contrasts, because one side of the principal line of hotels frequented
by our countrymen looks down upon the broad, luxurious Rue de Rivoli,
all modern gaiety and radiance, while the other side of their
courtyards open upon the busy working Rue St. Honoré, lined by the
tall, many-windowed houses which have witnessed so many revolutions.
They have all the picturesqueness of innumerable balconies, high,
slated roofs, with dormer windows, window-boxes full of carnations and
bright with crimson flowers through the summer, and they overlook an
ever-changing crowd, in great part composed of men in blouses and women
in white aprons and caps.
Ever since the fourteenth century the Rue St. Honoré has been one of
the busiest streets in Paris. It was the gate leading into this street
which was attacked by Jeanne d'Arc in 1429. It was the fact that the
Cardinal de Bourbon and the Due de Guise had been seen walking together
at the Porte St. Honoré that was said to have turned half the moustache
of Henri of Navarre suddenly white, from a presentiment of the crime
which has become known as the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Here, in
1648, the barricade was raised which gave the signal for all the
troubles of the Fronde. It was at No 3--then called L'Auberge des Trois
Pigeons--that Ravaillac was lodging when he was waiting to murder Henry
IV.; here the first gun was fired in the Revolution of July, 1830,
which overturned Charles X.; and here, in the Revolution of 1848, a
bloody combat took place between the insurgents and the military.
Throughout this street, as Marie Antoinette was first entering Paris,
the poissardes brought her bouquets, singing:
"La rose est la reine des fleurs.
Antoinette est la reine des coeurs."
("The rose is the queen of flowers, Antoinette is the queen of hearts")
and here, as she was being taken to the scaffold, they crowded round
her execution-cart and shouted:
"Madame Veto avait promis
De faire égorger tout Paris,
Mais son coup a manqué
Grâce à nos canonniers;
Dansons la carmagnole
Au bruit du son
Du canon!"
("Madame Veto had promised to have the throat cut of all Paris, but her
attempt failed, thanks to our gunners. Let us dance the carmagnole to
the music of the cannon's roar!")
* * * * *
Turning east toward Old Paris, we pass, on the right of the Rue St.
Honoré, the Church of St. Roch, of which Louis XIV. laid the
foundation-stone in 1633, replacing a chapel built on the site of the
Hôtel Gaillon. The church was only finished, from designs of Robert de
Cotte, in 1740. The flight of steps which leads to the entrance has
many associations.
"Before St. Roch," says De Goncourt, "the tumbrel in which was Marie
Antoinette, stopt in the midst of howling and hooting. A thousand
insults were hurled from the steps of the church as it were with one
voice, saluting with filth their queen about to die. She, however,
serene and majestic, pardoned the insults by disregarding them." It was
from these steps, in front of which an open space then extended to the
Tuileries gardens, that Bonaparte ordered the first cannon to be fired
upon the royalists who rose against the National Convention, and thus
prevented a counter-revolution. Traces of this cannonade of 13
Vendémiaire are still to be seen at the angle of the church and the Rue
Neuve St. Roch.
II
THE ENVIRONS OF PARIS
Versailles
By William Makepeace Thackeray
[Footnote: From "The Paris Sketch Book."]
You pass from the railroad station through a long, lonely suburb, with
dusty rows of stunted trees on either side, and some few miserable
beggars, idle boys, and ragged old women under them. Behind the trees
are gaunt, moldy houses; palaces once, where (in the days of the
unbought grace of life) the cheap defense of nations gambled, ogled,
swindled, intrigued; whence high-born duchesses used to issue, in old
times, to act as chambermaids to lovely Du Barri; and mighty princes
rolled away, in gilt caroches, hot for the honor of lighting his
Majesty to bed, or of presenting his stockings when he rose, or of
holding his napkin when he dined.
Tailors, chandlers, tinmen, wretched hucksters, and greengrocers, are
now established in the mansions of the old peers; small children are
yelling at the doors, with mouths besmeared with bread and treacle;
damp rags are hanging out of every one of the windows, steaming in the
sun; oyster-shells, cabbage-stalks, broken crockery, old papers, lie
basking in the same cheerful light. A solitary water-cart goes jingling
down the wide pavement, and spirts a feeble refreshment over the dusty,
thirty stones.
