Nooks and Corners of Old Paris Part 4

where Marshal Ney fell. Everywhere, the same mingling of mirth and sorrow, of laughter and blood. The reason is that each street, each cross-road, almost each house has seen some dark procession pa.s.s by or some victorious fete celebrated.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FRATERNAL SUPPERS IN THE SECTIONS OF PARIS On the 11th, 12th, and 13th of May 1793, or the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd of Floreal, Anno II. of the Republic.

_Drawn by Swebach-Desfontaines_ (Carnavalet Museum)]

On all these dingy walls of Paris, hands of women or of artists have contrived to put flowers or bird-cages; and no alley is so dismal that it does not harbour a little poetry and dreaming, some gillyflowers and songs.

Not far away is the Carmes prison, in the Rue de Vaugirard, at the corner of the Rue d'a.s.sas; and there all the externals are the same as they were at the moment of the terrible ma.s.sacre of 1792. At the foot of the staircase one sees still the tiled floor of the small room where, between two corridors, Maillard placed the chair and table that formed the b.l.o.o.d.y tribunal of the September slaughter; the balcony covered with climbing plants through which issued the unfortunates that were felled, stabbed with pikes, or shot in the large garden; and, at the top of the first story, on the wall bearing even now the red marks of the blood-dripping sabres used by the slayers, may be read the signatures of the fair prisoners who, day after day, in terrified anxiety, waited, each evening, for the fatal order to appear before the Tribunal: Mesdames d'Aiguillon, Terezia Cabarrus-Tallien, Josephine de Beauharnais. At this date, Tallien, himself suspected and followed by a band of spies, prowled from eve till morn round the sinister prison in which the woman he loved was confined. One day, on his table, 17 Rue de la Perle, he found a poniard that he recognised, a gem of Spain with which Terezia's hands were familiar. It was an imperative order; and on the 7th of Thermidor this note was transmitted to him from "La Force."

"The head of the police has just gone from here. He came to tell me that to-morrow I shall ascend to the Tribunal, that is, to the scaffold. It is different from the dream I had in the night: Robespierre dead and the prisons opened.... But, thanks to your signal cowardice, there will soon be no one in France capable of realising it!"

As a matter of fact, the fair Terezia, being more especially aimed at by the Committee, had been mysteriously transferred from the Carmes prison to La Force; and it was from this latter place that she sent her will and testament of vengeance and death. Then, Tallien swore to save his country; the mother country for him was the woman he wors.h.i.+pped. Mad with love and rage, rousing against Robespierre every rancour, terror, and hatred, he spent the night and the day of the 8th in preparing the dreadful and tragical sitting of the 9th of Thermidor, which was a merciless duel between the two sides. He appealed to Fouche, to Collot d'Herbois as to Durand-Maillane and Louchet, to Cambon as to Vadier, to Thuriot as to Legendre, to the few remaining Dantonists as to the eternal tremblers of the Marais; then, springing to the rostrum with a dagger in his hand, he threatened Robespierre, who was nervous, uneasy, distraught, from the presentiment that his power was escaping him; and, at length, after a fearful five hours' struggle, obtained the dread decree outlawing and condemning to the guillotine those who themselves for two years had been mowing down the members of the Convention.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FeTE GIVEN AT THE LUXEMBOURG ON THE 20TH OF FRIMAIRE, ANNO VII.

Bonaparte hands to the Directory the treaty of Campo-Formio]

