Nooks and Corners of Old Paris Part 3

Below the Lambert Hotel, along the river, is the Marie Bridge, at the foot of which used to moor the famous water-diligence from whose deck disembarked for the first time in Paris, on the 19th of October 1784, a pale-complexioned youth of resolute brow, with eyes that gazed from their depths on the horizons of the immense town. It was Bonaparte, a pupil from the Brienne School, who had come to continue his studies at the ecole Militaire; and the first glimpse the future Caesar had of the great Paris which was ultimately to acclaim him was the apse of Notre-Dame, the old and venerable Notre-Dame in which he was to be crowned, and round which, in preparation for the coronation day, the 2nd of December 1804, eighteen houses were pulled down, so that the pomp of the ceremony might be celebrated without obstacle and in all its magnificence!

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PONT MARIE IN 1886 _From a painting by P. Shaan_]

Finally, on the Anjou Quay, we meet with one of the handsomest mansions of old Paris, that bearing the name of Lauzun, which the generous initiative of the Munic.i.p.al Council has saved from destruction, the Lauzun mansion with its inimitable wainscoting, its ancient gildings, its glorious past, which is destined to become the museum of all belonging to the seventeenth century: a fine frame for a fine project.

In this old quarter of the Isle of Saint-Louis, at the confluence of the Seine's two arms, painters, writers and poets have always dwelt: George Sand, Baudelaire, Theophile Gautier, Gerard de Nerval, Mery, Daubigny, Corot, Barye, Daumier, all lived there for a long time. In the Lauzun mansion, were held the sittings of the has.h.i.+sh smokers' club; and the chipped Virgin that looks from her niche at the corner of the Rue Le-Regrattier--formerly known as the street of the Headless Woman--and saw the pa.s.sage of the whole Romantic Pleiad, will long continue to receive visits from lovers of old Paris.

It is from the Bourbon Quay that one of the most beautiful sights imaginable may best be obtained: a sunset over Paris.

The violet-tinted ma.s.s of Notre-Dame stands out with its superbly imposing silhouette against the purpled gold of the fiery sky. All the town dies away in a pink dust of light, whilst the broad roofs of the Louvre, the spire of the Sainte-Chapelle, the pepper-box turrets of the Conciergerie, the Saint-Jacques Tower, and the campaniles of the Town Hall, all this landscape alive with history glows in the last rays of the sinking sun. The Seine flows with a surface of liquid gold.

The spectacle is sublime.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ISLE OF SAINT-LOUIS]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BUILDING OF THE PANTHeON _Fragment of a water-colour by Saint-Aubin_]

THE LEFT BANK OF THE SEINE

No less than the old part of the City, the left bank of the river is rich in souvenirs. There the Roman occupation left the deepest traces.

We find the arenas of Lutecia, and, above all, the Thermae of Julian, saved from destruction by the taste and initiative of Du Sommerard at the moment when these grandiose ruins, which were being used as coopers'

store-rooms, were about to be pulled down, involving in their fall that jewel of the fifteenth century, the marvellous Hotel de Cluny. Quite recently, remains of Roman substructures have been discovered near the College de France, in the Rue Saint-Jacques and the Saint-Michel Boulevard; but the glory of the left bank of the river was, in particular, the University and the Sorbonne.

Little to-day is left of these old walls; but, ten years ago, the hill of Sainte-Genevieve still preserved much of its whilom picturesqueness.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE COLLEGE OF LOUIS-LE-GRAND _H. Saffrey, Sculpt._]

There was the Rue Saint-Jacques, with its old book-sellers and seventeenth-century houses, and especially--what dread reminiscences!--the heavy-leaved gate of the Louis-le-Grand Lycee, where Robespierre, Camille Desmoulins, and the future Marshal Brune had studied under the masters.h.i.+p of the good Abbe Berardier. I confess that the Louis-le-Grand of our boyhood was black, and gloomy enough also, with its moss-grown playgrounds, its smoky rooms, its punishment chambers up under the roof, where one was frozen in winter and stifled in summer, its punishment chambers in which tradition relates that Saint-Huruge was confined; quite near to the Saint-Jacques blind alley where Auvergne dealers sold such fine trinkets, and to the little Rue Cujas, noisy with the noise of rowdy students--but which rendered us pensive.

