From Paris: Its Sites, Monuments and History, compiled from the principal secondary authorities by Maria Hornor Lansdale, With an Introduction by Hilaire Belloc, Illustrated; Philadelphia: The International Press, The John C. Winston Co., 1898; pp. 405-446.
PARIS : ITS SITES, MONUMENTS AND HISTORY
405TO catch some thread that may connect the isolated facts of this chapter it is necessary to add but one feature to those which were described in the previous one. Paris, still in decay, still touchy and still ill at ease, has suffered a further evil and has become industrial
The seventy-four years between the death of Louis and the outbreak of the Revolution are marked (but to a more intense degree) with all that was mentioned as the new character of Paris in the last chapter. The work done is more official than ever; the governmental interest less and less; the houses, and especially the churches, less than ever an outcome of national or civic feeling. But added to this, great suburbs grow up, to add to her discomfort and to her lack of security. In Paris of the seventeenth century the bourgeois owned his own house; he does so in the “Tartuffe” of Molière, and you may perceive in that admirable play how those great buildings were filled all by one family — the shop or office on the ground floor, the servants in the Mansard roof. The next hundred years saw this changed for the worse. A growing proletariat, a growing capitalism, a growing 406 salaried class have (so to speak) “cut” these great houses transversely. Men live in flats — apartments — the unity of the household has disappeared. It is an evil from which the great French cities suffer to-day.
As Paris becomes industrial she increases largely in population; she is overburdened with it, the town overflows. In the Revolutionary turmoil we are always hearing of the “faubourgs,” the “suburbs” of St. Antoine or St. Marceau. These are the irregular, scattered, thickly-populated groups of houses to the east. When the Revolution was on the point of breaking out Paris had certainly more than six hundred thousand, perhaps nearer a million, souls in all. And this increase was of the character that so gravely threatens our modern civilization. I mean it was a new horde of families, without capital, depending upon centralized wealth, and destined to suffer, in any economic crisis, the most acute misery, or perhaps to die. Such was the populace which the Revolution worked upon, and which was often its arm. Paris and France, wherein to-day the proletariat form a smaller proportion than in any modern city or state, was given over, a hundred years ago, to a population more proletariat than in any other place. No contrast more striking than this is to be discovered in Europe — England and London, once the centre of the “bourgeoisie” and of small capital, becoming the highly capitalistic; France 407 and Paris, once the chief centre of opposed wealth and poverty, becoming the egalitarian type.
In this Paris, also, the old institutions were practically dead. The University flourished after a fashion, but the convents were empty (that is, compared with the generations before). The churches I will not say were empty too, but no such sight as the modern Christmas and Easter could be seen in them.
Side by side with this proletariat stood all that mass which we call the “old régime,” guilds which excluded the people, nobles no longer noble but poverty-stricken (the rich were at court), a priesthood that did not seek the poor, and a thousand rules, customs and laws designed for all, applied to a few, and finally rusted out of all knowledge and ceasing to affect any citizen at all, save for hindrance.
In such a period we will hardly expect to find any great architectural undertakings, and in fact the changes that came over the outward aspect of Paris in the reign of Louis XV. are largely ones of decay and neglect. It is true that these would have been diversified by at lest two deliberate and irreparable blunders but for chance intervention; one of these threatened the Hôtel de Ville, and the other the Louvre. It had been complained for a long time that both the Hôtel de Ville and the Place de Grève were too small, not for their proper functions, but for the great fêtes held there on such occasions — for example, as the celebration of the King’s recovery 408 at Metz in 1744, when the Advocate Barbier, after describing the decorations, adds that “the Place de Grève is so ugly and misshapen that the effect was poor.” The remedy suggested was to move the Hôtel de Ville! Accordingly, when the Prince de Conti, having been made Grand Prior of the Temple, wished to sell his palace near the Collège des Quatre Nations, the King recommended the Corps de Ville to buy it and put up a new Hôtel de Ville on the site. The exorbitant sums paid for this and the adjoining Hôtel de Sillery fortunately landed the municipality into such financial difficulties that no further steps could be taken, and when, seventeen years later, the King bought the Hôtel Conti to build a mint on the site, the plan was abandoned.
During this period there were no more fêtes at the Grève. When the Duke of Burgundy, eldest son of the Dauphin, was born, the sums ordinarily expended on a public celebration were used to provide dots for “six hundred young girls, to be selected by the curés of the several parishes and married by them to young men, natives of Paris, and known to be of irreproachable conduct.” Each groom was given a coat made of good cloth, and each bride a dress of striped silk and thread. The six hundred marriages came off on the 9th of November in a perfectly orderly manner. At St. Sulpice alone there were not fewer than sixty-eight, the city officials presiding like fairy godmothers, each in his parish church.
409In contrast to this idyl we find the usual accounts of executions at the Grève. Those of Count Horn, Cartouche and his band, Damiens (who attempted to stab Louis XV. in 1751), and the Count de Lally, the injustice of whose sentence was formally proclaimed by Louis XVI. twelve years after his death, being among the most notable.
The Louvre meantime was faring badly. During the Regency, Louis XV., living at the Tuileries, only went there occasionally to visit the little Infanta, who lodged with her Spanish suite in the rooms of the Academy of Painting (turned out for the purpose).
In the spring of 1722, however, the project of the Spanish marriage was abandoned and the young Princess sent home, leaving as sole reminder of her presence the name that the parterre in front of the Queen’s apartments has borne ever since, Jardin de l’Infante. For the ensuing thirty years or more the King practically forgot the existence of the Louvre; and the Regent did worse by annulling the decrees of Louis XIII., which forbade the erection of new buildings within the limits called the “grand dessein,” or even the repairing of old ones by private individuals.
The King’s complete indifference will best be understood by his passive acceptance of a scheme brought forward during the ministry of Fleury to demolish the Louvre, and sell it, with the site, for building materials. It is said that this plan would 410 have been adopted had not one member of the Council arisen and indignantly asked who would have the temerity to carry it out. “It is certain,” he added, “that whoever strikes the first blow will be torn in pieces by the people of Paris.”
