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. 257-295.
PARIS : ITS SITES, MONUMENTS AND HISTORY
257THE sixteenth century is, all over Europe, the conflict between two principles that cross and intermix, have a hundred ramifications and reactions, but remain, if one goes to the origins of the discussion, distinct and opposite. They are the international principle and the principle of local autonomy. Why had they come into conflict just at this epoch? Mainly because, after centuries of development, the European nations had now finally differentiated and recognized themselves. The Middle Ages were cosmopolitan — all their theory and their every institution. A thousand dialects had one common tongue, Latin. A hundred thousand villages had their common link of feudalism, a hierarchy leading (in theory at least) to a common head, the empire. They symbol and centre of this unity was Rome.
But three hundred years had brought about the nationalities. Which of the two forces is about to win the battle? Neither, luckily for Europe. They are to fight fiercely for a hundred years and to calumniate each other without mercy. They are to take religions, later social differences, as their banners; but in the end the centrifugal and the centripetal forces balanced each other, and (to borrow a metaphor from 258 astronomy) no nation “fell into the sun,” nor did any “fly off into space;” their intense forces of attraction and repulsion resulted in a rapid movement, but a movement of rotation, a closed orbit, and civilization (thanks to that result) remains to-day a “system” and not an anarchy of infinitely distant parts.
In the quarrel England and Italy suffered most. England, for more than a hundred years a definite nation, possessing an intense local patriotism, well-to-do, content, and lying to the outer side of Europe, flew out with violence. She yet remains the Neptune of Europe, and seeks some of her light from the outer parts of the world. The Reformation (which was the one great effect of the intense national feeling) takes her with power, as it does, in a different manner, the principalities of North German; she gathers herself into herself, and, like the outer planets, establishes a certain microsmic system of her own. Italy, divided in a hundred ways, the latest of all the nationalities to confirm her unity, hardly knowing any bond between her various divisions save the feeling that the rest of Europe were “the barbarians” — Italy, again, the seat of the papacy and the province of Rome the old Sun, becomes the type and rallying-point of the centripetal force. Thus the desire for national churches and national isolation expresses itself for two hundred years by an imitation of the English experiment, the desire for an international system — the imperial memories of Europe — fall back 259 upon something equally vigorous, equally new; I mean the Italian Renaissance.
France was, as she always is, the battle-field of either party. She grew to be a nation most intensely individual, and yet one most intensely determined to rely upon the cosmopolitan method. For three centuries she has kept this double character; the revolution which she personifies, with its basis of furious patriotism and its purely abstract conceptions, is an example.
France learnt the Renaissance through the Italian wars, she finally brought to Paris an Italian queen, and in that one character of Catherine de Médicis you may see summed up the Roman influence upon France during the great struggle of the religious wars. Paris on her material side (like France in the moral order) divided the new forces. Paris, northern and local as she was yet, gave in the St. Bartholomew the most signal example of a passionate — an almost delirious — determination to maintain unity. But it was a passion and a delirium closely connected with the opposite desire, I mean with sentiment of national integrity. It was not only the Protestant, it was also the Southerner and the noble who were massacred in that moment of madness.
Paris saw the Italian architecture of the Louvre, she also (almost alone of the great cities of Europe) made a desperate effort to continue the Gothic. Catherine de Médicis built her Tuileries — but from 260 their cupolas you would have seen a forest of spires. The Renaissance worked hardly in Paris, and pierced through a highly resisting medium.
What we are about to follow then, in this chapter, is a struggle which descends to the very houses and streets themselves, a struggle between Paris Catholic and Paris skeptical, a warfare between that part of her which was (and remains) intensely conservative, with that part which looks to the south and accepts new things. The whole summed up in a persistent desire to remain the head and the rallying centre of the French nation.
Such is the character of this confused and critical time. A time whose religious aspect is only the most important out of very many, and whose troubling effect upon the city we shall trace in the confused mixture of the pointed arch and of the colonnade, of the flamboyant and the Italian façade. The streets alternate between the narrow winding lane of the Boucherie and the great Italian plaza of the Carrousel. The uncertain destines of Paris fluctuate at the same time between the new and the old, and the whole period is one of an unsettled quarrel, reflected in the architecture and in the plan of the town. Let us first consider its effect upon the Hôtel de Ville.
Mention has been made in the last chapter of the great banquet held there on the 26th of November, 1514, in honor of the new Queen Mary of England. Two of the guests were Louise of Savoy and her 261 son, the young Duke of Valois, son-in-law of the King. It was the last event of the reign in connection with the Hôtel. In January Louis XII. died, and on the 15th of February Francis I. made his state entry into Paris. A few days later the city presented its customary “gift” to the new King, who in this instance had indicated very plainly just what form it was to take “le roi l’avait pieça, advisé, et ordonnée lui-même,” and had, moreover, asked for a very handsome addition in the way of plate for his mother. In return for these tokens of esteem from his “bons bourgeois” the King issued letters confirming the Prêvôt des Marchands and “Sheriffs” of Paris in their jurisdiction over the commerce of the Seine, and in their right to render decisions; he also gave them permission to establish a prison in the Hôtel de Ville, as they complained of the inconvenience of having to send persons arrested within their jurisdiction to the prisons of the Conciergerie, “qui sont grands frais.”