There was the Sorbonne, with its paved courtyard, where we used to wait, pale, feverish and anxious, for the posting of the small white notice bearing the names of those candidates for the Baccalaureat that were admitted to the _viva voce_; and we were half-dead with fear at the idea of appearing before the terrible Monsieur Bernes, while we blessed the G.o.ds to have given us as examiner the witty and indulgent Monsieur Mezieres, who, at least for his part, has not grown old.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE INNER COURTYARD OF THE ECOLE POLYTECHNIQUE _Etching by Martial_]

Further on, in the rear of Sainte-Barbe, we come to the Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve, alive and teeming with its old mansions converted into dispensaries or business premises, its petty trades, its popular dancing-rooms, and, last but not least, its celebrated ecole Polytechnique, dear to all Parisians, which adds its note of cheerfulness to this somewhat sombre quarter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE RUE CLOVIS IN 1867 _Drawn by A. Maignan_]

Quite near there is the Rue Clovis, where formerly stood the Abbey of Sainte-Genevieve, whose square tower still remains and makes us regret the part that has disappeared. In this Rue Clovis may be seen, crumbling to decay and half-buried under climbing plants--lichens, ivy, sage and moss--a big side of a primitive-looking wall, a fragment of the fortifications of Philippe-Auguste, the belt of stone and lofty strong towers behind which for centuries were heaped houses, palaces, colleges, churches and abbeys, huddling against one another. The church of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont opens its elegant portal a few yards away from the Rue Clovis. Ill.u.s.trious dead were buried there: Pascal, Racine, Boileau.

A crime was also committed in it.

On the 3rd of January 1858, the first day of the novena of Sainte-Genevieve, whose relics repose in one of the side-chapels of the church, dreadful cries were heard: "They have just murdered Monseigneur," and soon a man of haggard looks, clad in black, with blood-red hands, was seen on the Square in the grasp of some policemen who had just arrested him. It was Verger, a half-mad, interdicted priest, who had stabbed to the heart Monseigneur Sibour, Archbishop of Paris!

This charming church should be seen in the early days of January.

A sort of small religious fair is then held in front of the porch. A veritable liturgical library is there for sale, under umbrellas resembling those that used to shelter the orange-dealers: "Mary's Rose-trees," "Miracles at Lourdes," "Synopses of Novenas," "Acts of Faith," "Acts of Contrition," "Lives of the Saints," "Glorifications of the Blessed." Chaplets are sold, holy images, devotional post-cards, orthodox rituals, medals, scapularies--and unfortunately these objects have less artistic value than sentiment about them. It is a delightful Parisian tableau in one of the prettiest settings of the great town.

At the end of the Rue Clovis, is the Rue du Cardinal-Lemoine, where the painter Lebrun possessed a lovely house, still standing at No. 49, over-run with ivy and honeysuckle, two or three yards distant from the Scotch college--at present the "Inst.i.tution Chevallier,"--converted into a prison during the Terror, like most educational inst.i.tutions.

Saint-Just was conveyed thither, after being outlawed on the 9th of Thermidor; and his friends came there to fetch him at eight o'clock in the evening, as well as his colleague Couthon, who was confined in the Port-Libre (the old religious house of Port-Royal). It is easy to imagine the gendarmes, on the steep slopes of the Rue Saint-Jacques, running round the mechanical seat which the impotent Couthon feverishly worked and propelled with handles levered to the wheels, and which travelled rapidly over the hard stones, amid shouts and frightened "sectionnaires,"--easy to conjure up before one's senses the call to arms, the sound of the tocsin, under the downpour of the storm that dispersed the Robespierrian bands camped about the Town Hall, and enabled the troops of the Convention to invade the "Maison Commune"

without resistance.

An hour later, Robespierre had his jaw smashed by Merda's bullet; his brother sprang through the window; Le Bas committed suicide; Saint-Just, haughty and impa.s.sible, allowed himself to be arrested in silence; Couthon, with his paralysed legs, was flung on to a rubbish heap, and then, bleeding and motionless, was dragged by the feet to the parapet of the quay. He pretended to be dead. "Let us cast him into the water,"

howled a mult.i.tude of fierce voices. "Excuse me, citizens," murmured Couthon, "but I am still alive." So he was reserved for the scaffold.