Opposite the Luxembourg, is the Rue de Tournon, where Theroigne de Mericourt and Mademoiselle Lenormand lived; the Countess d'Houdetot dwelt at No. 12, the appearance of which has hardly changed since. If he were to come back and wander about these parts, Jean-Jacques Rousseau would again find almost intact the home of her he chiefly loved, quite near to the Rue Servandoni, a dark, damp lane lurking beneath the walls of Saint-Sulpice, where Condorcet, during the Terror, succeeded in safely hiding himself at the house of Madame Vernet, No. 15. There he terminated--under what sorry conditions!--his _Tableau of the Progress of the Human Mind_. His wife was living at Auteuil and there painted pastels. No industry prospered under the Terror. "Every one," says Michelet, "was in a hurry to fix on the canvas a shadow of this uncertain life." On the 6th of April, his work being finished, Condorcet dressed himself as a workman, with long beard and cap down over his eyes, a "Horace" in his hand, and in his pocket some poison, for a case of need, prepared him by Cabanis; and escaped from Madame Vernet's. All day, he roamed about the country, in the vicinity of Fontenay-aux-Roses, hoping to find with some friends, Monsieur and Madame Suard, a shelter that they refused him. He spent the night in the woods; then, on the morrow, haggard and starved, he entered a Clamart public-house. There, he made a ravenous meal, while reading his dear Horace. Being questioned and suspected, he was carried off to the district, put on an old horse and thus conducted to the prison at Bourg-la-Reine. At dawn, the gaolers, on going into his cell, stumbled over his corpse. Poison had made an end of this n.o.ble life of work, glory, and misery.

Aloft in the same quiet quarter, Saint-Sulpice rears its two unequal towers, on which Chappe planted the great arms of his aerial telegraph.

It was in the fine vestry of this imposing church, which has preserved its admirable wood-carvings, that Camille Desmoulins signed the marriage register, when, on the 29th of December 1790, he married his adored Lucile Duplessis. The marriage was a veritable romance; and all Paris crowded to the gates of Saint-Sulpice to see the procession go by. The bride and bridegroom were congratulated; and cheers were given for the witnesses, whose names had already become popular; Sillery, Petion, Mercier, and Robespierre. Then, the wedding party ascended the Rue de Conde to go and breakfast at Camille's home, No. 1 Rue du Theatre Francois (to-day, No. 38 Rue de l'Odeon), on the third floor. There, on the 20th of March 1794, the day of his mother's death, he was arrested, bound like a malefactor, and thence was taken to the Luxembourg hard by.

On the 5th of April, Camille was executed amid the shouts of the people who had so flattered him. Lucile followed him to the scaffold a week later! They had sworn to love each other in life and death.... The idyll finished in blood.

Round about Saint-Sulpice, one comes across the Rue Ferou, the Rue Ca.s.sette, the Rue Garanciere, the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, the Rue Madame, with their ancient names and provincial aspect, devout and silent quarters of monastic and semi-mysterious life, and, for this reason, full of infinite charm.

There, on all sides, are heard convent bells and liturgic sounds. The few shops that exist are austere in air and devoted to religious purposes: chasuble makers', holy image dealers', church book and jewellery sellers'. Behind long, sombre walls, shoots of verdure, the plumes of a tree joyously bursting forth remind one of large, unkempt gardens, where all grows wild, full of flowers and birds, inhabited by pious persons and old people who pray as they walk and regretfully dream of the times that are no more.

In the huge Paris, noisy and flippant, mad with sound and movement, tramways and underground railways, it is the refuge of the past, the quarter for prayer, silence, and oblivion; there still seem to live "a few dolent voices of yearnings for the past, which ring the curfew,"

says Chateaubriand in his _Memoirs from beyond the Grave_.

Old mansions are numerous.

In the Rue de Varenne alone, each portal awakes a remembrance of the most ill.u.s.trious names of France's n.o.bility: Broglie, Bourbon, Conde, Villeroy, Castries, Rohan-Chabot, Tesse, Bethune-Sully, Montmorency, Rouge, Segur, Aubeterre, Narbonne-Pelet, &c., and some of the hosts of these aristocratic dwellings were certainly found disguised, dressed up as horse-dealers, drovers, peasants, workmen, in the _Golden Cup_ hostelry at the corner of the Rue de Varenne, which was celebrated in the history of the Chouannerie: the heroes of _Tournebut_, my dear friend Lenotre's interesting work, put up there, says the author, who, himself filled with enthusiasm, knows how to inspire his reader with the same. It was one of the meeting-places used by the sworn companions of George Cadoudal, who hid there several times; and there, too, the royalist conspirators met to complete, for Vendemiaire, Anno IV., their arrangements relative to the abduction of the Convention.