After pacing for some time through such dismal streets, we déboucher on
the grande place; and before us lies the palace dedicated to all the
glories of France. In the midst of the great lonely plain this famous
residence of King Louis looks low and mean--Honored pile! Time was when
tall musketeers and gilded body-guards allowed none to pass the gate.
Fifty years ago, ten thousand drunken women from Paris broke through
the charm; and now a tattered commissioner will conduct you through it
for a penny, and lead you up to the sacred entrance of the palace.
We will not examine all the glories of France, as here they are
portrayed in pictures and marble; catalogs are written about these
miles of canvas, representing all the revolutionary battles, from Valmy
to Waterloo--all the triumphs of Louis XIV.--all the mistresses of his
successor--and all the great men who have flourished since the French
empire began. Military heroes are most of these--fierce constables in
shining steel, marshals in voluminous wigs, and brave grenadiers in
bearskin caps; some dozens of whom gained crowns, principalities,
dukedoms; some hundreds, plunder and epaulets; some millions, death in
African sands, or in icy Russian plains, under the guidance, and for
the good, of that arch-hero, Napoleon.
By far the greater part of "all the glories" of France (as of most
other countries) is made up of these military men: and a fine satire it
is on the cowardice of mankind, that they pay such an extraordinary
homage to the virtue called courage; filling their history-books with
tales about it, and nothing but it.
Let them disguise the place, however, as they will, and plaster the
walls with bad pictures as they please, it will be hard to think of any
family but one, as one traverses this vast gloomy edifice. It has been
humbled to the ground, as a certain palace of Babel was of yore; but it
is a monument of fallen pride, not less awful, and would afford matter
for a whole library of sermons.
The cheap defense of nations expended a thousand millions in the
erection of this magnificent dwelling-place. Armies were employed, in
the intervals of their warlike labors, to level hills, or pile them up;
to turn rivers, and to build aqueducts, and transplant woods, and
construct smooth terraces, and long canals. A vast garden grew up in a
wilderness, and a stupendous palace in the garden, and a stately city
round the palace: the city was peopled with parasites, who daily came
to do worship before the creator of these wonders--the Great King.
"Only God is great," said courtly Massillon; but next to him, as the
prelate thought, was certainly Louis, his vicegerent here upon
earth--God's lieutenant-governor of the world--before whom courtiers
used to fall on their knees, and shade their eyes, as if the light of
his countenance, like the sun, which shone supreme in heaven, the type
of him, was too dazzling to bear.
Did ever the sun shine upon such a king before, in such a palace?--or,
rather, did such a king ever shine upon the sun? When Majesty came out
of his chamber, in the midst of his super-human splendors, viz., in his
cinnamon-colored coat, embroidered with diamonds; his pyramon of a wig;
his red-heeled shoes, that lifted him four inches from the ground,
"that he scarcely seemed to touch;" when he came out, blazing upon the
dukes and duchesses that waited his rising--what could the latter do
but cover their eyes, and wink, and tremble? And did he not himself
believe, as he stood there, on his high heels, under his ambrosial
periwig, that there was something in him more than man--something above
Fate?
This, doubtless, was he fain to believe; and if, on very fine days,
from his terrace before his gloomy palace of St. Germains, he could
catch a glimpse, in the distance, of a certain white spire of St.
Denis, where his race lay buried, he would say to his courtiers, with a
sublime condescension, "Gentlemen, you must remember that I, too, am
mortal."
Surely the lords in waiting could hardly think him serious, and vowed
that his Majesty always loved a joke. However, mortal or not, the sight
of that sharp spire wounded his Majesty's eyes; and is said, by the
legend, to have caused the building of the palace of Babel-Versailles.
In the year 1681, then, the great king, with bag and baggage--with
guards, cooks, chamberlains, mistresses, Jesuits, gentlemen, lackeys,
Fénelons, Molières, Lauzuns, Bossuets, Villars, Villeroys, Louvois,
Colberts--transported himself to his new palace: the old one being left
for James of England and Jaquette his wife, when their time should
come. And when the time did come, and James sought his brother's
kingdom, it is on record that Louis hastened to receive and console
him, and promised to restore, incontinently, those islands from which
the canaille had turned him.
Between brothers such a gift was a trifle; and the courtiers said to
one another reverently, "The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my
right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool." There was no
blasphemy in the speech; on the contrary, it was gravely said, by a
faithful believing man, who thought it no shame to the latter to
compare his Majesty with God Almighty.