Though allowed to stand, its condition was truly deplorable. The great halls and galleries were divided into quantities of little rooms, wherein lodged a herd of persons — almost any one who wanted to, in fact, could he prove connection with any of the academies. On all sides could be seen stovepipes sticking out of the windows and vomiting smoke and soot on those magnificent walls, whose ruin seemed to have been determined upon. The Queen, although not occupying the Louvre in person, did her part by stabling her horses in the very apartments — those of Anne of Austria — that should have been her own. A number of persons following this august example, there were as many as half a dozen separate stables established there, including that of the Postes, which occupied the rez-de-chaussé of the east wing, that is the part directly beneath the Colonnade. As to this last, nothing could exceed the shameful state of neglect into which it had fallen. From its base, concealed on the right by the huge Hôtels de Longueville and de Villequier, and on the left by the Gothic remnant of the Petit Bourbon, now utilized for a storehouse, rose its mighty columns, their shafts for the most part still unfluted, their capitals unfinished, 411 and, worse still, their bases encumbered by a mass of wretched hovels occupied by waifs of the population of Paris, and contributing their smoke and refuse to the general dilapidation.
On the side facing towards the Tuileries, from which an entire quartier still separated it, the Louvre windows looked out on a section of the ancient moat, crossed by a double-arched bridge, and a dreary little square, from whence a flight of steps was required to lead down to the Rue Fromenteau, so high had the level of the palace become in the course of successive reconstructions and demolitions. In the court, when the day final came for clearing away the rubbish and débris, it was found to have accumulated to a depth of six feet. On this foundation some enterprising “squatters” had built themselves hovels, while the architect-in-chief, whose duty it was to protect the buildings, far from preventing them, did the same himself only on a more elaborate scale. He erected, that is, a house, almost a hôtel, in the centre of the courtyard, on the very spot where a statue of the King was to have stood.
This impudent performance, which seemed to taunt the palace with its fallen state, and to assert that not only would it never be finished, but it would never even be cleared and restored, put the final touch to the public indignation already aroused by the disgraceful state of the rest of the building. Voltaire now raised his voice.
412Mais, O nouvel affront! quelle coupable audace
Vient encore avilir ce chef-d’œuvre divin!
Quel sujet entreprend d’occuper une place
Faite pour admirer les traits du Souverain?
runs one of the “Strophes on the Louvre” which appeared during the early part of 1749. For six years the tide of expostulation, ridicule and supplication rose ever higher and higher — all manner of absurd suggestions for the preservation of the building were made. The Prévôt des Marchands even offered in the name of the city to finish the Louvre if the King would agree to have the Hôtel de Ville occupy the south wing!
Thus far nothing had had the smallest effect, and the abuses only seemed to grow worse, when in 1754 M. de Vandière, the newly-created Marquis de Marigny and a brother of Mme. de Pompadour, was appointed Superintendent of Buildings. He and his sister at once made the most vigorous representations of the King, and by the following February the work of restoration began.
Under the direction of Gabriel the east wing was first attacked. Perrault’s colonnade was repaired, but the façade overlooking the courtyard had to be entirely rebuilt; it had not been roofed in, and exposure to the storms of eighty years had finished by utterly ruining it.
Gabriel, constantly hampered by want of money, was more successful in demolishing than in anything 413 else. He tore down buildings, dug up the accumulated rubbish of a century, cleared out, carted off. The Louvre was seen gradually emerging from its sordid surroundings; the great colonnade, which had been standing there hidden, guessed at, for nearly a hundred years, was really seen for the first time. The last traces of the Petit Bourbon (one wing with the encorbelled “tourelle” half-razed at the time of the Constable’s treason) disappeared with the Hôtel de Longueville. For the “Postes” the King bought the Hôtel d’Armenonville in what is now the Rue J. J. Rousseau, which it occupied until the present building was put up in 1880-1884, partly on the same site. On either side of the east entrance he replaced the old buildings with large squares of turf, and also sodded the courtyard, at last restored to its proper level. This was about all that Gabriel was able to do. The money was even wanting for him to roof in the east wing when it was done, and the façade overlooking the Seine had to be left without either roof or windows.
As has been mentioned above, Louis XV. lived during his minority in the Tuileries. The “grand roi” had barely expired at Versailles before workmen were sent to prepare it for the young King. After some months of delay, for the palace was very much out of order, he arrived. Beyond these necessary repairs, however, the six and a half years passed there by Louis XV. do not seem to have left any 413 traces on the building. Several events of historical interest may be noted, as, for instance, the visit in May, 1717, of Peter the Great. “He seemed unable to stop caressing the King,” writes Dangeau, and then tells of the interest he took in the Grande Galerie, which he visited at six o’clock in the morning, and in the mechanical bridge over the moat, which was crossed to reach the Champs Elysées. This invention of an Augustine monk named Bourgeois was on the same principle as the gates of our modern locks.
The reception given at the Tuileries to the embassy sent by Achmet II. in 1721 is described at length in the Nouveau Mercure, where also may be found detailed accounts of the performances given in the newly-restored Salle des Machines. Among these the course of semi-sacred concerts given every Friday in Lent, and called spirituels, were the precursors of the Conservatory Concerts of to-day. It was the success of these performances that suggested the idea of offering the Salle des Machines to the opera company left homeless by the fire of 1763. Soufflot had been given charge of its restoration but was unable to overcome certain acoustic defects. “Mon Dieu que cette salle est sourde!” one spectator is made to say in a skit of the day, to which another, equally chagrined by the poverty of the chorus, replies: “Elle est bien heureuse.”
For twelve years the Comédiens Français played 415 in the Salle des Machines to crowded houses. The plays were few of them new, and most of them poor, but the acting made up for all defects. Anything by Voltaire was always received with enthusiasm, and when he returned to Paris in 1778, after an absence of thirty years, the company determined to get up a grand manifestation in his honor.
The evening of March 30th was chosen, and the scene is described as being unique in the annals of the Comédie Française. Greeted with frantic applause on his arrival, crowned first by the actor Brizard, then by the Prince of Beauvau, and a third time in effigy on the stage, to the accompaniment of trumpets and drums, the aged poet seemed to have reached the very summit of fame and popularity. After the performance of Irene, Vestris, surrounded by the entire personnel of the Comédie Française holding palms in their hands, recited a dithyramb in his honor. Nanine was then given, and Voltaire, indescribably moved and stirred, was followed all the way back to the Quai des Théatins by an idolatrous crowd. Two months later, while still under the influence of this wonderful evening, he died at the house of the Marquis de Villette.
