WALKS AT NIGHTFALL
The Prince whom Tartarin met in Africa had lived a long time in
Tarascon, and knew remarkably well one side of the town. He knew nothing
of the other side. This puzzled Tartarin until he found out that his
noble friend's residence in Tartarin's native town was a compulsory one.
The Prince had ample time to study a certain aspect of Tarascon in
detail from the little window of his penitentiary cell. We do not all
have the privilege of devoting ourselves, as the Prince did, to a minute
study of just one view from just one vantage-point. And yet, in certain
things we share the Prince's experience. We become accustomed to a
definite aspect of the things we see to the exclusion of other aspects.
Thus it is that I know many parts of Paris familiarly as they appear at
nightfall. I could go to these quarters at other times, but I never
have. I fear the breaking of the spell. I fear disillusion. And if you
want to follow me in Paris walks through this chapter, plan your strolls
from five to seven during the winter months.
It began this way. In the Bibliothèque Nationale, as in the Paris of
parks and gardens, the closing hour follows the sun. The Bibliothèque
has no lights. It turns you out at four, half-past four, five or six
according to the season. During the months of longer days, we stayed
until the last bell. In the winter we were put out before the afternoon
was over. One did not feel like making for home immediately. It was too
late to go far afield. We started in to explore Paris in a widening
circle from the Rue de Richelieu. My husband had covered much of this
ground in summer months with the Scholar from Oxford. When the light
held out until late, they had time to visit old Paris with the books of
Georges Cain for guides. In the winter months Herbert took me over this
ground again. But I saw it all at nightfall or after dark.
It was a wonderful discovery, to combine exercise with interesting
sight-seeing at the end of the day. The habit of walks through city
streets, thus formed, has been persisted in through many busy years. I
recommend it, even to tourists. Use your precious days for churches and
museums and palaces. After they are closed, walk for an hour or two each
night. You will find diversity, and, like Horatio, things you never
dreamed of. And no matter how long you live in Paris, there is always
something new to explore and something equally new when you follow
beaten tracks.
You have to be--or grow--catholic in your tastes if you want to enjoy
what Paris at nightfall offers. Of course in the beginning you look for
certain things. You have a goal: tracing the city walls from old
Lutetia to Henri IV; seeking traces of mediaeval days; spotting
Renaissance architecture; visiting historic spots or buildings
associated with famous names or events; reconstructing Paris of the
Revolution; or following the characters of Victor Hugo through _Les
Misérables_. Before long you join all these goals, and jump from
architecture to history, from history to literature. In the end, every
walk you take is the observation of living people inseparable from an
incomparably picturesque setting. It may take a long time to realize
that your primary interest is humankind. But when you do the world is a
kaleidoscope presenting new pictures, wherever you may be, each more
fascinating than the one that preceded it.
"Seek and ye shall find" is a promise with a condition attached to it.
You have to look before you see. An effort of the will is required.
Without that effort, impressions are false or transitory or give no
reaction that sinks deep. We passed close to Messina just after the
earthquake. The captain of our ship obligingly slowed down to
quarter-speed. Passengers crowded against the rail on the Sicilian side
of the straits.
"Why, Messina is all right!" someone cried. "The newspapers have been
exaggerating again."
"Wait," suggested a lawyer. He got out his opera glasses. Others did the
same. As we studied Messina from the sea, and looked for the deep
fissures, the crumbling walls, we found them all along the coast. The
American soldier who told me, "Since I been in France I ain't seen
nothing but kilometres and rain," was not looking for anything else.
Strolling after dark helps to bring into the foreground the human
element in the picture of Paris streets. Your field of vision is
limited. You do not see too many things at once. And you have to keep
your eyes open. Many a quaint corner, many a building, is less often
missed at nightfall than during the day.