During the first fourteen years of this reign the Hôtel de Ville is alluded to constantly in connection with the King’s incessant demands for money, which, as in contemporary England, was necessary to the government of a rapidly-developing society. Again and again are the officers of the municipal body summoned to discuss there the granting of a fresh subsidy; now for the entertainment of some royal guest, now for the King’s personal expenditures, now for the 262 Queen-Mother, and especially for the army. These deliberations always ended in the same way. The King got what he wanted. It was probably in the reign of Louis XI. that the Parloir au Bourgeois, after being transferred from its old quarters on the left bank and established for a time near the Châtelet, had finally joined the other municipal body of Paris in the Hôtel de Ville, a circumstance that no doubt made the alterations of 1470 a matter of urgent necessity. By 1529 the ancient Maison aux Piliers had, however, not only fallen into ruin, but was again far too small for its various functions. On the 13th of December, accordingly, the magistrates ask the King to issue “letters of expropriation,” affecting a number of the adjoining houses. In the following year eleven of these are pulled down, and in 1533 letters-patent authorize the seizure of the “saillye de l’Eglise du St. Esprit,” which interfered with the plans for the new façade. This façade was to terminate on the south or right in a square pavilion one story higher than the main building, and spanning the Rue du Martroy by an arch so as to leave a free passage through to St. Jean. A similar pavilion and archway on the left or north side was to give access to the chapel of St. Esprit. This plan was the basis of that picturesque seventeenth-century front which is so familiar to the student.
As the King and Queen were in the south on that journey which resulted in a meeting with the Pope 263 at Marseilles and the marriage of the future King Henry II. and Catherine de Médicis — and since Louise of Savoy was dead — the Provost and Sheriffs laid the corner-stone themselves on July 15, 1533, to the sound of fife and drums, the blowing of trumpets, the booming of cannon, and the ringing of church-bells. On the Grève, tables were spread for all who chose to come, while the crowd kept up a continual shout of “Vive le roy et Messieurs de la Ville.” When the main entrance was finished a golden inscription was placed over it in which, with the true sixteenth-century spirit, the spirit that made the Tudors, the King figures as the principal personage, while the city only appears in the light of carrying out the royal commands. The architect’s name is also given, Dominico Cortona, an Italian, who was probably brought to Paris by the King on his return from Italy.
For the first two years the work advanced very rapidly, but in 1535 it had to be suspended on account of the fresh breaking out of war, when the city was obliged to spend enormous sums on the defenses. As soon, however, as peace was declared Francis urged its completion. Cortona’s beautiful court-yard was accordingly so far advanced in 1540 that the master-carpenter and his workmen were able to roof it in. After this, however, the matter dragged. Francis died in 1547, and although Henry II. tried to push the building forward, in order to make himself 264 popular with the Parisians, Dominico Cortona’s death, two years later, acted as a serious check; his plans were unfortunately never carried out. A “Grand Salle” was designed, to occupy a part of the ancient building which was still standing on the Place de la Grève, and finished in time for “Messieurs de la Ville” to entertain the King there at supper on Shrove Tuesday, 1558, to celebrate the taking of Calais by M. de Guise. Everything went wrong on this occasion. It rained in torrents, so that the King had to go in a coach. The artillery stationed on the Place de Grève frightened the horses, and the King was nearly thrown in alighting. And the crowd was so great that the supper was a scene of fearful confusion, and many persons grumbled because they could get nothing to drink. After supper there was to be a dramatic entertainment gotten up by the poet Jodelle, who has himself left a most amusing account of it.
In allusion to the arms of the city he selected Jason’s ship as his subject, and the performances, for which no trouble or expense had been spared, took place after supper in the Grand Salle, but can hardly be called a success. Of the twelve actors, the author tells us in the account of what he calls “My Disaster,” half did not know their parts, and the remainder were so hoarse they could hardly speak. At last Orpheus appeared, “playing and singing a little song in praise of the King,” which music was to draw two rocks (rochers) after him with music issuing from 265 them; but unfortunately the mechanic employed was not up in classic literature, and thought two steeples (clochers) had been ordered. Jodelle, who took the part of Jason, was on the stage when these came gliding in, and was so overpowered at the sight that he completely lost his head and forgot his part.
The Queen, Catherine, was present at this unfortunate performance. We find her in the Grand Salle later, on a very different errand: coming, that is, to ask for money to put ten thousand men in the field, needed by her son Charles to fight the Huguenots. The municipal body asked the Queen to withdraw to a small room near by, which had been prepared for her. Here she waited while the question was discussed for over an hour. It ended, however, like many similar request that followed, in her getting what she came for.
The demands upon the city treasury grew more and more exorbitant, and the city got deeper and deeper into debt. The municipal body at last refused to give any more money, it was a question of bankruptcy, whereupon the King — it was Henry III. — took what he wanted, and some years later the bankruptcy actually came.
During the stormy period of Henry III. and the League there was little leisure to devote to building, and the Hôtel de Ville was left in the half-finished state it had reached under Henry II. The main front facing the Place de Grève was but two stories 266 high, and the Pavilion designed to surmount the arched approach to the Hospital of St. Esprit consisted only of a pointed gable, contrasting oddly with the lofty erection crowned with fleur-de-lis and crescents above the entrance to St. Jean, which it was supposed to balance.
Under Charles IX. an improvement was effected in the condition of the Place de Grève itself, which had come to be little better than a large sewer. It was now paved and an attempt was made to clean it; also an order was issued forbidding all persons to deposit anything there, or otherwise encumber the open space before the Hôtel de Ville, so that the public executions, which still continued to be held there, might not be interfered with. The space kept clear for this purpose also saw the burning in effigy of Admiral de Coligny after the Huguenot massacre.
The filthy condition of the Place de Grève was not exceptional, as we shall see if we accompany M. Alfred Bonnardot on a walk through the neighborhood of the Châtelet in the year 1570.
It is ten o’clock at night. The sentinel has taken up his position on the watch-tower, the curfew has sounded, and the worthy merchants and bourgeois are snoring peacefully beneath their gabled roofs. Everything is perfectly still, but it is not altogether dark, for at this time forty pounds are appropriated annually “pour chandelles posees au tour du Chastelet.”
