Seeing Europe with Famous Authors Volume III Part 3

It was Etienne Marcel, Mayor of Paris, who first established the munic.i.p.al council at the Place de Greve, at that time the only large square in Paris. In July, 1357, he purchased as a Hostel de Ville the Maison aux Piliers, which had been inhabited by Clemence d'Hongrie, widow of Louis le Hutin, and which afterward took the name of Maison du Dauphin from her nephew and heir, Guy, Dauphin de Viennois.

In 1532 a new Hotel de Ville was begun and finished by the architect Marin de la Vallee in the reign of Henri IV. This was so much altered by successive restorations and revolutions that only a staircase, two monumental chimney-pieces in the Salle du Trone, and some sculptured doorways and other details remained from the interior decorations in the old building at the time of its destruction.

Till the time of Louis XVI. the history of the Hotel de Ville was entirely local; after that it became the history of France. It was there that Louis XVI. received the tri-colored c.o.c.kade from Bailly, Mayor of Paris, July 17, 1789; and there, in the chamber called, from its hangings, Le Cabinet Vert, that Robespierre was arrested, in the name of the Convention, during one of the meetings of the Commune, July 27, 1794. After the fall of Robespierre it was seriously proposed to pull down the Hotel de Ville, because it had been his last asylum--"Le Louvre de Robespierre." It was only saved by the common-sense of Leonard Bourdon.

But most of all, in the popular recollection, is the Hotel de Ville connected with public fetes--with those on the second marriage of Napoleon I. (1810), on the entry of Louis XVIII. (1814), on the coronation of Charles X. (1825), on the marriage of the Duke of Orleans (1837), on the visits of different foreign potentates to Napoleon III. Here also was the Republic proclaimed, September 4, 1870.

It was in one of the windows of the Hotel de Ville that Louis Philippe embraced Lafayette (August, 1830) in sight of the people, to evince the union of the July monarchy with the bourgeoisie. On the steps of the building Louis Blanc proclaimed the Republic, February 24,1848. From September 4, 1870, to February 28, 1871, the hotel was the seat of the "government of the national defense," and from March 19 to May 22, 1871, that of the pretended "Committee of public safety" of the Communists. On May 24 it was burned by its savage defenders, many of whom happily perished in the flames.

The Place de l'Hotel de Ville is so modernized that it retains nothing of the Place de Greve but its terrible historic a.s.sociations. Among the many fearful executions here, it is only necessary to recall that of Jean Hardi, torn to pieces by four horses (March 30, 1473) on an accusation of trying to poison Louis XI.; that of the Comte de St. Pol (December 19, 1475), long commemorated by a pillar; those of a long list of Protestants, opened by the auto-de-fe of Jacques de Povanes, student of the University, in 1525; that of Nicholas de Salcede, Sieur d'Auvillers, torn to pieces by four horses in the presence of the king and queens, for conspiracy to murder the Duc d'Anjou, youngest son of Catherine de Medici. More terrible still was the execution of Ravaillac (May 27, 1610) murderer of Henri IV.

"The executioner cut off his hand with an ax, and threw it and the murderous knife into the fire. His b.r.e.a.s.t.s, his arms and his legs were torn with pincers, and boiling oil and melted lead poured into the open wounds. He was then dismembered by four strong horses, which pulled for no less than an entire hour. They dismembered only a corpse. He expired,"

says L'Estoile, "at the second or third pull." When the executioner had to throw the limbs into the fire that the ashes, according to the sentence, might be flung to the winds, the whole crowd rushed on to claim them.

"But," adds the same chronicler, "the people rushed on so impetuously that every mother's son had a piece, even the children, who made fires of them at the corners of the streets."

After the capture of the Bastille its brave governor, M. de Launay, was beheaded on the steps of the Hotel de Ville, and his major, M. de Losme- Salbray, was ma.s.sacred under the Arcade St. Jean. These were the first victims of the Revolution. Foulon, Intendant du Commerce, suffered here soon afterward, hung from the cords by which a lamp was suspended, whence the expression, which soon resounded in many a popular refrain, of "put the aristocrats to the lantern."