At some little distance, in the Rue Canettes, another rendezvous existed, for emigrants and chouans, in the house of the perfumer, Caron, where a famous hiding-place was used. Hyde de Neuville tells us, in his picturesque memoirs, that one needed only to slip behind the picture, serving as signboard to the perfumery--a picture overhanging the street--then to draw over one the shutter of the neighbouring chamber, for all the police Fouche employed to be tricked, in spite of searching, as they frequently did, the house through and through.

Next, we come upon the Odeon--the old Odeon--still standing on its base, in spite of the countless jests levelled at it, with its famous galleries, where, for many a long year, saunterers have gone to have a look at the last productions of contemporary literature. How often have we lingered in front of the old books or new ones, turning over the leaves, or reading between two pages yet uncut?

It was in 1873 that, under three arcades of the Odeon galleries, the most amiable of publishers, Ernest Flammarion, installed himself in partners.h.i.+p with Ch. Marpon; both of them indefatigable workers, benevolent and witty, they spent treasures of contrivance to get into too narrow a s.p.a.ce all the nice, fine books they loved so well, and understood so well how to make others love.

But soon the three arcades were really inadequate; and, progressively, the untiring Flammarion spread round two sides of the big building, before starting out to conquer Paris, and to establish in the city so many bookshops. He had his faithful readers: an old book-lover of narrow purse owned to him that he had read the whole of Darwin's _Origin of Species_ (450 pages) while standing in front of the stall!

Other customers less scrupulous have sometimes carried off the volume they had begun; but the good Flammarion is infinitely indulgent to such "absent-minded" individuals. "The desire to instruct themselves is too strong for their feelings," he murmurs by way of excuse, and, philosophically, he smiles and pa.s.ses these petty larcenies to his profit and loss account.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE RUE DE L'ECOLE DE MeDECINE IN 1866 House where Marat was a.s.sa.s.sinated _Drawn by A. Maignan_]

Along the Rue de l'ecole-de-Medecine, pa.s.sing by the Dupuytren Museum, which was formerly the refectory of the Franciscan monastery, we reach the Boulevard Saint-Germain, the cutting of which did away with so many precious relics; among others, the abode where Marat was a.s.sa.s.sinated, the Mignon College, and the Saint-Germain Abbey, the front of which opened opposite the row of old, curiously gabled houses which so far have been left alone by architects and builders. These latter heard the cries of the victims that were ma.s.sacred in the September slaughters.

They were lighted by the reflection of eighty-four fire-pots supplied by a certain Bourgain, the candle-maker of the quarter, in order that the families of the slaughterers and the amateurs of fine spectacles might come and contemplate the work; the shopkeepers of the quarter, who were complaisant witnesses, supplied details. These houses also saw Billaud-Varennes congratulate the "workers" and distribute wine tickets to them; and Maillard, surnamed Strike Hard, they saw leave, when his work was done, with his hands crossed behind the skirts of his long grey overcoat, and walk quietly back to his home, like a worthy clerk quitting his office, coughing the while, for he had a delicate chest.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GALLERY OF THE ODeON (RUE ROTROU)]

Together with the present presbytery, they form the sole extant witnesses of that dreadful butchery.

Within a stone's throw, once there was the Pa.s.sage du Commerce, where resounded the b.u.t.t-ends of the guns of the sectionaries who, on the 31st of March 1794, came at daybreak to arrest Danton and conduct him to the Luxembourg; and it is easy to fancy what must have been that hour of fright and stupefaction. Arrest Danton! the t.i.tan of the Revolution, him whose formidable eloquence had raised fourteen armies from the soil! the Danton of the 10th of August, Danton till then untouchable! It was only a few days after the arrest of Camille with his cruel wit; the Camille of the Palais-Royal, of the _Lanterne_, the _Revolutions of France and Brabant_, the _Brissot unmasked_; the Camille of the "_Vieux Cordelier_," that masterpiece of wit and courage, in which he dared to speak of clemency to Robespierre and of respect for his fellows to the ign.o.ble Hebert! On the site of Danton's house, the tribune's statue stands to-day; we regret the house.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ROHAN COURTYARD IN 1901 _Water-colour by D. Bourgoin_]