In 1783 the company was installed in its new theatre, and seven years later the Salle des Machines, vacant during this period, was reopened under the name of “Théatre de Monsieur.” It was here that the Comte de Provence, with the aid of a troupe of 416 Italians, introduced the new style of performance called “des Bouffes,” which soon became so popular with the Parisians.
But while the upper classes were amusing themselves with Italian music and balloon ascensions (it was in 1783 that the celebrated ascent of the aeronauts, Charles and Robert, was made from the Tuileries garden), the flood of the Revolution was rising higher and higher. Every day these same gardens were thronged by a restless, feverish crowd that overflowed into the Palais Royal, and gathered in excited mobs to listen to the harangues of the open-air orators. Only a few years more and the Salle des Machines will witness scenes very different from the apotheosis of Voltaire; and Camille Desmoulins will be heard at the Palais Royal.
The Palais Royal faithfully echoed, in fact, every storm of popular excitement that swept over Paris. It was here that the crowd surged and howled for Law, dead or alive, when the inevitable financial crash came, caused by the collapse of his scheme. In the rush on the bank in the Place Vendôme, which began at six o’clock in the morning, three persons were crushed to death. The mob brought the bodies to the very doors of the Palais Royal, and refused to believe the assertion that Law was not there. The people were finally dispersed, and during the night the speculator managed to slip in without being seen. He remained under the protection 417 of the Regent for six months or more, occupying the suite of the Marquis d’Etampes. During this time an extra guard was stationed on the opposite side of the Place, at the corner of the newly-erected Château d’Eau, a building put up by the architect Cotte for the King, or rather by order of the Regent, but on property belonging to the Crown — a part, in fact, of the “grand dessein du Louvre” which, as we have already seen, the Regent failed to respect.
This new building, a much more agreeable object to look out on from the Palais Royal than the forlorn old houses it replaced, was a not unpleasing specimen of the architecture of the Regency — the only one, indeed, in Paris in the way of a public building. It was in two stories. Its façade, vermiculated in imitation of rustic wood, was flanked by two pavilions. On either side of the portico in the centre were coupled Tuscan columns supporting the pediment on which rested two reclining figures by Guillaume Coustou, one representing the Seine and the other the Nymph of the Arcueil springs, both of whose waters flowed in to the reservoir which this façade screened. From the “Château d’Eau” the Palais Royal and the Tuileries were supplied with water; it stood until 1848.
Louis, Duke of Orléans, who succeeded to the title on the death of his father in 1723, did little for the Palais Royal. Almost a fanatic in matters of religion, he was beyond measure scandalized by the promiscuous 418 mingling of sacred and profane subjects in his father’s picture gallery. The remedy he applied was severe. Selecting forty of the most indecent (they were almost all from the collection of Queen Christina), he made a bonfire of them. Three only were saved: a Venus by Albani, Coreggio’s Leda, and the Io also by Correggio, which had already been cut in strips when Collin managed to get possession of it, and had it pieced together. In 1727 the Duke sold the Flemish pictures. He now came to the Palais Royal as little as possible. His wife, a daughter of the Margrave of Baden, to whom he was devotedly attached, had died the year before, and he spent most of his time in retreat at the Canonry of Ste. Geneviève, now the Lycée Henri IV. He left his library and collection of medals to this establishment, and died there in 1752.
Three years before his death, his conscience reproaching him with having a theatre in his house, and singers and dancers for tenants, he had ceded the proprietorship of the opera to the city of Paris.
It was, however, in 1748, when the opera was still a dependency of the Palais Royal, that Charles Edward, son of the Pretender, was seized there by the King’s order. Possibly this flagrant breach of hospitality would not have taken place had the Duke been living in his palace at the time, the King having merely yielded to pressure from England. All the approaches had been shut off and guards stationed 419 not only throughout the building, but at various points all the way to the Porte St. Antoine.
The Prince was overpowered from behind, bound, and taken to a house on the Rue Bons Enfants, where he was disarmed. He was then placed in a carriage drawn by six horses and whirled off to Vincennes.
The Palais Royal garden, newly laid out and thickly planted with trees in 1730, was the favorite resort of opera singers, small shopkeepers, poor writers, and hosts of others. Every avenue, walk, and corner had its name. The Allée d’Argenson, for instance, on the right, or east side, so-called from the hôtel in the Rue des Bons Enfants, later the “Chancelerie du Duc d’Orléans.” This hôtel replaced the Hôtel Méluzine, where the first meetings of the Académie Française were held, where Abbé Dubois lived for a time, and where M. de Navailles, tutor to the Regent, died in 1684.
On the opposite side, the avenue bordering on the Rue de Richelieu was called “l’allée du café de Foix,” from the celebrated restaurant belonging to a man named Foy or Foix. It stood opposite the opening of the Rue Villedo, and close to Molière’s house. A flight of steps led down into the garden, and Foy (succeeded by Tousserand) had permission to “carry, to circulate, and to stand on the chairs” his trays in this alley, which, by the way, was the only one in the garden where the ancient elms planted by Richelieu had been left standing.
420With the death of the religious Louis, Duke of Orléans, and the installation of M. de Silhouette as Chancellor in the place of the Marquis d’Argenson, extensive plans were made for improving the Palais Royal.
In his memoirs M. Argenson, who had never been empowered to do anything of the kind, writes with evident jealousy, under date of April 1, 1752, “Two months after the old Duke’s death we have M. le Duc projecting building operations at the Palais Royal and Villers Cotterets to cost as high as eight millions. . . . So they are going to hurry to put up buildings and to go into debt. As a man builds so he governs, says Voltaire.”
The old architect Cartaud had charge of the work; when he died in 1758 the new buildings on the right of the first and second courts were finished, and the apartments of the charming Duchess Henrietta de Bourbon-Conti well advanced. He was succeeded by Contant d’Ivry, but before long the Duchess too died, gay and unselfish to the last.
It is told of her that when the end was approaching she was troubled by a strange noise close to her room, and sent to inquire about it. On being told that it was a turnspit, a poor abbé whom she had befriended and given an asylum in the Palais being about to sit down to dinner, she said with a smile: “I can die quite comfortably, then, since the abbé will not lose so much as a single mouthful by the event.”