Two parasite buildings, the Conciergerie, and the Prefecture of Police, are now annexed to the Palais de Justice. The Conciergerie takes its name from the house of the concierge in the time of the royal residence here, who had a right to two chickens a day and to the cinders and ashes of the king's chimney.

It has always been a prison, and it was here that the Comte d'Armagnac was murdered, June 12, 1418. Here was made, below the level of the Seine, the prison called La Souriciere, from the rats which had the reputation of eating the prisoners alive. The present Conciergerie occupies the lower story of the right wing of the existing Palais de Justice, and extends along the Quai de l'Horloge, as far as the towers of Montgomery and Cesar.

It has an entrance on the quay, before which the guillotine-carts received the victims of the Reign of Terror, and another to the right of the great staircase in the Cour d'Honneur.

All other a.s.sociations of the Conciergerie are lost in those which were attached to it by the great Revolution. The cell in which Marie Antoinette suffered her seventy-five days' agony--from August 2 till October 15, when she was condemned--was turned into a chapel of expiation in 1816. The lamp still exists which lighted the august prisoner and enabled her guards to watch her through the night. The door still exists, tho changed in position, which was cut transversely in half and the upper part fixt that the queen might be forced to bend in going out, because she had said that whatever indignities they might inflict upon her they could never force her to bend the head.

After her condemnation, Marie Antoinette was not brought back to this chamber. It was a far more miserable cell which saw her write her last touching farewell to Madame Elizabeth. But this was the room in which the Girondins spent their last night, when, as Riouffe, himself in the prison at the time, says, "all during this frightful night their songs sounded and if they stopt singing it was but to talk about their country." The adjoining cell, now used as a sacristy, was the prison of Robespierre.

Pere la Chaise

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

[Footnote: From "Outre Mer." Published by Houghton, Mifflin Co.]

The cemetery of Pere la Chaise is the Westminster Abbey of Paris. Both are the dwellings of the dead; but in one they repose in green alleys and beneath the open sky--in the other their resting-place is in the shadowy aisle, and beneath the dim arches of an ancient abbey. One is a temple of nature; the other a temple of art. In one, the soft melancholy of the scene is rendered still more touching by the warble of birds and the shade of trees, and the grave receives the gentle visit of the suns.h.i.+ne and the shower; in the other, no sound but the pa.s.sing footfall breaks the silence of the place; the twilight steals in through high and dusky windows; and the damps of the gloomy vault lie heavy on the heart, and leave their stain upon the moldering tracery of the tomb.

Pere la Chaise stands just beyond the Barriere d'Aulney, on a hill-side, looking toward the city. Numerous gravel-walks, winding through shady avenues and between marble monuments, lead up from the princ.i.p.al entrance to a chapel on the summit. There is hardly a grave that has not its little inclosure planted with shrubbery; and a thick ma.s.s of foliage half conceals each funeral stone. The sighing of the wind, as the branches rise and fall upon it,--the occasional note of a bird among the trees, and the s.h.i.+fting of light and shade upon the tombs beneath, have a soothing effect upon the mind; and I doubt whether any one can enter that inclosure, where repose the dust and ashes of so many great and good men, without feeling the religion of the place steal over him, and seeing something of the dark and gloomy expression pa.s.s off from the stern countenance of death.

