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. 503-528.
PARIS : ITS SITES, MONUMENTS AND HISTORY
503OUR closing chapter deals with a period of extraordinary change. In the space of something over eighty years Paris has seen the reign of three Kings, three Revolutions have thrown their barricades across her streets, two Republics and an Empire have been successively established. The outward aspect of the city, meanwhile, has passed through a series of transformations hardly less radical and varied; due first to the passionate love of building of Louis Napoleon and the ambitious designs of Baron Haussmann, next to the excesses of the Communards of 1871, and finally to the tremendous work of rebuilding and restoration successfully carried out by the Republic in our own day.
To give anything like a detailed account of all these events and their accompanying changes in the short space remaining to us is out of the question. We will therefore only attempt to notice the more important, with occasional references to some of those hôtels and churches whose origins have been already described, and which may still be found in the less frequented streets and corners of old Paris.
504Of the ancient Hôtel de Ville, whose history for upwards of five hundred years has been traced in this book, nothing now remains. Napoleon I. had plans for enlarging it that came to nothing, and the Restoration troubled it but little. The insurgents of 1830, however, got possession of the building early in the morning (it was July 28th), and immediately the tocsin, silent since Thermidor, rang out summoning once more the men of the Quartier St. Antoine and of the Marais, while from the clock tower the tricolor and the black flag appeared floating side by side. On the arrival of the troops the Hôtel de Ville was retaken, and the people, forced back, made a stand on the suspension bridge that for about two years had led from the Place de la Grève to the Cité. Strongly intrenched and constantly reinforced from the rear, they held this bridge for hours. At about three o’clock in the afternoon a young man was seen to swing himself upon the high central arch and plant the tricolor there. Instantly the fire of the Swiss and Royal Guards, stationed in the Place, was concentrated upon him. As he fell, mortally wounded, he cried out, “My name is Arcole! Avenge my death!” So runs the story; and the bridge, rebuilt in 1854, as we see it to-day, has been called ever since, Pont d’Arcole.
Three days later Louis Philippe, Duc d’Orléans, showed himself to the crowds on the Grève (armed crowds with a background of barricades) from a window 505 of the Hôtel de Ville. Beside him stood Lafayette holding a tricolored flag, and the gist of the famous “Programme de l’Hôtel de Ville” was given out in the words “a throne surrounded with republican institutions.”
The building where the policy of the new government was thus laid down had long been inconveniently small; it was now determined to enlarge it on an enormous scale — nearly, in fact, to its present size. After some years spent in selecting plans and clearing the site, work was begun in 1837. Thirty years later it was completed, the Revolution of ’48 having delayed matters first by interfering with the actual work and then by using up all the money. Still another plan of government, the Provisional, had been prepared in the apartments and announced from the windows of the Hôtel de Ville. Lamartine had harangued the people who crowded into the Place de Grève with a red flag at their head, and in the four stormy years that followed, the building had made more than one hairbreadth escape. Then came the Coup d’Etat, and the work was resumed with fury in anticipation of the inaugural fêtes of the Second Empire. The surroundings, meantime, were completely changed. On the east the old buildings were swept away to make room for great new barracks, and on the west the Place was enlarged, and no less than nine streets that had previously lain between it and the Châtelet were engulfed in the wide, straight Avenue 506 Victoria, named during the visit of the Queen and Prince Albert in 1854.
On Sunday, the 4th of September, 1870, Paris received the news of the disaster of Sedan. “Hurry, get to the Hôtel de Ville, where revolutions are made, as fast as we can,” cries M. Etienne Arago, who is only outstripped by M. Gambetta because the latter has a better horse.
The “Government of the Defense, “hastily improvised, with M. Arago for Mayor (his investiture consisted of a pink scarf found by his nephew in his pocket and tossed across the table to him), lasted till the following March; then the Communards took possession of the Hôtel de Ville and held it as the seat of their government for two months. When the troops entered Paris on the 21st of May, the insurgents, strongly fortified in the Place de Grève, managed to hold it for several days, and before evacuating set fire to it and all the surrounding buildings. A hundred barrels of gunpowder had been stacked in the cellars of the Hôtel de Ville, and petroleum poured over the walls. The result was so completely successful that when the troops reached the spot it was too late to save any part of the building; the whole was utterly in ruins.