267On our left a strong smell of meat — not always as fresh as one might wish — issues from the wooden gratings of the Grande Boucherie. We may as well accustom ourselves to the smell, however, as we shall have to stand many worse ones. Now we are beneath the archway, and the regular tramp of feet falls on our ears. It is a division of the Guet Civil, the city watch composed of bourgeois and trades-people, who, notwithstanding their name, Assis or Dormant, are marching about armed with halberds and arquebuses, and very much on the alert to prevent prisoners from escaping. In the court-yard of the Châtelet two sergeants of the Royal Watch act as sentinels for the same purpose. In the dungeons of that strong group of pointed towers are confined rich and poor, innocent and guilty, some still racked with pain from the torture they have undergone, others half dead from want of air, food, warmth, all wretched and hopeless. Issuing from this lugubrious spot we find ourselves in the Rue St. Leufroi. Overhead a niche contains a stone statue of the Virgin. On our left we come presently to the building belonging to the city called the Parlouer aux Bourgeois. Either this house or the one next to it had for a sign in 1500 the legend la Tête Noire. Beyond it we come to a high stone gable flanked on either side by a small turret and a little Gothic door-way, surmounting a pointed window; this is the façade of St. Leufroi. We will not linger; close by is the open mouth of a sewer, 268 a ditch in fact, where every sort of refuse is deposited. Another fruitful source of infection exists behind the street that runs along the end of the church. Here are a number of tortuous alley-ways where animals are killed in the open air; their blood trickles slowly through a gutter into the Seine, that which fails to flow off being allowed to stagnate and exhale the most fearful odors, for the benefit not only of the prisoners close by, but of the innocent shop-keepers who have to live in the neighborhood. This is “la Boucherie.”
From the river comes the sound of the waters as it rushes through the paddle-wheels of a dozen or more mills; before us is a wooden bridge, now forbidden to the public, the Pont aux Meuniers. On the Place Vallée de Misère is the poultry-market, and here the spits whiz around unceasingly in the cook-shops established against the embankment of the quay. The Rue Pierre à Poisson opens out from the Place de la Vallée de Misère and skirts the Châtelet on the west. Here a series of stone slabs, fastened against the prison wall, and forming one long table, will be loaded at daybreak with all manner of fish, the sale of which is one of the privileges of the powerful corporation of Butchers.
Suddenly a light shines out from the court-yard of the Châtelet. We walk around to l’Apport-Paris, in time to see a mournful little procession issue from the archway and proceed silently up the Rue St. Denis. At its head walks a man carrying a smoking 269 torch, and behind him come six others, two and two, bearing litters on which are extended three bodies found in the Seine, which, after having been exposed for several days in the lower gaol, are still unclaimed. They are taking them to the sisters of Ste. Catherine, who, after bathing and shrouding them, will have them decently buried in the Cemetery of the Innocents, with which depressing sight our excursion ends. The only change made in the outward appearance of the Châtelet during this period was the addition of some sculptures executed in the style of the Renaissance under Louis XII. There is one monument in this quarter which will particularly attract our attention in modern Paris. It is the “Tour St. Jacques.” That tower, standing in the modern square, is all that remains of the Church of St. Jacques-de-la-Boucherie. The first building dated from the twelfth century, when it belonged to the Church of St. Martin. At first it was known merely as St. Jacques, the surname, de-la-Boucherie, being added either on account of the proximity of the meat-market, or because almost all the surrounding houses were occupied by butchers. The church, which lasted (though in decay) to our own time, was a late fifteenth-century bit of flamboyant, and the tower was only completed in the reign of Francis I.
To turn to the Louvre. It was after his return from Madrid that Francis I. began to lay those plans for the transformation of Paris which his successors 270 more than he were destined to carry out. His defeat and captivity had for a time at least dampened his desire for warfare, and he turned eagerly to the arts, for which he had always had a strong taste, as a means of distraction and amusement.
At Chenonceau, at Chambord, and later at Fontainebleau and in the Bois de Boulogne, he busied himself in that work of chateau building which had replaced the tower and fortress activity of an earlier period.
After the defection of the Constable de Bourbon, Francis had taken possession of his Palace, which stood very close to the Louvre on the east, branding it with the marks of treason. A century later the doorway and threshold still bore traces of the yellow paint which indicated the dwelling of a traitor. It may have been the King’s intention to incorporate this Hôtel into the Louvre, for the act of confiscation is dated in the same year as the document which speaks of the rebuilding on a larger scale of the Louvre; if such was his idea it was not carried out, and the principal work actually accomplished there under Francis I. seems to have been the destruction of the Great Tower, which took five months to pull down. A tradition long current among the people said that the great hole left where its foundation had stood would never be filled up; and, in truth, for nearly two hundred years it was not. The earth dumped there had a way of sinking, and little streams of water constantly undermined the work accomplished. 271 (The difficulty was finally overcome in the beginning of the present century.) When the courtyard had been thus disencumbered of the great mass of masonry which had darkened the surrounding apartments and overweighted the whole building for so long, the King established himself there at once; without waiting to do more than repair some of the outbuildings on the side of St. Nicholas and St. Thomas, kitchens, stables, and so forth. Though the comprehensive plans referred to in the document mentioned above were not completed in his lifetime, a beginning was made in August 1546, when Pierre Lescot was engaged to convert the Grand Salle in the west wing from the Gothic to the prevailing style of architecture, an imitation of the antique. Eight months later Francis died, without seeing even this part completed. His successor at once confirmed Lescot’s appointment, and throughout the whole of his troubled reign continued to push the work on the Louvre. Pierre Lescot had not only the genius to substitute for a bald copy of the antique, a style of architecture that was really new, but he had the sense and judgment to turn to account a part of the original building instead of blindly demolishing all that stood in his way. It is to him that we undoubtedly owe the preservation of that portion of the fortress of Philip-Augustus alluded to in a previous chapter.*
272By 1550 this hall was far enough advanced for the decorations to be begun. Jean Gonjon was accordingly instructed to carve the four caryatides from which it is still called. The western and northern wings were already spoken of as the “old Louvre.” In Henry II.’s time Lescot had transferred the chapel from thence to the south wing. Its site, distinguished from the rest of the great hall into which it had been merged by being on a slightly higher level, was called “the tribunal,” as it was there that Henry II. heard pleadings. The tribunal, too, was moved to the south wing in time, and placed at the end of the Salle des Cariatides, with a door of its own opening on to the court. This door is still surmounted with a bull’s-eye and some sculptures of Jean Gonjon. The first work undertaken by him seems to have been the exterior decorations of the west wing, those seen from the main court-yard especially, having been carefully completed. There is no evidence that Paul Ponce took any part in this work, as is sometimes said. Those parts that Gonjon was unable to finish himself, no one else seems to have had the courage to undertake. For example, the carvings of the arch over the grand staircase remain still as he left them, merely blocked out; and it was over two hundred years before the decoration of the Salle des Cariatides, which he began, were taken up again. In the meantime this hall, intended for State receptions and royal functions, was devoted to the very 273 ordinary uses of a guard-room, and it was here that on one March morning in 1583 a hundred and twenty royal pages who had made fun of the King’s (Henry III.) procession des flagellants were soundly whipped for their impertinence. Henry seems to have had to suffer more than once from the irreverent jests of his subjects. In 1576 a satirical placard was posted on the very walls of the Louvre itself, in which he was termed the “Concierge of the Louvre and churchwarden of St. Germain l’Auxerrois.”
