The Stones of Paris in History and Letters Volume I Part 9

Let us now, crossing the river, get on the ground of positive proof, safe from doubts or conjectures. The d.u.c.h.esse d'Abrantes, wife of that adorable ruffian, Andoche Junot, made a duke in 1807 by the Emperor, writes in her "Memoirs": "To this day, whenever I pa.s.s along Quai Conti, I cannot help looking up at the garret windows at the left angle of the house, on the third floor. That was Napoleon's chamber, when he paid us a visit; and a neat little room it was. My brother used to occupy the one next it." Madame Junot had been Mlle. Laure Permon, whose father, an army contractor, had brought his family to Paris early in 1785, and leased for his residence the Hotel Sillery, formerly the Pet.i.t Hotel Guenegaud. Madame Permon, a Corsican lady, had been an early friend of Madame Buonaparte, and had rocked young Buonaparte in his cradle; so that he was called by his first name in her family, as her daughter shows in this quotation. Finding him at the ecole Royale Militaire in Paris, she invited him to her house for frequent visits, once for a week's stay, whenever permission could be got from the school authorities. He was a lank, cadaverous, dishevelled lad, solitary, taciturn, and morose; brooding over the poverty that had forced him to seek an unpaid-for scholars.h.i.+p, and not readily making friends with the more fortunate Albert Permon. Yet he came often, and was nowhere so content as in this house before us. It stands far back from the front of the quay, half-hidden between the Inst.i.tute and the Mint, and is numbered 13 Quai Conti, and its entrance is on the side at No. 2 Impa.s.se Conti. Its upper portion is now occupied by a club of American art students. Constructed by Mansart, its rooms are of admirable loftiness and proportion, and retain much of their sixteenth-century decoration. Here in this _salon_ after dinner, young Buonaparte would storm about the "indecent luxury" of his schoolmates, or sit listening to Madame Permon, soothed by her reminiscent prattle about Corsica and his mother, to whom he always referred as Madame Let.i.tia. Here he first showed himself to the daughters in his new sub-lieutenant's uniform, before joining his regiment on October 30, 1785, and they laughed at his thin legs in their big boots.

[Ill.u.s.tration: No. 13 Quai Conti.]

The ecole Superieure de Guerre, commonly called the "ecole Militaire,"

remains nearly as when constructed under Louis XV., but it is impossible to fix on the room allotted to this student during his year there--a small, bare room, with an iron cot, one wooden chair, and a wash-stand with drawers. The chapel, now unused, remains just as it was when he received his confirmation in it. He arrived at this school, from his preparatory school at Brienne, on the evening of October 19, 1784, one of a troop of five lads in the charge of a priest. They had disembarked, late that afternoon, at Port Saint-Paul, from the huge, clumsy boat that brought freight and pa.s.sengers, twice a week, from Burgundy and the Aube down the Seine. The priest gave the lads a simple dinner near their landing-place, and led them across the river and along the southern quays--where the penniless young Buonaparte bought a "Gil-Blas" from a stall, and a comrade in funds paid for it--and, stopping for prayers at Saint-Germain-des-Pres, he handed them over to the school authorities.

From that moment every hour of young Buonaparte's year in Paris can be accounted for. And no foundation can be discovered or invented for the fable, mendaciously upheld by the tablet, placed by the Second Empire in the hallway of No. 5 Quai Conti, which claims a garret in that tall, up-climbing, old house as his lodging at that time or at any later time. This flimsy legend need no longer be listened to. Not far away, however, is a garret that did harbor the sub-lieutenant in the autumn of 1787. It is to M. Lenotre that we owe this delightful find.

