The Stones of Paris in History and Letters Volume I Part 3

It may have been while driving between this tower and his sister's house, that Pascal's carriage was overturned on Pont-Neuf, and he narrowly escaped death by falling or by drowning. From that day he gave up his service to science, and gave himself up solely to the service of G.o.d. Into his "Thoughts" he put all his depth of reflection and his intensity of feeling, all his force and finish of phrase. Yet, always behind this Christian philosopher, we are conscious of the man of feeling, who owns that he could be drawn down from his high meditations, and could be drawn up from his profound melancholy, by "_un peu de bon temps, un bon mot, une louange, une caresse_."

His body was laid in the Abbey Church of Sainte-Genevieve, and was removed, on the destruction of that edifice in 1807, to its successor in tradition and sentiment, Saint-etienne-du-Mont. It rests at the base of one of the outer pillars of the Lady Chapel, opposite the spot of Racine's final sepulture. The two tablets from their original tombs have been set in the pillars of the first chapel on the southern side of the choir, just behind the exquisite rood-screen.

When aged Rue Rollin was quite young it was christened Rue Neuve-Saint-etienne, and it was bordered by cottages standing in their own gardens, looking down the slope across the town to the river, this being the highest street on the hill-side. Its length has been lessened by Rue Monge, and that portion left to the east of the new street is now Rue de Navarre. Rue Monge was cut through the crest of the hill, so that one must mount by stone steps to the old level of the western end of Rue Neuve-Saint-etienne, named anew in honor of the scholar and historian, who has given his name also to the great college, since removed from this quarter to Boulevard Rochechouart, away off on the northern heights. Charles Rollin was an earnest student, an unusually youthful Rector of the University, and princ.i.p.al of the College of Beauvais in 1696, and a writer of history and _belles-lettres_ of great charm but little weight. He was, withal, an honest soul, somewhat nave, of simple tastes and of quiet life. So he came to this secluded quarter, when a little over seventy, and here he died in 1741. His cottage is numbered 8 in the street, and is occupied by the school of Sainte-Genevieve, whose demure maidens do no violence to his tranquil garden in which they stroll. For their use a small pavilion has been built in the rear of the garden, but there is no other change. The two Latin lines, inscribed by him in praise of his rural home within the town, remain on an inner wall of his cottage at your left as you enter.

Fifty years later another writer found a quiet home in this same street. Hidden behind the heavy outer door of No. 4, a roomy mansion built in 1623 by a country-loving subject of Louis XIII., is a tablet that tells of the residence here, from 1781 to 1786, of Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. A man of finer qualities and subtler charm than Rollin, his work is of no greater weight in our modern eyes, for with all the refinement of imagination and the charm of description that made his pen "a magic wand" to Sainte-Beuve, his emotional optimism grows monotonous, and his exuberant sensibility flows over into sentimentality. In the court of his house is an ancient well, and behind lies a lovable little garden, with a rare iron rail and gateway. This traveller in many lands, this adorer of nature, took keen delight in his outlook, from his third-story windows, over this garden and the gardens beyond, to the Seine. Here in 1784 he wrote "Studies from Nature," an instantaneous success, surpa.s.sed only by the success of "Paul and Virginia," published in 1786. Possibly no book has ever had such a vogue. It was after reading this work, in Italy, that the young Bonaparte wrote to Bernardin: "Your pen is a painter's brush." Yet his reading of the ma.n.u.script, before its publication, in the _salon_ of Madame Necker, had merely bored his hearers, and the humiliated author had fled from their yawns to this congenial solitude.

The narrow street has suffered slight change since those days, or since those earlier days, when Rene Descartes found a temporary home, probably on the site of present No. 14, a house built since his day here. That was between 1613, when he first came from Brittany, and 1617, when he went to the Netherlands. But there can be found no trace of the stay in this street, nor of the secluded home in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, of the founder of Cartesian philosophy--the first movement in the direction of modern philosophy--the father of modern physiology, as Huxley claims, and of modern psychology, as its students allow. His wandering life, in search always of truth, ended in 1650, at the court of Christina of Sweden. His body was brought back to France by the amba.s.sador of Louis XIV., and placed in the old Church of Sainte-Genevieve. In 1793, the Convention decreed its removal to the recently completed and secularized Pantheon, and from there it was carried for safe keeping, along with so many others, to the Museum of French Monuments. In 1819 it found final resting-place in Saint-Germain-des-Pres, in the third chapel on the southern side of the choir. The man himself lives for us on the wonderful canvas of Franz Hals in the gallery of the Louvre.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Rene Descartes.