Four years later the present building, designed by Ballu and Deperthes, was begun. It is a somewhat enlarged and modified reproduction of the one it replaced, the changes being all in the way of improvements. 507 “Just at this present time,” writes Philip Gilbert Hamerton in 1883, “the Parisian Hôtel de Ville seems the most perfectly beautiful of modern edifices. * * * It would be bold to assert such a thing positively, but it is very likely to be the simple truth, that this building, just at present, is the fairest palace ever erected in the world.” This may be true, and he may also be right in viewing with relief the absence of “all revolting and horrible associations” which the new structure enjoys, but the ordinary mind cannot help regretting that to accomplish these ends a building which had been the scene of some of the most interesting and dramatic events in history should have been completely swept out of existence. Nor is there anything left in the present Place, with its new name, altered shape and modern buildings, to remind us of the popular fêtes and public executions of which it was alternately the theatre.
In the district lying east of the Hôtel de Ville, however, there are many interesting old buildings and quaint little streets. For instance, there is the Church of SS. Gervais and Protais, a picturesque example of fifteenth century Gothic (the portico is a seventeenth century Renaissance addition of De Brosse), and beyond it a number of old hôtels mentioned in the earlier chapters of this book, as the Hôtel of the Archbishop of Sens, on the Rue Fauconnier; the Hôtel Fieubet, on the Quai des Celestins; and, on the interesting little Rue François Miron, 508 once a part of the old Rue St. Antoine, the Hôtel de Beauvais, whose iron balcony is the same as when Anne of Austria and Henrietta of England witnessed from it the state entry of Louis XIV. and Maria Theresa. Then No. 26 Rue Geoffroy Lasnier is the hôtel of the Constable Anne de Montmorency (restored early in the seventeenth century), while the hôtel which belonged first to Hugues Aubriot, Charles V.’s celebrated Prévôt, and later to the Cardinal de Bourbon, is one of the most beautiful and interesting relics of old Paris. It stands west of the Jesuit Church of SS. Louis and Paul, and is reached by the narrow Passage de Charlemagne. Others still are Sully’s Hôtel, on the Rue St. Antoine; the Hôtel d’Ormesson, at the corner of the Rue du Petit Muse, both by du Cerceau, but the latter restored by Boffrand; and finally the hôtel at No. 28 Rue des Tournelles, built by J. H. Mansard, where Ninon de Lenclos died. Voltaire, eleven years old, had been brought there a short time before to see her, and made such an impression that she left him two thousand francs “to buy books.”
The neighboring Place des Vosges is an admirable example of the architecture of Henry IV., preserved to our own day by a perpetual prohibition to the proprietors of the surrounding buildings, to change their shape or design, while subsequent Revolutions have spared the equestrian statue of Louis XIII., placed there in 1829. The Colonne de Juillet, 509 which occupies the centre of the Place de la Bastille, was begun in 1831. Nine years later, when it was finished, the bodies of the “Victims of the three glorious days of July” were brought from various spots where they had been given a hasty interment and placed in vaults constructed beneath for the purpose. In the trench dug at the foot of the Louvre Colonnade their bones were found mingled with those of the guard who had fallen while defending the Palace.
From the Place de la Bastille the modern Boulevard Henri IV. leads in a direct line to the eastern extremity of the Boulevard St. Germain — also modern — skirting the western end of what was once the Ile Louviers. This little island was joined to the right bank in 1844 by the filling up of the small arm of the Seine that had formerly separated them. Thus the Arsenal and Cabinet of Henry IV. are no longer on the river bank, but stand a little inland.
Passing along the part of the Rue de Rivoli opened by Napoleon III., we come on our left to the beautiful tower of the old Church of St. Jacques de la Boucherie, bought by the municipality in 1836 and completely restored under the Second Empire. On our right the Rue des Halles leads to the enormous market-houses, the Halles Centrales, erected by Baltard under Napoleon III. on the site of the ancient Halles. Among the most interesting survivals to be found in this neighborhood are the column of Catherine de 510 Médicis, on the Rue Vauvilliers, the Church of St. Eustache and the donjon of Jean Sans Peur, formerly a part of the Hôtel Bourgogne.