Indeed, the books of the time will give one a strong idea how general
was this Louis-worship. I have just been looking at one which was
written by an honest Jesuit and protégé of Père la Chaise, who
dedicates it to the august Infants of France, which does, indeed, go
almost as far in print. He calls our famous monarch "Louis le Grand: 1,
l'invincible; 2, le sage; 3, le conquérant; 4, la merveille de son
siècle; 5, la terreur de ses ennemis; 6, l'amour de ses peuples; 7,
l'arbitre de la paix et de la guerre; 8, l'admiration de l'univers; 9,
et digne d'en être le maître; 10, le modèle d'un héros achevè; 11,
digne de l'immortalité, et de la vénération de tous les siècles!"
A pretty Jesuit declaration, truly, and a good, honest judgment upon
the great king! In 30 years more: 1. The invincible had been beaten a
vast number of times. 2. The sage was the puppet of an artful old
woman, who was the puppet of more artful priests. 3. The conqueror had
quite forgotten his early knack of conquering. 5. The terror of his
enemies (for 4, the marvel of his age, we pretermit, it being a loose
term, that may apply to any person or thing) was now terrified by his
enemies in turn. 6. The love of his people was as heartily detested by
them as scarcely any other monarch, not even his great-grandson, has
been, before or since. 7. The arbiter of peace and war was fain to send
superb ambassadors to kick their heels in Dutch shopkeepers'
antechambers. 8. Is again a general term. 9. The man fit to be master
of the universe was scarcely master of his own kingdom. 10. The
finished hero was all but finished, in a very commonplace and vulgar
way. And, 11, the man worthy of immortality was just at the point of
death, without a friend to soothe or deplore him; only withered old
Maintenon to utter prayers at his bedside, and croaking Jesuit to
prepare him, with heavens knows what wretched tricks and mummeries, for
his appearance in that Great Republic that lies on the other side of
the grave. In the course of his fourscore splendid miserable years, he
never had but one friend, and he ruined and left her. Poor La Vallière,
what a sad tale is yours!...
While La Vallière's heart is breaking, the model of a finished hero is
yawning; as, on such paltry occasions, a finished hero should. Let her
heart break: a plague upon her tears and repentance; what right has she
to repent? Away with her to her convent! She goes, and the finished
hero never sheds a tear. What a noble pitch of stoicism to have
reached! Our Louis was so great, that the little woes of mean people
were beyond him; his friends died, his mistresses left him; his
children, one by one, were cut off before his eyes, and great Louis is
not moved in the slightest degree! As how, indeed, should a god be
moved?...
Out of the window the king's august head was one day thrust, when old
Condé was painfully toiling up the steps of the court below. "Don't
hurry yourself, my cousin," cries Magnanimity; "one who has to carry so
many laurels can not walk fast." At which all the courtiers, lackeys,
mistresses, chamberlains, Jesuits, and scullions, clasp their hands and
burst into tears. Men are affected by the tale to this very day. For a
century and three-quarters have not all the books that speak of
Versailles, or Louis Quatorze, told the story?
"Don't hurry yourself, my cousin!" O admirable king and Christian! what
a pitch of condescension is here, that the greatest king of all the
world should go for to say anything so kind, and really tell a
tottering old gentleman, worn out with gout, age, and wounds, not to
walk too fast!
What a proper fund of slavishness is there in the composition of
mankind, that histories like these, should be found to interest and awe
them. Till the world's end, most likely, this story will have its place
in the history-books, and unborn generations will read it, and tenderly
be moved by it.
I am sure that Magnanimity went to bed that night, pleased and happy,
intimately convinced that he had done an action of sublime virtue, and
had easy slumbers and sweet dreams--especially if he had taken a light
supper, and not too vehemently attacked his "en cas de nuit." ...
The king his successor has not left, at Versailles, half so much
occasion for moralizing; perhaps the neigbhboring Parc aux Cerfs would
afford better illustrations of his reign. The life of his great
grandsire, the Grand Llama of France, seems to have frightened Louis
the well-beloved; who understood that loneliness is one of the
necessary conditions of divinity, and, being of a jovial, companionable
turn, aspired not beyond manhood.