(From the portrait by Franz Hals, in the Musee du Louvre.)]

The Paris of the north bank has its slope, that looks across the Seine to this southern slope, and that has come to be its Scholarly Quarter.

The high land away behind the lowlands stretching along the northern bank was taken early by the Romans for their villas, and then by n.o.bles for their _chateaux_, and then by the _bourgeoisie_ for their cottages. As _la Ville_ grew, its citizens gave all their thought to honest industry and to the honest struggle for personal and munic.i.p.al rights, so that none was left for literature. When its time came, the town had spread up and over these northern heights, and men of letters and of the arts were attracted by their open s.p.a.ces and ample outlook.

So large a colony of these workers had settled there, early in the nineteenth century, that some among them gave to their hill-side the name of "_la Nouvelle Athenes_." Its vogue has gone on growing, and it is crowded with the memories of dead pen-workers, and with the presence of living pen-workers. So, too, are the suburbs toward the west, and this Scholars' Quarter on the southern bank, which is barely touched on in this book, given so greatly as it is to history, archaeology, architecture, and other arts. All this wide-spread district awaits the diligent pen that has given us "The Literary Landmarks of London," to give us, as completely and accurately, "The Literary Landmarks of Paris."

MOLIeRE AND HIS FRIENDS

MOLIeRE AND HIS FRIENDS

In the early years of the seventeenth century there stood a low, wide, timbered house on the eastern corner of Rues Saint-Honore and des Vieilles-etuves. To the dwellers in that crowded quarter of the Halles it was known as "_la Maison des Singes_," because of the carved wooden tree on its angle, in the branches of which wooden monkeys shook down wooden fruit to an old wooden monkey at its foot. This house, that dated from the thirteenth century surely, and that may have been a part of Queen Blanche's Paris, was torn down only in 1800, and a slice of its site has been cut off by Rue Sauval, the widened and renamed Rue des Vieilles-etuves. The modern building on that corner, numbered 92 Rue Saint-Honore, is so narrow as to have only one window on each of its three floors facing that street. Around the first story, above the butcher's shop on the entrance floor, runs a balcony with great gilt letters on its rail, that read "_Maison de Moliere_." High up on its front wall is a small tablet, whose legend, deciphered with difficulty from the street, claims this spot for the birthplace of Moliere. This is a veracious record. The exact date of the birth of the eldest son of Jacques Poquelin and Marie Cresse, his wife, is unknown, but it was presumably very early in January, 1622, for, on the fifteenth of that month, the baby was baptized "Jean Poquelin," in his father's parish church of Saint-Eustache--a new church not quite completed then. The name "Baptiste" was, seemingly, added a little later by his parents.

On this corner the boy lived for eleven years; here his mother died, ten years after his birth, and here his father soon married again; he removed, in 1633, to a house he had inherited, the ground floor of which he made his shop of upholstery and of similar stuffs, the family residing above. It was No. 3 Rue de la Tonnellerie, under the pillars of the Halles, possibly, but not certainly, on the site of the present No. 31 Rue du Pont-Neuf. In a niche, cut in the front wall of this modern building, has been placed a bust of Moliere and an inscription a.s.serting that this was his birthspot, a local legend that harms no one, and comforts at least the _locataire_.

Hereabout, certainly, the boy played, running forward and back across the market. On its northern side, near the public pillory, was another house owned by his father, on the old corner of Rue de la Reale, and its site is now covered by the pavement of modern Rue Rambuteau. It is pleasant to picture the lad in this ancient quarter, as we walk through those few of its streets unchanged to this day, notably that bit of Rue de la Ferronerie, so narrow that it blocked the carriage of Henri IV., a few years before, and brought him within easy reach of the knife of Ravaillac as he sprang on the wheel.

Francois Coppee, not yet an old man, readily recalls the square squat columns of the old Halles, and, all about, the solid houses supported by pillars like the arcades of Place des Vosges; all just as when young Poquelin played about them. Plays, as well as play, already attracted him; he loved to look at the marionettes and the queer side-shows of the outdoor fairs held about the Halles; and his grandfather, Louis Cresse, an ardent playgoer, often took him to laugh at the funny fellows who frolicked on the trestles of the Pont-Neuf, and at the rollicking farces in the Theatre du Marais. No doubt he saw, too, the tragedies of the theatre of the Hotel de Bourgogne, and this observant boy may well have antic.i.p.ated the younger Crebillon's opinion, that French tragedy of that day was the most absolute farce yet invented by the human mind. For this was a little while before the coming of Corneille with true tragedy.