Behind Saint-Etienne-du-Mont, there is a nook almost unknown to Parisians: a little cloister close to the apse of the church, and containing some admirable painted gla.s.s windows by Pinaigrier, the great artist, who, in 1568, charged for the "Parable of the Guests," a three-compartment window painting, which masterpiece now adorns the chapel of the Crucifix, "92 livres 10 sols, including the leading and iron trellis."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE RUE DE LA MONTAGNE-SAINTE-GENEVIeVE IN 1866 _Drawn by A. Maignan_]

It is one of the retreats for poetry and devotion so common in Paris, and yet ofttimes so unsuspected amid the city's noise; and one never forgets the impression produced when leaving the Latin Quarter, with its laughter and songs, and plunging suddenly into this deserted cloister full of dream and melancholy, though so close to the sunny, busy square of the Pantheon, where, on the 27th of July 1830, to the shouts of the people and the army, an actor at the Odeon Theatre, Eric Besnard, replaced once more the inscription: "_To her great men the grateful mother country_" on the fine temple built by Soufflot, which the Restoration had consecrated to the wors.h.i.+p of Sainte-Genevieve.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PANTHeON, IN BUILDING]

The Pantheon is certainly the one Parisian building which has been most often baptized and re-baptized. Constructed in consequence of a vow made by Louis XV. when ill at Metz, on the gardens belonging to the original Abbey of Sainte-Genevieve, the money that paid for it was derived from a portion of the funds raised by three lotteries drawn every month in Paris.

Soufflot, whose grandiose plans had been accepted, set to work in 1755.

Towards 1764, the edifice began to a.s.sume shape, and the Parisians in enthusiasm admired the magnificent forms that modified the ancient outlines of their city. But cracks and fissures and sinkings-in occurred; a mad terror succeeded to the wonder: "The building will tumble, and its fall will involve a part of the old quarter of the Sorbonne," people said. Works of shoring up, embanking and strengthening were carried out. Paris breathed again; but poor Soufflot, in despair, could not survive so many tragic emotions. He died in 1781 without finis.h.i.+ng his undertaking.

In 1791, the const.i.tuent a.s.sembly set apart for the "Honouring of Great Men" the church primitively dedicated to Sainte-Genevieve; and Mirabeau's body was conveyed thither in triumph "to the sounds of trombone and gong, whose notes, by the intensity with which they were produced, tore the bowels and harrowed the heart," says a chronicle of the time.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PROCESSION IN FRONT OF SAINTE-GENEVIeVE _Meunier, fecit_ (Carnavalet Museum)]

The great tribune was destined to make but a short stay in the Pantheon,--this was the name given to the secularised church--for on the 27th of November 1793, at the instigation of Joseph Chenier, and after study of the doc.u.ments found in the iron safe, doc.u.ments that left no doubt as to "the great treason of the Count de Mirabeau," the Convention, "considering that a man cannot be great without virtue, decreed that Mirabeau's ashes should be removed from the Pantheon, and that those of Marat should be buried there." The sentence was carried out by night, and the "virtuous" Marat took the place of Mirabeau; not for long, however, since, some months later, Marat's body, "depantheonised" in its turn, was cast into the common grave of the small graveyard belonging to Saint-Etienne-du-Mont. Voltaire and Rousseau were, in their turn, triumphantly interred. Voltaire's body, after remaining all night in the ruins of the Bastille, had been brought to the Pantheon on a triumphal car, escorted by fifty girls dressed in antique style through David's care, and by the actors and actresses of the Theatre Francais in their stage dresses. The widow and daughters of the unfortunate Calas walked behind, close to the torn flag of the Bastille. In order to make this interment a never-to-be-forgotten fete, its organisers had provided for everything except for the weather. A dreadful storm descended on the heads of those composing the procession: Merope, Lusignan, the Virgins, Brutus, and the delegates sent in the names of Politics, the Arts, and Agriculture, were wet to the skin; and, covered with mud and in wretched plight, were compelled to huddle into cabs or shelter themselves under umbrellas.

And thus it was that, on the 12th of July 1791, Voltaire made his entry into the Pantheon.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE APOTHEOSIS OF JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU His translation to the Pantheon on the 11th of October 1794 _Girardet, inv. et del._]

Jean-Jacques Rousseau followed him there on the 11th of October 1794; his body brought back from Ermenonville, beneath a bower of flowering shrubs, to the agreeable sounds of the "Village Seer," had pa.s.sed the preceding night on the basin of the Tuileries, transformed for the occasion into an "Isle of Poplars." While yet not so popular as that of Voltaire, his triumph was "one of sensitive souls," and "the man of nature" was interred according to the rites he had himself prescribed.