Paris is divided into arrondissements, each one with its local
administration, its _maire_, its _mairie_, its postal service, and its
police. The postal authorities have tried in vain to insist upon the
placing of the arrondissement indication upon the letters. But they have
never had much success. It is enough to remember where your friends live
without having to keep in mind twenty different arrondissements! Before
the war your arrondissement meant little to you, and you often did not
know its number if you wanted to be married, to register the birth of a
new baby, or got into difficulties with the police. Since the war,
residents in Paris came to know their own arrondissements because of
bread tickets, passports, income-tax declarations and other annoyances.
But in planning your walks at nightfall, it is helpful to take a map of
Paris and know something about the divisions of the city. We started our
explorations by hazard, and then found to our astonishment that we had
been going from one arrondissement to another, practically following the
numerical order.
The Bibliothèque Nationale is just on the border between the First and
Second Arrondissements. Arrondissements One to Four are the old city on
the Rive Droite between the Grands Boulevards and the Seine.
Arrondissements Five to Seven include similar quarters on the Rive
Gauche. Some of the most interesting strolls are in the outer
arrondissements. But the seven inner arrondissements provide enough for
years without ever having to take the subway or tram.
The four Rive Droite arrondissements stretch from the Place de la
Concorde to the Place de la Bastille, and include the Ile de la Cité and
the Ile Saint-Louis. The three Rive Gauche arrondissements stretch from
the Eiffel Tower to the Jardin des Plantes. On the Rive Droite the Place
de l'Opéra and the Place de la République, and on the Rive Gauche the
Place de Breteuil and the Place de l'Observatoire, are the outer corners
of the inner arrondissements. The Boulevard de Sébastopol on the Rive
Droite and the Boulevard Saint-Michel on the Rive Gauche form the only
straight route, cutting through the mass of tangled streets of
succeeding centuries. Running north and south, this central line divides
the arrondissements as the Seine does, running east and west.
I have a horror of guide-books, partly because I do not know how to use
them (I never have learned!) and partly because I love to find my way
without pre-meditation and by accident. But many of my readers will
never have the same opportunity I have enjoyed of discovering
fascinating spots at nightfall. Why should I resist the temptation of
indicating some of the strolls that make the late winter afternoons
delectable?
Everyone knows the Rue de Rivoli as far as the Oratoire or perhaps to
the Tour Saint-Jacques. At the crossing of the Boulevard Sébastopol, the
Rue de Rivoli leaves the familiar heart of Paris and enters the Fourth
Arrondissement. It becomes the Rue Saint-Antoine a couple of blocks
before the Eglise Saint-Paul. There the first break in the straight line
from the Place de la Concorde occurs. You deflect a little bit to the
right, and before you is the Bastille column. The Rue de Rivoli and the
Rue Saint-Antoine are the main artery of the Fourth Arrondissement. No
quarter of Paris affords more variety in walks at nightfall. Starting
from the Boulevard de Sébastopol, the streets on the left, at angles and
parallel to the main artery, are a labyrinth. Here is the Ghetto in a
setting incomparably more picturesque than the Ghettos of London and New
York. I doubt if even the oldest Paris _cocher_ finds his way here
unerringly. Through some of the streets no carriage can pass. The
narrowest street in Paris, the Rue de Venise, is here. Beginning
opposite the Hôtel de Ville, the Rue du Temple cuts through the Ghetto
all the way to the Place de la République. Then come the equally
interesting right-angle streets, the Rue des Archives and the Rue
Vieille du Temple. On the latter faces the Imprimerie Nationale. And do
not miss the parallel streets, Rue de la Verrerie, Rue du Roi de Sicile,
Rue Sainte-Croix de la Bretonne, Rue des Rosiers. Further along (now we
are in the Rue Saint-Antoine) the Rue de Birague leads one short block
into the Place des Vosges, one of the rare bits remaining of Paris of
Henri IV.
