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. 189-256.
PARIS : ITS SITES, MONUMENTS AND HISTORY
189THE period covered by this chapter will lead us through not quite two hundred years. From the beginning of the English wars to the death of Louis XII. Of what nature are those two centuries in the history of Paris?
They are essentially the close of the middle ages. The great divisions whose origins are to be found in the awakening of the eleventh century, and whose dramatic and almost tragic close is marked by the opening of the new world, by the discovery of printing, by the Renaissance, and by the Reformation.
From such shocks no system and no society could have escaped unchanged. But, by an accident which has not on the whole done hurt to our civilization, the blows happened to fall on a body already near to death. The result was that the modern world was developed with extreme rapidity, and that the date we have chosen for the close of this chapter marks, not so much a boundary as a gulf, on the far side of which lie the times to which we belong, and whose divisions, violent discussions, bewilderment and hopes are our own.
190You will discover that during these two hundred years Paris suffers and changes in a manner very typical of the time. Her adventures are, as it were, the epitome of what Europe is passing through. The theatrical apparatus which feudalism puts on in its dotage, the useless plumes, the fantastic heraldry, the cumbersome trappings of the charger, the foolish embroidered bridle — all those paraphernalia of the fourteenth and fifteenth century chivalry are the life of her palaces and the gaiety of her streets.
The tournament has taken the place of private war, and the whole appearance of the soldiery — in such times an excellent test of what society in general was feeling — is transformed. During these many early centuries, in which the knight had been simply bent upon his trade of fighting and upon its object, armor had been simple and useful. The outward appearance of the knight reflected the simplicity of heroic times. This spirit died with Saint Louis on the Tunisian sand. It had produced the Song of Roland and a hundred other majestic epics; it gave us the Gothic, the Parliaments, the Universities. It is there that an historian may place with so much security his admiration of the middle ages.
But now this child-like nature which looked outward and was brave is replaced by the clearest evidences of decay. It is getting dark, the footlights are lit, and in a kind of false glare the sham heroes of Froissart come on to the stage. They fight one 191 hardly knows for what, unless it is to have the opportunity of making fine phrases and of achieving the picturesque. Later, the beginning of diplomacy enters to make things worse, and a thousand dynastic conspiracies fill up the time, till at last a double figure, mad enough for any play, and yet the full representative of national feeling, appears in Louis XI.
If the spirit which we should find in the upper classes of Paris was of this nature, and if such figures are to lend color to her movement, we may naturally expect some similar phase in the buildings whose aspect and whose changes are the chief theme of this book. This expectation is not disappointed, but the background which architecture furnished to this fantastic time is nobler than the figures which it frames. The Gothic stoops, of course, to a certain littleness, but it increases in charm and gains in beauty what it loses in majesty. The simple spire, the strong, sufficient pillars, the just proportion of the thirteenth century building, have something about them as certain as the creed and as full of satisfaction as a completed love. These qualities the later architects fail to attain, but they were desirous of putting grace and charm and subtlety into their work, and they succeeded. The pillars are too thin for what they support, but this very insufficiency gives them the characteristic of fantasy. They spring up to immoderate heights, but it is in such deep roof-trees that one can best feel the spirit that haunted their builders. 192 The carving is more delicate, the allegory deeper than what the earlier period could design, and they grow so perfect in the art of expression that there is produced in this false time a pair of statues which cannot, I think, be matched in the whole world. I mean the Madonna over the southern portal at Rheims, and the statue of Our Lady of Paris, which stands in Notre Dame. With the first a history of Paris is not concerned, and this is just as well, for it would be impossible to describe it in moderate terms. As to the second, it is one of the principal glories of the city. It stands at the corner where the southern transept meets the nave, and, as you come up by the southern aisle, you see it all surrounded with lighted candles. It is upon coming closer and looking at the face that you understand the cause of this decoration.
As the period closes architecture goes further and further along this road. The carvings jostle one another. Every church front is a kind of foliage of detail. The windows especially display this luxuriance. They attempt every manner of re-entrant curve, the lines pass one into the other, and there finally appears that effect of a fire burning which has given the last style of mediæval architecture its French name. This feverish close of the great three hundred years is best described in the phrase of Michelet, “The Gothic caught fire, leapt up in the tongues of the Flamboyant, and disappeared.”
193But while we have described this development of fourteenth and fifteenth century art as being less vain than the men for whom it was built, yet it must not be forgotten that the kind of building upon which all this lavish imagination was poured out indicates very well the social change. Such masses of detail are luxuries. Expense is the first character of these gems, and the flamboyant, exquisite as it is, could not have existed but for the growing evil of social conditions. Property was concentrating in great masses, and though (luckily) the means of production, especially the land, do not get into fewer hands, yet the rich become richer, the poor poorer, during that period. The classes divide. The writing of romances and of histories, the admirable illuminations which we cherish so carefully, the growing power of art — all these things are at the disposition of what has now definitely become a luxurious upper class. The old idea of a man in high position having a definite duty as the price of his dignity, the hierarchical conception of the thirteenth century, still exists in the letter, but the spirit is fast disappearing. The fatal line between the upper and the lower clergy has been drawn. These churches that delight us were the playthings of rich dignitaries, and the closing energy of Gothic architecture is expended upon the chapels or upon the palaces of men who are merely rich. In the religious and civil tumult of the sixteenth century the people took their revenge. But that revenge did 194 not settle matters, and we suffer to-day from evils which the fifteenth century prepared.
It is then with such a society, growing in social differences, in luxury, in misery, in the power of expression, that the Paris we are about to describe is peopled. What was the history of the city as this development, or rather decay, took place?
When we left the monarchy in the last chapter the work of consolidation and unity had been finally accomplished. The Capetian house had worked steadily towards one end for the better part of four hundred years, or rather it had during all that time been at the helm directing the natural course of the nation. By a striking coincidence the succession during all that period had been perfect. The task of guiding the national development is regularly handed down from father to son. The prince is crowned in the king’s lifetime, and all this long line of kings is a continuous chain whose links are periods of increasing power. We have seen how the king’s government succeeded in enforcing itself over all France. Philippe the Conqueror fought its last battles. Saint Louis inherits its perfection. Philippe le Bel pushes it to the point of despotism.
Now, in the first generation of the fourteenth century, when the work is thoroughly accomplished, the direct line ends, and, as though a kind of spell were connected with the Capetian succession, upon the failure of a direct heir, this great and successful effort 195 of the dynasty goes through a hundred years of trial. The hundred years’ war comes directly upon the heels of the success, and we may compare it to the furnace in which a work of art is either perfected or destroyed, but which is necessary for it to reach its final purpose.
Charles le Bel was the last of the direct line. It was necessary to cast about for a successor, and three claimants present themselves: Philip of Valois, Charles of Navarre, and Edward III. of England. It would not come within the scope of this book to trace at any length the various values of these claims, or how lightly the English King may have treated his legal rights. Suffice it to say that it is made the pretext for the beginning of those wars which nearly ended in the coalescence of France and England. The motive of the English attack will be clear when we consider the spirit of the time. There was a memory, loose in the matter of legal right, but strong in tradition and sentiment, of the Angevin house. The kings of England had not been technically sovereigns of their French fiefs, but virtually these formed part of a united empire. These times were not far removed. Henry III., the son of the man who had lost the French possessions and who had himself fought to recover them, had been dead for only seventy years or so. French was still the language of the court and upper classes, though English was rapidly superseding it. And above all there was a 196 desire to “Faire Chevalerie.” That spirit of which we spoke above, the theatrical knighthood of the fourteenth century, was strong on both sides of the channel. It is this last feature which lends so indeterminate a character to the first part of the hundred years’ war. Rapid raids going deep into the heart of France, followed by equally rapid retreats heavy with booty: a lack of permanent garrisons, and, finally, as everybody knows, the clearing out of the foreigner from French soil. This earlier period of the wars, covering, roughly speaking, the latter half of the fourteenth century, might have passed with little effect upon either country, save only for this. France was greatly impoverished and the nobility were hard hit in the great defeats.
Nothing formative appears. Paris, vaguely conscious of its mission, passes indeed through the strange episode of Etienne Marcel’s rule. It is the first note of that civic attitude which will later make Paris lead France; but it was out of due season and it failed, because even those who took part in it doubted the moral right of their action. Still it was a memory to look back to and to strengthen further developments in the idea of the city. One may say that the Hôtel de Ville arose in these famous riots, and that the House of the Pillars was the direct ancestor of the place where they plotted in the night of the ninth Thermidor and of the walls which the Commune destroyed.
197With the next century a very different prospect opens on the war. England is ruled by English-speaking nobles, the House of Lancaster, and they must prove their right to usurpation by adding to the national power, while the attempt was peculiarly suited to a family whose genius was for diplomacy and intrigue, and who had in their blood the instinct which tells a conqueror the moment at which to strike. The old King spent his reign in affirming a very unstable throne, surrounded by nobles who were his equals. The task of the French invasion was left to Henry V.
Of all the circumstances favoring his attempt, none was more powerful than the condition of Paris and of the French court. These we will describe; for, in order to follow the strange story of how the French crown fell into foreign hands, and of how, almost by a miracle, it was recaptured, it is necessary to appreciate what the Burgundian party meant and why Paris adhered to it.
Ever since the time of Saint Louis, that is, ever since the unity of France under the crown had been achieved, the fatal custom had obtained of granting “appanage.” The “appanage” was a great fief, lapsed from its old Feudal Lord, fallen to the King, and regranted by him to a brother or a son. This policy was imagined to be wise. It was thought that the immediate relation of the royal family would help it upon all occasions, and that this relegation of power 198 was far more practical than any system of governors — which, in the conditions of the middle ages, would have meant so many potential rebels. But as a fact the “appanage” turned out more dangerous than the feudal family. It had all the vices of an independent fief, and added to these its ruler would remember the pride of the Royal blood but not his duty to the family of which he was a member. In a few generations his house would grow into a distinct and almost foreign menace to the throne, and so to the unity of the nation.