421There were a great many of these pensioners in the Palais Royal, each one inhabiting a separate little suite of his own. Fontenelle after living there for twenty-five years was turned out by the Regent’s son, and left it most regretfully. The destruction of the opera house and a part of the palace by fire in 1763 was the result of an overheated stove in the rooms of the Governor’s wife. The fire broke out at an hour when the opera house was deserted; even the porters were not there; but a young singer, who was to make her début that evening, having gone on the stage to test her voice in the empty house, discovered it in time and gave the alarm. The rebuilding of the opera house, as well as the other works at the Palais Royal, dragged on for many years. The Opera was finished in 1770. Moreau, the architect employed after the fire, was in constant collision with Contant d’Ivry, and many of the strange inequalities in the building as we see it to-day, the variations in line and level, are due to their disagreements. Moreau was given the exterior of the first court to do, in order that it might agree with the façade of his opera house, which he was under strict orders to construct so as to look like an integral part of the palace, and not at all like a theatre. Pajou carved the genii on the pediment in the centre; the arms of the Orléans family which they supported have been replaced with a dial.
Much of Moreau’s work still remains. The Orléans arms have been obliterated here and there, but Pajou’s 422 figures of Prudence and Liberty still adorn the pavilion of the right wing, and those of Force and Justice the pediment on the Rue Richelieu. The terrace in front of the outer court, with its eight coupled Doric columns and the arcades that flank it, are due to Moreau; but the grand stairway came within Contant’s jurisdiction, and is his work. The magnificent balustrade of polished iron and bronze, the work of Corbin and Caffieri, was so costly to keep in order that a later and more economical age covered it with a neat coating of paint. It has now, however, been restored to its original state.
Pajou also carved the figures for Contant’s façade of the second court. The side wings were not altered, and the “Galerie des Prous” still remains as the sole memory of Richelieu’s palace.
Meantime the Duke of Orléans had withdrawn almost completely from the Palais Royal. His secret marriage on the night of the 24th of April, 1773, to the Marquise de Montesson had caused a breach between him and his son, the Duc de Chartres. The latter, who had married Mlle. De Penthièvre several years before, occupied the left wing, while the Duke lived in the right. It was not long after his marriage, however, before the Marquise, who had him completely under her influence, induced him to move into a small hôtel in a new quarter of the Chaussée d’Antin. Here, becoming reconciled to his son during a serious illness, he agreed 423 to put him into immediate possession of the Palais Royal.
The new proprietor began at once to try to put a stop to the free use made of the garden by persons occupying the adjoining houses. They were either to cease giving little parties and fêtes there, or they were to pay a round sum for the privilege. The affair caused great excitement throughout Paris. The property owners appealed to the Duchess, as beloved by the people as her father, the Duc de Penthièvre, and, when her efforts to help them failed, to the archbishop, whose ancient rights in the matter of rents and sales over all this part of Paris gave him a pretext for interfering. He called upon the Duke with great ceremony, but no better success. Then the proprietors, many of them persons of influence, took the matter in hand for themselves. One of these was the Marquis de Voyer, a member of the Argenson family, to whom, as long as there should be a male representative, the use of the Hôtel de la Chancellerie had been ceded in 1752. De Voyer was angry at being received by the Duke in his slippers and dressing-gown, and adopted a high tone in making his demands. “I am in need of money,” was the only answer the Prince would make. “Very well,” said the Marquis, “we have plenty, but it is to defend our rights with, not to give to you.” The matter was taken to the courts, but long before the lawsuit that followed was settled the Duc de Chartres had 424 entirely changed his plans, and decided to put up at his own cost the galleries, which, with slight alterations, we see to-day surrounding the Palais Royal garden.
The three streets of Montpensier, Beaujolais and Valois, which were opened at this time, were named after the Duke’s three young sons, the last, Valois, being the future Louis-Philippe. These streets were taken off the garden itself, and its size was further diminished by the line of buildings inside them. On the fourth side, the south that is, towards the palace, was the arcade called l’Exposé, and the little Jardin des Princes was converted into a court opening on the Rue Richelieu by three large doorways. The Duke de Chartres persisted in carrying out these plans in the face of the most violent opposition. He said that his object was to erect a magnificent building which should be suitable in every way as a meeting-place for natives and foreigners of all trades and conditions, and that, far from being a disadvantage to the neighboring proprietors, it would very sensibly increase the value of their property. All this was true enough. The work, begun in 1781 and pushed forward with the greatest haste, was far enough advanced three years later for a number of temporary booths, put up between the pillars of the east gallery, to be rented out. The Duke was indeed by this time hard pressed for money; before the whole thing was finished he was bankrupt.
425Meanwhile the opera house had again been burned. This time the fire broke out during a performance, and probably many of the audience would have perished had it not been for the presence of mind of Dauberval, who was on the stage and nearing the end of the ballet of Coronis. Happening to look up he saw a frieze on fire, took a few rapid steps, and gave the signal for the curtain to be lowered. The audience was surprised, but left without demanding the usual finale, and in a few minutes the whole place was in flames. Guimard, who occupied a lodging off the Cour des Fontaines, was nearly burned to death, and the bodies of twenty-one persons less fortunate than she were found in the ruins. Most of the dead were members of the corps de ballet and opera, but among them were three poor Capucins, who in obedience to a rule of their order, had been working with the rescuers. The fire took place in June, 1781, and this time the Duke found it impossible to force the city to have the opera house rebuilt on the same site. He was so loath to let it go that the case was laid before the Parliament, but it was decided against him, and the opera took possession in August of a hall improvised for them in the Boulevard St. Martin by Lenoir; it became the theatre St. Martin, and stood until 1871. For nearly nine years the Duke never ceased his efforts to make up in some worthy manner for the loss of the opera. One style of performance after another was attempted and 426 failed, but at last the germ of the present Théatre Française, was successfully started. In order to get space for the handsome theatre opened in May, 1790, the oldest parts of the palace of Richelieu were torn down — that is, the Galleries of Coypel and Oppenord and the Regent’s suite of apartments, which Madame de Genlis had occupied for a brief space, and which she said she had tried to purify by her acts of devotion. The magnificent collection of paintings was sold and scattered over Europe, may of them finding their way to England, and but few ever returning to France. The theatre, after being called by a half dozen names, was finally known as “la Comédie Française.”
