Dumas' Paris Part 12

There was a general furbis.h.i.+ng up of the streets and quais. Marie de Medicis built the Palais du Luxembourg and planted the Cours la Reine; many new bridges were constructed and new monuments set up, among others the Palais Royal, at this time called the Palais Cardinal; the eglise St.

Roch; the Oratoire; le Val-de-Grace; les Madelonnettes; la Salpetriere; the Sorbonne, and the Jardin des Plantes. Many public places were also decorated with statues: the effigy of Henri IV. was placed on the Pont Neuf, and of Louis XII. in the Place Royale.

By this time the population had overflowed the walls of Philippe-Auguste, already enlarged by Francois I., and Louis XIV. overturned their towers and ramparts, and filled their _fosses_, believing that a strong community needed no such protections.

These ancient fortifications were replaced by the boulevards which exist even unto to-day--not only in Paris, but in most French towns and cities--unequalled elsewhere in all the world.

Up to the reign of Louis XIV. the population of Paris had, for the most part, been lodged in narrow, muddy streets, which had subjected them to many indescribable discomforts. Meanwhile, during the glorious reign of Louis XIV., Paris achieved great extension of area and splendour; many new streets were opened in the different _quartiers_, others were laid out anew or abolished altogether, more than thirty churches were built,--"all highly beautiful," say the guide-books. But they are not: Paris churches taken together are a decidedly mixed lot, some good in parts and yet execrable in other parts, and many even do not express any intimation whatever of good architectural forms.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PONT NEUF.--PONT AU CHANGE]

The Pont au Change was rebuilt, and yet four other bridges were made necessary to permit of better circulation between the various _faubourgs_ and _quartiers_.

To the credit of Louis XIV. must also be put down the Hotel des Invalides, the Observatoire, the magnificent colonnade of the Louvre, the Pont Royal, the College des Quatre Nations, the Bibliotheque Royale, numerous fountains and statues, the royal gla.s.s, porcelain, and tapestry manufactories, the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, and the Boulevards St.

Denis and St. Martin.

Saint Foix (in his "Essais sur Paris") has said that it was Louis XIV. who first gave to the reign of a French monarch the _eclat_ of grandeur and magnificence, not only for his court, but for his capital and his people.

Under the succeeding reign of Louis XV. the beautifying of Paris took another flight. On the place which first bore the name of the monarch himself, but which is to-day known as the Place de la Concorde, were erected a pair of richly decorated monuments which quite rivalled in achievement the superb colonnaded Louvre of the previous reign, the Champs Elysees were replanted, the ecole Militaire, the ecole de Droit, and the Hotel de la Monnaie were erected, and still other additional boulevards and magnificent streets were planned out.

A new church came into being with St. Genevieve, which afterward became the Pantheon.

The reign following saw the final achievement of all these splendid undertakings; then came the Revolution, that political terror which would have upset all established inst.i.tutions; and if Paris, the city of splendid houses, did not become merely a cemetery of tombs, it was not because maniacal fanaticism and fury were lacking.

Religious, civic, and military establishments were razed, demolished, or burnt, regardless of their past a.s.sociations or present artistic worth.

In a way, however, these sacrilegious demolitions gave cause to much energetic rebuilding and laying out of the old city anew, in the years immediately succeeding the period of the Revolution, which as an historical event has no place in this book other than mere mention, as it may have been referred to by Dumas.

It was Napoleon who undertook the rehabilitation of Paris, with an energy and foresight only equalled by his prowess as a master of men.

He occupied himself above all with what the French themselves would call those _monuments et decorations utiles_, as might be expected of his abilities as an organizer. The ca.n.a.l from the river Ourcq through La Villette to the Seine was, at the Fosses de la Bastille, cleared and emptied of its long stagnant waters; _abattoirs_ were constructed in convenient places, in order to do away with the vast herds of cattle which for centuries had been paraded through the most luxurious of the city's streets; new markets were opened, and numerous fountains and watering-troughs were erected in various parts of the city; four new and ornate bridges were thrown across the Seine, the magnificent Rues Castiglione and de la Paix, extending from the Tuileries to the interior boulevards, were opened up; the Place Vendome was then endowed with its bronze column, which stands to-day; the splendid and utile Rue de Rivoli was made beside the garden of the Tuileries (it has since been prolonged to the Hotel de Ville).