When John the Loyal was taken prisoner at Poictiers his little son had defended him in the battle, and in memory of this his father gave him the province of Burgundy in fee. In less than fifty years Burgundy was almost like another kingdom — not its people, but its policy — and the Duke of Burgundy is the overshadowing protector of the throne.
Now, when Henry V. was about to invade France, the King, Charles VI., was mad — he had periods of sanity, but his personal hold on the government was gone. From the Tower of the Louvre not the old familiar, if sometimes terrible, face of the King awed and controlled Paris, but rather there sounded the voices of two factions, each claiming to rule in the Mad King’s name, and between these Paris had to choose. They were the family of Armagnacs — southerners — and the Duke of Burgundy’s people. Into the treachery, the murders and the bitter personal 199 enmity between these two we cannot enter here, but in brief Paris, upon whose decision at this stage of French history the whole nation already depended, declared for Burgundy. The southerner has always meant for Paris the danger of national disunion, and again the Duke of Burgundy was at least a Capet. The choice was not ill-considered, and yet events proved it unwise. The Duke of Burgundy felt against the Armagnac a violent and personal hatred in which dynasty and nationality had nothing to do, and since the southern faction continued to hold the Dauphin, he declared for the English invader. Paris followed him even in this extreme step, and Henry V. was welcomed as he entered the city.
Lest this grave misjudgment should appear inexplicable, it must be understood that the city saw in the advent of the Lancastrian the only opportunity for national unity and for the end of a disastrous struggle. It was only as a means of affirming the dynasty through the female line and being rid of the Armagnac that Henry was admitted. He was to marry the daughter of the Mad King, and his son was to inherit the crowns of England and France. These terms Paris actually applauded, and after his father’s death the poor little child of less than a year old, doomed with tainted blood, and heir to all the misery of the wars of the Roses, was crowned in Notre Dame.
All the world knows how this false step on the part 200 on the capital was redeemed by the Peasantry. The social differentiation which had cursed France with a clique of professional lawyers and diplomats had not destroyed the people nor lessened their hold on the soil. And while the upper class was achieving the rule of the nation, Joan of Arc comes out of the new class of peasants who own the land, the direct ancestors of the proprietors of to-day, and saves it. Her story does not directly affect the city, save that she fell wounded in attacking its gate of St. Honoré (close to where her statue now stands, in the Place des Pyramides), and that her success, though long after her death, changed the views of Paris as it did those of the Dukes. Richemont re-enters the city, and the English retreat fighting from the Bastille.
Louis XI. at last inherits the peace that succeeds these victories. The figure of Louis XI. though not the best is yet the most striking figure at the close of this period; not as a fighter (for the time of that has passed) nor merely as a patriot (for that has not yet come), but as an upholder of the dynasty, as a true heir of the Capetians, this King, who was so deeply touched with his grandfather’s madness, reconsolidates the nation under the royal power. In the brief period between his death and the Italian wars the Renaissance is already upon us, and the chapter of mediæval France and Paris is closed.
We leave the city and the nation pulled out of that furnace of the wars, but at this expense that 201 they will never live strongly again, save with a highly centralized government, and Paris in the three centuries between that time and the Revolution will be found steadily supporting her own hegemony and the necessity of a strong rule in one hand.
As we turn to the detailed history of the buildings of the city during these two hundred years, let us begin with the quarter which is the centre of the municipality, and which (with the Palais) is the principal interest of the time, I mean that which was later called the Hôtel de Ville.
In 1328 Clemence of Hungary, widow of Louis X., died in the Maison aux Piliers, on the Place de la Grève, and left it by will to her nephew, Guy, Dauphin of Vienne. His brother and heir, Humbert, being childless, ceded all his possessions to the King, Philip VI., in behalf of his grandson Charles, for a sum of money, and on condition that the Province of Dauphiné should be kept distinct from the Crown of France. From henceforth the eldest son of the royal family is called the Dauphin, and the House of Pillars becomes for a time the “Dauphin’s House.”
It was enlarged — probably about the middle of the fourteenth century — not towards the Place de la Grève but in the rear, where stood the Church of St. Jean, for a document of 1357 mentions the little street that had bounded this church on the east as being then the eastern limit of the Maison aux Dauphins. This piece of evidence is of the greatest 202 importance, as the existence of a Hôtel de Ville in Paris dates from that moment.
Etienne Marcel, the famous Prévôt des Marchands, during King John’s captivity, who had done so much already to advance the power of the Bourgeois, had determined to establish some sort of municipal centre or communal building, modelled on those of several Flemish towns, and the Maison aux Piliers, situated in the heart of the city and close to the principal port, was precisely suited to his purpose. The Dauphin tried hard to prevent his house from becoming the headquarters of an already threatening faction, finally giving it to Jean d’Auxerre, in the hope that as the property of a private citizen it might escape; but Marcel overreached him, and the document above referred to is nothing less than a record of the purchase, with public money, of the Dauphin’s House. Within a year, when the Prévôt had the artillery of the Louvre moved there, and transformed it into a sort of revolutionary headquarters, it is called “la Meson de la Ville,” and with that phrase begins the long story of the Hôtel de Ville.
It was here that the people assembled after the murder of the Marshals of Champagne and Normandy, in February, 1358, and when Marcel harangued them from the window they, from the Place de la Grève, replied by shouting: “We acknowledge the deed, and will abide by it!” And it was also here that in August of the same year, when the Dauphin 203 had reasserted his power, Toussac and Macon, two of the Prévôt’s warmest supporters, were beheaded.
When the revolution was suppressed the Dauphin allowed the Prévôt des Marchands to remain at the Place de la Grève, but transferred some of his powers to his own Prévôt de Paris, Hugues Aubriot, whose headquarters were at the Châtelet.
The Hôtel de Ville seems, however, from its inception destined to be the core and centre of revolutionary enterprises; for when, during the minority of Charles VI., the people of Paris rebelled against the authority of the King’s uncles, it was there they assembled and armed themselves with those leaden mallets from which the rebels got the name of maillotins. This time the punishment was severe. In the following year, 1383, when the King returned flushed with his victory over the Flemish Communes, one of his first acts was to install the Provost of the Crown in the place of the Prévôt des Marchands, and for thirty-two years the Hôtel de Ville appears in the public documents as the “House of the Provost of Paris,” or worse still, the “King’s Hôtel at the Grève.” In 1415, notwithstanding the general state of disorder and bad government, the municipal body of Paris succeeded in effecting the reorganization of the Prévôtè des Marchands. Paris once more gains possession of her Hôtel de Ville, not to lose it again till nearly four hundred years had brought it to Thermidor.
204During the English occupation the Place de la Grève, deserted and neglected, presents a most melancholy picture. Sauval quotes a document dated 1430, whose significance he himself does not take in. It refers to the sole embellishment of the building during this period, when a certain room is decorated by Mahiet Biterne with the ship — the city’s emblem — surrounded by lilies interlaced with roses, undoubtedly the red roses of Lancaster, the mark set by the Duke of Bedford on the walls of the Hôtel de Ville.
After the entry of Charles VII. the English taken at Pontoise were sent by hundreds, according to the Journal d’un Bourgeois, to the Grève, tied hand and foot and drowned, “in the presence of all the people.”
Although Charles VII. absented himself from the capital as much as possible, and maintained the seat of his government elsewhere, it was in his name that a most happy transformation of the administrative body of Paris was accomplished, and the national unity re-established. In the month of July, 1450, the Prévôt des Marchands and the four sheriffs ask the King’s permission to appoint a commission for the purpose of examining all the ancient registers and documents of the Hôtel de Ville, with a view to thoroughly reorganizing their body. The result was that by the close of this reign the municipality was established upon so firm a basis that in the next it 205 was able to render substantial service and support to the Crown.
It was in fact upon the bourgeois that Louis XI. chiefly relied. From almost the moment of his coronation he set himself to gain their confidence and good-will. We find him taking part in the election of the Provost, becoming a member of the “Brotherhood of the Bourgeois,” even taking supper in the Hôtel de Ville with the Provost and sheriffs, and in 1471, with his own hand, lighting the great bonfire which (a custom older than Christianity) burned every year on Saint John’s eve in the Place de la Grève. Less than two years later Jean le Hardi, who had conspired with the Duke of Burgundy to poison the King, was executed on the same spot, and his heat stuck on the point of a lance in front of the Hôtel de Ville. Here, too, took place the execution of the treacherous Constable of St. Pol, who, however, just before “little John,” the executioner, cut off his head, publicly repented and asked the King’s pardon. Louis, in order to keep his people in mind of the risks they ran in resisting him, and also of how in this case the justice of the sentence had been recognized by even the victim himself, put up a column twelve feet high, on the spot where M. de Saint Pol had been executed, on which were engraved his epitaph and his last words.
Meanwhile the Hôtel de Ville was getting very much out of repair; during the last two or three reigns 206 but little had been done for it, and now, moreover, its functions were increasing so rapidly that it had become much too small. Fortunately money was not wanting under Louis XI. for public works. When royal visitors came to the capital the King paid all the costs of their entertainment; the citizens were neither required to serve in the army themselves nor to send substitutes, and an act of 1465 provides against soldiers being quartered on them; thus the city was able to spend its income upon itself. In 1470 work was begun on the Hôtel de Ville, and the Maison aux Piliers, which was already more than three hundred years old, was thoroughly repaired and enlarged.