It seems probable that the “Salle haute” on the second floor of the west wing (the present Salle la Caze) was completed in the reign of Henry II., for it was while walking up and down there some months before his death that he saw from the windows the fire at the Abbey of Montmartre, and sent a body of Swiss guards to help extinguish it. At the time of the marriage of his daughter Claude to the Duke of Lorraine, however, the work on the Louvre was pushed forward sufficiently to celebrate it there.
All that remains to-day of the “Pavillon du Roi” with which Henry II. replaced the tower of the south-west corner, is the Salle du Tibre on the ground-floor and the Salle des Sept Chéminées on the second; the former was originally a sort of antechamber opening into the “Tribunal,” or raised end of the Salle des Cariatides. Henry also used it for a dining-room, and sometimes, as in the case of the Venetian ambassador, Giovanni Capello, who has left an account 274 of the interview, gave audiences as he sat at table. On the floor above were the State chamber and the King’s bed-chamber, this latter so dark that Sauval declares one had to grope his way there at midday.
The wooden panelings of the State chamber of Henry II. are still to be seen in the east wing of the present Louvre. During the last year of his life the King was conducting the work on the apartments of the Queen in the south wing, those famous apartments where he used invariably to present himself for a little while, after dinner, and where were to be seen that “troop of human goddesses each one more beautiful than the last,” whom Catherine de Médicis gathered about her. The furniture of this apartment was of the most meagre, consisting only of a couple of elevated seats surmounted by a dais for the King and Queen and a chest running along the wainscot, on which, however, only the royal princesses, Mme. Claude de Lorraine and the Queen of Navarre, were permitted to seat themselves. Gentlemen and ladies in waiting had either to stand or to sit on mats spread on the floor.
On the marriage of Charles IX. with Elizabeth of Austria, Catherine, according to custom, resigned her apartments to the new Queen, and they were then fitted out with great magnificence.
The principal doorway of the Louvre was on the east front, facing the Hôtel de Bourbon. On either 275 side of it was a tennis court, one constructed by Francis I., the other by Henry II. Here, on August 21, 1572, Charles IX. was playing with the Duke of Guise when he received the news of the attempted assassination of Admiral de Coligny, shot in the hand while on his way from the Louvre to his lodging in the Rue des Fossés St. Germain l’Auxerrois. This event was the prelude to the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, three days later, during which the wretched King remained closeted in his chamber, where were brought to him a list of the slain and those taken prisoners. The accounts which describe him as shooting down with his own hands, from a window, some of those who were trying to escape, are without historical proof. The bride, Marguerite, married only a week before to Henry of Navarre, has left a most vivid account of the events of the night, the 23d-24th of August, from the moment when her terrible mother sent her to bed, knowing well enough the danger she would run of being killed with her husband’s followers, to her flight to her sister’s room in the early morning, when she fell almost fainting in her companion’s arms at the sight of a Protestant gentleman murdered within three feet of her. In these Memoirs there is also given an account of the escape, through her efforts, of her brother, the Duc d’Alençon, whom the Queen Mother was keeping prisoner in the Louvre. Marguerite, with the help of three of her women and the youth who had provided the rope, let the Duke 276 down from the window of her room on the second floor overlooking the moat.
Charles IX. and his mother, who seem never to have felt quite safe from the Huguenots, strengthened the Louvre by building a new drawbridge on the north-west façade and establishing two new guard-rooms close by. On the death of the King, and before his successor could reach Paris, the Queen Mother not only had all the entrances (except the main one on the east) walled up, but she closed both ends of the Rue d’Autriche, already called Rue du Louvre. Charles, for his own amusement, built a forge, where, according to one writer, he spent hours at a time; and, another means of distraction, a building where the lions and other wild beasts who took part in his dog-fights were confined.