Only in the matter of ladies did he surpass his predecessor, as Solomon
did David. War he eschewed, as his grandfather bade him; and his simple
taste found little in this world to enjoy beyond the mulling of
chocolate and the frying of pancakes. Look, here is the room called
Laboratoire du Roi, where, with his own hands, he made his mistress's
breakfast; here is the little door through which, from her apartments
in the upper story, the chaste Du Barri came stealing down to the arms
of the weary, feeble, gloomy old man.
But of women he was tired long since, and even pancake-frying had
palled upon him. What had he to do, after forty years of reign; after
having exhausted everything? Every pleasure that Dubois could invent
for his hot youth, or cunning Lebel could minister to his old age, was
flat and stale; used up to the very dregs; every shilling in the
national purse had been squeezed out, by Pompadour and Du Barri and
such brilliant ministers of state. He had found out the vanity of
pleasure, as his ancestor had discovered the vanity of glory: indeed,
it was high time that he should die. And die he did; and round his
tomb, as round that of his grandfather before him, the starving people
sang a dreadful chorus of curses, which were the only epitaphs for good
or for evil that were raised to his memory....
On the 10th of May, 1774, the whole court had assembled at the château;
the Oeil de Boeuf was full. The Dauphin had determined to depart as
soon as the king had breathed his last. And it was agreed by the people
of the stables, with those who watched in the king's room, that a
lighted candle should be placed in a window, and should be extinguished
as soon as he had ceased to live.
The candle was put out. At that signal, guards, pages, and squires,
mounted on horseback, and everything was made ready for departure. The
Dauphin was with the Dauphiness, waiting together for the news of the
king's demise. An immense noise, as of thunder, was heard in the next
room; it was the crowd of courtiers, who were deserting the dead king's
apartment, in order to pay their court to the new power of Louis XVI.
Madame de Noailles entered, and was the first to salute the queen by
her title of Queen of France, and begged their Majesties to quit their
apartments, to receive the princes and great lords of the court
desirous to pay their homage to the new sovereigns. Leaning on her
husband's arm, a handkerchief to her eyes, in the most touching
attitude, Marie Antoinette received these first visits.
On quitting the chamber where the dead king lay, the Due de Villequier
bade Mr. Anderville, first surgeon of the king, to open and embalm the
body: it would have been certain death to the surgeon.
"I am ready, sir," says he; "but while I am operating, you must hold
the head of the corpse; your charge demands it."
The Duke went away without a word, and the body was neither opened nor
embalmed. A few humble domestics and poor workmen watched by the
remains, and performed the last offices to their master. The surgeons
ordered spirits of wine to be poured into the coffin.
They huddled the king's body into a postchaise; and in this deplorable
equipage, with an escort of about forty men, Louis, the Well-beloved,
was carried, in the dead of night, from Versailles to Saint-Denis, and
then thrown into the tombs of the kings of France!
If any man is curious, and can get permission, he may mount to the roof
of the palace, and see where Louis XVI. used royally to amuse himself
by gazing upon the doings of all the towns-people below with a
telescope. Behold that balcony, where, one morning, he, his queen, and
the little Dauphin stood, with Cromwell Grandison Lafayette by their
side, who kissed her Majesty's hand, and protected her; and then,
lovingly surrounded by his people, the king got into a coach and came
to Paris: nor did his Majesty ride much in coaches after that....
He is said to have been such a smart journeyman blacksmith that he
might, if Fate had not perversely placed a crown on his head, have
earned a couple of louis every week by the making of locks and keys.
Those who will may see the workshop where he employed many useful
hours: Madame Elizabeth was at prayers meanwhile; the queen was making
pleasant parties with her ladies; Monsieur the Count d'Artois was
learning to dance on the tightrope; and Monsieur de Provence was
cultivating l'éloquence du billet and studying his favorite Horace.
It is said that each member of the august family succeeded remarkably
well in his or her pursuits; big Monsieur's little notes are still
cited. At a minuet or sillabub, poor Antoinette was unrivaled; and
Charles, on the tightrope, was so graceful and so gentil that Madame
Saqui might envy him. The time only was out of joint. Oh, curst spite,
that ever such harmless creatures as these were bidden to right it!
A walk to the little Trianon is both pleasing and moral; no doubt the
reader has seen the pretty, fantastical gardens which environ it; the
groves and temples; the streams and caverns (whither, as the guide
tells you, during the heat of summer, it was the custom of Marie
Antoinette to retire with her favorite, Madame de Lamballe): the lake
and Swiss village are pretty little toys, moreover; and the cicerone of
the place does not fail to point out the different cottages which
surround the piece of water, and tell the names of the royal
masqueraders who inhabited each.