It was near the close of a bright summer afternoon that I visited this celebrated spot for the first time. The object that arrested my attention, on entering, was a monument in the form of a small Gothic chapel, which stands near the entrance, in the avenue leading to the right hand. On the marble couch within are stretched two figures, carved in stone and drest in the antique garb of the Middle Ages. It is the tomb of Abelard and Helose. The history of these unfortunate lovers is too well known to need recapitulation; but perhaps it is not so well known how often their ashes were disturbed in the slumber of the grave. Abelard died in the monastery of Saint Marcel, and was buried in the vaults of the church. His body was afterward removed to the convent of the Paraclet, at the request of Helose, and at her death her body was deposited in the same tomb. Three centuries they reposed together; after which they were separated to different sides of the church, to calm the delicate scruples of the lady- abbess of the convent. More than a century afterward, they were again united in the same tomb; and when at length the Paraclet was destroyed, their moldering remains were transported to the church of Nogent-sur- Seine. They were next deposited in an ancient cloister at Paris; and now repose near the gateway of the cemetery of Pere la Chaise. What a singular destiny was theirs! that, after a life of such pa.s.sionate and disastrous love,--such sorrows, and tears, and penitence--their very dust should not be suffered to rest quietly in the grave!--that their death should so much resemble their life in its changes and vicissitudes, its partings and its meetings, its inquietudes and its persecutions!--that mistaken zeal should follow them down to the very tomb--as if earthly pa.s.sion could glimmer, like a funeral lamp, amid the damps of the charnel-house, and "even in their ashes b.u.m their wonted fires!"....

Leaving this interesting tomb behind me, I took a pathway to the left, which conducted me up the hill-side. I soon found myself in the deep shade of heavy foliage, where the branches of the yew and willow mingled, interwoven with the tendrils and blossoms of the honeysuckle. I now stood in the most populous part of this city of tombs. Every step awakened a new train of thrilling recollections; for at every step my eye caught the name of some one whose glory had exalted the character of his native land, and resounded across the waters of the Atlantic. Philosophers, historians, musicians, warriors, and poets slept side by side around me; some beneath the gorgeous monument, and some beneath the simple headstone. But the political intrigue, the dream of science, the historical research, the ravis.h.i.+ng harmony of sound, the tried courage, the inspiration of the lyre--where are they? With the living, and not with the dead! The right hand has lost its cunning in the grave; but the soul, whose high volitions it obeyed, still lives to reproduce itself in ages yet to come.

Among these graves of genius I observed here and there a splendid monument, which had been raised by the pride of family over the dust of men who could lay no claim either to the grat.i.tude or remembrances of posterity. Their presence seemed like an intrusion into the sanctuary of genius. What had wealth to do there? Why should it crowd the dust of the great? That was no thoroughfare of business--no mart of gain! There were no costly banquets there; no silken garments, nor gaudy liveries, nor obsequious attendants!....

I continued my walk through the numerous winding paths, as chance or curiosity directed me. Now I was lost in a little green hollow, overhung with thick-leaved shrubbery, and then came out upon an elevation, from which, through an opening in the trees, the eye caught glimpses of the city, and the little esplanade, at the foot of the hill, where the poor lie buried. There poverty hires its grave, and takes but a short lease of the narrow house. At the end of a few months, or at most of a few years, the tenant is dislodged to give place to another, and he in turn to a third. "Who," says Sir Thomas Browne, "knows the fate of his bones, or how often he is to be buried? Who hath the oracle of his ashes, or whither they are to be scattered?"

Yet, even in that neglected corner, the hand of affection had been busy in decorating the hired house. Most of the graves were surrounded with a slight wooden paling, to secure them from the pa.s.sing footstep; there was hardly one so deserted as not to be marked with its little wooden cross, and decorated with a garland of flowers; and here and there I could perceive a solitary mourner, clothed in black, stooping to plant a shrub on the grave, or sitting in motionless sorrow beside it....

After rambling leisurely about for some time, reading the iscriptions on the various monuments which attracted my curiosity, and giving way to the different reflections they suggested, I sat down to rest myself on a sunken tombstone. A winding gravel-walk, overshaded by an avenue of trees, and lined on both sides with richly sculptured monuments, had gradually conducted me to the summit of the hill, upon whose slope the cemetery stands. Beneath me in the distance, and dim-discovered through the misty and smoky atmosphere of evening, rose the countless roofs and spires of the city. Beyond, throwing his level rays athwart the dusky landscape, sank the broad red sun. The distant murmur of the city rose upon my ear; and the toll of the evening bell came up, mingled with the rattle of the paved street and the confused sounds of labor. What an hour for meditation! What a contrast between the metropolis of the living and the metropolis of the dead!....