When Napoleon I. established the Tribunate in the Palais Egalité (Royal), in 1801, it became state property and took the name of Palais du Tribunat. On the Restoration the Duc d’Orléans regained possession of all but the Theatre and the Cour des Fontaines, and employed Fontaine to restore it. The Galeries de Bois were replaced in 1829 by the present handsome Galerie Orléans, and shortly after the King of Naples, who was visiting Paris, was splendidly entertained by his brother-in-law in his newly-restored Palace. An unexpected feature of the occasion was a huge bonfire lighted by a riotous crowd who poured from the streets into the garden, and, piling up chairs, tables, everything they could lay hands on, set fire to them. The optimistic Charles X. saw nothing threatening in this little demonstration, but M. de Salvandy observed that they were giving their guest an appropriate form of entertainment. “Messieurs, we are at a Neapolitan fête — we are dancing on a volcano.”
Sure enough, the eruption came in less than two months, and Charles was overthrown. Louis Philippe, walking quietly in from Neuilly on foot, one July night, entered the Palais Royal from a house on the Rue St. Honoré (No. 216) and passed the first two years of his unostentatious reign there.
511In the Revolution of 1848 the Palace was pillaged and partly burned, and the Chateau d’Eau, opposite, was entirely demolished. In the Second Empire it became the residence of Prince Jerome, and the Communards of 1871 again set fire to it. This time, owing to the use of petroleum, it would probably have been completely wrecked had not a band of rescuers arrived in time to save it. Under the present government the Palais Royal is used by the Cour des Comptes, the Conseil d’Etat, and a department of the Bureau of Public Instruction.
The Banque de France, close by, created in 1800, has preserved within its new buildings the hôtel occupied at the outbreak of the Revolution by the Duc de Penthièvre and his daughter-in-law, the Princess de Lamballe. It was built in 1620 by François Mansard.
From the Théâtre Français the Boulevard de l’Opera leads to what has been termed “the most magnificent of recent structures,” the new Opera House, designed by Charles Garnier and finished in 1875.
Proceeding to the Louvre, we find it almost untouched by the Restoration. Louis Philippe did something at the Tuileries, mainly on the interior, but it was reserved for Napoleon III. to realize the dream of so many successive rulers, and accomplish the long-talked-of junction of the two palaces. Visconti, who was already in office, was retained, and his 512 plan adopted. On his death, in 1853, Lefuel continued the work. The great difficulty that had confronted each succeeding architect lay in the want of parallelism between the two great masses of buildings to be jointed. Visconti’s plan was to continue the north and south façades of the Louvre in straight lines as far as the Place du Carrousel, while between them and the Grande Galerie on the south and the slanting new wing on the Rue de Rivoli were to be courtyards whose irregular size would be concealed by the buildings. The object was not attained. The fact that the Pavillon Sully of the Louvre was not opposite the central pavilion of the Tuileries was rather accentuated than otherwise by the perspectives thus created. But the new buildings were imposing and magnificent to an undreamed-of degree; so much so, in fact, that the old ones seemed plain, almost poor, by contrast. The west front of the Louvre was finally rebuilt so as to be more in keeping with the rest. All this part of the work was finished by 1858, but the comprehensive plans for the Tuileries, which would, if carried out, have meant the practical rebuilding of the whole, were never completed. Lefuel had rebuilt the Pavillon de Flore and most of the long gallery, and had erected the gate Guichets des Saints Pères, and the pavilions and wings that flank it. Then there came the surrender of Metz, followed by the fall of the Empire. Philip Gilbert Hamerton says, in reference to this work: “As for perfection 513 of detail, there has never been any epoch of French architecture in which the essentially national style was worked out with more thorough knowledge and skill than under Napoleon III. * * * Much as we admire Gothic architecture, we have to acknowledge that the modern work on the Tuileries is what Gothic sculptors could never have accomplished.”
The last event of historical interest connected with the Tuileries is the flight of the Empress Eugenie on the 4th of September, 1870. The previous night had been one of wildest confusion and anxiety. The Empress, who had not gone to bed, heard mass in her private oratory early in the morning. All day the news from without became more and more alarming. The populace had proclaimed the downfall of the Empire and the establishment of a Republic. At a quarter past three in the afternoon the mob invaded the Tuileries Gardens. Every one tried to induce the Empress to leave. General Trochu had deserted her, and the Prefect of Police declared that to stay meant the massacre of all her attendants. At last, accompanied only by Mme. Lebreton and the Italian and Austrian ambassadors, she made her way through the long galleries communicating with the Louvre on the south, crossed the Gallery of Apollo and the whole length of the Louvre, and emerged on the Place opposite the Church of St. Germain l’Auxerrois.