Arriving in Paris from Corsica, after exactly two years of absence, Buonaparte took room No. 9, on the third floor of the Hotel de Cherbourg, Rue du Four-Saint-Honore. That street is now Rue Vauvilliers, its eastern side taken up by the Halles, and its present No. 33, on the western side, is the former _hotel-garni_, quite unchanged as to its fabric. Here he was always writing in his room, going out only for the frugal meals that cost him a few _sous_, and here he had his first amorous adventure, recited by him in cynical detail under the date: "_Jeudi 22 Novembre 1787, a Paris, Hotel de Cherbourg, Rue du Four-Saint-Honore._"

On August 10, 1792, Buonaparte saw the mob carry and sack the Tuileries. He was in disgrace with the army authorities, having practically deserted to Corsica, and he had come back for reinstatement and a job. In his Saint-Helena "Memorial," he says that he was then lodging at the Hotel de Metz in Rue du Mail. This is evidently the same lodging placed by many writers in Rue d'Aboukir, for many of the large houses that fronted on the first-named street extended through to the latter, as shall be shown later. The hotel is gone, and the great mercantile establishment at No. 22 Rue du Mail covers its site.

Gone, too, is the shabbily furnished little villa in Rue Chantereine, where he first called on Josephine de Beauharnais, where he married that faded coquette--dropping the _u_ from his name then, in March, 1796--and whence he went to his _18 Brumaire_. The court-yard, filled with resplendent officers on that morning, is now divided between the two courts numbered 58 and 60 Rue de la Victoire; that name having been officially granted to the street, on his return from his Italian campaign in 1797. The villa, kept by the Emperor, and lent at times to some favorite general, was not entirely torn down until 1860. Its site is now covered by the houses Nos. 58 and 60.

Rue Chantereine was, in those days, almost a country road, bordered by small villas; two of them were a.s.sociated with Napoleon Bonaparte. In one of them, Mlle. Eleonora Dennelle gave birth, on December 13, 1806, to a boy, who grew up into a startling likeness of the Emperor, as to face and figure, but who inherited from him only the half-madness of genius. He lived through the Empire, the Restoration, the Second Republic, the Second Empire, and into the Republic that has come to stay, dying on April 15, 1881. To another modest dwelling in this same street, there came the loving and devoted Polish lady, Madame Walewski, who had thrown herself into the Emperor's arms, when she was full of faith in his intent to liberate her native land. Their son, Alexandre Walewski, born in 1810, was a brilliant figure in Paris, where he came to reside after the fall of Warsaw. A gifted soldier, diplomat, and writer, he died in 1868.

So, of the roofs that sheltered the boyhood of Napoleon, three still remain. Of those loftier roofs that sheltered his manhood, there are also three still to be seen. In the Paris _Bottin_ of the first year of the nineteenth century, the name of Napoleon Bonaparte appears as a member of the Inst.i.tute, Section of Mechanism, living in the palace of the Luxembourg. In 1805 his address is changed to the palace of the Tuileries, and he is qualified "Emperor of the French;" enlarging that t.i.tle in 1806 to "Emperor of the French and King." The Tuileries are swept away, and Saint-Cloud has left only a scar. The Luxembourg remains, and so, too, the Palais de l'elysee, where he resided for a while, and the _chateau_ of Malmaison has been restored and refurnished in the style of Josephine, as near as may be, and filled with souvenirs of her and of her husband. Her body lies, with that of her daughter Hortense, in the church of the nearest village, Reuil, and his remains rest under the dome of the Invalides--his last roof.

There is a curious letter, said to be still in existence, written by young Buonaparte to Talma, asking for the loan of a few francs, to be repaid "out of the first kingdom I conquer." He goes on to say that he has found nothing to do, that Barras promises much and does little, and that the writer is at the end of his resources and his patience.