Napoleon also founded the Palais de la Bourse (1808), and caused to be erected a superb iron _grille_ which should separate the Place du Carrousel from the Tuileries.

Under the Restoration little happened with regard to the beautifying and aggrandizing of the city, though certain improvements of a purely economic and social nature made their own way.

The literature and art of Dumas and his compeers were making such st.u.r.dy progress as to give Paris that preeminence in these finer elements of life, which, before or since, has not been equalled elsewhere.

Since the Revolution of 1830 have been completed the Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile (commenced by Napoleon I.), the eglise de la Madeleine, the fine hotel of the Quai d'Orsay, the Palais des Beaux Arts, the restoration of the Chambre des Deputes (the old Palais Bourbon), and the statues set up in the Place de la Concorde; though it is only since the ill-starred Franco-Prussian _affaire_ of 1871 that Strasbourg's doleful figure has been buried in jet and alabaster sentiments, so dear to the Frenchman of all ranks, as an outward expression of grief.

At the commencement of the Second Empire the fortifications, as they then existed, possessed a circ.u.mference of something above thirty-three kilometres--approximately nineteen miles. The walls are astonis.h.i.+ngly thick, and their _fosses_ wide and deep. The surrounding exterior forts "_de distance en distance_" are a unique feature of the general scheme of defence, and played, as it will be recalled, no unimportant part in the invest.i.ture of the city by the Germans in the seventies.

A French writer of the early days of the last Empire says: "These new fortifications are in their ensemble a gigantic work." They are, indeed--though, in spite of their immensity, they do not impress the lay observer even as to impregnability as do the wonderful walls and ramparts of Carca.s.sonne, or dead Aigues-Mortes in the Midi of France; those wonderful somnolent old cities of a glorious past, long since departed.

The fortifications of Paris, however, are a wonderfully utile thing, and must ever have an unfathomable interest for all who have followed their evolution from the restricted battlements of the early Roman city.

The Parisian has, perhaps, cause to regret that these turf-covered battlements somewhat restrict his "_promenades environnantes_," but what would you? Once outside, through any of the gateways, the Avenue de la Grande Armee,--which is the most splendid,--or the Porte du Ca.n.a.l de l'Ourcq,--which is the least luxurious, though by no means is it unpicturesque; indeed, it has more of that variable quality, perhaps, than any other,--one comes into the charm of the French countryside; that is, if he knows in which direction to turn. At any rate, he comes immediately into contact with a life which is quite different from any phase which is to be seen within the barrier.

From the Revolution of 1848 to the first years of the Second Empire, which ought properly to be treated by itself,--and so shall be,--there came into being many and vast demolitions and improvements.

Paris was a vast atelier of construction, where agile minds conceived, and the artisan and craftsman executed, monumental glories and improvements which can only be likened to the focusing of the image upon the ground gla.s.s.

The prolongation of the Rue de Rivoli was put through; the Boulevards Sebastopol, Malesherbes,--where in the Place Malesherbes is that appealing monument to Dumas by Gustave Dore,--du Prince Eugene, St. Germain, Magenta, the Rue des ecoles, and many others. All of which tended to change the very face and features of the Paris the world had known hitherto.

The "Caserne Napoleon" had received its guests, and the Tour St. Jacques, from which point of vantage the "clerk of the weather" to-day prognosticates for Paris, had been restored. Magnificent establishments of all sorts and ranks had been built, the Palais de l'Industrie (since razed) had opened its doors to the work of all nations, in the exhibition of 1855.

Of Paris, one may well concentrate one's estimate in five words: "Each epoch has been rich," also prolific, in benefits, intentions, and creations of all manner of estimable and admirable achievements.

By favour of these efforts of all the reigns and governments which have gone before, the Paris of to-day in its architectural glories, its monuments in stone, and the very atmosphere of its streets, places, and boulevards, is a.s.suredly the most marvellous of all the cities of Europe.