At the beginning of the reign of Louis XII. a gallery was built around the court, and the crumbling wood-work renewed, not however at the reigning King’s expense, who merely took advantage of the improvements to give the Archduke of Austria a more imposing reception when he visited Paris, and who, moreover, required the city to pay all the costs. Charles VIII. made Paris contribute pretty heavily towards his Italian campaign, but Louis went much further. The seventeen years of his reign present a long series of demands, now on one pretext and now on another; but with it all he continued to keep on good terms with the bourgeois. At the time of his third marriage the young Queen, Mary of England, was waited upon by the Prévôt des Marchands and 207 four sheriffs, and presented with the gift of the city, “silver-gilt plate to the value of about six thousand pounds.” They ventured, moreover — a thing never done before — to ask her to do them the honor to dine at the Hôtel de Ville. Accordingly, on Sunday, the 26th of November, 1514, the first really royal repast was served in the old Maison aux Piliers, the Queen being seated at table with Louise of Savoy, mother of Prince Francis of Angoulême, who but a few weeks later was to become King of France.
The residence of the Provost of Paris had fared no better than the Hôtel de Ville as far as its preservation went, for Félibien says that in 1460 the Châtelet had become so out of repair that the pleas had to be heard in the Louvre. The work of reconstruction seems to have progressed but slowly, for in 1506 it was still far from completed, though Corrozet notes that in that year the “seat and jurisdiction of the Provost of Paris” was re-established at the Châtelet. One description of the building states that the various offices, quarters for the guard, and so forth, were on the east, while the prisons were on the lower side, overlooking the Rue St. Denis; the cells under the prisons and the cellars along the river-bank were used as store-rooms, either for arms or provisions.
The prisons just mentioned were more than twenty in number, each having its especial name, as the Griesche, where only women were confined; the 208 Fin-d’aise, described as the worst of all the Châtelet dungeons, “where the air was so fetid that a candle would not burn;” the Gloriette, and so on. As a rule persons were only detained here while awaiting trial; after that they were liberated, executed or committed to other prisons, according to the nature of their sentence. Prisoners had to pay a regular tax to the gaoler for their keep; this was fixed by the state, and varied according to their station or means.
Articles taken from thieves or found were kept at the Châtelet forty days, if not reclaimed they were then sold, and the price turned over to the Crown.
The entrance to the prisons was, as it had been for centuries past, by the arched passage-way from the Rue St. Lenfroi. Persons accused of crime were first conducted to a room on the ground-floor, called the lower gaol or morgue, where they were examined attentively by the agent of the police (“on les morguaient”), so that they could be recognized if they escaped. A good deal later this room was used for the reception of bodies found in the Seine. From very early times, however, some spot was set aside for this purpose, and a document of 1372 refers to the fact that the Sisters Hospitallers of Ste. Catherine were obliged by their rule to receive the corpses of any persons who had either died in prison or on the public highways, or been drowned in the river, and to provide them with shrouds, and have them buried in the neighboring cemetery of The Holy Innocents.
209In front of the Châtelet on the north was an open square, where to-day is the short “Avenue Victoria.” It was called the Porte-Paris or Apport-Paris, and there from time immemorial a market had been held. It was bounded on the east by the façade of the Grande Boucherie or Slaughter-House, and on the west by a continuation of the Rue St. Denis, which still bears the same name.
From there the Pont au Change led over the river to the Cité. It had been rebuilt in wood in the beginning of the fourteenth century, and two hundred years later had become so out of repair as to be (according to Dulaure) useless. Still it had a long life for a mere trestle bridge, for it was again rebuilt, or possibly only strengthened, in 1510, and so effectually as to resist the inundation that carried away the Pont aux Meunièrs some ninety years later.
The Hôtel du Chevalier du Guet stood north-west of the Châtelet, between the present Avenue Victoria and the Rue de Rivoli; it was, as its name indicates, the headquarters of the royal watch, a body of militia whose duty it was to patrol certain parts of the city at night. The commander or chevalier was appointed by the Provost of Paris. The Journal Sous Charles VI. mentions a certain Gaulthier Rallard, Chevalier du Guet in 1418, who when on duty always had four or five minstrels march ahead of him playing on loud instruments, “which seemed to the people to be a very strange thing, as it was 210 like telling wrong-doers to get out of the way of his coming.”
Charles VII. bestowed the emblem of the lately-suppressed Order of the Star upon the Chevalier du Guet and his servants; they had the exclusive privilege of wearing it, and could also have access to the King at all hours, “even booted.”
South of the Châtelet, close to the river, stood the Parloir aux Bourgeois, the meeting-place of the municipality before its regular reorganization, and adjoining it, the Chapel of St. Leufroi, belonging originally to the parish of St. Germain l’Auxerrois. The mention of this last church naturally leads us to the Louvre, which was its immediate neighbor on the west.
The reigns of Philip le Bel’s first and last sons had terminated under very similar circumstances, but in the latter case the child born at the Louvre after its father’s death proved to be a girl, and there were, moreover, no uncles ready to carry on the direct succession from father to son. The throne remained in the same branch of the family, but a new dynasty was established. Immediately on the death of Charles IV. Edward III. of England, nephew of the late King, claimed the regency. The Peers of France meeting to consider the question, appointed Philip of Valois — grandson of Philip le Hardi and the only heir to the throne through the male succession — regent, with the understanding that in case the child should be a girl 21 he was to succeed to the crown. On the 1st of April, 1328, a little princess was born, “whereat, “says Froissart, “most of the kingdom was greatly troubled.” Not so Philip; he was already in possession of the Louvre, which meant nearly the same as holding the crown itself, and he had, moreover, the support of the chief barons and the twelve peers. He was crowned without opposition at Rheims in the following month.
As de Montfort knew to his cost, Philip of Valois kept his political prisoners in the Louvre, but their history hardly belongs to so purely domestic a chronicle as this; other prisoners that more nearly concern us occupied a little vine-shaded building in one corner of the palace garden, the “lion’s house,” as it was called, and there was housed the royal menagerie until the time of Charles V., when the animals were moved to the garden of the Hôtel St. Paul, and the Rue des Lions got the name it has ever since gone by.
After King John’s defeat and capture at Poictiers, the Dauphin returned to Paris, and establishing himself in the Louvre, opened negotiations with Marcel and the States General. The Provost at first appeared with a strong, armed following, but later, fearing that even these would not be sufficient to protect him, should the Louvre once fairly hold him in its grasp, he declined to venture further than St. Germain l’Auxerrois. We have already seen how in April, 1358, he succeeded in capturing the artillery 212 stored at the Louvre, and transferring it to the Hôtel de Ville; his next move was more important still. Having managed to force the Dauphin out of the Louvre, he took measures to prevent its ever again becoming the redoubtable stronghold of the Crown that it had been hitherto, and this he effected by simply extending the city walls as far as the site of the present Tuileries Gate in the Carrousel. Thus communication with the country outside the city was cut off, and the terrible prison found itself in turn a prisoner.
When the Dauphin, after the downfall and death of Marcel, returned to Paris he allowed these arrangements to stand, but, since the Louvre had lost its importance as a fortress, he determined to transform it into a palace, albeit a fortified one.
The moat was cleared and repaired, and the Tour du Bois, corresponding to the Tour du Coin, constructed, as well as the wall along the bank of the Seine beyond the point where that of Philip-Augustus stopped.
It may be remembered that the Fortress of Philip-Augustus had on its eastern and northern sides only low, battlemented walls. The first work undertaken after the moats had been repaired was that of pulling these walls down (after extending the façades of the western and southern sides for a considerable distance) and erecting in their stead two wings corresponding in height, size and appearance to the others. Thus the Louvre has now become a complete rectangle, built up on all four sides.
213The great tower in the centre was left intact with its moat, no attempt being made either to heighten or to ornament it, only it was connected with the main building on the north by a sort of covered gallery supported by a single arch of masonry. On the left, and nearly touching it, the architect, Raymond du Temple, had placed a covered stairway built against the wing that overlooked the garden. The lower part of this stair led to the first four floors; each landing was paved with tombstones like those in the galleries of the cemetery of the Innocents, and furnished with a bench, so that the King might rest when mounting to the top stories, as he had to do occasionally when the high rank of his guests made it necessary to quarter them in his own apartments.
The narrow stair at the top led to the attics, and even to the little lead-covered terrace which opened out from the garrets, “la terrasse plomée, par où le Roy monte au galetas,” as it is called in an account of the head-carpenter under date of 1364. The walls of the stairway were carved and decorated, niches contained statues of the King and Queen and other members of the royal family, and a carved stone window, ornamented with the arms of France, overlooked the court.
The state chamber of the King, of great size and magnificently fitted up, was in this new wing on the north, while the apartments of the Queen were in 214 the wing overlooking the river, called “le grand pavillon.” The small chapel or oratory of the King, as well as his library and “study,” was also in the north wing which overlooked the gardens. The Queen had her private chapel as well, while attached to the suite occupied by each “Child of France” was a small oratory, usually situated in one of the towers and surmounted by a little spire.
Immediately on the birth of the Dauphin Charles caused a suite of apartments, nearly as large and richly furnished as his own and the Queen’s, to be set aside for his use. In the tower was a chapel, and, what none of the others had, in the steeple overhead a clock, the second to appear in Paris, that in the tower of the Palais being the first. This chapel was situated just where the southern extremity of the Salle des Cariatides is now.
It was not long, however, in spite of all the additions made by Charles V., before the Louvre became too small for the King’s numerous suite, especially when, as was more and more frequently the case, he had royal personages to entertain. Thus Charles VI. spent almost his entire reign at the Hôtel St. Paul; after this the Louvre ceased to be used by the court, and was relegated to the royal princes. The Duc de Guienne, for instance, lived there long enough to completely transform the Grand Salle and open a doorway on to the court.