This son of the King's upholsterer cared nothing for his father's trade, and not much for books. He learned, early, that his eyes were meant for seeing, and he not only saw everything, but he remembered and reflected; showing signs already of that bent which gave warrant, in later life, for Boileau's epithet, "Moliere the Contemplator."

He was sent, in 1636, being then fourteen years old, to the College de Clermont, named a little later, and still named, Lycee Louis-le-Grand.

Rebuilt during the Second Empire, it stands on its old site behind the College de France, in widened Rue Saint-Jacques. Here, during his course of five years, he was sufficiently diligent in such studies as happened to please him; and was prominent in the plays, acted by the scholars at each prize-giving. He made many friends.h.i.+ps with boys who became famous men; with one, just leaving school as he came, who especially stood his friend in after life--the youthful Prince de Conti, younger brother of the great Conde. And this elder brother became, years after, the friend and protector of the young actor-playwright, just as he was of some others of that famous group, Racine, La Fontaine, Boileau. All these, along with all men eminent in any way, were welcomed to his grand seat at Chantilly, and were frequent guests at his great town-house, whose _salon_ was a rival to that of the Hotel de Rambouillet. His mansion, with its grounds, occupied the whole of that triangular s.p.a.ce bounded now by Rues de Vaugirard, de Conde, and Monsieur-le-Prince. At the northern point of that triangle, nearly on the ground now covered by the Second Theatre Francais, the Odeon, stood the prince's private theatre; wherein Moliere, by invitation, played the roles of author, actor, manager.

Moliere's customary role in this great house was that of friend of the host, who wrote to him: "Come to me at any hour you please; you have but to announce your name; you visit can never be ill-timed."

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin betook himself early to the boards for which he was born, from which he could not be kept by his course at college or at law. He studied law fitfully for a while; sufficiently, withal, to lay up a stock of legal technicalities and procedure, which he employed with precision in many of his plays. So, too, he took in, no doubt unconsciously, details of his father's business; and his references, in his stage-talk, to hangings, furniture, and costumes, are frequent and exact.

The father, unable to journey with the King to Narbonne in the spring of 1642, as his official duties demanded, had his son appointed to the place, and the young man, accompanying the court and playing _tap.i.s.sier_ on this journey, saw, it is said, the execution of Cinq-Mars and de Thou. In the provinces at this time, or it may have been in Paris earlier, he met, became intimate with, and soon after joined, a troupe of strolling players, made up of Joseph Bejart, his two sisters Madeleine and Genevieve, and other young Parisians.

This troupe was touring in Languedoc early in 1642, and was rather strong in its talent and fortunate in its takings; in no way akin to that shabby set of barnstormers satirized by Scarron in his "Roman Comique." We cannot fix the date of Poquelin's _debut_ in the company, but we know that--with the unhallowed ambition of the born and predestined comedian--he began in tragedy, and that he was greeted by his rural audiences with hootings, punctuated by the pelting of fried potatoes, then sold at the theatre door. And we know that the troupe came north to Rouen in the autumn of 1643, playing a night or two in the natal town of Corneille. It is a plausible and a pleasing fancy that sees the glory of French dramatic art of that day, at home on a visit to his mother, receiving free tickets for the show, with the respects of the young recruit to the stage, the glory of French dramatic art at no distant day. The troupe had gone to Rouen and to other provincial towns only while awaiting the construction of their theatre in the capital, contracted for during the summer. At last, on the evening of December 31, 1643, it raised its first curtain to the Parisian public, under the brave, or the b.u.mptious, t.i.tle of "l'Ill.u.s.tre Theatre."

To trace, from his first step on Paris boards, the successive sites of Moliere's theatres is a delightful task, in natural continuation of that begun in an earlier chapter, where those theatres in existence before his time were pointed out. In England, we know, stage-players were "strollers and vagabonds" by statute; not allowed to play within London's walls. All their early theatres were outside the City limits.

The Globe, the summer theatre of Shakespeare and his "fellows"--"whereon was prepared scaffolds for beholders to stand upon"--was across the Thames, on Bankside, Southwark. So, too, were the Hope, the Rose, the Swan. The Curtain was in Sh.o.r.editch, Davenant's theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and the Blackfriars theatre on Ludgate Hill, just without the old wall.