The Austrian Ambassador then went to look for his carriage on the Quai, but in his absence the Italian, 514 Chevalier Nigra, was so much alarmed by hearing a boy call out, “There is the Empress!” that he thrust his two companions into an ordinary cab and banged to the door, merely telling the driver to go to the Boulevard Haussmann. The man, frightened by the approach of the mob, dashed off, and the two Ambassadors lost sight of the carriage. The Empress had left in such haste that she was without so much as a change of clothing, and had not even money enough to pay the cabman. After driving about aimlessly for some time she finally remembered that the house of the American dentist, Dr. Evans, was close by. There she went, and it was through the kindness and good management of Dr. Evans that she succeeded in reaching Trouville and the yacht of Sir John Burgoyne, on which she was taken to England.
On the night of the 23d of May following the Communards set fire to the Tuileries in pursuance of a carefully-prepared plan for destroying all the principal buildings of the capital. The Government troops arrived on the scene in time to save the Louvre, but too late to do anything for the old Tuileries. The entire west façade — the old palace — was destroyed, and the wing on the Rue de Rivoli much damaged; that on the south escaped with comparatively little injury.
The most serious loss was the Imperial Library, in the north wing. The Communards, who occupied the Pavillon Richelieu, opposite the Palais Royal, as 515 a guard-house, set fire to it from within, and the Library was a total loss. The Republic has rebuilt all but the west front, the old Tuileries Palace that is. Of this the walls remained standing until 1885. The space is as yet unbuilt upon.
The Column Vendôme, surmounted under Louis Philippe by Seurre’s statue of Napoleon, now in the Cour des Invalides, and in 1863 by a reproduction of the original one by Caudet, was thrown down by the Communards and broken in pieces; fortunately the fragments were rescued, and it is now restored and in place. Further out the Rue St. Honoré is the Elysée Palace, once owned by the Marquise de Pompadour and then by her brother, de Marigny. After passing through many hands it was assigned to Prince Murat, and then to the Emperor, who here signed the second act of abdication on the day after Waterloo. Since 1871 it has been the official residence of the Presidents of the French Republic.
A little to the south-west, at the corner of the Rue Bayard and the Cours de la Reine, is the Maison de François I., a hunting lodge which once stood in the forest of Fontainebleau, and was transported here in the present century. The frieze and trophies of the façade, as well as some of the carvings at the back, are probably the work of Jean Goujon, but the medallion portraits are modern restorations.
The unfinished Arc de Triomphe was dedicated, by an ordinance of Louis XVIII., to the glory of the 516 Duc d’Angoulême and the troops commanded by him in the Spanish campaign of 1823. Louis Philippe, however, restored it to its original purpose, and saw it completed in 1836. The great Place and the Boulevards that radiate from it were laid out under the Second Empire.
Leaving the right bank by the Pont Neuf, we find another statue of Henry IV. standing in the centre of the Place Dauphine. This one, by Lemot, was put up under the Restoration.
As for the Island, the changes that have taken place there in the past seventy years or so are simply stupendous. Fortunately they have been conducted with a view to the best possible preservation of the three great monuments of the Cité — the Palais, Sainte Chapelle and Notre Dame.
The Palais de la Cité, for example, enlarged, twice rebuilt in great part, — before the Commune of 1871 and after it, — and with its name changed to Palais de Justice, fulfills its ancient functions as it could not possibly do had it been left dark, inconvenient, and totally inadequate to meet the growing demands made upon it. In order to accomplish this, one side of the Rue de Harlay and the Courts de Harlay and Lamoignon were suppressed, and the new west wing built on their site. The shops and booths of the Galerie Mercière, the Sainte Chapelle Court, and along the Rue Barillerie and Quai de l’Horloge were done away with, the Grand’ Salle (Salle des Pas 517 Perdus) rebuilt, and much of the rest of the building, including the Tour de l’Horloge, completely restored. The Conciérgerie, with the “Cuisines de Saint Louis” and the three towers, de César, d’Argent and de Bon Bec or Saint Louis, have remained unchanged to our own day.
The present Boulevard du Palais was made by enlarging and straightening the Rue de Barillerie, and the Sainte Chapelle, instead of being allowed to all into ruins — as it was in a fair way to do sixty years ago — was subjected to a restoration of the most thorough and careful nature. In every case where it was possible the old carvings and stained glass were repaired and preserved, and where this could not be done they were replaced by others carefully executed in the same style. The result is that we have this gem of the Middle Ages standing before us almost as it must have appeared to the wondering and reverent gaze of the men of the thirteenth century.