Later, Napoleon peopled the Pantheon with the shades of obscure senators and some few artists, admirals, and generals. Subsequently, the Second Republic made a definitive a.s.signment of the edifice to the cult of great men; and there, on a sunny day, the 3rd of May 1885, Victor Hugo's body was brought in the humble hea.r.s.e of the poor, amid the acclamations of an immense concourse of people, after spending a night of apotheosis under the Arc de Triomphe, which he had so n.o.bly sung. Since then, Baudin, President Carnot, La Tour d'Auvergne have been buried there; and an admirable decoration, the work of our best contemporary artists, covers the vast walls of this necropolis. Puvis de Chavannes, Humbert, Henri-Levy, Cabanel, Jean-Paul Laurens are finely represented in it; and, last of all, Edouard Detaille, surpa.s.sing himself, has, in an admirable soaring of art, created on the canvas--in Homeric proportions--a mad rush of horses and riders, the old cavaliers of the Republic and the Empire, towards the radiant image of the Motherland, with standards conquered from the enemy by their dauntless heroism.

Around the Pantheon, there used to be, and still is, a labyrinth of little streets, poor and crowded together, once inhabited by those that attended the schools, so numerous in that quarter of the Sorbonne.

The Rue des Carmes remains to us as a perfect specimen of the past, with its houses whose shaking walls support each other, its crumbling facades, its dilapidated staircases; and then, here and there, the relics of a vanished splendour, the entrance to two important colleges, to-day dwindled down into dens of misery, into lodgings of the poor.

Narrow and uneven, the Rue des Carmes ascends toilingly between shops whose paint has been streaked by storms, faded by dust and wind; and yet it continues to be full of charm and poetry, this sorry-looking street, crowned at the top by the august proportions of the Pantheon, and framing at the bottom, with its two lines of dingy houses, mean hotels, and dancing-rooms, the delicate and elegant spire of Notre-Dame aloft on the horizon of the clear sky.

It was at the corner of this Rue des Carmes and the Rue des Sept-Voies, not far from Sainte-Genevieve's church, that, at seven o'clock in the evening of the 9th of March 1804, George Cadoudal sprang into the cab that was to take him to the fresh hiding-place which his friends had prepared for him in the house of Caron, the royalist perfumer of the Rue du Four-Saint-Germain. George was narrowly watched, all the Paris police being on the alert. He was recognised, and pursued by the Inspectors of the Prefecture, two of whom pounced on him at the corner of the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince and the Rue de l'Observance. The one he killed with a pistol bullet in his forehead, the second he wounded. Meanwhile, the a.s.sembled crowd hindered his flight; and a hatter of the neighbourhood seized the outlaw and dragged him to the Police Station. His calmness and dignity and the wit of his replies disconcerted his adversaries.

Reproached with having killed a married detective, the father of a family: "Next time have me arrested by bachelors," he retorted. After he had owned to the dagger found upon him, he was asked if the engraving on the handle were not the English hall-mark. "I cannot say," he replied, "but I can a.s.sure you that I have not had it[1] hall-marked in France."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LUXEMBOURG, ABOUT 1790 _Marechal, del._ (National Library)]

Quite near, is the Luxembourg, both palace and prison, the Luxembourg, where Marie de Medici gave such magnificent fetes, where Gaston d'Orleans yawned so much, and where the Grande Mademoiselle sulked, sighing for the handsome Lauzun; where also the Count de Provence so cleverly prepared, with Monsieur d'Avaray, his escape from France, on the same evening that Louis XVI. and Marie-Antoinette made such bad arrangements for the lugubrious journey that was to lead them to Varennes; the Luxembourg, whose courtyard was used as a promenade by such prisoners as the Terror crowded there; the Luxembourg, whence Camille Desmoulins wrote to his Lucile those heartrending letters that still bear the traces of tears; the Luxembourg whither, a few weeks later, Robespierre was brought as a prisoner, and where, "for want of room," Hally, the porter, refused to receive him; the Luxembourg where, after Thermidor, the artist David painted, from, his dungeon, the shady walk in which he could see his children playing at ball; the Luxembourg of Barras, of Bonaparte, of the Directory fetes; the Luxembourg, too, of Nodier, of Saint-Beuve, of Murger, of Michelet, of the students, of the workers of Bohemia, of the songs of the worthy Nadaud and Mimi Pinson, near to Bullier's and the Lilac Closerie and also to the Observatory and the ill-omened wall "scored with bullets"