The early playhouses of Paris were built--but for another reason--on the outer side of the town wall of Philippe-Auguste, and their seemingly unaccountable situations are easily accounted for by following on either bank the course of that wall, already plainly mapped out in preceding pages.

This magnificent wall of a magnificent monarch had lost much of its old significance for defence with the coming of gunpowder, and a new use was found for it, in gentler games than war, as the town outgrew its encircling limits. In the Middle Ages, tennis--the oldest ball-game known--was a favorite sport of kings and of those about them. It was called _le jeu de paume_, being played with the hand until the invention of the racket; the players standing in the ditch outside the wall, against which the ball was thrown. Beyond the ditch was built the court for onlookers, the common folk standing on its floor, their betters seated in the gallery. When the game lost its vogue, these courts were easily and cheaply turned into the rude theatres of that day, with abundant s.p.a.ce for actors and spectators; those of low degree crowding on foot in the body of the building, those who paid a little more seated in the galleries, those of high degree on stools and benches at the side of the stage, and even on the stage itself. This encroachment on the stage, within sight of the audience, grew to such an abuse that it was done away with in 1759, and the scene was left solely to the players.

Where a tablet is let into the wall of the present Nos. 12 and 14 Rue Mazarine, then named the Fosse-de-Nesle--the ancient outer ditch of the old wall--a roomy playhouse had been contrived from a former tennis-court owned by Arnold Mestayer, a solid citizen of the town, captain of the Hundred Musketeers of Henri IV.'s day. This was the theatre taken by the Bejart troupe and named "l'Ill.u.s.tre Theatre."

Here young Poquelin made his first bow to Paris. The building stood on the sites of the present Nos. 10, 12, and 14 Rue Mazarine, its only entrance for spectators reached by an alley that ran along the line between Nos. 14 and 16, and so through to Rue de Seine, to where the buildings extended over the ground now covered by Nos. 11 and 13.

These latter houses are claimed by local legend for Moliere's residence, and it may well be that the rear part of the theatre served as sleeping-quarters for the troupe. The interior of No. 11 is of very ancient construction, its front being of later date. In the wall between it and No. 9--a low wooden structure, possibly a portion of the original fabric--is hidden the well that served first the tennis-players and then the stage-players. There is no longer any communication between these houses in Rue de Seine and those in Rue Mazarine. These latter were built in 1830, when the street was widened, that portion of the old theatre having been demolished a few years earlier.

It was in June, 1644, that the name Moliere first appears, signed--it is his earliest signature in existence--among the rest of the company, to a contract with a dancing man for the theatre. How he came to select this name is not known, nor was it known to any of his young comrades; for he always refused to give his reasons. What is known, is that it was a name of weight even then, proving that, within the first six months of the theatre's existence, his business ability had made him its controlling spirit. But his abilities as manager and as actor could not bring success to the theatre. Foreign and civil wars made the State poor; wide-spread financial troubles made the people poor; that cruelly cold winter froze out the public. "_Nul animal vivant n'entra dans notre salle_," are the bitterly true words, put into the mouth of the young actor-manager, by an unknown writer of a scurrilous verse.

He and the troupe were liberated from their lease within the year, and, early in 1645, they migrated over the river to the _Jeu de Paume de la Croix-Noire_. On either end of the long, low building at No. 32 Quai des Celestins is a tablet; the western one showing where stood the Tour Barbeau that ended the wall on this river-bank; that at the eastern end marking the site of this theatre, just without the wall.

It had an entrance on the quay-front for the boatmen and other water-side patrons, another in Rue des Barres for its patrons coming by coach.

Moliere lodged in the house--probably a portion of the theatre--at the corner of the quay and of Rue des Jardins-Saint-Paul--that country lane wherein had died Rabelais, nearly a century earlier. Little Rue des Barres, already seen taking its name from the barred or striped gowns of the monks who settled there, is now Rue de l'Ave-Maria, and at its number 15 you will find the stage entrance of this theatre, hardly changed since it was first trodden by the players from over the river. There is the low and narrow door, one of its jambs bent with the weight of the more modern structure above, and beyond is the short alleyway, equally narrow, by which they pa.s.sed to the stage. At its inner end, where it opens into a small court, is the stone rim of a well, half hidden in the wall. It is the well provided in each tennis-court for the players, and handed on, with the court itself, for the use of the actors. Moliere has leaned over this well-curb to wash away his rouge and wrinkles. It is an indisputable and attractive witness of his early days. In Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, where he knelt at the altar for his marriage and stood at the font with his son; in Saint-Eustache, where he carried his second son for baptism; in Saint-Roch, where he wrote his name as G.o.dfather of a friend's daughter--within these vast and dim aisles, his bodily presence is vaguely shadowed forth; _here_ we can touch the man.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Stage Door of Moliere's Second Theatre in Paris.]