To give an idea of what the quarter lying to the east of the Palais Royal was like at this period, we can hardly do better than quote the description of Piganiol de la Force, written in 1765.
“The Halles of Paris,” he says, “are undoubtedly the richest markets in the world. There one can find every article, either of necessity or luxury, that is produced on the earth, in the sea or the air; but it is also the dirtiest and most unsightly quarter of Paris, like an enlarged reproduction of the Jewish quarters in towns where Jews are allowed.”
Plans for enlarging and improving the buildings had been on foot for some time. Between 1763-1772 the Halle aux Blés was built on the site of the old Hôtel de Soissons, bought from the creditors of Victor 427 Amédeus of Savoy for the purpose, and the graveyard of the Holy Innocents was added by Louis XVI.; but during the Revolution there was little interest taken in the improvement of market-houses, and they were left in the same dirty and unsanitary condition as when Piganiol de la Force wrote.
The old hôtel that gave its name to the Rue Roi de Sicile had passed into the hands of the Duke de la Force, from whom it was bought by two brothers named Paris, who had made enormous fortunes as provision merchants, and Jean Poultier, Intendant of Finances. Two handsome hôtels were built on the site, the one designed by Gabriel and other by Bullet, both continuing to be called by the name of the last proprietor, la Force. The purchase of these hôtels in 1754 by the Crown, and their conversion later, with all their magnificent decorations, into a model prison was loudly applauded by the eighteenth century philosophers as an encouraging sign of the enlightened policy of the age.
Louis XVI. did indeed, by the advice of his Minister Necker, undertake a thorough reform in the prison system of Paris. By an order issued in 1780, the horrible prisons of the Châtelet and For l’Evêque were suppressed and the prisoners removed to the Hôtel de la Force (called from thence forth la Force), where they were all, even the most culpable, to be allowed air, space, and proper food. It was also provided that they were to be classified, and that persons 428 under temporary arrest were not to be herded in with common criminals, as had hitherto been the custom in the Conciergerie of the Palais de la Cité.
The main entrance to la Force was on the Rue Roi de Sicile. It had eight courtyards, four of them very large, and most of them planted with trees and provided with fountains fed from the Seine. The prison was divided into six departments. The first was for the head turnkeys and other employés; the second was devoted solely to “heads of families,” fathers, that is, detained there until they should have paid the wages of their children’s wet-nurses; the third was for debtors, and so on; but the classes were kept apart and the women separate from the men, and there was a well-ordered infirmary and a chapel, where all the prisoners attended the services without mingling together. The allowance of food was good and sufficient, and each prisoner was given a change of linen once a week.
The Hôtel de Brienne, which stood near by, was next bought and turned into a prison for women only. Modeled on the same plan, it was called La Petite Force. Until August 10, 1792, the prisons of La Force, continued to be administered according to this system.
Following the Rue Roi de Sicile a little way to the west, and then turning north on the Rue Vielle du Temple, we come to the great hôtel of the Rohan family, whose history we have traced in a preceding 429 chapter up to the early part of the eighteenth century. When Madame de Soubise, one of Louis XIV.’s favorites, died in 1709, and was followed three years later by her husband, their second son, Hercule Meriadec, inherited the magnificent dwelling which has parents had spent their fortunes and their energies in building and furnishing. The King allowed him to bear the titles of Duc de Rohan-Rohan and Prince of Rohan, while his brother, Armand Gaston, was made Archbishop of Strasbourg and Cardinal de Rohan. These two brothers both died in 1749, having devoted themselves for more than thirty years to the furnishing and embellishing of their respective hôtels, that of Soubise belonging to the Prince, and the adjoining one of Strasbourg to the Cardinal, who had built it himself. From the time that Cardinal de Rohan added the library of President de Menars (into which de Thou’s library had been incorporated fifty years before) to his own not inconsiderable collection, the library of the Hôtel Strasbourg was looked upon as one of the most valuable in Paris.
The Prince’s grandson and the Cardinal’s great-nephew succeeded to their properties and their titles; but the old order of things was passing away, and the last of the house of Rohan to possess the Hôtel Soubise was the Marshal Charles de Rohan, the favorite of Louis XV. and Mme. Du Barry, a gallant enough soldier, but a poor General, and responsible for his share of the French reverses in Germany; while the 430 last Cardinal de Rohan was he who is so inseparably connected with the scandal of the diamond necklace in Louis XVI.’s reign.
By Louis XIV.’s time the Arsenal had come to be nothing more than a storehouse for old arms, a saltpetre depôt, and a foundry of bronze statues. Upwards of two thousand persons lived within the enclosure, subject to a sort of military discipline; among these were numbered the Saltpétriers, a body of men whose business it was to collect from all the old building in Paris such plaster as could be used in the manufacture of saltpetre.
The office of grand Master had become entirely a sinecure, the incumbent living in great state in the hôtel near the Arsenal, at the expense of the government, and doing nothing at all. It was suppressed in 1755, or rather merged into that of the Minister of War.
Close to the Bastille, the Arsenal was a convenient seat of justice for the trial of prisoners (rapidly on the increase in the seventeenth and eighteenth century) accused of sorcery and poisoning.
The famous trial of Mme. de Brinvilliers, which we spoke of in the last chapter, had brought to light a terrible state of affairs. Members of respectable and even prominent families resorted to love-philters, magic, and what were called poudres de succession, nothing less than slow poisons, by whose aid inconvenient persons were gotten rid of without the cause being suspected.
431In 1718 the Regent employed Boffrand to rebuild the hôtel of the Grand Master, the Duke of Maine, who held the office, and his wife being then implicated in Cellamare’s plot and detained away from Paris.
Boffrand preserved a part of Sully’s building, but hid it behind the great south façade he put up facing the river, adding a terrace, attic, and Italian roof. The cabinet of Henry IV, the miniature theatre called “la Terrasse,” whose decorations dated from the time of Louis XIII., and the grand state stairway were left intact. Boffrand undertook the interior decoration of the building as well, and one of the salons of the second floor is considered to be the very best example of his work, both as architect and decorator.