Henry III. kept up this menagerie and continued the fights until one night he dreamed that the wild beasts, helped by his own dogs, fell upon him and tried to devour him. The next day he had them all shot. The events which this dream might have foreshadowed occurred some five years later, when the League inaugurated another massacre. On the Journée des Barricades the messenger who came to warn the King that his only safety lay in flight mounted to the royal chamber by that same little flight of stairs that we have spoken of as still leading from the Salle des Cariatides to the upper floor.† Henry succeeded 277 in reaching the stables in the Tuileries by way of the quay and the Porte Neuve, and once on horseback was able to gain the open country.
The Louvre remained pretty much as Charles IX. left it until the reign of Henry IV. Pierre Lescot died in 1578, and although Baptiste Du Cerceau was appointed to succeed him and to carry on the work as he had planned it, this was not done; the northern, eastern, and a part of the southern façades were the same Gothic erections that Charles V. had built, while the western and west end of the southern wings were those beautiful creations on which the great reputation of Pierre Lescot mainly rests to this day: two stories whose spaces are broken up by pilasters, Corinthian and composite columns, surmounted by an attic lavishly decorated by Jean Gonjon and his pupils.
Another piece of work planned by Catherine de Médicis, which was allowed to languish during the reigns of her three sons, was the Grande Galerie designed to connect the Louvre, the town residence, with the new palace, the “lieu de plaisance,” she had begun on the west.
We have already seen how the wall of Charles V. had divided up the grounds of the Quinze-Vingts. This suburb now consisted of pottery or tile-kilns, market-gardens and brick-kilns, occasionally interspersed with country houses. In the beginning of the sixteenth century the Le Gendre family, Seigneurs de 278 Neufville, inherited the entire district lying between the moat of the city wall and the establishment of the Quinze-Vingts. They accordingly built themselves a villa on what was rightly considered the most healthful and beautiful spot in the suburbs of the city. This villa was at first rented and then bought by Francis I. for Louise of Savoy, who had found the smells of the city unendurable at the Palais des Tournelles, where she had been living; it was thus that the grounds of the Tuileries became the property of the Crown.
In 1564 Catherine de Médicis, tired of occupying a simple suite of apartments in the Louvre, where no doubt she was uncomfortably crowded, for there were not less than four queens lodging there at the time, determined to have a palace of her own. Several properties adjoining the de Neufville Villa were bought, the old constructions cleared away, and in May the foundations of the Tuileries were laid by De L’Orme, who had been engaged to conduct the work.
In order to transport the huge masses of stone required by De L’Orme’s plans, from the quarries of Vaugirard and Notre Dame des Champs, situated on the other side of the river, to the site of the new palace, permission was obtained from the brothers of the Abbey of St. Germain to make a road through their domain (it still exists as the Rues Notre Dame des Champs and du Bac), connecting with a ferry which 279 gave part of it its name. The first buildings erected by De L’Orme were the stables on the north-west. These, together with the pavilion where the head groom was lodged, were finished in a few years, and the central part of the façade overlooking the garden begun. De L’Orme’s design contemplated something elegant and charming, rather than imposing or majestic. He himself states that he tried to lend a feminine character to the palace which the queen was building for her own occupation, and for that reason selected the Ionic rather than the Doric order as being more suitable to a woman. Catherine herself suggested many of the internal arrangements, but it does not seem that she did more, notwithstanding De L’Orme’s flattering allusion to her part in the work. Owing to lack of money, and to the Queen’s increasing demands for ornament and elaboration of every detail, the work progressed slowly, and when Philibert De L’Orme died in 1570 only the central pavilion on the garden side, with its two wings, were completed. He was succeeded by Jean Bullant, to whom is attributed the pavilion at the end of the right wing of De L’Orme’s façade, which formed a continuation of the lower wing erected later.
In May, 1571, Charles IX. issued an order for wood to be taken from the forest of Neufville en Haye for the roofing of the “Pallais et Maison des Thuileries,” and there are descriptions extant of two magnificent fétes given there, one to celebrate the 280 election of the future King Henry III. as King of Poland, in 1573, and the other on the marriage of Marguerite de Vaudemont, Charles’ sister-in-law, to the Vicomte de Joyeuse. The admiration and wonder of the people of Paris was not, however, the palace buildings, but the garden.‡ This wonderful garden, fifteen years in making, with its six great alleys, crossed by eight lesser ones, and square open spaces, “parquets,” at each intersection, with its labyrinths, its fountain, and its sun dial, its echo and its marvellous grotto — the creation of Bernard Palissy and his two relatives, Nicolas and Mathurin — was the model which, amplified and completed later at Versailles, was to be adopted for the gardens of all Europe, and to remain in vogue until the naturalist movement of the eighteenth century should cause a reaction.
Whether it was on account of her superstitious fears that the Queen-Mother abandoned the Tuileries, a soothsayer having predicted her death “near St. Germain,” or whether it was owing to the vicinity of the pig-market, with its overpowering smells, from 1572 work on the Tuileries ceased, and Catherine devoted herself to a new and still more ambitious undertaking. 281 The vast palace, second in size only to the Louvre, which she now built occupied the site of a hôtel called successively de Nesle and de Bohême, situated a little to the south-east of the Church of St. Eustache. Catherine added the domain of the Filles Pénitentes, whom she moved to the Rue St. Denis, and several of the adjoining houses. In one of the courts of the Palais de la Reine, as it was now called, stood a lofty column, an imitation of that in Trajan’s Forum, from the top of which tradition has represented Catherine studying the heavens, in pursuance of her taste for astrology.
The Church of St. Eustache, dating from the thirteenth century, was entirely rebuilt at this period; that is, it was begun in 1532, but not completed for more than a hundred years. Viollet le Duc describes this building as “a sort of Gothic skeleton clad in Roman rags sewed together like the pieces in a harlequin’s dress.” But it has a glorious great roof.