At the other end of the Island a resurrection almost as wonderful has been accomplished at Notre Dame. Under the conscientious and scholarly guidance of M. Viollet-le-Duc the Cathedral church has been restored to what must have been its appearance before the abominable taste of the eighteenth century suppressed buttresses, spires, pinnacles and gargoyles, covered the walls with paint, mutilated the west portal, and destroyed the stained glass. These, as well as the damages wrought by the Revolution, have all 518 been repaired. A new Gothic sacristy has replaced the Renaissance one, absurdly put up by Soufflot, and every means have been taken to preserve the wonderful old building to the love and admiration of future generations. These three great works of preservation accomplished, the rest of the island was swept clean of its network of tortuous streets, blind alleys and gloomy courtyards, with their teeming population.
From where the Morgue now occupies what was once the eastern extremity of the Jardin du Terrain to the Pont Neuf hardly half a dozen of the old streets remain. Four churches and five times that many streets have been swallowed up by the numerous buildings of the new Hôtel Dieu alone, and the enlarged Parvis Notre Dame is answerable for the disappearance of may more, as is the great open square or park back of the Cathedral Church.
The Archbishop’s Palace has gone, and so has the establishment of the Enfants Trouvés. The reeking Ilot de la Pelleterie is the Marché aux Fleurs and the Tribunal de Commerce. The Ceinture St. Eloi is occupied by barracks. Finally, all that remained of the ancient garden of the First President is engulfed in the great Prefecture of Police.
If, however, we wish to recall the Paris of nearly three hundred years ago, we have but to cross the bridge at the end of the Rue Cloître Notre Dame to find the Ile St. Louis almost unchanged since the early half of the seventeenth century.
519Christophe Marie, Superintendent-General of the bridges of France, then threw this and the Ile aux Vaches into one, and laid it out in streets that were immediately built up about as we see them now. On the Rue St. Louis en l’Ile we find a church and a palace by Le Vau. The first, called St Louis, he did not finish, but the other, the Hôtel Lambert, now owned by Prince Czartoryski, is a good example of his work. The Hôtel Lauzan, or Pimodan, on the Quai d’Anjou, belongs to the same period.
The bridge called la Tournelle will take us across to the left bank.
In 1840, upon the suggestion of M. Thiers, Paris was enclosed within a new line of fortifications, consisting, beside the ramparts, of sixteen detached forts. Twenty years later it was decided to pull down the old octroi wall of Louis XVI. and include all the space lying between it and the new fortifications within the city limits. This vast increase of area, “les Communes annexées,” together with numberless new streets and squares, the great boulevards opening up direct communication between the new quarters and those lying in the heart of the capital, new bridges, widened quays and great public buildings, have changed the left bank, in particular, almost past recognition.
If we follow the straight, modern boulevards of St. Germain and St. Michel we will, to be sure, still recognize a few of the old buildings of the Mons Lucotetius, 520 but we will be treading on the sites of many others. On reaching the Rue Soufflot we find the Pantheon has finally solved the question of its destination, Pantheon or Christian Church, by becoming both. Four days after the Coup d’Etat Louis Napoleon restored the building to the “Culte de Ste. Geneviève,” but on the death of Victor Hugo in 1885 President Grévy again used the name of Pantheon in the decree ordering the interment there of the poet.
The west side of the Place Ste. Geneviève is taken up by the great library of that name, built in 1844, the only library in Paris open to students at night. On the east is the Church of St. Etienne du Mont, which on the Neuvaine of Sainte Geneviève (January 3-11) is not large enough to hold the crowds which pour out to visit the tombstone of the saint. Some years after the shrine containing her relics had been burned by the revolutionists on the Place de Grève, this stone, on which it had formerly stood, was found in the crypt of the old church and removed to St. Etienne du Mont, where it is preserved in a chapel of its own and held in extraordinary reverence.
The Sorbonne was reopened by Napoleon I. in 1808. It is to-day the Académie de Paris, and the official seat of the Rector, who is chief of the five faculties of theology, science, letters, medicine and law. The old buildings have been entirely replaced by large new ones, begun in 1884; only the church 521 built by Richelieu and dedicated to Saint Ursula is still standing, and contains the Cardinal’s tomb. The great library occupies the third and fourth floors of the west front, under the name of Bibliothèque de l’Université. M. Victor Cousin occupied an apartment in what had been the old library, and dying there, left his valuable collection of books to the Académie.