As we have said, the office of Grand Master of Artillery was suppressed in 1755; but the Arsenal still preserved its old organization, and was presided over by a Lieutenant-General or Governor, appointed under the Minister of War. The first to hold this office — and to keep it for some thirty years — was the Marquis de Paulmy, whose peaceful and studious occupation of the Arsenal we have alluded to in a previous chapter.* The author of the “Tableau de Paris” draws the following picture of the Arsenal in 1784:
“All that the metal at the Paris Arsenal is good 432 for is to make pots of. . . . Instead of munitions of war, one sees, from across the great squares, a curious library belonging to M. de Paulmy. The garden, which has a charming view, is used as a promenade by the good people of the Marais. They all have a somewhat old-fashioned air, and somewhat bored as well; there is a difference in everything, even in the way of walking, between this quartier and the rest of the Ville.”
There is nothing at the Bastille to detain us at this period; its mysterious life goes on as before; prisoners arrested by “lettres de cachet” disappear within those walls never to be heard of again; the very gaolers are unable, after a few years, to say whether the unknown person brought there by night, with no distinguishing mark but the number of his cell (often changed), is still alive or no; there are a great many of them, and one gets confused. Meanwhile the people grow ever more and more to hate and dread the forbidding pile.
Nor is the Cathedral of Notre Dame, across the northern arm of the river, especially associated with this time.
A curious incident is related of the year 1728. Some scaffoldings erected for the purpose of repairing the roof afforded a gang of daring thieves the means of concealing themselves among the rafters. At the first versicle of the second psalm of the vesper service, the signal agreed upon, they dropped a 433 number of beams, planks, and tools from the top of the roof down into the midst of the throng below; at the same instant their colleagues stationed near the different doors set up a shout that the roof was falling, and in the terrible panic and confusion that followed stole quantities of snuff-boxes, watches, rings, and other jewels. So great was the crush that upwards of four hundred persons, either injured or knocked insensible, had to be provided with hastily-improvised litters and looked after in the Parvis Notre Dame. The thieves meanwhile got off safely with their booty that time, but it is supposed that they belonged to the celebrated band of Cartouche, all of whom were executed on the Place de Grève some years later.
An edict of 1670, published by Louis XIV., had provided for the establishment of a foundling hospital adjoining the General Hospital opposite Notre Dame, but the work was not begun until 1746, when the corner-stone was laid in the name of the Queen, Marie Leczynska. Boffrand, the architect, put up the three wings of which the building was composed, and Natoire and Brunetti executed the decorations. An arched roof painted by the former in imitation of a ruin about to tumble on the heads of the spectators was greatly admired in the eighteenth century. The ancient hospital called l’Hôtel Dieu had become so overcrowded by the middle of the seventeenth century, one report states, that “they are obliged to put six and sometimes eight patients in one bed.” 434 To remedy this the Regent authorized a tax on all tickets for the theatre, opera, and other public entertainments. This “droit des pauvres” met with the most violent opposition, but, thanks to it, the new ward of St. Antoine was finished in 1717. Twenty years later all those parts of the building situated between the square of St. Denis and the Archbishop’s palace were destroyed by fire, while on the 30th of December, 1772, there broke out that terrible fire that lasted eleven days, and consumed everything between the square of St. Denis and the Petit-Pont. Many of the patients were burned in their beds, while others, flying almost naked, were given shelter by the Archbishop in Notre Dame. He was one of the first to reach the spot, and had the great doors thrown wide open, so that the unfortunates could be received there. The numerous schemes proposed for the restoration and removal of the Hôtel Dieu were all rejected, and, with merely a change of name (the Convention rechristened it Maison de l’Humanité), it existed in much the same condition for the next hundred years. In 1786 the Pont Notre Dame, at the other extremity of the Rue de la Lanterne, was cleared of all the houses which formed such a picturesque, if undesirable, feature of the bridges of the day. This was done in the interests of the city, “to give it air and to embellish it.” The Marquis de Villette was so enthusiastic over the improvement that he proposed to erect a statue of Louis XVI. on 435 the bridge, but never did it. The pump was left, though, and could be seen there as late as in 1801.
Some ten or twelve years earlier a similar clearance had been effected on the Pont Neuf, and great discontent caused thereby. The booths and stalls had come to be a real nuisance, crowding the foot-passengers and interfering with traffic. The young King had a number of pavilions built on the half-moons of the bridge, into which the florists, fruit-sellers, tavern-keepers, vendors of ink, of dogs, of umbrellas, crowded, and where the exhibition of pictures that had failed of admission to the Salon was held every year on the Fête Dieu by the members of La Petite Académie des Peintres, or Académie de St. Luc. This society had always been highly popular on the Pont Neuf, and it was for their benefit that the pavilions had been built. Yet notwithstanding this, and the fact that the rents all went into a fund for the benefit of the orphans and widows of the artists, the people continued to grumble, and to regret the noisy, crowded, inconvenient Pont Neuf of the past.
In 1737 a disastrous fire broke out in the Cour des Comptes of the Palais. Although its cause was never known certainly, it probably started from the chimney of the adjoining hôtel of the Premier President. A violent wind kept it alive for two days, and in spite of all efforts made to save it, the building of Louis XII. was completely wrecked. Gabriel, first King’s 436 architect, replaced it with a very poor substitute for the charming and unique specimen of combined Gothic and Renaissance architecture which had been destroyed. Three registrars’ offices, two “depôts des auditeurs,” and the three chambers, du Terrier, du Conseil, and des Procureurs, were burned besides. The new Cour des Comptes and the building for the offices of the Procureurs were all that the Crown did for the Palais during the reign of Louis XV. The Ville, however, accomplished some important work close by on the Quai de l’Horloge, already nicknamed “Quai des Lunettes,” from the number of opticians’ shops gathered there. The object, which was to widen the quay, could more easily have been gained by clearing away the mass of small shops and stalls that had accumulated at the foot of the palace towers; but as the rent from these went to the Hôtel Dieu, and formed a considerable part of its income, they preferred, instead, to erect a sort of encorbelled balcony along the narrowest part, from the descent to the Pont au Change, that is, to a point a little beyond the towers. The work was very well done, and the Prévôt, M. Turgot, who had directed it, was minded to put up an inscription. So Piron wrote him one:
Monsieur Turgot étant en charge
Et trouvant ce quai trop peu large,
Y fit ajouter cette marge.