So many princes and princesses of the blood claimed 215 the right to occupy an apartment — a complete suite, that is — in the Louvre that the servants and various officials were crowded out; these occupied buildings of all styles and sizes outside the moats, and, grouped under the general name of Basses Cours, threw a sort of girdle of noise and life and movement around the stately fortress, from whose towers floated banners bearing aloft the emblem of the lilies of France.
In front was an open space (converted by Charles VI. into a garden) and stairs leading down to the water’s edge, where all the materials used in the new constructions were landed. On the north, as we have said, was the garden, called the large garden, to distinguish it from a smaller one on the south.
Charles V. was exceedingly proud of his enlarged and embellished Louvre, and especially of his library, which occupied three floors of one of the towers, and which was valuable enough to arouse the cupidity of the duke of Bedford, who carried off all but about fifty of its thousand and odd volumes, first to the Tournelles and then to England.
During the English occupation the Louvre sustained serious injury; it was in fact too much out of repair for Charles VII., on his return to his capital, to live there, even had he wished to. Louis XI., not caring to undertake the costly operation of restoring it as a palace, contented himself with fitting it out as a prison, and from the reign of Charles VIII. it 216 ceased to figure at all as a residence, or even as a royal prison; the Duke d’Alençon, confined there by Louis XI., was in fact the last prisoner of the great tower.
But as the Louvre falls into disuse another fortress-palace at the opposite end of Paris rises into importance — that which was to become, by an accident, so famous under the name of the Bastille.
It was in anticipation of an attack from the English that Etienne Marcel hastily enclosed the new suburbs beyond the wall of Philip-Augustus on the right bank of the Seine. This remarkable piece of work was accomplished in the short space of four years, and at comparatively small expense. The new wall was lofty, crenelated, and furnished here and there with watch-towers, attached to the battlements by heavy iron clamps. A deep and wide moat filled with water guarded the approach to the walls, which were further protected at regular intervals by massive square towers. Each gate was flanked with round towers, and acted as a sort of ordinary fortress; these were called bastille or bastide (Latin bastilia). Two of these gates, which were more strongly fortified than the others, were named the Bastille St. Denis and the Bastille St. Antoine. The new wall began at the Tour Barbeau — which stood on what is now the Quai des Celestins, directly opposite the market, and was a gate of Philip-Augusts’ wall — continued along the right bank of the river as far as 217 the Tour de Billy, then took a sharp turn to the north-west, and describing a wide semicircle, including both the Temple and the Louvre within its limits, joined the old wall at a point about half-way between the modern bridges called des Arts and Carrousel.
In July of the year 1358 the Dauphin, who had succeeded in eluding Etienne Marcel, was encamped with quite a strong force in the neighborhood of Paris, engaged in checking the advance of the English, and also of the army headed by Charles the Bad, King of Navarre. Marcel, whose popularity had been waning for some time, was now openly accused of conspiring to betray Paris into the hands of the King of Navarre. On the afternoon of the 31st he appeared before the Bastille St. Denis and called upon his former supporter, Jean Maillard, to deliver up the keys, but Maillard had been won over to the Dauphin’s side, he refused, and, as Marcel with his band of fifty or sixty followers began retreating towards the Bastille St. Antoine, seized a banner bearing the arms of the city, leaped on horseback, and rallying the citizens about him with the cry of Montjoie Saint Denis, gave chase. The Prévôt knew that if he could once get possession of the St. Antoine gate he was safe, as it was there that he proposed admitting Charles of Navarre and his troops, but the soldiers on guard refused to open the gates, and Maillard coming up shortly, the whole band were cut to pieces. Three days later the Dauphin entered 218 Paris. As he passed in front of the Church of Ste. Catherine du Val des Ecoliers he saw three bodies, stripped and mutilated, lying exposed on the paving; they were Marcel and his two companions, Giffart and Jean de l’Isle. These, together with the bodies of various other persons executed for having supported Marcel, were thrown into the Seine, at the Port of St. Paul.
When the Dauphin succeeded his father in 1364, under the title of Charles V., he brought the experiences of a long and troubled regency to aid him in the task of governing Paris. One of his first acts shows that the lesson of Marcel’s rule had not been thrown away on him. In order to oppose some sort of check to the powerful and sometimes seditious influence of the Prévôt des Marchands, the representative of the people, he appointed as Prévôt de Paris the representative of the Crown, Hugues Aubriot, a man of marked ability, intelligent and active, and on whose loyalty he could rely implicitly.
Aubriot at once set about completing and adding to the fortifications of Marcel, and as the new quarter containing the Hôtel St. Paul now seemed to be not only very difficult to defend, but especially exposed in case of a siege, he advised the King to convert the Bastille of St. Antoine into a regular fortress, which could likewise be used as a state prison. The first stone was laid in the month of April, 1370, and by 1374 the building was finished. At first it consisted 219 only of two great towers, each seventy-three feet in height, which flanked the old gate of the Bastille St. Antoine, left intact as well as the drawbridge. A little later two other towers like the first were built opposite them, overlooking the Quartier St. Antoine, also provided with a gate and a moat. But Aubriot was not satisfied. The entrance to the city traversing the middle of the fortress by means of this double gateway seemed to offer an element of danger; he accordingly built four other towers, and connected the whole with walls of solid masonry, of the same height. The Porte St. Antoine was left on the right, and served to defend the fortress.
All documents relating to the defenses erected by Aubriot have been either lost or suppressed, but it is safe to affirm that the Bastille with its eight towers complete was standing in 1380.
Charles VI. regained possession of his capital in 1382, and from his reign the Bastille is used almost exclusively as a state prison, with a governor appointed by the King. During the early years of the fifteenth century it was the object of endless skirmishes between the two factions of the Armagnacs and the Burgundians, each rightly considering it the key to Paris. It remained, however, in the hands of the King. On the night of the 29th of May, 1418, when the massacre of the Armagnacs, incited by the Duke of Burgundy, had begun, it sheltered for a moment the escape of the Dauphin, 220 for the Provost of Paris, Tanneguy du Châtel, rushing into the neighboring Palace of the Hôtel St. Paul, where the young Dauphin lay asleep, seized him, half-dressed, and carried him off to the Bastille in his arms.
During the English occupation the Duke of Exeter was placed in command of the Bastille, which, however, seems not to have played any part in the military operations of the English. In 1464, once more garrisoned by Frenchmen, it resumed its functions of state prison and defense to Paris.
It was in September of that year that Louis XI., lying in the Hôtel des Tournelles (near where the street of that name now stands), was all but lost through his own soldiers giving up the Bastille to the Duke of Burgundy’s troops. The plot was discovered by the Provost of the Merchants — that is the head of the municipality — and from that moment Louis places his dependence on his Parisian Militia of a hundred thousand men.
But as a fortress the days of the Bastille were numbered. The Faubourg St. Antoine increasing very rapidly, the time came when the great pile found itself hemmed in on all sides by a densely populated district. As a defense for this district it was useless, but its artillery could and did command it, and so there grew up that feeling of hatred and fear, which the Bastille inspired in the people of Paris for more than three hundred years. Although 221 its guns were only used to announce the peaceable entries of kings and queens, of bishops and ambassadors, the common people and the bourgeois persisted in regarding them as a menace, and the building itself as the symbol of royal oppression and tyranny, directed against themselves.
Charles V. had removed his residence to the neighborhood of the Bastille. Here he bought a large house from the Count d’Etampes, which the new Prévôt des Marchands, Marcel’s successor, and the sheriffs had undertaken to pay for with money furnished by the city. To this the Dauphin added a number of other buildings, with their grounds, courts, and dependencies, so that when the walls around his new palace were finished they enclosed six or seven great hôtels, twelve galleries, eight gardens, six yards and a number of courts, the largest of which, the Cour des Jeux, was used for military exercises.
This great establishment reached from the Port St. Paul to the Rue St. Antoine, which it followed to the east as far as the Bastille, but did not trespass upon the grounds of Celestins lying south. On the modern map it would be bounded by the Quai des Celestins, the Rue St. Paul, the Rue St. Antoine, the Rue du Petit Musc as far north as the Rue de la Cerisai, and on the extreme east by the Boulevard Bourdon; the space covered by the Celestins Barrack, a part of the Boulevard Henry IV., and all the adjoining houses, was the property of the Celestins. 222 The Church and Cemetery of St. Paul and the Grange of St. Eloi, standing close together on the north-west, were also left intact.
Charles V. lived in this palace throughout his entire reign; he seems to have felt more safe there from the plots of the Prévotè des Marchands and the uprisings of the people; he was, moreover, close by the headquarters, at the Port of St. Paul, of the Hanse Parisienne, a corporation that had always lent him its loyal support. Even when he had occasion to hold his court either in the Palais de la Cité or at the Louvre, it is stated that he always returned to the Hôtel St. Paul at night. He was succeeded in 1380 by his unfortunate son, Charles le Bien-Aimé, who here passed, almost without interruption, the forty-two years of his long, wretched reign, during thirty of which he was subject to periodical attacks of insanity. During the last eleven years of his life the poor King, now left by his wife and children entirely in the care of servants, lived like a prisoner in his own palace. On his death, however (October 20, 1422), he was given a grand funeral; the body lay in state for nearly three weeks before being taken to Notre Dame. When the Queen died (also in the Hôtel St. Paul), thirteen years later, she had become so unpopular among the Parisians that her body, escorted only by two or three servants, was put by night in a small boat and carried off to St. Denis, where it was given “the burial of any simple demoiselle.”
223When Charles VII. entered Paris in 1437, after the evacuation of the English, he showed no desire to occupy either the Hôtel des Tournelles, whose last tenant had been the Duke of Bedford, nor the Hôtel St. Paul, filled with painful associations both of his father and mother, but established himself at the Hôtel Neuf close by on the Rue du Petit-Musc. (It took later the name of Hôtel de Bretagne, when Charles VIII. gave it to Anne of Brittany.)