This letter was evidently written at that poverty-stricken period between 1792 and 1795, when he was idly tramping Paris streets with Junot, the lovable and generous comrade from Toulon; or with Bourrienne, now met first since their school-days at Brienne, who was to become the Emperor's patient confidential secretary. At that period Talma had fought his way to his own throne. Intimate as he had been with Mirabeau, Danton, Desmoulins, Joseph-Marie de Chenier and David, he had, also, made friends with the Corsican officer, either during these years of the letter or probably earlier. He made him free of the stage of the Theatre Francais, and lent him books. His friends.h.i.+p pa.s.sed on to the general, the Consul, and the Emperor, and it was gossipped that he had taught Bonaparte to dress and walk and play Napoleon. Talma always denied this, avowing that the other man was, by nature and training, the greater actor!

Joseph-Francois Talma used to say that he first heard of a theatre, from seeing and asking about the old Theatre de l'Hotel de Bourgogne, whose entrance was in Rue Mauconseil, opposite the place of his birth, on January 15, 1763. As he grew up he learned a good deal more about the theatre, for he went early and often. He was only fifteen when he was one of the audience in the Theatre Francais, on that night of the crowning of Voltaire, and one of the crowd that tried to unharness the horses, and drag the old man from the Tuileries to his house on the quay. By day the lad was learning dentistry, his father's profession--it was then a trade--and the two went to London to practice. For a while young Talma got experience in that specialty from the jaws of the sailor-men at Greenwich, and got gayer and more congenial experience in amateur theatricals in town. They returned to Paris, and the father's sign, "_M. Talma, Dentiste_," was hung by the doorway of No. 3 Rue Jean-Jacques-Rousseau, next to the corner of Rue Saint-Honore. From the house that was there before the present modern structure, young Talma went across the river to the Comedie Francaise, on the night of November 21, 1787, and made his _debut_ as Seide in "Mahomet."

In our chapter on Moliere, we left the Comedie Francaise, on its opening night in 1689, at the house in Rue de l'Ancienne-Comedie.

There it remained for nearly a century, until forced, by overflowing houses, to find a larger hall. While this was in course of construction the company removed, in 1770, to the Salle des Machines in the Tuileries, already transformed into a theatre by the Regent for his ballets. Here the troupe played until the completion of the new theatre in 1782. That new Comedie Francaise is now the Second Theatre Francais, the Odeon, the second largest hall in Paris. It was burned in 1799 and again in 1818. In 1789 it took the t.i.tle of Theatre National; in 1793, Theatre de l'egalite was the newest name forced upon the unwilling comedians, who were, as always with that profession, fond of swelldom and favorites of princes. The house being in the very centre of the Cordeliers quarter, in _la Section Marat_, there was always constant friction between players and audience, and by 1793 this had so exasperated the ruling powers--the _sans-culottes_--that nearly the whole troupe was sent to prison, charged with having insulted the Patriots on the boards, and with having given "proofs of marked incivism." The ladies of the company, aristocrats by strength of their s.e.x, occupied cells in Sainte-Pelagie, where we have already listened to their merriment. They escaped trial through the destruction of their _dossiers_ by a humane member of the Committee of Safety, and the _9 Thermidor_ set them free. Talma had already left the troupe in April, 1791, driven away, with two or three friends, by dissensions and jealousies. They went over to the new house which had been constructed, in 1789, at a corner of the Palais-Royal, by enterprising contractors with influential politicians between them. It was called at first Theatre Francais de la Rue de Richelieu, and, in 1792, Theatre de la Republique. On Talma's desertion of the old house, there began a legal process against him, exactly like that inst.i.tuted by the same Comedie Francaise against M. Coquelin, a century later, when the theatre had for its lawyer the grandson of its advocate of 1792; and the decision of the two tribunals was the same in effect. Talma stayed at the theatre in the Palais-Royal, to which he drew the discerning public, and, after ten years of rivalry, the two troupes joined hands on those boards, and so the Comedie Francaise came to the present "House of Moliere."