Passants, qui passez tout de go,
Rendez grâce à Monsieur Turgot.
In the absence of any certain proof, the fire of 1737 was, as usual, said to have been the work of an incendiary, and M. Armand Arouet, an elder brother of Voltaire, and an ardent Jansenist, was accused. He, like their father, held an office in the Chamber des Comptes, and continued to live in the corner of the Palais, where both brothers were born. The fight between the Jansenists and Jesuits was then at its height, each party constantly accusing the other of all manner of crimes. From the appearance of the Bull Unigenitus, in 1713, the struggle continued for fifty years, the Crown and the Pope siding with the Jesuits, and the Parliament, ably backed by the Encyclopædists, with the Jansenists. In 1753 the trouble threatened most serious consequences. The Archbishop had issued an order refusing the sacraments to all who were not furnished with a “billet de confession” signed by an anti-Jansenist curé. The Parliament condemned this order, which the king had approved, and on the 5th of May all its members, except those of the Grand’ Chamber were arrested by lettres de cachet. On the 8th all the Presidents and Councillors of “enquêtes” and “requêtes” were taken from their homes in the night by Mousquetaires and sent to separate places of exile. The next day the Grand’ Chamber met and protested, and was promptly exiled to Pontoise. Thus the Palais was left without either magistrates or hearings, a thing that had only happened four times 438 before — three times in the fifteenth century, on account respectively of a flood, a pestilence, and a severe freeze, probably what would now be called a “blizzard,” and once again during the Fronde. Confined first at Pontoise, then sent to Soissons, the Parliament found, however, that it was as powerful in banishment as at the Palais itself, and continued to issue orders, which caused the greatest inconvenience to Paris. No one paid much attention to the “Chamber Royale” appointed to represent it, and which held its sittings in the Louvre. An order comes from Pontoise forbidding the gaolers of the Conciergerie to deliver prisoners to the Chambre Royale. Fresh prisoners were received, but none were sent away, and in 1753 the Marquis d’Argenson writes that “the prisons of the Conciergerie of the Palais are infected by the quantity of prisoners confined there. . . . They are afraid the plague may break out in Paris.” At last, in August, the King was glad to make the birth of the Duc de Berry — afterwards Louis XVI. — the pretext for a reconciliation, and recalled the exiles to Paris. In 1770 Louis XV. came to the Grand’ Chambre to “exercise for the last time that prerogative of royalty, the personal administration of justice;” and all to no avail, too. It was the affair of the Duc d’Aiguillon, accused by the Rennes Parliament of “abuse of power.” The Parliament, in the teeth of the King, found him guilty; the King cancelled the finding. In the following year the Parliament 439 suspended the Duke from his functions of peer. A fresh lit de justice, held at Versailles, again broke the sentence, and a warning was sent to the members of the Parliament. These replied that as they felt they were no longer sufficiently free to be just, they would cease to judge. On the 19th of January, 1771, at four o’clock in the morning, a Mousquetaire presented himself at the door of each member with a summons requiring him to state yes, or no, whether he proposed to resume the administration of justice; all but twenty-nine wrote “no,” and the others followed suit the next day. They were all then declared deprived of their powers, and, seized in their own homes by Mousquetaires, were escorted to separate places of exile.
The Parliament, after an existence of upward of five hundred years, was abolished, and Paris apparently looked on with the most perfect indifference, and made not the smallest effort to save it.
Still another fire attacked the Palais de la Cité. This one, in 1776, had its origin in the prisoners’ gallery, and was thought to have been started by them. Fifteen, indeed, managed to escape in the confusion, while the others were scattered about in the different prisons of Paris. All the shops in the Galerie Mercière were destroyed (many of them occupied by rich jewellers), as well as the Chancellerie, established in the chamber of Saint Louis, the ancient apartments of the Queen in the Galerie Mercière, and a mass of 440 valuable papers deposited in the different registry offices. “More than two thousand families will find themselves stripped of their title-deeds,” says one account.
The Parisians were taxed to pay for the restoration, and the work under Desmaisons, assisted by Moreau, Couture and Antoine, was begun in 1781. The Galerie Mercière and the Galerie des Prisonniers were rebuilt. The Tour de Montgommery was so much injured that it was torn down, the last person confined there having been Damiens, who occupied the same cell on the second floor as that used for Ravaillac. Damiens, who tried to kill Louis XV. by stabbing him with a penknife at Versailles in 1757, was first made to undergo a torture that would have crippled him had he been allowed to live, was kept there under an extraordinary guard for nearly two months and a half, and then executed at the Grève. Desmaisons replaced the tower by a courtyard and certain buildings intended to separate the male and female prisoners of the Conciergerie, and built a new chapel. The irregular line of little shops that encumbered the palace along the Rue de la Barillerie was cleared away, and replaced by an elegant grating designed by Antoine. The court, now brought to light for the first time, was flanked by two aisles of Doric columns, but in obedience to what has been called the “tyranny of regularity, the vandalism of symmetry,” in order to get the left one in where 441 it would exactly correspond to the other, the exquisite sacristy of the same date as the Sainte Chapelle, and probably designed by the same master, Pierre de Montereau, was torn down; its upper floor had served for upwards of five hundred years as the Trésor des Chartres. By means of three arcades on this side, a communication was reopened between the Cour de Mai and the Cour de la Sainte Chapelle.
The stairway, at the foot of which so many books — Rousseau’s Emile, for instance, and more recently still the Mémoires of Beaumarchais — have been publicly burned, was replaced by a magnificent one leading up directly from the line of the eastern façade. Four Doric columns support a balconied entablature, on which are the much decried statues of Strength and Abundance by Berruyer, and Justice and Prudence by Lecomte. Pajou executed the quadrangular dome with its sculptured angels supporting the arms of France. At the foot of the stairway two arcades lead, the one on the right to the Conciergerie, and that on the left to the Tribunal de Simple Police.