But in fact Charles le Victorieux did not like Paris, and stayed there as little as possible. Then came Louis XI., who, notwithstanding the Patents of Charles V., by which the Hôtel St. Paul was always to be royal property, began its alienation from the crown by giving a part of the Hôtel de la Reine to his Chamberlain, and from then on this hôtel ceased to be the residence of the court.
The Church of St. Paul (called originally aux Champs) was entirely rebuilt during the latter part of the fourteenth and early part of the fifteenth centuries; the principal relic, a black font wherein at least two Kings of France were baptized (John the Loyal and Charles V.) is now in the Church of Médan, near Poissy.
The establishment of the Celestins, mentioned above as adjoining the Palais de St. Paul on the south, was founded by Garnier Marcel in a very small way, but afterwards so enriched and enlarged by Charles V., who built the church, dormitory, refectory, 224 cloister and chapter house, that he was considered the founder, and so represented in a statue over the principal entrance to the church, with his wife beside him, holding in his hands a model of the building. The Celestin Convent was the seat of the King’s notaries or secretaries in all matters relating to the canon law, and as such acquired enormous wealth. The church, built in a rather heavier and ruder style than most other buildings of the period, was nevertheless filled with magnificent tombs, statues, stained-glass windows and rich decorations. It became very much the fashion to be buried there, and many prominent persons who had made gifts to the convent claimed the right to receive their last communion, die and be buried, wearing the dress of the order, in which, moreover, they were represented in bas-relief on the tops of the flat tombs. This custom continued until the sixteenth century.
The Hôtel des Tournelles, which lay just north of this group, and which we have already mentioned more than once, was built by Charles V., and took its name from the quantity of little towers with which the architect had crowned it, more by way of ornament than with a view to defense. It stood on the site of the old palace of the chancellor Pierre Orgemont. It was surrounded originally by a small wood, called parc des Tournelles, which gave its name to the present Rue du Parc Royal that opens from the Rue Turenne, at the end of the Rue Sevigné. 225 The palace was enlarged and beautified by the Duke of Bedford, who lived there throughout the occupation of Paris by the English, preferring it to the Royal Palace of St. Paul, even when, by the death of his brother, Henry V., he became Regent of France.
Although Louis XI., on the night of his formal entry into Paris in 1461, slept, according to custom, in the Palais de la Cité, he made the Tournelles his residence on that and all subsequent visits to the capital.
Under Charles VIII. the court remained most of the time in the Château de Blois, built by him. But Louis XII. had the greatest liking for the Tournelles Palace, where, in fact, he spent the happiest years of his reign in the company of his beloved Anne of Brittany; here he brought his third wife, the youthful Mary of England, and here he died on January 2, 1515, the crieurs des corps running through the streets of Paris ringing their bells and calling out mournfully, “Good King Louis, father of his people, is dead!”
The district lying north and west of the Bastille, “the Marsh,” had undergone great changes since the suppression of the Order of Templars in 1313. Their great commandery, become the property of the Knights Hospitallers of St. John (at this time called the Knights of Rhodes), remained, it is true, for two hundred years pretty much as they left it, and for half a century the towers were used as State Prisons, but the 226 great estate which had formerly belonged to it was divided into three parts when the wall of Charles V. (i. e. the wall originated by Etienne Marcel) enclosed the whole within the city limits. Two of these divisions were covered with streets and houses, while the third was left unbuilt upon till the time of Louis XIII.
The palace of Charles de Savoisy, Chamberlain of Charles VI., in the present Rue Pavée, was pulled down under circumstances which give striking proof of the autocratic power of the University at that time. In July, 1408, some students were going in procession to the Church of Ste. Catherine du Val des Ecoliers, when a servant of the Chamberlain’s returning from the river, where he had been bathing a horse, galloped through the midst of them and spattered one of the company with mud; this one promptly struck him with his fist. The servant called his mates, and they chased the students to the church door. As Savoisy declined to dismiss his men, the Rector of the University cited him to appear before the State Council, with the extraordinary result that he was condemned to pay a fine of fifteen hundred pounds to the students wounded in the melée, one thousand pounds to the University, to require three of his people to do public penance in shirts and with torches in their hands in front of three churches, and to pull down his dwelling.
Although the King gave his consent to the rebuilding of the hôtel in 1416, the University still objected, 227 and when a hundred years later consent was finally obtained, it was only on condition that an inscription recording the sentence should be placed over the main entrance. A little distance to the north stood the Hôtel de Clisson, built for the Constable in the reign of Charles VI. with money given him for the purpose by the late King. The Prévôté of Paris presented the land on which the hôtel was erected, or rather reconstructed out of the house of the Grand-Chantier du Temple, which already stood there. During the English occupation it was confiscated and given to the Duke of Clarence, brother of Henry V.
We have seen how the Cemetery of the Holy Innocents had been enclosed by Philip-Augustus with a wall in order to keep out the roughs and hangers-on of the Halles close by, but as it was left open during the day, these disorders soon recommenced. The neighborhood was always the resort of idlers and knaves, who found there convenient nooks, especially in the cemetery, for spending the night, and plenty of dupes attracted by the market, innocents, as they were called in an old play on the word. The “Journal d’un Bourgeois” describes the coming of a Cordelier called Brother Richard to Paris, and how he preached at the Innocents, à l’endroit de la Dance Macabre, on Sunday, beginning at five in the morning and keeping on till between ten and eleven o’clock to a crowd of five or six thousand persons.
In the sixteenth century the people living in the 228 adjoining Rue aux Fers brought an injunction to compel the Chapter of St. Germain to barricade the gate of the cemetery in that street in order to prevent the poor people from lodging there at night, as they brought contagious diseases and indulged in disorderly conduct.
We have spoken of the charnel-houses, for the reception of bones unearthed in digging fresh graves, which had been placed along the walls in the Cemetery des Innocents; in the arcades of one of these, bordering on the Rue Ferronnerie, was the original representation of the Dance Macabre.* Abbé Dufour quotes a notice in the Journal de Paris sous Charles VI. et Charles VII., which, under date of 1424, says that this wall painting was begun about August and finished in the following Lent; he attributes it to Jean d’Orléans. In the divisions were painted living figures representing all the different grades of society from Popes and Emperors down, each accompanied by a skeleton, while below ran a rhyming dialogue, the address made by Death, and the reply of the living. On the principal entrance to the cemetery was carved, in 1408, the legend of the “three dead and the three living,” suggested by Orcagna’s “Triumph of Death” in the Campo Santo of Pisa. This sculpture was executed by order of the Duc de Berry in memory of his nephew, 229 Louis, Duke of Orleans, murdered by his cousin the Duke of Burgundy three days after they had supped together, in sign of reconciliation, at the house of their old uncle.
North of the cemetery, and close to the Halles, was an open space, the place aux Marchands, in the centre of which stood a cross and a pillory. This last was a two-storied octagonal tower, the upper part having a high window in each division; in the centre was a large iron wheel, by whose means the frame (through round holes in which the head and hands of the offender were thrust) could be made to revolve slowly so that all the spectators should have equal opportunities for beholding the edifying show. The exhibition extended over three market-days, three hours every day, the wheel being turned every half hour.
Here took place as well some of the public executions. The executioner had the right to live on the Place de Pilori and nowhere else, and was also allowed a certain fixed amount of each kind of merchandise exposed for sale in the adjoining Halles. The pillory and scaffold had to be rebuilt in 1516, when the people became so indignant with certain Fleurant, who had to strike a number of times before severing the head of a criminal, that they burned them both down, the executioner being suffocated by the smoke in the cellar underneath, where he had taken refuge. At the foot of the great stone cross hard by 230 the condemned formally assigned their property to their creditors and had the green cap placed on their heads by the executioner. Without this ceremony the transfer was not considered valid.
Following the Rue St. Honoré to the west, a few minutes’ walk would have brought us to the new quarter, once a faubourg, but now enclosed by the walls of Charles V. The swine-market and gallows belonging to the jurisdiction of the bishop were moved outside the walls to the small hill formed from the earth dug out of the new trenches, only the sheep-market being left in its old place, and before long a number of houses and hôtels were put up. The large gardens of the Collége des Bons Enfants ran nearly as far as the Rue des Petits-Champs, which we now call Rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs; facing this street, and backing on the garden, were some houses belonging to a loyal supporter of the Constable d’Armagnac, one de Bonpuits, who held, under the Constable, the office of sheriff. In the open space before his houses he erected a large stone cross, which stood there until the Revolution. When the Burgundians got possession of Paris he was obliged to flee, and all his property was confiscated.
The hôtels of his patron in the neighborhood, the principal one of which stood at the corner of the Rues St. Honoré and Bons Enfants, met with a similar fate; Jean sans Peur acquired them for his son, the Count de Charolais. Under Louis XI. the property 231 was divided up, and passed into the hands of a great many proprietors before the main hôtel finally came into the possession of Richelieu.
The great Hôtel d’Angennes stood further down the Rue St. Honoré, being, in fact, bounded on one side by the walls of the town. This hôtel, probably put up by Regnauld d’Angennes, Captain of the Louvre under Charles VI. was confiscated by the English and given to a Seigneur de Villiers, Simon Mohrier, who had become their ally.
On September 8, 1429, when Jeanne d’Arc led the army of Charles VII. against Paris, this personage was one of the most active in driving back the besiegers.