It may not be an exceedingly pleasant subject, but there is, and always has been, a certain fascination about a visit to a cemetery which ranks, in the minds of many well-informed and refined persons, far above even the contemplation of great churches themselves.

It may be a morbid taste, or it may not. Certainly there seems to be no reason why a considerable amount of really valuable facts might not be impressed upon the retina of a traveller who should do the round of _Campos Santos_, _Cimetieres_ and burial-grounds in various lands.

In this respect, as in many others, Paris leads the way for sheer interest in its tombs and sepulchres, at Montmartre and Pere la Chaise.

In no other burial-ground in the world--unless it be Mount Auburn, near Boston, where, if the world-wide name and fame of those there buried are not so great as those at Paris, their names are at least as much household words to English-speaking folk, as are those of the old-world resting-place to the French themselves--are to be found so many celebrated names.

There are a quartette of these famous resting-places at Paris which, since the coming of the nineteenth century, have had an absorbing interest for the curiously inclined. Pere la Chaise, Montmartre, the royal sepulchres in the old abbey church of St. Denis, and the churchyard of St. Innocents.

"Man," said Sir Thomas Brown, "is a n.o.ble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave." Why this should be so, it is not the province of this book to explain, nor even to justify the gorgeous and ill-mannered monuments which are often erected over his bones.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PORTRAIT OF HENRY IV.]

The catacombs of Paris are purposely ignored here, as appealing to a special variety of morbidity which is as unpleasant to deal with and to contemplate as are snakes preserved in spirit, and as would be--were we allowed to see them--the sacred human _reliques_ which are preserved, even to-day, at various pilgrims' shrines throughout the Christian world. That vast royal sepulchre of the abbey church of St. Denis, which had been so outrageously despoiled by the decree of the Convention in 1793, was in a measure set to rights by Louis XVIII., when he caused to be returned from the Pet.i.ts Augustins, now the Palais des Beaux Arts, and elsewhere, such of the monuments as had not been actually destroyed. The actual spoliation of these shrines belongs to an earlier day than that of which this book deals.

The history of it forms as lurid a chapter as any known to the records of riot and sacrilege in France; and the more the pity that the motion of Barrere ("_La main puissante de la Republique doit effacer inpitoyablement ces epitaphes_") to destroy these royal tombs should have had official endors.e.m.e.nt.

The details of these barbarous exhumations were curious, but not edifying; the corpse of Turenne was exhibited around the city; Henri IV.--"his features still being perfect"--was kicked and bunted about like a football; Louis XIV. was found in a perfect preservation, but entirely black; Louis VIII. had been sewed up in a leather sack; and Francois I.

and his family "had become much decayed;" so, too, with many of the later Bourbons.

In general these bodies were deposited in a common pit, which had been dug near the north entrance to the abbey, and thus, for the first time in the many centuries covered by the period of their respected demises, their dust was to mingle in a common blend, and all factions were to become one.

Viollet-le-Duc, at the instruction of Napoleon III., set up again, following somewhat an approximation of the original plan, the various monuments which had been so thoroughly scattered, and which, since their return to the old abbey, had been herded together without a pretence at order in the crypt.

Paris had for centuries been wretchedly supplied with _cimetieres_. For long one only had existed, that of the churchyard of St. Innocents', originally a piece of the royal domain lying without the walls, and given by one of the French kings as a burial-place for the citizens, when interments within the city were forbidden.

It has been calculated that from the time of Philippe-Auguste over a million bodies had been interred in these _fosses communes_.

In 1785 the Council of State decreed that the cemetery should be cleared of its dead and converted into a market-place. Cleared it was not, but it has since become a market-place, and the waters of the Fontaine des Innocents filter briskly through the dust of the dead of ages.

Sometime in the early part of the nineteenth century the funeral undertakings of Paris were conducted on a sliding scale of prices, ranging from four thousand francs in the first cla.s.s, to as low as sixteen francs for the very poor; six cla.s.ses in all.

This law-ordered _tarif_ would seem to have been a good thing for posterity to have perpetuated.