Another transformation in the neighborhood of the Palais had its origin in a fire. On the 27th of April, the son of a poor woman was drowned in the Seine. The mother was told that if she would place a lighted taper and a loaf of bread, blessed under the invocation of Saint Nicholas, in a wooden bowl, and set it afloat, she would recover the body. With implicit 442 faith, she carried out the directions. The bowl sailed off, and presently set fire to a boat loaded with hay moored to the Quai de la Tournelle. The dealers in wood, fearing for their boats close by, cut it adrift, and in a short time it was carried in among the floating logs and débris, caught in the arches of the Petit-Pont, and a terrible fire was the result. The bridge, with all its houses was destroyed; only the solid masonry of the piers survived. On this were constructed — and immediately too, for the Petit-Pont was of far too great importance to do without for any longer than necessary — three great stone arches, which existed until the middle of the present century; but the Parliament issued an order forbidding the erection from thenceforth of any houses on the bridge, whether the property of the city or of private individuals.
Six years later the Petit Châtelet was ceded to the Hôtel Dieu; the intention was to use the site to extend the hospital. This was never done, but the building was nevertheless torn down in 1782, to the hearty satisfaction of the inhabitants of the neighborhood, deprived by its gloomy walls of much air and light. One of the few pleasing ceremonies of which it had been the scene was the yearly procession — on Palm Sunday — of the clergy of Notre Dame; the doors of the cells were then thrown open and the officiating priest singled out a prisoner, who joined the procession back to the Cathedral and was then set at liberty.
443In 1775, the Ecoles de Médecine were transferred from the Rue de la Bûcherie to the old quarters of the Ecoles de la Faculté de droit, on the Rue St. Jean de Beauvais, these last having gone to the new Place Ste. Geneviève. The reason for the change was the dilapidated condition of the buildings, but those on the Rue St. Jean de Beauvais were soon found to be almost equally ruinous. The King was petitioned to allow the use of the hospital building of St. Jacques, then vacant, but no attention was paid to the request, and it was not until the close of the Revolution that the Ecoles des Médecine could get a suitable lodging.
We will now follow the Ecoles de droit to their new home. The canons of Ste. Geneviève had long been desirous of rebuilding their ancient church, when Louis XV.’s recovery at Metz gave them an excuse. The young King, on being assured that he owed his life to the intercession of the Patroness of Paris, willingly agreed to do something in her honor. In 1754 a tax levied on lottery tickets brought in the necessary funds. Soufflot was engaged to furnish the designs, and the work of preparing the foundations was begun in 1757. Extraordinary difficulties had to be overcome. Soufflot’s plan required substructures of great strength and depth, and it was found that the hillside was honeycombed with excavations, remains of the potteries and quarries established on the Mons Lucotetius by the Gallo-Romans. 444 It was not until 1764 that Louis XV. laid the corner-stone, and on the death of Soufflot, sixteen years later, the building had only reached the base of the dome. Soufflot was buried in the incompleted church, and Rondelet, one of his pupils, went on with it. The range of airy columns on which the dome was to rest, being found insufficient for the weight, were replaced by solid pillars connected by arches; otherwise Soufflot’s plan, a Greek cross surmounted at the intersection by a dome and cupola, and a magnificent portico with twenty-two fluted Corinthian columns, was carried out. Of the vicissitudes through which it was to pass we will speak in the next chapter. While the new church of Ste. Geneviève was building the canons continued to occupy the old one, standing a little to the south-west; it was not pulled down until 1807, and the tower is still standing. To open the new Place Ste. Geneviève the fourteenth century Collège de Lisieux was demolished, a part of the site being used for the new Ecoles de droit. Soufflot prepared the plans and declined to receive any payment, in acknowledgment of which his descendants of the same name have the privilege of attending the courses free of charge. The college of Lisieux meanwhile was moved to that of Louis-le-Grand. It was in the old quarters of this college that Sorel laid a part of the scene of L’Histoire Comique de Francion, the picture being anything but “comic” in its details of needless severity and privation.
445South of Ste. Geneviève is the great church of Val de Grace, founded by Anne of Austria in gratitude for the birth of a Dauphin, Louis XIV. Mansard, Le Mercier and Le Muet were the architects. The convent and garden are now used for a military hospital.
The church of St. Sulpice, which we find occupying the site of a small twelfth century chapel of the same name, was finished in 1745, ninety-nine years after Anne of Austria had laid the corner-stone. The parish is an important one, and the church, by reason of its great size and fine façade, is imposing; no less than five architects had a hand in it. Servandoni executed the west façade, with its Doric and Ionic columns, while the two towers that flank the portal are, the north one by Chalgrin and the south one by Maclaurin.
The great fountain on the Rue de Grenelle de St. Germain, off to the west, was put up in 1739 by Bouchardon, “aus frais et pour les besoins de la Ville.” The draped figure surmounting it represents Paris, and the reclining statues on either side are the Seine and the Marne.
The Rue de Seine will take us very near the Hôtel des Monnaies, begun in 1771 by order of Louis XV. on the domain of the Hôtel de Conti, formerly Guénégaud. The building, designed by Jacques Denis Antoine, fronts on the Quai de Conti. Six Ionic columns rest on a substructure of arcades; in front of the attic are a row of allegorical statues. On the second floor is the museum of coins, a magnificently decorated 446 hall, which served originally for the lectures of Balthasar Georges Sage, the father of metallurgy in France. The bust of Antoine, the architect, who, the son of a joiner, started life as a simple mason, stands on the stairway leading to the museum; it was only placed there, however, in 1839. The statues representing the four elements, on the façade on the Rue Guénégaud, are by Caffieri and Dupré. The Petit Hôtel de Conti, an addition made by the widow of Armand de Bourbon, Prince de Conti, to the main hôtel, was incorporated into the Hôtel des Monnaies, where its charming façade may still be seen overlooking the garden. It was at this time that the Abbot of St. Germain des Prés, the Cardinal de Furstenberg, sold some of the abbey property to raise money for the restoration of the “Palais Abbatial.” The streets called Furstenberg, Cardinale, Abbatiale and Childebert, were opened up and built up, and the palace, which dates from the sixteenth century (Cardinal Charles de Bourbon began it in 1586), is still standing. Its brick and stone façade may be seen on the Rue de l’Abbaye.
Finally, we will call attention to the octroi wall built by Louis XVI. on the line of the old fortifications, at the suggestion of the “fermiers généraux.” As its object was to facilitate the levying of a duty on all articles of food brought into the Capital, it was naturally an unpopular work, and called forth the well-known play upon words:
“Le mur murant Paris rend Paris murmurant.”
*Footnotes