What sort of plays were presented at this house we do not know, the only record that remains referring to the production of "Artaxerxes"

by one Mignon. Whatever they played, neither the rough men of the quay and of Port Saint-Paul, nor the _bourgeoisie_ of the Marais, nor the fine folk of Place Royale, crowded into the new theatre.

During this disastrous season, the troupe received royal commands to play at Fontainebleau before the King and court, and later, by invitation of the Duc de l'eperon, at his splendid mansion in Rue de la Platriere--that mansion in which lived and died La Fontaine, half a century later. Neither these fas.h.i.+onable flights, nor the royal and n.o.ble patronage accorded to the troupe, could save it from failure and final bankruptcy. Moliere, the responsible manager, was arrested for the theatre's poor little debt for candles and lights. He was locked up for a night or two in the dismal prison of the Grand Chatelet, once the fortress of Louis "le Gros," torn down only in 1802, on whose site now sparkles the fountain of Place du Chatelet. From this lock-up, having pet.i.tioned for release to M. d'Aubray, Civil Lieutenant of the town and father of the Marquise de Brinvilliers, Moliere was released by the quickly tendered purse of Leonard Aubry, "Royal Paver and Street Sweeper," who, when filling in the Fosse-de-Nesle and laying out over it the present Rue Mazarine a year before, had made fast friends with the young actor. "For his good service in ransoming the said Poquelin," the entire troupe bound itself to make Aubry whole for his debt.

Now they cross the river again to their former Faubourg Saint-Germain, taking for their house the _Jeu de Paume de la Croix-Blanche_, outside the wall on the south side of the present Rue de Buci, between the _carrefour_ at its eastern end and Rue Gregoire-de-Tours. Here they played, still playing against disaster, from the end of 1645 to the end of 1646, and then they fled from Paris, fairly beaten, and betook themselves to the southern provinces. We cannot follow their wanderings, nor record their ups and downs, during the twelve years of their absence. In the old play-bills we find the names of Bejart _aine_ and of his brother Louis, of their sisters Madeleine and Genevieve. Toward the end of their touring they added to the family, though not to the boards, Armande, who had been brought up in Languedoc, and who was claimed by them to be their very young sister, and by others to be the unacknowledged daughter of Madeleine.

Moliere, the leader and manager of the troupe from the day they started, was then only twenty-five years of age, not yet owning or knowing his full powers. These he gained during that twelve years'

hard schooling and rude apprentices.h.i.+p, so that he came back to the capital, in 1658, master of his craft, with a load of literary luggage such as no French tourist has carried, before or since.

Under princely patronage, won in the provinces, his troupe appeared before Louis XIV., the Queen-Mother, and the entire court, on October 24, 1658, in a theatre improvised in the Salle des Gardes of the old Louvre, now known as the Salle des Caryatides. The pieces on that opening night were Corneille's "Nicomede" and the manager's "Le Docteur Amoureux." In November, the "_troupe de Monsieur_"--that t.i.tle permitted by the King's brother--was given possession of the theatre in the palace of the Pet.i.t-Bourbon. It stood between the old Louvre, with which it was connected by a long gallery, and the Church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, and was torn down in 1660 to make place for the new colonnade that forms the present eastern face of the Louvre.

The dainty Jardin de l'Infante covers the site of the stage, just at the corner of the Egyptian Gallery.

In this hall Moliere's company played for two years, on alternate nights with the Italian comedians, presenting, along with old standard French pieces--for authors in vogue held aloof--his provincial successes, as well as new plays and ballets invented by him for the delectation of the _Grand Monarque_. From this time his remaining fifteen years of life were filled with work; his brain and his pen were relentlessly employed; honors and wealth came plentifully to him, happiness hardly at all.

While at this theatre Moliere lived just around the corner on Quai de l'ecole, now Quai du Louvre, in a house that was torn away in 1854 for the widening of present Rue du Louvre. Many of the buildings left on the quay are of the date and appearance of this, his last bachelor home.