Off on the south-east, quite close to the Gare d’Orléans, is the huge Hospital of the Salpêtrière, the largest in France, occupying the site of Louis XIII.’s saltpetre factory. It is associated with the reform brought about in the treatment of the insane by Philippe Pinel, whose statue stands in the Place in front.
The Boulevard St. Marcel, wide and modern, recalls the ancient church built on the saint’s grave; it ends at the Avenue des Gobelins, No. 40 of which is the entrance to the manufactory. The entrance court is modern, but an arched passage on the left leads to the old main courtyard, built under Henry IV. The church, now used as a sort of museum, dates from Louis XV.’s time, and the two detached buildings parallel with the wings, from the time of Louis XIV. The site of the pavilion on the left, which, with its collection of precious objects, was burned by the Communards of 1871, is now a garden. The building on the right, burned at the same time, has been restored. Le Brun occupied the second 522 floor of the corner opposite the chapel, when he was superintendent of the Gobelins, and died there.
All the artists employed on the tapestries live within the enclosure. Each one has a little house to himself, with a small garden, on the Island of the Bièvre, to reach which he has but to cross a small bridge. From this bridge a curious view is to be had of the Ruelle des Gobelins, a truly Venetian view, since the little street is in reality the Bièvre itself, flowing between two rows of houses occupied exclusively by tanners and dealers in hides and raw wool, to whom the waters of the stream are useful in their trades.
The little one-storied house close by, with its top-heavy roof, is a survival of the time when this neighborhood was out in the country. It was the shooting-lodge of M. Julien, overseer of the Gobelins, and his hôtel at No. 3 Rue des Gobelins is a good example of the architecture of Louis XIII. The ancient Rue Lourcine (or Broca), which winds its tortuous length from the Rue de la Santé to the Rue Claude Bernard, diving under boulevards and reappearing unexpectedly, is at once one of the most picturesque and sordid streets of all Paris.
Not very far to the north-west is the Luxembourg Palace. Under the Terror it was used as a prison. Marino, a painter on porcelain and member of the Commune, was placed in charge of what he called his “magasin à guillotine.” He had as many as 523 three thousand prisoners confined there at one time, and treated them with a brutality that has made his name notorious. He was guillotined in June, 1794, in company with Céceile Rénault, the Sombreuils, father and son, and a number of other distinguished people, all accused of conspiring against Robespierre. The Directory, appointed the following year, was installed in the Petit Luxembourg, which next became the residence of the First Consul, the Senate occupying the main Palace. In 1804 the great central stairway and dome were suppressed, so as to give more room. Chalgrin then built another stair in the right wing in place of the gallery, where the series of twenty-four pictures by Rubens, representing scenes from the life of Marie de Médicis now at the Louvre, had hung.
In 1836, when the Chamber of Peers was holding its sittings in the Luxembourg, it was found necessary to enlarge it very considerably. M. de Gisors, the architect in charge, did this by adding two more to the four existing pavilions of the garden side, thus overweighting that end. The two new pavilions are connected by a new wing, the whole being a very careful imitation of the style of the old building. Here the new Imperial Senate of 1852 was established, and the Prefecture of the Seine between 1871 and the completion of the new Hôtel de Ville. Finally, the Republican Senate of 1875 still meets there, in a large hall on the first floor, planned in 524 two hemicycles, — the larger for the three hundred Senators, and the smaller for the President and Secretaries. The adjoining Petit-Luxembourg, built at the same time as the Palace, and occupied by Cardinal Richelieu when he was building the Palais Royal, is the residence of the Presidents of the Senate.
The pretty façade of the church of the Filles du Calvaire is seen on the Rue Vaugirard, surmounted by a bust of Marie de Médecis, who founded the convent and placed it under the care of Père Joseph. The convent was torn down in 1848, and the cloister, closed in with glass, is the conservatory of the President of the Senate.
The new museum of paintings of living artists is on the Rue Vaugirard; it was opened in 1886. At the end of this street stands the Odéon Theatre, classed officially as the “Second Théâtre Français.” The present building was opened in 1879, and has had a remarkable career. Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Alfred de Musset, Balzac, George Sand and scores of other writers have here made their débuts and some of them their most brilliant successes.