On the right hand side we have the Hôtel de Ville, the old buildings
behind the Lycée Charlemagne and the Quai des Célestins. Several bridges
cross to the Ile de la Cité and the Ile Saint-Louis. The Pont
Saint-Louis connects the two islands. There is nothing more wonderful in
Paris than to cross the Pont Sully from the eastern end of the Quai des
Célestins, walk through the Rue Saint-Louis-en-l'Ile, and come suddenly
upon the apse of Notre Dame, protected by its flying buttresses.
In the Second Arrondissement, start from the Place des Victoires at the
end of the Rue des Petits-Champs, and find your way through the various
tortuous routes that bring you out on the Grands Boulevards to the
Boulevard Poissonnière, the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle and the Boulevard
Saint-Denis. A few hundred feet from the Grands Boulevards, to the right
of the Rue Saint-Denis, as you go toward the river, Paris of the
Revolution remains in almost as full measure as in the Sixth
Arrondissement.
We must not leave the Rive Droite without mentioning two walks at
nightfall in the outer arrondissement. From the Place de la République,
the most interesting glimpse of a crowded workingmen's quarter can be
gained in an hour by walking up the Rue du Faubourg du Temple, which
becomes the Rue de Belleville. There is a steep climb until you reach
the Eglise Saint-Jean-Baptiste. To the right is Ménilmontant, dominating
the famous Père-Lachaise cemetery, and to the left you can climb still
farther to Buttes-Chaumont. The second walk is along the Quai de
Jemmapes, which you reach by turning to the left from the Rue du
Faubourg du Temple just after crossing the canal. A few blocks up, on
the right, through the Rue Grange aux Belles you pass the Hôpital
Saint-Louis, a group of seventeenth-century buildings which continue to
do blessed work in the twentieth century.
Dear me! I have forgotten Montmartre, where you climb endless flights of
stone steps and find--despite the tourist _réclame_--probably more of
old Paris than in any other part of the city.
On the Rive Gauche, the walks at nightfall are more difficult to
indicate. You can go anywhere in the three inner arrondissements, and
you will not be disappointed. Walk year after year and you will begin to
wonder whether you ever will follow out the oftformed resolution of
returning to America to live. In the Seventh Arrondissement the region
between the Quai d'Orsay and the Rue de Sèvres, the Rue des Saints-Pères
and the Invalides is the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where are to be found
the finest residences in Paris, far ahead of anything in the Etoile
Quarter. But unless you are lucky enough to have the _entrée_ to
aristocratic and diplomatic Paris, you can only guess at the beauty of
the gardens whose trees thrust alluring limbs over high walls and at
what is behind the stately portals of the _hôtels_.
In the Sixth Arrondissement the Boulevard Saint-Germain and the Rue de
Vaugirard are the best streets to take as guides in your wanderings.
Between the boulevard and the river, and between the boulevard and the
Rue de Vaugirard, most of the streets are thoroughfares, a swarming mass
of autos and wagons and push-carts, between five and seven.
What shall I say of the Fifth Arrondissement, most fascinating of all to
me because I know it best at nightfall, I suppose? My favorite nightfall
walk in Paris is behind the Panthéon. Start at the Place Maubert, on the
Boulevard Saint-Germain, climb the Rue de la Mont Sainte-Geneviève. Turn
to the left through the Rue Descartes, and you will find yourself in the
Rue Mouffetard. Here you are as far from modern Paris as you will ever
get. You walk for nearly a mile with no interruption of trams and
omnibuses. No taxi cab or truck would dream of using the Rue Mouffetard
as a thoroughfare. And yet, on the Rue Mouffetard, to eat and drink and
dress yourself and furnish your house, you can buy all you need. You do
not have to hunt for it: it is displayed before your eyes. The Rue
Mouffetard. Here you are as far from modern Paris time, and I might
shrink from some of the foodstuffs, if not all, it offers, were I to buy
by sunlight. But by flickering torch-light the Rue Mouffetard is Araby
to me. And I never come out at the Avenue des Gobelins without a sigh.
Why isn't the Rue Mouffetard just a bit longer?