The Duke d’Alençon, with a body of men, appeared before the barrière St. Denis, in order to create a diversion, while the Maid, clad in armor from head to foot, and bearing her standard ornamented with the lilies of France, advanced with a troop of chevaliers towards the Porte St. Honoré. After crossing the road running in front of the swine-market, and planting some culverins on the mound alluded to above, she made a rapid advance towards the walls, driving back the English, panic-stricken at the sight of her. A fierce skirmish followed; the Duke d’Alençon and the count of Clermont expecting a sortie, stationed an ambuscade behind the hillock where the swine-market stood. But the besieged had all they could do to defend themselves without 232 thinking of taking the offensive. La Pucelle had now crossed the outer trench and stood on the edge of the moat, whose waters lapped the foot of the city walls. Gauging its depth with the staff of her standard, she called for “Logs, timber, something to make a bridge and help us to mount the walls!” She herself was the first to make this dangerous attempt, calling meanwhile for her “gentil Dauphin” to come to her aid. But the King failed to appear, and her own people lent but a half-hearted support. “Yield,” she shouted to the Parisians; “yield now while you can, for if by night time you have not surrendered, we will enter the city whether or no, and every one shall be put to death without mercy!” But in spite of these brave words, the city held out, and, worse still, Jeanne was presently severely wounded by an arrow from a cross-bow, and fell from her horse, covered with blood, on a spot lying a little to the north of the present Place du Théâtre Français, a stone’s throw from where her statue stands to-day. According to some accounts she not only lay there until evening, still encouraging her men with her voice although unable to stand, but was abandoned by them when the attack was finally given up, only the Duke d’Alençon coming back after dark and taking her to St. Denis. But a more likely version tells us that La Hire, Dunois, Xaintrailles, and all the most prominent knights of her company fought valiantly to prevent her from falling into the hands of the English. 233 Whichever is correct, the royal army, utterly discouraged by their repulse, raised the siege four days later and withdrew in the direction of St. Denis.
Simon Mohrier, although an ardent supporter of the English to the very end, seems to have by some means made his peace with Charles VII., for we find him re-established in the house on the Rue Honoré after the Constable Richmond had won back the capital. Mohrier died probably in 1460, and in the same year the Angennes, Seigneurs of Rambouillet, were given back their hôtel, of which they retained peaceable possession for a century and a half.
The establishment of the Quinze-Vingts, an institution for the blind, founded by Saint Louis outside the walls of Philip-Augustus, has been spoken of in a previous chapter. The new fortifications put up by Etiennne Marcel, called the wall of Charles V., included not only the Louvre within the city limits, but the Hôtel de la Petite-Bretagne and the Hospice des Quinze-Vingts standing to the west. The grounds of the latter (a vast territory which on the modern map would reach from the Rue St. Honoré on the north to about the middle of the Place du Carrousel, and from the line of the Pont de Solferino and the Rue Castiglione, on the west, to the line of the Pont du Carrousel) were cut in half by the new wall. In 1356 the municipality ordered a party of bourgeois to have trenches dug from the old tuileries (or tile-kilns), situated just about where the Pavillon de 234 Lesdiguières is now, to the Filles-Diêu; beyond those, walls were built a little later, strengthened at intervals with strong towers, projecting beyond the line of the fortifications, and other devices such as overhanging balconies of stone and watch-towers, from cover of which projectiles could be showered down upon the enemy, if they had gained the second moat. In addition to these there were small constructions at the foot of the trenches, backing on the slope of the fortifications, manned with archers who could thus protect the approaches. It was from one of these outposts that Jeanne d’Arc was wounded in the attack of September 8, 1429.
The wall of Charles V. terminated with the Tour du Bois, corresponding to the Tour du Coin of Philip-Augustus’ wall. It closely resembled the Tour de Nesle, apparently being built after the same model. It was in three stories, terminating in a machicolated platform. On one side it was flanked by a turret, ending in a watch-tower which rose above the platform, reached by a stairway in this turret.
The Tour du Bois dates from 1383, the period of the Maillotin riots; at this time the walls were completed, but it was a recognized necessity to finish the Bastille and to build a fortified tower close to the Louvre, so that the two main approaches to Paris might be well protected.
The name, Tour du Bois, came from one of those wooden fortresses called “bastides” or “Châteaux de Bois,” 235 which, more rapidly constructed and at less expense, usually preceded the more lasting one of masonry.
It was built at the expense of the city, as much by way of punishment for the revolt as in continuation of the custom of requiring Paris to contribute out of its own pocked toward its own “tuition.”
Like the walls, the Tour de Bois was then municipal property. The third floor was used as a store-room for arms and armor, and the two others were rented out to a private individual, with the understanding, however, that he was always to allow free access to the sluice, by which the water for the trenches was controlled.
This tower, which is not only the best known part of the wall of Charles V., figuring as it does in all the maps and engravings of the period, but acts as a connecting link with the important changes of the succeeding hundred years, is the point at which we will close our survey of the northern bank at that date. We have described its principal buildings, the Louvre, the Hôtel de Ville, the Bastille, the Châtelet; and its various quarters, the Marais, the Rue St. Honoré, and, lastly, the line of the Tuileries; let us now cross over to the Island of the Cité, beginning with the Palace.
When we last saw the Palais de la Cité Parliament was sitting in state to confirm the regency of Philip the Long and arrange for the succession. In 1356, 236 forty years later, we find King John presiding over the first “lit de justice” held there, and giving sentence against Charles the Bad, King of Navarre.
The King, wearing his crown and royal robes, was seated on a sort of bed or couche de bois, covered with a rich stuff embroidered in fleurs de lis, placed on a dais no less magnificent. Although such a short time had elapsed since the Palais had been almost rebuilt, it was now necessary to enlarge it again; this was done by raising the roof and converting the lofts into habitable rooms. It was there that the Dauphin had his apartments at the time of the revolt under Marcel, February 22, 1358. The Provost at the head of some thousands of armed workmen whom he had assembled in St. Eloi, close by, forced the Palace doors, and, making his way to the Dauphin’s room, murdered the two marshals of Normandy and Champagne, before his eyes. Etienne Marcel is said to have saved the Dauphin from a similar fate by placing his own red and blue cap, the colors of the city of Paris, on his head and himself taking the Dauphin’s.
The rebels meanwhile dragged the bleeding bodies of their victims down the stairs, and after passing through the long gallery connecting the Ste. Chapelle and the Grand Salle, the Mercerie du Palais, as it was called, flung them on the great marble table, where they stayed for several days, no one having the courage to claim them.
237Two years later, when the revolt was crushed, Charles was obliged, notwithstanding these horrible associations, to again occupy the Palais de la Cité. The Louvre had not yet been altered, nor the Hôtel St. Paul built. With a view to greater security, however, he reorganized the office of concierge or bailiff, appointing Philip de Savoisy “bailli royal.” All the keys of the Palace were given into his charge, except those of the main entrance, which the doorkeeper kept. Among the many perquisites attaching to his office that of the right to help one’s self to “coal, logs, and cinders” from the royal kitchen may have given rise to the right claimed by “portiers” to-day to the first log “la premierè bûche.”
The most important function of the bailli was the exercise of justice “haute et basse” over a territory bounded by the Palace itself, the two arms of the Seine, and the moat running along the eastern façade between it and the Rue Barilleries. He was supplied with all the paraphernalia, irons, scaffolds, prisons, and dungeons, these latter equalling in horror even those of the Châtelet. Some of them were situated under the reservoirs, so that the water constantly filtered through, others were deep underground, and almost all were raised above the level of the galleries, so that they could only be entered with ladders. Each one could hold about fifty prisoners. Two wells (brought to light early in the present century under the Tower of Bon-Bec) served as oubliettes, their 238 bottoms being on a level with the Seine, and the sides studded with sharp pieces of iron, which caught and tore the flesh of the victim as he was hurled down. When the river was flooded, as for instance in 1326 when Charles IV. was kept prisoner in the palace, the water would flow up the channel high enough to clear it of any bodies lying there.
There were also great entertainments at the Palace so long as it was a royal residence. Probably the most magnificent one was that given by Charles V. in honor of the Emperor Charles IV. and his son, King of the Romans. On the first evening a magnificent supper was served to the various princes and eight hundred attendant knights. On the following day, we are told that the Emperor was suffering so from gout that he had to be carried to hear mass in the Ste. Chapelle, and to kiss the Holy Relics preserved there.
The festivities celebrating the marriage of Charles VI. and Isabella, of Bavaria, and her coronation in the Sainte Chapelle, and those held during the visit of the Queen of England, and when the Emperor Sigismund passed through Paris, were all given at the Palais de la Cité. On these occasions everything in the Palais had to give way, the courts were obliged to suspend their hearings, and Parliament to sit elsewhere, usually at St. Eloi, or at the Augustins, on the left bank. When Sigismund came, however, in 1416, the times were so hard that very little could be done 239 in the way of entertainment, and instead of interrupting the session of Parliament, the King invited him not only to attend, but, by way of amusement and distraction, to preside, much to the indignation of the Lords of the Grand Chambre, who did not at all enjoy being presided over by a foreigner.
Queen Isabella, to whom nothing bringing in revenues came amiss, took the office of Concierge du Palais for herself, with all privileges and perquisites attaching thereto. The document recording this fact bears date of 1412, and as late as 1808 the part of the main building adjoining the rooms of La Tournelle, on the Quai de l’Horloge, was called hôtel Isabeau, having without doubt been repaired and occupied — possibly even built — by the Queen-Concierge.
There are many allusions to the Sainte Chapelle during this reign of Charles VI. Thus the spire, made of wood and covered with lead, was renewed, gifts were made to the shrine, concessions, privileges, none of which, however, saved it from desecration and pillage under the Burgundian riots. “How many precious objects,” exclaims Jérôme Moraud, “were stolen, ruined, or burned, in the reign of Charles VI.!”
The insurgents, called in a document of that year (1417) Communes, forced an entrance by one of the doors of the Tournelle, on the north side of the Palace, and after murdering the higher officials confined in the Tower — the Constable of France, the 240 Chancellor, and others — massacred the prisoners in the Conciergerie and a number of lawyers of the Parliament, and then pillaged the Sainte-Chapelle.