The three streets of Las Casas, Martignac and Casimir Perier were opened in 1825, and, with the meagre Gothic church of Ste. Clotilde (which shares with St. Thomas d’Aquin a fashionable pre-eminence), occupy the sties of a Carmelite convent, and another called Bellechasse, suppressed under the Revolution.
525On the Rue de Grenelle, near the Boulevard des Invalides, is the archiepiscopal palace, originally the hôtel of the Abbé de Pompadour. All of this neighborhood is thickly sown with the hôtels of foreign ambassadors and others containing bureaus connected with the government. Of these, some half-dozen should be noted.
The palace begun by Louise Françoise de Bourbon, daughter of Louis XIV. and Mlle. de la Vallière, and finished by the Prince de Conti (Giardini and Gabriel were its chief architects), was seized as national property during the Revolution, and is now the Chamber of Deputies. The fine façade on the Rue de l’Université belongs to the original building, but the side facing on the quay was added when Louis XVI. built the bridge called first by his name, but since 1830 de la Concorde. The lofty peristyle erected there was designed to serve as a pendant to the front of the Madeleine. Adjoining it, the old Hôtel de Lassai, rebuilt by the Prince de Condé in 1740, is now the residence of the President of the Chamber of Deputies. Still on the quay, but further west, is the huge palace of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, finished in 1853. East of the Pont Solférino is the palace of the Légion d’Honneur. It was built in 1786 by the Prince de Salm Kirbourg. Named a deputy to the Constituent Assembly, and later having command of a battalion of the National Guard, he was one of the last victims of the Terror. 526 The palace was won on a lottery ticket by a hairdresser and sold to an adventurer, who was later sent to the Galleys. Mme. De Staël presided there over those political gatherings that got her into trouble later. Finally the government bought it in 1803 and turned it into the headquarters of the Legion of Honor.
All this part of Paris, that is the buildings along the Quai d’Orsay, suffered from the Communards of 1871. The palace was burned at the same time with the Cour des Comptes and Conseil d’Etat, further along the quay, but was rebuilt in the same style.
Between this and the Invalides is the huge palace of the Minister of War, built on the sites of the old Hôtels d’Estrées, d’Aiguillon, and several others; it was finished in 1877 by the architect Bouchot.
Finally at the Invalides we come to the most conspicuous monument of recent times, the tomb of Napoleon I., so admirably contrived by Visconti, beneath the great Dôme, as not in any way to interfere with that imposing interior, but rather to enhance its stateliness. It is a great circular crypt of polished granite, around which stand Pradier’s twelve colossal Victories, ever brooding over the sarcophagus in the centre, and on its walls are sixty flags captured in battle. Napoleon’s body was brought back from St. Helena by the Prince de Joinville in 1840. M. de Rémusat, Minister of the Interior in M. Thiers’ Cabinet, announced the fact 527 to the Chamber of Deputies, in a flowery speech: “The mortal remains of Napoleon will be placed in the Invalides. * * * He was the legitimate sovereign of our country, and such has the right to be interred in St. Denis; but Napoleon must not have the ordinary burial of a king * * *.” The body was placed provisionally in the Chapel of St. Jerome, but in 1861 was transported with immense pomp to its magnificent tomb, where, to again quote M. de Rémusat, “All who revere his glory, his genius, his greatness and misfortunes, can come to muse above his grave.”
With this we bring to a close the story of the buildings of Paris. If that story has value it is to be found, as we promised at the opening of this book, in tracing by how many changes and by what a perpetual recreation a thing that looks so modern, a thing so eminently ours, has been found. This book will have achieved its object if from the dust of detail and of minute research there arises a conception of that profound truth which we so frequently forget — that vigor and actuality depend upon deep roots, that a thing to be alive with power must have been alive continually through ages, and that the permanence of life is based upon a continuity of ideas. Here is a Paris that Napoleon would not understand; his Paris would have been a mystery to Louis XIV.; Louis XIV.’s an enigma to Louis IX.; Louis the IX.’s something modern and unreal to the solid 528 workers of the Dark Ages. It is this unceasing change that has been her condition of permanence.
It is not a new thing that you watch as you look at the city from the western hills. It is a present thing, and the contrast between the new and the present, between the thing that rises suddenly and the thing that lives and remembers, is the lesson of Paris. To understand that contrast is to understand not only Paris but the forces in all modern Europe which are making not for growth but rather for stability, which, if you question Europe in all its past, you will find to be the only and constant ideal in which the Old World has found repose.