The Rohan courtyard (the word ought to be written _Rouen_, for, in the fifteenth century, the yard depended on the old mansion possessed by the Cardinal de Rouen) joins the Pa.s.sage du Commerce, a few steps from the bookshop where the philanthropic Doctor Guillotin tried on a sheep the knife of his "beheading machine"; it is picturesque and curious, this Rohan courtyard, where you can still see the well of the house once inhabited by Coictier, the doctor of Louis XI.; where, too, the "mule's step" may be found, that Sorbonne doctors, who frequented this quarter, used in order to get off their steeds, and which preserved a very old wall round a garden planted with lilac and turf--alas! destroyed last year. The wall, like that of the Rue Clovis, was a fragment of Philippe-Auguste's fortification, the base of one of whose towers is still to be made out in the Pa.s.sage du Commerce, No. 4, at the house of a locksmith, who has set up his forge upon it!

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ROHAN COURTYARD IN 1901 Second view]

The houses there are old, dilapidated, and sordid, but perfect in their picturesqueness; the strangest industries flourish in them, and quite recently one might read there this characteristically Parisian advertis.e.m.e.nt, "Small hands required for flowers and feathers," beside a plate pointing out the address of the newspaper, _Heaven_, on the fourth floor, door to the left!

The Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie is on one side; it is the ancient Rue des Fosses-Saint-Germain, where Marat set up his press and printing-machine in a cellar. At No. 14, in the courtyard of an old mansion occupied by a wall-paper merchant, once stood the premises of the Theatre-Francais.

The large entrance door, the staircases leading to the actors' private rooms, the slanting pit of the hall, and even the friezes are still in existence. The King's Comedians played there, on April 18th, 1689, _Phedre_ and the _Medecin malgre lui_, and performed in the same building until 1770.

The encyclopaedists, d'Alembert, Diderot and his friends, used to meet opposite at the Procope coffee-house, the handsome iron balcony of which is yet subsisting, from where it was so agreeable to hobn.o.b with the balcony of the Comedy. The Procope coffee-house, celebrated in the eighteenth century, was even more so under the Second Empire. In 1867, on the eve of the Baudin trial, Gambetta poured forth in it, to the students of the various University schools, the thunder and lightning bursts of his admirable eloquence. The great orator in 1859 lived at No.

7 Rue de Tournon, in the hotel of the Senate and the Nations, at present to be found there. His small room afforded a fine view over the roofs of Paris, and also remains as it was then.

Near the spot, at No. 1 Rue Bourbon-le-Chateau, on the 23rd of December 1850, two poor women were a.s.sa.s.sinated. One of them, Mademoiselle Ribault, a designer on the staff of the _Pet.i.t Courrier des Dames_, edited by Monsieur Thiery, had the strength to write on a screen with a finger dipped in her own blood: "The a.s.sa.s.sin is the clerk of M.

Thi...." This clerk, Laforcade, was arrested the next day.

How many delightful nooks besides, hardly known by Parisians, are to be met with on the left bank of the river!

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE RUE VISCONTI _Water-colour by F. Leon_]

Not all have disappeared for ever of those vast melancholy gardens, those h.o.a.ry mansions buried in streets where the gra.s.s grows, and whose n.o.ble but gloomy facades would never cause one to suspect the riches they contain. Many are in the vicinity of the Hotel des Invalides.

Others are in the Rue Vanneau, the Rue Bellecha.s.se, the Rue de Varenne, the Rue Saint-Guillaume, the Rue Bonaparte; some also in the Rue Visconti, which dark narrow lane possesses ill.u.s.trious souvenirs. The famous Champmesle, Clairon, and Adrienne Lecouvreur lived in the Ranes mansion, built on the site of the Pet.i.t-Pre-aux-Clercs, and J. Racine died there in 1697. This house, which bears the number 21, is to-day a girls' boarding-school! And last of all, at No. 17 the great Balzac established the printing-press that ruined him, and that later became the studio of Paul Delaroche. There, was played the sentimental and commercial drama whose poignant phases have been related to us so eloquently by Messieurs Hanoteaux and Vicaire.