The great Hôtel d’Armagnac had meanwhile been cut up into a number of smaller dwellings, bearing such names as “Des Trois Pucelles,” “Du Gros Tournois et de l’Image Notre Dame,” “de la Fleur de Lis,” etc.; between the last two was a little street, or rather cul-de-sac, called la Cour Orry, which has been preserved under one form or another through all the succeeding changes that have swept over this spot. The Petits Champs, though now partially included within the city walls, still merited the name. 282 It was, indeed, a lonely neighborhood that lay to the north-east of the end of the Rue St. Honoré, frequented principally by thieves and vagabonds. Here at the bottom of the Rue des Petits Champs, near a windmill that stood at its intersection with the Rue Coquillière, M. de Caumont la Force and his son were massacred on the day after St. Bartholomew. The younger son escaped by pretending that he was dead, a naquet — tennis-marker — saved the boy by carrying himself along the entire length of the deserted ramparts to the Arsenal, where he delivered him safely to his aunt, Mme. De Brisembourg.
The fountain (the work of Pierre Lescot and Jean Gonjon) that stood at the corner of the Rue aux Fers and the Rue St. Denis, at the time of which we write, has been preserved to the present day, and may now be seen in the centre of the Marchè aux Innocents.
Close by to the north-east stood the Temple, which we find (its tower, that is) coming a little more into notice in the sixteenth century as a store-house for arms and powder manufactured at the Arsenal. On the eve of the “Jour des Barricades,” Henry III. learning that the League intended seizing the Temple on the following morning and distributing the stores among the people, sent troops to defend it. A few days later, however, the populace succeeded in forcing an entrance, aided by the very “archers de la Ville” brought there by the Prévôt des Marchands for its defense.
283In the Rue Culture Ste. Catherine there still stands one of the most beautiful monuments of the sixteenth century, the hôtel built by Pierre Lescot and decorated by Jean Gonjon for Jacques des Ligneris. It took the name of the Dame de Carnavalet, when she bought it in 1578. Another hôtel of this period was that called d’Angoulême, in the Rue Pavée, built by Diana of France, a natural daughter of Henry II. In the Rue Ste. Avoye stood the hôtel built by the Constable Anne of Montmorency, who died there in 1567 from wounds received in the battle of St. Denis. The hôtel of Louis de l’Hospital, Seigneur de Vitry, stood on the Rue Minimes, on a part of the gardens of the Hôtel Royal des Tournelles. A number of other Marshals of France also had their hôtels in the Quartier du Marais.
The Hôtel de Clisson, which had passed into the hands of the Duc de Guise in 1553, had been enlarged by the purchase of several neighboring hôtels; these were connected with it by various new constructions, the vaulted doorway of the great entrance on the Rue de Chaume being left intact, with its turrets on either side. The chapel was repaired and decorated with paintings by Niccolô Abbate. The Lorraine Princes occupied this dwelling uninterruptedly from the year 1556, when Francis de Lorraine deeded it to his brother Louis, Cardinal de Guise, until the very end of the seventeenth century.
The neighboring Hôtel des Tournelles was seldom 284 inhabited by the immediate successors of Louis XII., both Francis I. and Henry II. preferring those magnificent country seats and vast chateaux, which they built for themselves at Fontainebleau, at Compiegne, at Chambord, and at a dozen other places, to the gloomy, confined quarters of the hôtel, full of the memories of Louis XI., with its bad air and detestable smells. When affairs of state demanded their presence in Paris, they greatly preferred to stay at the Louvre, which, moreover, always maintained more the character of a seat of the Crown. One attraction of the Hôtel des Tournelles was, however, its lists, where tournaments were held on the occasion of a royal entry or other state function. It was in the lists on the Rue St. Antoine that Henry II. was fatally wounded by the Sire de Montgomery, on the occasion (in 1559) of his daughter Elizabeth’s marriage with Philip II. of Spain; the King was taken to the Hôtel des Tournelles, where he died after ten days of intense suffering. This affair ended the history of the palace. Charles IX. kept his birds, his dogs, and his menagerie there for some years. The Queen-Mother wanted to have it torn down and a horse-market established in its place, but this was not done, and the buildings, entirely neglected, fell into greater ruin year by year. The other royal residence in this quarter, the Hôtel Royal de St. Paul, was composed, it will be remembered, of an agglomeration of individual hôtels, connected and enclosed, 285 and called by the one name. In the reign of Francis I. the disintegration of this collection took place. By a series of grants and sales a number of persons became the proprietors of these different hôtels; some were rebuilt and others only added to or repaired. A good many of the original constructions still exist in the old houses in the neighborhood of the Quai des Célestins.
On this Quai des Célestins stood the arsenal belonging to the Corps de Ville, a jealously guarded possession, since it was adapted to the casting of guns, something that could not be done with safety in the royal arsenal of the Louvre. Great uneasiness was felt, therefore, when Francis I. sent two of his officers to “borrow” this arsenal for the purpose of founding some cannons. The Prévôt des Marchands did his best to get out of it, but without success. The loan was made, and although the city continued for years to submit demands for the return of its property, it was never given back, but became the arsenal of the Crown under Henry II. This vast establishment, surrounded by walls and moats by Charles IX., reached from the river to the Bastille, and with its two thousand workmen, trained in a military discipline of the severest kind, was like a great fortress. Experience had, indeed, taught the necessity for discipline, since the explosion of the powder stored in the old Tour de Billy in 1538, which caused not only the utter destruction of the 286 tower, but great damage in the neighborhood; and that other explosion in 1563, in one of the powder-mills of the arsenal itself, when a great many lives were lost and almost all the buildings within the enclosure thrown down. The Huguenots were accused of having been the authors of this disaster, and a massacre was threatened. It was after this that Charles IX. rebuilt it.