At the consecration of Henry VI., of England, which took place there, the officiating Bishop, Winchester, allowed some of the royal household to carry off the magnificent plate that had been used in the ceremony.
When Charles VII. made his entry into Paris, he found the statue of Henry V. of England occupying a niche in the Grand’Salle, in the series of the Kings of France, and allowed it to remain, contenting himself with merely mutilating the face.
It was here that, under the same King, a curious scene took place in 1440. A woman had been going about through the towns and villages of France, proclaiming that she was Jeanne d’Arc, and the people were beginning to believe her. In order to put an end to the imposture, the King had her arrested and brought to Paris, where, mounted on the marble table, she was made to confess to the crowds assembled for the purpose that she was not the Pucelle, but was married, and had two sons.
The clerks of the Basoche used the marble table for their stage when acting on certain days of the year those farces which got them into trouble under Louis XI. This curious institution, the court of the Basoche, had its origin under Philippe le Bel; the clerks, acting as lawyers and judges themselves, settled 241 all questions arising between their own members, or with outsiders. It was modelled exactly after the regular courts of justice, had its attorneys, advocate-general, chancellor, and so on, the presiding officer bearing the title of “King of the Basoche,” until Henry III. took it away from him. The name Basoche has been traced to the Latin word basilica, originally indicating a seat of justice. This miniature court held its sessions in the Salle de St. Louis, and its curious annual “review” in the great court of the Palace, another annual celebration, in which the clerks of the Châtelet took part, was held on the last day of May, when a “May-pole,” erected the previous year was taken down and a new one put up. The Cour de Mai gets its name from this custom.
In the beginning of his reign, Louis XI. had the Palace Gardens laid out anew (the grape arbors especially having fallen into ruins), apparently with the idea of making it his residence; but after 1465, when Parliament had had the audacity to disapprove of his revocation of the Pragmatic Sanction, he was too much offended to occupy the building where that body held its sittings, and only went there on certain special occasions, such as the feasts of Saint Louis, or Charlemagne. These two kings he proposed to hold in great veneration, and had their statues removed from the series of the Kings of France and placed in the little chapel he had fitted out at the northern end of the Grand’Salle, adjoining the apartments 242 of Saint Louis. “It is there,” says one historian, “that they say the Mass for Messieurs.” Louis had also a small oratory put up in the lower church of the Sainte-Chapelle, through the little grated window of which he could see the altar, and take part in the services without being seen.
Under Charles VIII. both Palais and Sainte-Chapelle were largely restored. The west façade of the latter was almost rebuilt, a new rose-window replaced the original one, and the balustrade above it and the little two spires on the gables were renewed. It is at this time, too, that we find the first mention of organs in the Sainte-Chapelle, and the outer stair, by which it could be entered directly from the court, obviating the necessity — which again exists to-day — of going through the Gallerie Mercière. An addition to the Palace of the same date was the extension of the Chambre des Comptes, at the end of the Sainte-Chapelle court, to the north.
The apartments of Saint Louis were still preserved, and the bedchamber occupied by him on his wedding-night was always used by his successors on the night of their formal entry as King into Paris. But as a regular residence, the Palais is unused after the English wars. It becomes only the courts of Law, which it still is.
When Louis XII. returned from Italy in 1500 he brought with him a monk, a native of Verona, named Fra Giovanni Giocondo, under whose directions the 243 Grand’Chambre was magnificently restored, and so lavishly decorated and gilded that it became known henceforth by the name of la chambre dorée. At the foot of the hall hung the picture of the crucifixion, by Van Eyck, afterwards removed to the first chamber of the Court of Appeal.
Fra Giovanni also erected by order of Louis the three wings of the Chambre des Comptes, the first only having been put up under Charles VIII. The King was represented on the façade, with his device, a porcupine, and below the inscription, “Ludovicus hujus nominis duodecim, anno suæ ætatis XLVI.,” showing that the building must have been finished in 1508.
Another and still more important work in which the Italian artist had a hand was the reconstruction of the Pont Notre Dame. In 1412, the ancient Grand Pont having entirely disappeared, except for some vestiges of the arch nearest the right bank, the city got permission from the King and the monks of St. Magloire to rebuild it; and a year later the King accompanied by his court, baptized it Pont Notre Dame. Although in the description of Guilbert de Metz, written in 1422, the new bridge figures as a model of beauty and strength with its seventeen rows of thirty piles each, by 1440 it had to be extensively repaired, and fifty-nine years later it fell into the river, carrying with it the sixty-odd houses which lined its sides, and a number of their occupants. 244 The blame of the catastrophe belonged to the Prévôt des Marchands and the Sheriffs, for they had been told a year before, by some master-carpenters, that a great many of the piles were rotten and would soon give way if not renewed, to which warning the municipality paid no attention. Arrested and tried, they were condemned to pay such enormous damages that they are said to have died bankrupt, and still in prison. A commission was appointed to consider the reconstruction at once of the bridge, which the King wished this time to be of stone. This commission met on several occasions, and discussed plans for raising the money. It was suggested that they should ask the Pope to give them indulgences to sell; that a special tax should be levied; a public subscription be opened, and so on; but nothing was decided. The question was settled by the King, who issued letters-royal the following month, imposing an extra duty on all fish and cloven-footed animals sold at the Halles, and on every boat-load of salt brought up the Seine beyond the limits of the Grenier de Verron. All the leading architects and master-workmen of the day were called on to furnish plans, and a commission was appointed to overlook the work. Fra Giovanni Giocondo must have been an important member of this body, for it is to him that the magnificent results are commonly attributed, though the register of the Hôtel de Ville shows that the plans were by no means entirely his. The first stone was 245 laid in 1500. Seven years later the bridge was finished, and four years after that the last of its houses. The new bridge, according to all contemporaneous accounts, was the most magnificent thing of the kind in Europe. It was built in six great arches, the piers resting on massive piles, and protected on each side by great triangular blocks of stone, whose points were designed to split up floating masses of ice. On the bridge were sixty-eight houses of stone and brick, each containing a cellar, a shop, a balcony, a kitchen, two chambers, and a loft; and on each one was written its number, in gold characters. Here we have the first attempt to number houses in Paris, and what seems quite remarkable, it was done by the most approved method of our day, i. e., with the even numbers on one side and the odd on the other. In the middle of the bridge were statues of Our Lady and Saint Denis, and it was paved just like the streets, “so that strangers thought themselves still on solid ground.”
As to the centre of the island, most of the changes which took place in this part of the cité during the period of which we treat, were in the nature of additions to, or restorations of, old buildings. The Madeline is rebuilt, the ancient Halle de Beance, on the right as you go toward the Petit-Pont, has become a storehouse for grain, and for the leather buckets and ladders to be used in case of fire in the city — the first record, this, of an organized defense against fire 246 in Paris. The existence of this grain depôt had attracted a great many bakers to the neighborhood. One document shows twenty-four of them established close by; they scattered, however, when, in the sixteenth century, the building was rented to the well-known printer, Geoffrey Tory, who moved his workrooms there, from the house on the Petit-Pont, together with that sign, so dear to the heart of the bibliophile, of the Pot cassé.
The cathedral church of Notre Dame, meantime, remains much as we saw it last. During periods of prosperity it is enriched by gifts, statues are erected, votive offerings placed on its altars.
Jean de Montaigu presents the great bell in 1400, and names it Jacqueline, after his wife, and on May 1, 1472, we find it ringing the Angelus. After the defeat of Poictiers the bourgeois of Paris vow a taper the length of the cité to the Virgin, in the hope of bringing the evil times to an end.
Here on the day after the tragedy of the Ballet des Ardents, at the Hôtel St. Paul, when the King nearly lost his life, we see the Dukes of Berry, Burgundy, and Orleans, coming in procession, barefoot, all the way from the Porte Montmartre, to hear Mass and return thanks for the King’s escape. The little English Prince Henry is crowned King of France in 1431, and six years later Charles VII. presents himself before the altar of Notre Dame to return solemn thanks to God for the recovery of his 247 Kingdom. It became the fixed custom of his successors, on their state entry into Paris, to withdraw from the brilliant cortège at the Pont Notre Dame, with only a few members of the suite, and in the quiet and solitude of the great Cathedral to spend a short time in prayer to God.
The Petit-Pont has been twice carried away and twice rebuilt since we saw it last, and the Petit Châtelet has been the scene of a brutal massacre of its prisoners by the Burgundian rioters in 1418, when no less than four bishops were among the victims.
We will now pass in rapid review the changes and improvements that took place in the domain of the University between the early part of the fourteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries.
The School of Medicine, which we left wandering about from place to place, and sometimes even holding its meetings in Notre Dame, has at last acquired a building on the Rue de la Bûcherie through the generosity of one of its own faculty. It was opened in 1483, and in the course of the next twenty years or so lecture halls, an amphitheatre for anatomical clinics, and a small garden for medicinal plants were added, after which the medical college remained in pretty much the same state for more than two hundred years.
A little to the north a new college has been founded in the fourteenth century for the benefit of poor students from Cornwall to the number of ten. Its 248 walls are still standing at No. 20 Rue Domat, which, however, in the days of the college was called Rue du Plâtre; following this street to the Rue St. Jacques, a few steps to the left will bring us to the site of the Chapel of St. Yves, dedicated at about the same time by a few pious natives of Brittany to the patron saint of lawyers. The walls of the interior used to be hung, it is said, with brief-bags, placed there in token of gratitude by litigants who had won their suites, thanks to the good offices of the Saint.
The Rue de St. Jean de Beauvais, which still retains its ancient name, and at present runs from the Boulevard St. Germain to the Rue des Ecoliers, is called from the college founded there in 1372 by a Bishop of Beauvais, Jean de Dormans, who became Chancellor of France and a Cardinal. Saint Francis Xavier (before Ignatius Loyola induced him to join the Order of Jesuits) taught in the College of Beauvais.