Driven from the Pet.i.t-Bourbon by its hurried demolition in 1660, Moliere was granted the use and the privileges of the _Salle_ of the former Palais-Cardinal, partly gone to ruin and needing large expenditure to make it good. It had been arranged by Richelieu, just before his death, for the presentation of his "Mirame." For the great cardinal and great minister thought that he was a great dramatist too, and in his vanity saw himself the centre of the mimic stage, as he really was of the world-stage he managed. He is made by Bulwer to say, with historic truth: "Of my ministry I am not vain; but of my muse, I own it." His theatre in his residence--willed at his death to the King, and thenceforward known as the Palais-Royal--was therefore the only structure in Paris designed especially and solely for playhouse purposes. It stood on the western corner of Rues Saint-Honore and de Valois, as a tablet there tells us. During the repairs Moliere took his troupe to various _chateaux_ about Paris, returning to open this theatre on January 20, 1661. This removal was the last he made, and this house was the scene of his most striking successes.

It is not out of place here to follow his troupe for a while after his death, and so complete our record of those early theatres. His widow, succeeding to the control of the company, was, within three months, compelled to give up the Cardinal's house to Lulli, the most popular musician of that day, and a scheming fellow withal. The unscrupulous Florentine induced the King to grant him this Salle des Spectacles for the production of his music. The opera held the house until fire destroyed it in 1763, when a new "Academy of Music" was constructed on the eastern corner of the same streets; this, also, was burned in 1781. Above the tablet recording these dates on this eastern-corner wall is a fine old sun-dial, such as is rarely seen in Paris, and seldom noticed now.

The widow Moliere, being dispossessed, found a theatre in Rue Mazarine, just beyond her husband's first theatre, "in the Tennis-Court where hangs a Bottle for a Sign." For it had been the _Jeu de Paume de la Bouteille_, and now became the Theatre Guenegaud, being exactly opposite the end of that street. Within the structure at No. 42 Rue Mazarine may be seen the heavy beams of the front portion of its fabric, where was the entrance for the public. The s.p.a.ce behind, now used for a workshop, with huge pillars around its four sides, served for the audience, and the stage was built farther beyond. On the court of this house, and on the contiguous court of No.

43 Rue de Seine, stood a large building, whose first floor was taken by Madame Moliere, and in its rear wall she cut a door to give access to her stage. The entrance for the performers was in the little Pa.s.sage du Pont-Neuf, and under it there are remains of the foundations of the theatre. Here, in May, 1677, the widow took the name of Madame Guerin on her marriage with a comedian of her company.

And we feel as little regret as she seems to have felt for her loss of an ill.u.s.trious name. In the words of a derisive verse of the time:

"_Elle avoit un mari d'esprit, qu'elle aimoit peu; Elle prend un de chair, qu'elle aime davantage._"

[Ill.u.s.tration: COMeDIE FRANcAISE 1680]

This was the first theatre to present to the general public "lyric dramas set to music," brought first to France by Mazarin for his private stage in the small hall of the Palais-Royal, where they were presented as "_Comedies en Musique, avec machines a la mode d'Italie_." They bored everybody, the fas.h.i.+on for opera not yet being set. On October 21, 1680, by letters-patent from royalty, the troupe of the Theatre Guenegaud was united to that of the Hotel de Bourgogne, and to the combined companies was granted the name of Comedie Francaise, the first a.s.sumption of that now time-honored t.i.tle. The theatre became so successful that the Jansenists in the College Mazarin--the present Inst.i.tute--made an uproar because they were annoyed by the traffic and the turmoil in the narrow street, and succeeded in driving away the playhouse in 1688. After a long search, the Comedie Francaise found new quarters in the _Jeu de Paume de l'etoile_, built along the outer edge of the street made over the ditch of the wall, named Rue des Fosses-Saint-Germain, now Rue de l'Ancienne-Comedie. At its present No. 14, set in the original front wall of the theatre, between the second and third stories, a tablet marks the site; above it is a bas-relief, showing a Minerva reclining on a slab. She traces on paper, with her right hand, that which is reflected in the mirror of Truth, held in her left hand. At the rear of the court stands the old fabric that held the stage. Since those boards were removed to other walls--the story shall be told in a later chapter--the building has had various usages. It now serves as a storehouse for wall-paper. During the Empire it was taken for his studio by the artist Antoine-Jean Gros, the successor of David and the forerunner of Gericault; so standing for the transition from the Cla.s.sic to the Romantic school. It is not true that he killed himself in this studio. He went out from it, when maddened by the art critics, and drowned himself in the Seine in the summer of 1835.

It was a great bill with which the Comedie Francaise opened this house on the night of April 18, 1689, for it was made up of two masterpieces, Racine's "Phedre" and Moliere's "Le Medecin Malgre Lui."