During this period the Bastille had become more and more distinctly a prison. After the Jour des Barricades, the Duc de Guise being master of it, Bussy-Leclerc was placed in charge, and under him ten times as many prisoners are said to have been confined there as had been the case under the Kings from the time of its foundation. On Monday, January 15, 1589, Bussy-Leclerc, with twenty-five or thirty of his guard, presented himself, pistol in hand, in the Grand Salle of the Palais de la Cité, where the Parliament was sitting, and compelled the members — sixty were present — to march through the streets in their black and red robes to the Bastille, where he kept them until they had paid a ransom.
Under Francis I. the Palais de la Cité is spoken of but little. The King still looks upon it as his official residence, as it were, and goes there when occasion demands some special act of religious devotion. In 1521, for instance, he receives the sacrament in the Church of St. Bartholomew, in his character of “chief parishioner,” and two years later, 287 just before starting for Italy, he comes to the Sainte Chapelle to visit the Holy Relics.
After the King’s release from his captivity in Madrid, the first Te Deum was chanted in the Sainte Chapelle, and it was in the Grand Salle that Francis, surrounded by a brilliant company composed of the highest nobility, the princes of the blood, the peers, Cardinals and Bishops, the Papal Legate, the foreign ambassadors, and, finally, the Parliament and counsellors, received the envoy of the Emperor bringing his reply to Francis’ demand that a place should be assigned for their meeting. On the surface it appeared as though this imposing gathering had been called together to no purpose, for when the King learned that the herald had nothing to communicate about the proposed “mortal combat,” he would not hear what he had to say at all. This, however, was no doubt precisely what he was aiming at, it having been his claim from the beginning that the quarrel was merely a personal one between himself and the Emperor, and a matter in which France had no concern whatever.
Among the numerous wares sold in the Palais precincts at this time, books held the chief place. The destruction of the Pont Notre Dame, in 1499, had obliged the bookseller, Antoine Vérard, to establish himself there, and he had also another shop at the other end of the island; both addresses are found in his books published after that date. Two others, 288 Gallio & Dupré, whose emblem was “Vogue la Gallée,” and Abel L’Angelier, who published Montaigne’s works in 1588, were among the number of those who had their shops in the Palais.
On the marriage of the eldest son of Henry II. with Mary of Scotland, a magnificent supper was given in the Grand Salle, and others in the following year, when the two weddings of the King’s daughter and sisters were celebrated; it was then that Henry was killed in a tournament in the Rue St. Antoine. This event, which we mentioned above, is also associated with the Palais, for, fifteen years later, when Montgomery, who had meanwhile identified himself with the Huguenot party, was taken prisoner he was tied hand and foot and imprisoned in the tower of the Conciergerie. Although his imprisonment lasted but ten days, he had gained such notoriety by his unfortunate tourney with the King that the people continued to call the tower in the interior of the Palais by his name until it was demolished under Louis XVI.
While under Francis I. the only additions to the Palais, of which we find any mention, were five high gibbets, erected at the time of the King’s captivity. Henry II. enriched the Sainte Chapelle with a beautiful rood-screen and two altars; the carved likenesses of himself and Catherine de Médicis, and of Francis I. and Eleanora of Austria, belonging to them, are now preserved in the Louvre. Henry also built the wing in purest Renaissance style, which stands at 289 right angles with the “Galerie Mercière,” where the lower court now holds its sittings. The building which he erected on the river bank as a depôt for the archives of the Chambre des Comptes is in a severer style; it was connected with the main building by means of a bridge spanning the Rue de Nazareth. The archivolts, resting on light brackets, were ornamented with alternate heads of satyrs and women, interspersed with the carved monograms of Henry and Diana. Some portions of this construction are still standing, though it was greatly injured during the Commune.
The only work undertaken by Henry III. at the Palais was the decoration of the clock in the Tour de l’Horloge. Under his directions it was ornamented with carvings by Germain Pilon, and surmounted by a flattering inscription by Passerat; too flattering, in the opinion of the Parisians, for this unpopular King, for they proceeded to parody it mercilessly.
It was while pacing up and down in the green alleys of the “Jardin du Bailliage” that the President de Harlay was confronted by the Duc de Guise a few days after the King’s flight, when the fearless manner of the Premier daunted the Leaguers and secured him a reprieve of some months at least.
For some reason the Pont Neuf has become in the popular mind a creation of Henry IV. The impression is erroneous. Ever since the latter part of the fourteenth century the people of Paris had been trying 290 to get a bridge to connect the Louvre, the Ile de la Cité, and the Faubourg St. Germain. In 1556 the inhabitants of this last quarter submitted a formal petition to the King on the subject, but the Prévôt des Marchands, to whom he turned the matter over, refused to do anything on account of want of money. Finally, however, in 1578 the work was begun. In 1585, under Henry III., a commission was appointed “pour l’establissement du Pont Neuf en pierre.” It had been decided to connect the two small islands lying below it with the Ile de la Cité, and the bridge was to cross the western extremity of the now-prolonged island, starting from the end of the Rud de la Monnaie, then much narrower than it is to-day, on the right bank, and opening at the other end opposite a narrow alley, the present Rue de Nevers, that ran between the Augustin Convent and the Hôtel de Nevers. It was not till thirty years later that this inconvenient arrangement was remedied by the opening of the Rue Dauphine.
Plans by Guillaume Marchand and Du Cerceau had been adopted, and the work, especially on the left arm of the Seine, was pushed as rapidly as the empty treasury and constant wars would permit. This southern half, under the name of Pont des Augustins, was even in use before anything but some piles sticking out of the water could be seen of the other part. The whole was not completed until the reign of Henry IV.
291It was across the Pont Notre Dame, finished some twenty-five years earlier, that Eleanora of Austria made her state entry into Paris, the procession passing down the entire length of the Rue St. Denis, around the Châtelet on the left, and so to the Pont Notre Dame, which was used for subsequent royal entries.