For many generations most of the juriconsults, magistrates, advocates, and others learned in the law in Paris, received their training in the law schools which stood in this street from an early period. At first only ecclesiastical law was taught, for a bull of Honorius (confirmed in 1580 by the “Ordonnance de Blois”) forbade instruction in civil law to be given anywhere but at Orleans or Poictiers.
For the many Italians attracted to Paris the Collège des Lombards was founded on the Rue des 249 Carmes, in the fourteenth century, by a Florentine bishop named Ghini. In the reign of Louis XII. its principal was the great Hellenist, Jérome Aléandre.
The old Church of St. Etienne du Mont was pulled down to make way for the existing beautiful building, which, begun in 1517, took a hundred years to complete. During a terrible thunder-storm in June, 1489, the neighboring bell-tower of “Madame Sainte Geneviève au Mont de Paris” caught fire; the wood-work was all consumed, and the lead with which it was overspread, as well as the bells, were melted “qui estoit pitié à voir.” Contributions for the repairs were asked for throughout not only all Paris, but all France, and Pope Sixtus IV. proclaimed plenary indulgence to every one visiting the church on certain days and giving something to the fund.
The Collège de Lisieux stood to the west; it was founded in 1356 by Guy d’Harcourt, Bishop of Lisieux, and enlarged a hundred years later by the d’Estouteville family. Still further west, across the Rue St. Jacques, we find the Convent of the Jacobins flourishing greatly, and by Etienne Marcel’s time reaching out in every direction, some of its buildings being actually in the fields; the renowned Provost, however, made sad havoc in it. In order to carry on his city wall, some chapels, a part of the cloister and the infirmary were demolished and the cemetery suppressed. Charles V. bought the Hôtel de Bourgmoyen in 1362 for the Jacobins, who pulled it down 250 and built an infirmary, paid for by Jeanne de Bourbon, and in the reign of Louis XII. the order succeeded, much against the will of the municipality, in getting the King to cede to them the Parloir aux Bourgeois.
In the Quartier de St. Andrè des Arts the Church of the Augustins was rebuilt by Charles V., and the Church of St. Andrè des Arcs (or Arts), ceded in 1345 by the Brothers of St. Germain des Prés to the University, is frequently made the starting-point for those stately processions by which the faculty sought to impress upon the bourgeois and people of Paris an idea of the strength and importance of the University.
Directly opposite the church a Bishop of Autun had established a college named after his diocese, for fifteen students — five to study theology, five philosophy, and five the canon law. A curious inventory of the furnishings of this college in 1462 tells us that the library contained about two hundred volumes, some on theology, an equal number on jurisprudence, and the rest philosophical works, notably commentaries on some of Aristotle’s treatises, but not a single history, no work of the heathen poets, nor any of those epics of the Middle Ages so popular at the time.
The act of donation of the Collège de Boissi, dating from the period of Etienne Marcel and the Jacquerie, states that it is intended only for poor boys of humble birth, “as we and our fathers were.”
The first printing-presses of Paris were set up in 251 the Sorbonne by Ulric Géring, Martin Krantz, and Michel de Colmar, and from these issued the first books printed in the capital.
The Convent of the Mathurins was rebuilt by Robert Gaguin, Minister-General of the Order, in the fifteenth century, and author of a history of France still consulted by students.
In 1340 the Order of Cluny acquired the ancient Palais des Thermes, and about a hundred years later Jean de Bourbon, natural son of King John and Abbot of the Order, began to build on a part of the ruins the Hôtel de Cluny, which, when completed about the end of the fifteenth century, was considered one of the most magnificent establishments in Paris. It forms to-day the best example of the period. Opposite it stood the old Hôtel d’Harcourt, with its ample gardens, which the people ignorantly called the Palace of Julian the Apostate.
North-west of the Hôtel Cluny, on a site that is now in the middle of the Boulevard St. Germain, directly opposite the opening of the Rue Boutebrie, stood the ancestor of the Observatory of Paris. In 1371 Maître Gervais, canon of Bayeux and of Paris, and physician to the King, Charles le Sage, founded a college for natives of the diocese of Bayeux, sometimes called the Collège de Maître Gervais, and sometimes Collège de Notre Dame de Bayeux. Here Charles endowed two scholarships for the study of mathematics, the holders to go by the name of 252 “King’s scholars,” the only conditions laid down being that they were to study such works on astronomy as were not forbidden by the University, the King himself providing the necessary instruments and charts.
South of the Rue Saint Victor was the college of Cardinal Lemoine, where the students celebrated every 13th of January the generosity of the founder and his brother. One of them personated the Cardinal and wore his robes at the Vesper service; a supper followed in the evening, to which all the old scholars were invited, and the fête was carried on the next day with speeches, recitations, distributions of sugar-plums, and so forth.
Outside the walls, a little east of the spot where the present Rue Clovis opens into the Rue du Cardinal Lemoine, David, Bishop of Murray in Scotland, founded a college in the fourteenth century for students of his own country. On the south-west, the site of a part of the present Ecole Polytechnique, was the wealthy Collège de Navarre, whose origins were described in the last chapter. In 1354 the University deposited its treasure and archives there, lately removed from the Abbey of Ste. Genevieve.
During the English wars this college was rifled, and its masters and scholars dispersed. Charles VII. and his successors rebuilt it.
As the Collège de Constantinople, probably instituted for the benefit of poor natives of Asia and 253 Greece come to Paris in search of a Christian education, had but one scholar in 1362, it was ceded to Jean de la Marche and his nephew, who repaired the buildings and founded the establishment which henceforth went by their name.
The Order of the Carmelites, which we last saw established in two modest houses on the Rue Montane Ste. Geneviève, built in the middle of the fourteenth century, through the liberality of the widow of Charles le Bel, a great church and cloister. The Queen gave for this purpose not only a large sum of money, but her “crown, the fleur-de-lis she wore when she was married, her girdle, her jewels — pearls, diamonds, and other precious stones.” With this we will close our notice of some of the colleges of this period.
We have seen in the last chapter how a Seigneur de Nesle had built himself a palace on the left river-bank adjoining the Abbey of Saint Germain, and close to the great tower of Philip Hamelin (soon called by his name), and how it subsequently became the property of Philippe le Bel.
King John made the Hôtel de Nesle his residence for a time, and it was there that Raoul, Count of Eu and of Guines, and Constable of France, was beheaded by his orders. In 1380 it passed into the hands of the Duke de Berri, uncle of Charles VI., who transformed it into a magnificent palace, and added a number of acres of land lying outside the 254 city walls, for the stables and other out-buildings. This enclosure was called the Séjeour de Nesle. It was probably at the same time that a stone bridge replaced the wooden one thrown across the moat belonging to the wall of Philip-Augustus, and that the great stone gateway was built close to the tower that went by the name of Porte de Nesle. The Séjour of Nesle was destroyed by the Cabochiens in 1411. In 1422, the year of her husband’s death, we find Isabella of Bavaria holding her court in the Hôtel de Nesle, and giving fêtes in honor of the King of England in his character of heir to the throne of France, and all the world knows Villon’s rhyme. There remains nothing more to chronicle of the southern bank save that the Fair of St. Germain des Prés was established in the latter part of the fifteenth century, by the brothers of the order, who erected a hundred and forty stalls or booths on a part of the grounds of the Hôtel de Nesle; and the building of the Pont Saint Michel by Charles V. between the years 1378 and 1387.
The point at which we leave Paris with the close of this chapter is the end of the Middle Ages. The idea which precedes the thing is stirring in her, some artists are thinking in the terms of antiquity; already they knew that in Italy the colonnades were rising and the domes were multiplying from the unique example at Florence. But Paris, whose mind was changing, yet kept her form. Had you passed 255 through Paris on the night when the “father of the people was dead” you would have had everywhere about you the narrow mystery of Gothic streets. The houses overhanging and timbered would have hidden the sky, and that spirit in which Europe had attempted to reach heaven would still be with you mournfully in its decay. You would have seen spires beyond the roof, and here and there the despairing beauty of the Flamboyant at its last effort, the jutting carved windows of the rich, or the special additions of porches at St. Jacques or at the Auxerrois.
But even if you had been in that midnight ramble, of the populace; had Italy been unknown to you, and for you the new classics undiscovered; had the new discontent and fantastic hopes of Europe been with you nothing but a sullen irritation against the priests and monks, even then you would have felt that the Paris around you belonged to a past; that it was out of place, in danger of possessing relics, and in the light of day your eyes would have welcomed change. It was this spirit in all the people that permitted the Renaissance to work its century of change all over Europe; the beautiful mystery which had fed the soul of the west for three hundred years had lost its meaning, and empty symbols disturbed the curiosity of the young century.
It is for this reason that all men who have well described the end of the Paris of St. Louis have made their descriptions fall in with the spirit of 256 night. Victor Hugo shows you Paris moonlit in the snow from the towers of Notre Dame; its little winding streets like streams of black water in breaking ice, its infinite variety of ornament catching the flakes that had fallen. Stevenson shows you Paris moonlit in the snow from the point of view of poor Villon wandering after the murder, and afraid of wolves and the power of the King.
The whole spirit is that of the night. But the armies are going into Italy, we are to have Bayard and Francis, a Medici will rule in Paris, and the long troubling dawn of quite a new day is coming upon the city. The Reformation, the period of the buccaneers, the stories of western treasure, the sixteenth century, which Voltaire has so admirably called “a robber clothed in crimson and in cloth of gold.”
Footnotes
* Dance, in the sense of a procession; macabre, from an Arabic word signifying a place where there are tombs, — a cemetery.