All these houses, so pregnant with history, are still visible; yet how few Parisians are acquainted with them!

[Ill.u.s.tration: ALFRED DE MUSSET AT 23 YEARS OF AGE _Drawn by Lepaulle_ (Pigoreau Collection)]

On the Voltaire Quay lived Vivant, Denon, Ingres, Alfred de Musset, Judge Perrault, Chamillard, Gluck, and Voltaire himself who died there, and whose corpse, wrapped in a dressing-gown and held up by straps, like a traveller asleep, started by night in a travelling-coach, on the 30th of May 1778, from the courtyard of Monsieur de Villette's mansion, with its entrance still in the Rue de Beaune, to be buried outside Paris at the Abbey of Scellieres in Champagne.

The flat in which Voltaire pa.s.sed away has not been altered, and its decoration has remained almost intact, with its wall mirrors, its painted ceilings, and its small mirrored salons contrived in the thick walls.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FAcADE OF THE INSt.i.tUTE _From an original drawing of the Revolutionary period_ (Carnavalet Museum)]

The Inst.i.tute is not far, but for the ancient College of the Four Nations to produce its best impression, it needs a special day--an extraordinary sitting, a sensational reception, when the prettiest costumes of the most elegant Parisian dames contrast with the Academicians' green uniforms. On one side, are beauty, charm, and grace; on the other, some of the n.o.blest intelligences, the most ill.u.s.trious names in Literature, Art, and Science. It is the great intellectual banquet of France in one of the fairest sights of the Capital.

If, however, we wish for something to amuse us, something original, we must mount the endless staircases of the Inst.i.tute and seek it in the attic portion of the palace, visiting the tiny chambers where formerly it was the custom to put candidates for the Prix de Rome in the compet.i.tive music examination.

Inside these closets, at which the sumptuously lodged prisoners of Fresnes-les-Rungis would grumble, on these decrepit walls, the finest talents of our modern school have left traces of their whilom presence--bars of music, verses, drawings, writings of varied nature. I confess I should not dare to reproduce, even expurgated, the inscriptions which confinement and absence from Paris streets and acquaintance have suggested to many an admirable composer of to-day.

Saint-Saens would certainly blush, Bizet's great shade would be troubled, our great and witty Ma.s.senet would surely refuse to accept the paternity of his vigorous apostrophes, and--I will be discreet; never mind--it's something very enjoyable, very funny, and quite in the character of the language.

Between the Mint and the lion-poodle of the Inst.i.tute (from the shelter of which, if we are to believe his delightful Memoirs, Alexandre Dumas contributed so valiantly to the triumph of the 1830 Revolution) nestles a small, provincial-looking Square; Madame Permon, mother of the future Madame Junot, d.u.c.h.ess of Abrantes, lived there until the Revolution. In a small garret of the same house, at the left corner, on the third floor, Bonaparte used to lodge during his rare holidays from the ecole Militaire. The fine, carved wainscotings are still round the walls of the drawing-room on the ground floor, overlooking the Seine, which the Caesar that-was-to-be used to enter and there speak of his hopes, and the marble chimney-piece is in its old place; at it he would come and dry his big patched boots that "smoked again," the talkative Madame d'Abrantes tells us. So, while dreaming, the little sub-lieutenant might, from the window, see opposite him the palace whence, for a number of years, he was to conqueringly dispose of the destinies of the dazzled world.

In front of the Inst.i.tute is the Pont des Arts. There the sight is an enchanting one; the Seine--the gayest, most lively of rivers--crowded with pa.s.senger-boats, tugs, barges, and barques. The grey or blue sky is reflected in the water, and the river flows majestically between two verdure-clad quays, surmounted by book-sellers' cases, and inhabited by the most picturesque of populations.

What strange trades there are on the river sides!--watermen's barbers, dog shearers, dockmen, and sand-carters, tollmen and mattress-carders, anglers, bathmen, washerwomen; it is a separate population with its own customs, habits, and peculiar language. And what a splendid frame is round this odd little world seen from the Pont des Arts!