Before I left the graveyard the shades of evening had fallen, and the objects around me grown dim and indistinct. As I pa.s.sed the gateway, I turned to take a parting look. I could distinguish only the chapel on the summit of the hill, and here and there a lofty obelisk of snow-white marble, rising from the black and heavy ma.s.s of foliage around, and pointing upward to the gleam of the departed sun, that still lingered in the sky, and mingled with the soft starlight of a summer evening.

The Musee de Cluny

By Grant Allen

[Footnote: From "Paris."]

The primitive nucleus of the suburb on the South Side consists of the Roman fortress palace, the "tete du pont" of the Left Bank, now known as the Thermes, owing to the fact that its princ.i.p.al existing remains include only the ruins of the bath or therma. This colossal building, probably erected by Constantius Chlorus, the father of Constantine, covered an enormous area south of the river. After the Frankish conquest, it still remained the residence of the Merwing and Karling kings on the rare occasions when they visited Paris; and it does not seem to have fallen into utter decay till a comparatively late date in the Middle Ages.

With the Norman irruptions, however, and the rise of the real French monarchs under Eudes and the Capets, the new sovereigns found it safest to transfer their seat to the Palace on the Island (now the Palais de Justice), and the Roman fortress was gradually dismantled. In 1340 the gigantic ruins came into the hands of the powerful Benedictine Abbey of Cluny, near Macon, in Burgundy; and about 1480, the abbots began to erect on the spot a town mansion for themselves, which still bears the name of the Hotel de Cluny. The letter K, the mark of Charles VIII. (1483-1498), occurs on many parts of the existing building, and fixes its epoch. The house was mostly built by Jaques d'Amboise, abbot, in 1490. The style is late Gothic, with Renaissance features.

The abbots, however, seldom visited Paris, and they frequently placed their town house accordingly at the disposition of the kings of France.

Mary of England, sister of Henry VIII., and widow of Louis XII., occupied it thus in 1515, soon after its completion. It was usual for the queens of France to wear white as mourning; hence her apartment is still known as the "Chambre de la reine blanche."

At the Revolution, when the property of the monasteries was confiscated, the Hotel de Cluny was sold, and pa.s.sed at last, in 1833, into the hands of M. du Sommerard, a zealous antiquary, who began the priceless collection of works of art which it contains. He died in 1842, and the Government then bought the house and museum, and united it with the Roman ruin at its back under the t.i.tle of Musee des Thermes et de l'Hotel de Cluny. Since that time many further objects have been added to the collection.

At Cluny the actual building forms one of the most interesting parts of the sight, and is in itself a museum. It is a charming specimen of a late medieval French mansion; and the works of art it contains are of the highest artistic value.... At least two whole days should be devoted to Cluny--one to the lower and one to the upper floor. Much more, if possible.

The Place de la Bastille

By Augustus J. C. Hare

[Footnote: From "Walks in Paris." By arrangement with the publisher, David McKay. Copyright, 1880.]

The south end of the Rue des Tournelles falls into the Place de la Bastille, containing Le Colonne de Juillet, surmounted by a statue of Liberty, and erected 1831-1840. This marks the site of the famous castle- prison of the Bastille, which for four centuries and a half terrified Paris, and which has left a name to the quarter it frowned upon. Hugues Ambriot, Mayor of Paris, built it under Charles V. to defend the suburb which contained the royal palace of St. Paul. Unpopular from the excess of his devotion to his royal master, Aubriot was the first prisoner in his own prison.

Perhaps the most celebrated of the long list of after captives were the Connetable de St. Pol and Jacques d'Armagnac, Due de Nemours, taken thence for execution to the Place de Greve under Louis XI., Charles de Gontaut, Due de Biron, executed within the walls of the fortress under Henri IV., and the "Man with the Iron Mask," brought hither mysteriously, September 18, 1698, and who died in the Bastille, November 19, 1703.

A thousand engravings show us the Bastille as it was--as a "fort-bastide"