On the left of the street, which formed a continuation of the bridge — Rue de la Lanterne and Rue de la Juiverie, now Rue de la Cité — stood the newly-restored Church of the Madeleine, which had replaced the synagogue of Philip-Augustus’ day. This church had a special importance as the seat of the oldest and most highly thought of brotherhood of Paris, the “Grande Confrérie de Notre Dame aux Seigneurs, prêtres et bourgeois de Paris,” whose Abbot was the Archbishop, and Dean, the President of Parliament. On the Monday of the Octave of the Assumption the society walked in procession, all the clergy wearing their robes. Blanche of Castille, the mother of Saint Louis, had been admitted not withstanding her sex; thus a precedent was established, and after that the King and Queen of France were always made members. On every Friday of Lent the Good Friday service was recited, in memory of the Jewish origin of this very ancient church. Proceeding down the Rue de la Juiverie, we find that a great change has taken place since we last saw this neighborhood, nothing less than the transformation 292 of the quiet, secluded “Grande Orberie” into a busy, crowded vegetable and fish-market, the Marché Neuf. By pulling down, about 1558, two houses, one called de St. Jean Baptiste, and the other de la Fleur de Lis, communication was once more opened between the Rue du Marché Palú and the Petit-Pont, and a year or two later the quay was constructed; it was in connection with this work that the new doorway and tower of St. Germain le Vieux was put up. Jean Gonjon executed some sculptures for the arched entrance to the fish-market — two Tritons in bas-relief blowing on horns. The new market was formally opened in June, 1568.
No important changes were made at this time in the Cathedral Church. Queens came there to be crowned, while the Kings of France (who had been crowned at Rheims) attended the solemn services which followed at Notre Dame. Here Te Deums were chanted when some national cause of rejoicing occurred, and here were conducted the funeral services of the rulers of France. From the early days of its history it had been the custom to place cradles, first inside the church and later on the porch, for the reception of abandoned children; these were sometimes left on the steps of St. Jean le Rond as well. In 1552 the first Foundling Hospital of Paris was established, between St. Christopher and Ste. Geneviève des Ardents. Grave abuses crept into the management of this place, and one account states that infants 293 from there could be bought on the Rue St. Landry for twenty sous apiece, the customers being professional beggars and acrobats.
In 1531 Cardinal Duprat added a new hall capable of containing a hundred beds to the Hôtel Dieu, the charming Renaissance gable of which rose close to the entrance to Notre Dame.
It will only be necessary to note a few changes in the University Quarter during this period. The brothers of St. Julian le Pauvre, scandalized by the stormy scenes which took place in their Priory in 1534, ask Parliament to appoint some other spot for the students of the Faculty of Arts to hold their elections.
In 1517 the corner-stone is laid of the new Church of St. Etienne du Mont, which is not completed until a hundred years later, and the Cordeliers Church, burned down in 1580, is rebuilt by Henry III., the Chevaliers du St. Esprit, and the De Thou family; and, finally, the Abbey of St. Victor is almost entirely rebuilt in the first half of the sixteenth century.
Let us close with a word or two on the Faubourg St. Germain under Francis I. The Hôtel de Nesle was divided into the “grand Nesle,” including the tower, the gateway, and the moat, which still belonged to the Crown, and the “petit Nesle,” which became the property of the city. In 1540, however, Francis gave Benvenuto Cellini permission to occupy the Petit Nesle. “I told the King,” says Cellini in 294 his memoirs, “that I had found a place that would do admirably for my work. A place, I continued, called the Petit Nesle, which belongs to your Majesty, and which has been ceded to the Provost of Paris. As he makes no use of it, your Majesty may well give it to me, as I will certainly apply it to your service. ‘The chateau is mine,’ the King replied, ‘and I know very well that the person to whom I have given it does not live there, so take it for your work.’ And then he ordered one of his lieutenants to put me in possession. This officer told him it was impossible. But the King became angry and said that he meant to give his own property to whomsoever he pleased, and especially to persons who were working for him, that this chateau was of no use to any one, and finally, that he did not want to hear anything more on the subject. The lieutenant remarked that it would be necessary to employ force. ‘Very well, then,’ said he King, ‘use force; and if a little is not enough, then use a great deal.’ The lieutenant accordingly took me to the Petit Nesle, and established me there, but told me to be on the alert or I would be killed. So I engaged a large number of servants and laid in a quantity of arms. . . . .”
The upshot of it was that Cellini stayed there, notwithstanding the efforts of the Prévôt des Marchands to dislodge him.
All of the Hôtel de Nesle, but the tower, gateway, and moat, which now became the property of the city, 295 were offered for sale under Henry II. For a long time no purchaser appeared, but it was finally bought by the Prince of Nevers, Louis de Gonzague, who built a magnificent palace on its site.
The Faubourg St. Germain, neglected during the wars of the fifteenth century, made a fresh start in the beginning of the sixteenth, and the University took advantage of the movement to rid itself of the Petit Pré aux Clercs, of no use and a great burden to keep its moats cleaned and in order. In 1539 notices were posted announcing that the Pré was for sale; by 1552 the entire space was covered with buildings and gardens, while the quai Malaquais dates from the same period.
The Huguenots chose this neighborhood for their meetings, whence its name of petite Genève. The Rue des Marais was inhabited almost exclusively by them, and we will close the chapter with this mention of a faction whose political importance had led to the St. Bartholomew in the period we have been discussing, and was destined to produce the wars of religion whose action covers the first part of our next period.
Footnotes
‡ But little interest seems to have been taken by contemporaries in the construction of the Tuileries. Ronsard scores it in the following lines:
“J’ai veu trop de Maçons,
Bastir lesTuileries,
Et en trop de façons,
Faire les Momeries.”