In the long cottage, close upon the lake, dwelt the Seigneur du
Village, no less a personage than Louis XV.; Louis XVI., the Dauphin,
was the Pailli; near his cottage is that of Monseigneur the Count
d'Artois, who was the Miller; opposite lived the Prince de Condé, who
enacted the part of Gamekeeper (or, indeed, any other role, for it does
not signify much); near him was the Prince de Rohan, who was the
Aumonier; and yonder is the pretty little dairy, which was under the
charge of the fair Marie Antoinette herself.
I forget whether Monsieur the fat Count of Provence took any share of
this royal masquerading; but look at the names of the other six actors
of the comedy, and it will be hard to find any person for whom Fate had
such dreadful visitations in store. Fancy the party, in the days of
their prosperity, here gathered at Trianon, and seated under the tall
poplars by the lake, discoursing familiarly together: suppose, of a
sudden, some conjuring Cagliostro of the time is introduced among them,
and foretells to them the woes that are about to come.
"You, Monsieur l'Aumonier, the descendant of a long line of princes,
the passionate admirer of that fair queen who sits by your side, shall
be the cause of her ruin and your own, [Footnote: In the
diamond-necklace affair.] and shall die in disgrace and exile. You, son
of the Condés, shall live long enough to see your royal race
overthrown, and shall die by the hands of a hangman. [Footnote: He was
found hanging in his own bed-room.] You, oldest son of St. Louis, shall
perish by the executioner's ax; that beautiful head, O Antoinette, the
same ruthless blade shall sever."
"They shall kill me first," says Lamballe, at the queen's side.
"Yes, truly," says the soothsayer, "for Fate prescribes ruin for your
mistress and all who love her."
[Footnote: Among the many lovers that rumor gave to the Queen, poor
Fersen is the most remarkable. He seems to have entertained for her a
high and perfectly pure devotion. He was the chief agent in the
luckless escape to Varennes; was lurking in Paris during the time of
her captivity; and was concerned in the many fruitless plots that were
made for her rescue. Fersen lived to be an old man, but died a dreadful
and violent death. He was dragged from his carriage by the mob. In
Stockholm, and murdered by them.--Author's note.]
"And," cries Monsieur d'Artois, "do I not love my sister, too? I pray
you not to omit me in your prophecies."
To whom Monsieur Cagliostro says, scornfully, "You may look forward to
fifty years of life, after most of these are laid in the grave. You
shall be a king, but not die one; and shall leave the crown only; not
the worthless head that shall wear it. Thrice shall you go into exile;
you shall fly from the people, first, who would have no more of you and
your race; and you shall return home over half a million of human
corpses, that have been made for the sake of you, and of a tyrant as
great as the greatest of your family. Again driven away, your bitterest
enemy shall bring you back. But the strong limbs of France are not to
be chained by such a paltry yoke as you can put on her: you shall be a
tyrant, but in will only; and shall have a scepter, but to see it
robbed from your hand."
"And pray, Sir Conjurer, who shall be the robber?" asked Monsieur the
Count d'Artois.
This I can not say, for here my dream ended. The fact is, I had fallen
asleep on one of the stone benches in the Avenue de Paris, and at this
instant was awakened by a whirling of carriages and a great clattering
of national guards, lancers, and outriders, in red. His Majesty, Louis
Philippe, was going to pay a visit to the palace; which contains
several pictures of his own glorious actions, and which has been
dedicated, by him, to all the glories of France.
Versailles in 1739
By Thomas Gray
[Footnote: From a letter to his friend West.]
What a huge heap of littleness! It is composed, as it were, of three
courts, all open to the eye at once, and gradually diminishing till you
come to the royal apartments, which on this side present but half a
dozen windows and a balcony. This last is all that can be called a
front, for the rest is only great wings. The hue of all this mass is
black, dirty red, and yellow; the first proceeding from stone changed
by age; the second, from a mixture of brick; and the last, from a
profusion of tarnished gilding. You can not see a more disagreeable
tout ensemble; and, to finish the matter, it is all stuck over in many
places with small busts of a tawny hue between every two windows.