment, the wife
and the children.'"
It does not seem to have occurred to the author of this interesting
exposé, or to his interlocutor, that there was a very simple and
well-known remedy for this idiotic and extravagant mode of living,--the
dinner-pail. The contractor cited to his friend the case of the masons
from the provinces, the Creusois and the Limousins, who are enabled to
save money by leaving their families in the country, and that of the
London workman who commences his day's labor at nine o'clock in the
morning and who ends it at five,--but without any interruption. "At one
o'clock in the afternoon he breaks a piece of bread, which he generally
brings in his work-bag; and at six o'clock, thanks to the
'Metropolitan,' he is again with his family, comfortably seated at
table." The workman's dinner-pail, or its equivalent, is not altogether
unknown to the Parisian _ouvrier_, and picturesque groups may sometimes
be seen, sometimes with the wife's presence to cheer and adorn, eating
and drinking comfortably _al fresco_, on the sidewalks, or on the steps
of some monument. To the sojourner in the land, the facts appear to be
that the workmen frequent the _gargotes_ much more to drink than to eat,
that they spend a very important fraction of the day congregated around,
or in, the cheap wine-shops of the neighborhood, and that they consume a
highly unnecessary quantity of variously and fearfully colored cheap
combinations of _alcool_.
In the strike referred to, the _terrassiers_, or diggers, who commenced
it, had enough influence in the Conseil Municipal of Paris to get the
increased wages for which they quit work, awarded them; but the other
workmen, who struck for the cause of _solidarité_, were unsuccessful,
and the great strike of all the railway employés throughout the nation,
ostentatiously ordered by the _Syndicat Guérard_, and promptly met by
the military occupation of all the stations and points of danger, was a
complete failure.
[Illustration]