It would seem that Talma was a shrewd man of business, and drew money in his private role of landlord. He owned the house in which Mirabeau died, in Rue de la Chaussee-d'Antin, and always referred to the great tribune as "_mon ancien locataire, Mirabeau_." Just beyond, in Rue Chantereine, Talma was attracted by the small villa built by the architect Ledoux, for Condorcet, it is said. Perhaps the actor had seen, in that street, an even more plausible actor, Giuseppe Balsamo by name, calling himself the Count Cagliostro. He had established himself in one of the villas in this street, on coming to Paris to ply his trade, toward 1784. And in 1778 the wonder-working Mesmer had set up his machinery and masqueraded as a magician in a house in the same street. Benjamin Franklin went there, one of a government commission sent to investigate the miracles.

In his new residence in Rue Chantereine, Talma welcomed his friends among the Revolutionary leaders, and gave them _bouillon_ in the kitchen, when he came home from the theatre at night. In 1795 he sold the villa to Josephine de Beauharnais, and he always said that her first payment was made to him from moneys sent to her, by her husband, from Italy. It is not known whether Talma owned, or leased, an apartment in No. 15 Quai Voltaire, where he lived from 1802 until 1806. The house, now No. 17, one of the ancient stately structures facing the quay, is somewhat narrower than its neighbors. During the ten years between 1807 and 1817 he had an apartment at No. 6 Rue de Seine; possibly in that pavilion in the court which was built by Marguerite de Valois for her residence, and which has been heightened by having two new floors slipped between the lower and top stories, leaving these latter and the facade much as she built them. His home, from 1818 to 1821, at No. 14 Rue de Rivoli, is replaced by the new structures at the western end of that street, which is entirely renumbered. After two more changes on the northern bank, he finally settled at No. 9 Rue de la Tour-des-Dames. Until 1822 there was still to be seen the tower of the windmill owned by the "_Dames de Montmartre_," which gave its name to this street. At its number 3, a small _hotel_, circular-fronted and most coquettish, lived Mlle. Mars, it is believed, and here she was the victim of the earliest recorded theft of an actress's jewels. The simple and stately house, of a low curtain between two wings, with two stories and a mansard roof, bearing the number 9, is the scene of Talma's last years and of his death, on October 19, 1826. His final appearance had been on June 11th of that year, in his marvellous personation of Charles VI. At this house we shall see Dumas visit the old actor, who had seen Voltaire!

Dumas says that Talma spared nothing in his aim at accuracy, historic and archaeologic, when creating a new role or mounting a new play.

Indeed, we know that Talma was the first great realist in costume and scenery, as we know that he first brought the statues of tragedy down to human proportions and gave them life-blood. Dumas dwells especially on the voice of the great tragedian--a voice that was glorious and sincere, and in anguish was a sob.

There is a glowing portrait of Talma from the pen of Chateaubriand, in which he makes plain that the tragedian, while he was, himself, his century and ancient centuries in one, had been profoundly affected by the terrible scenes of the Terror which he had witnessed; and it was that baleful inspiration that sent the concentrated pa.s.sion of patriotism leaping in torrents from his heart. "His grace--not an ordinary grace--seized one like fate. Black ambition, remorse, jealousy, sadness of soul, bodily agony, human grief, the madness sent by the G.o.ds and by adversity--_that_ was what he knew. Just his coming on the scene, just the sound of his voice, were overpoweringly tragic.

Suffering and contemplation mingled on his brow, breathed in his postures, his gestures, his walk, his motionlessness."

Thomas Carlyle seems strangely placed in the stalls of the Theatre Francais, yet he sat there, at the end of his twelve-days' visit to Paris in 1825. "On the night before leaving," he writes, "I found that I ought to visit one theatre, and by happy accident came upon Talma playing there. A heavy, shortish, numb-footed man, face like a warming-pan for size, and with a strange, most ponderous, yet delicate expression in the big, dull-glowing black eyes and it. Incomparably the best actor I ever saw. Play was 'Oedipe'; place the Theatre Francais."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Monogram from former entrance of the Cour du Commerce, believed to be the initials of the owner, one Girardot.]