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. 360-404.
PARIS : ITS SITES, MONUMENTS AND HISTORY
360THIS chapter and the next are a history of decay in Paris.
The “Grand Siécle,” especially that part of it which is associated with the maturity and old age of Louis XIV., was an evil time for the city. Paris, like a personality, lives by an interior energy, and is great and successful in proportion as she is herself and content with herself. But the final victory of the monarchy had killed, or rather had lethargized, the soul of the Capital.
When the King could say “I own everything,” then Paris could no longer play her part; she no longer possessed the hegemony of that France which she had so largely created. There are great works done, but they are official purely; there is genius, but it is too little given to Paris and too much to the court. After all, it is the time of Molière, and later of Mansard. In such a time and with such names the capital is necessarily stately, but it grows gloomy, too. The highest point of vigor and of life is the chef-d’œuvre of the Invalides. In that church the dome, a very difficult thing to make beautiful, is a success, and the battle-flags of all the European 361 nations have the glory of hanging beneath as perfect a roof as the after-Renaissance ever produced. But, after all, the Invalides was outside of Paris then; it was like a free action of grace or energy performed by a man who has left a narrow and false circle and is out again with his friends; from the dome you could look over fields. But with that one exception (in spite of many detailed effects that could not save the general result) Paris gained little from the “Roi Soleil.”
What in our modern jargon we falsely call “good government” — the order, misery and wealth that accompany such periods — that indeed obtained. It was the fashion for the wealthy foreigner to visit Paris then, and the reputation which it now enjoys of being a good centre for the idle and curious certainly arose at the close of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth. It was this reputation that somewhat later gathered so many foreigners in the city, and helped not a little to prepare the Revolution. But Paris herself — the Paris that in her vigor makes so characteristic a thing — that Paris was dying. The one focus of life left, the court, retired from it. There began the profound sense of ill-ease and discontent that lasted till the Revolution, and in the midst of such a city, dull, archaic, a type of decay, was the Parlement, the old fossilized body of lawyers who sat in the Palais, in the Cité, and who in the succeeding seventy years 362 protest sullenly, and with the spasmodic eccentricity of something that is dying, against the overwhelming power at Versailles.
We will as usual begin our survey of the city at the Grève. When the Fronde was finally suppressed and negotiations of peace were opened between Paris and the court, then established at Pontoise, the officers of the Hôtel de Ville came forward to do their part, but were promptly informed that no direct communication between the Hôtel de Ville and the Crown was possible until the former Provost and sheriffs, driven out by the Fronde, were re-established. Broussel and his two sheriffs at once retired, Antoine Le Febre was reinstated, and when the King entered Paris in October, 1652, the representatives of the Hôtel de Ville took part in the State reception held at the Louvre. The King declared that all should be forgotten, and the city, to prove it, went so far as to entertain Mazarin with feastings, while the crowd assembled on the Grève; gave every evidence of enthusiastic joy, as though the Cardinal had been the most popular of Ministers, bursting out into a perfect frenzy of delight when his almoner threw money to them from the windows. Soon after, the King, his mother, Mazarin and all the court took supper at the Hôtel de Ville and witnessed a representation of the Cid, the occasion being the unveiling of a statue of Louis XIV. trampling upon Discord, by Gilles Guérin, set up in the courtyard by the Provost 363 and sheriffs as a witness to their loyalty and devotion. On the whole, the Crown kept its promises to the Hôtel de Ville pretty well, confirming former privileges and adding some new ones.
Under the Provost Michel Le Pelletier a work was undertaken that changed the whole appearance of the Grève — we refer to the hanging quay, finished in 1675, which reached from the Pont Notre Dame to the middle of the Grève, and was then prolonged to the north and east again, so as to divide the Place in two. Bullet, who had just finished the Porte St. Denis, was the architect, and did his work so successfully that the contemporaneous Journal des Savants gravely compares it to the hanging gardens of Babylon. The Place de la Grève thus found itself secured from inundations, but at the cost of a greatly diminished theatre for the shows and fêtes with which it disputed the popularity of the Pont Neuf. It continues to be the scene of numerous executions, but during the reign of Louis XIV., instead of the political offenders sent there by Richelieu, the most famous criminals are all women. “At last the thing is done,” writes Mme. De Sévigné to her daughter on the 17th of July, 1676. “The Brinvilliers is in the air;” by which she does not mean to be understood as saying that the Marchioness was hung, but that after being beheaded her body had been burned and the ashes scattered to the wind. Madame de Sévigné did not watch the actual execution, but from the window of 364 one of the houses on the Pont Notre Dame saw the victim pass — “thrown back on some straw, in a mob-cap and a chemise, with a doctor on one side of her and the executioner on the other.” The painter Le Brun as well was among the crowds gathered to see her go by, and made a sketch of her sitting in the wagon, holding a crucifix between her bound hands.
Madame de Sévigné has also left an account of the execution of La Voisin, convicted of poisoning, and burned alive on the Place de la Grève, after having absolutely refused to perform “l’amende honorable” at the Parvis Notre Dame, and having resisted with all her strength, and to the last, the execution of the sentence. She had been tried at Vincennes, and was passing along the Rue St. Antoine when Mme. de Sévigné saw her, this time from a window in the Hôtel de Sully.
Louis XIV. never took the trouble to come from Versailles in order to be present at the annual celebration on Saint John’s eve in the Place de la Grève, but in 1687, after attending a service at Notre Dame to return thanks for his recovery from a severe illness, he accepted an invitation given by the Provost and sheriffs to dine in the Hôtel de Ville, and by his extreme affability nearly made up on that one occasion for all the previous years of neglect. After insisting upon having only bourgeois to act as his guard, and to wait upon him at table, and ordering the release of any prisoners then confined for debt in the 365 gaol, his eye falling upon the marble statue of himself mentioned above, where he was represented as trampling discord beneath his feet, he observed that such allusions were now out of place and the statue should be removed. M. de Fourey, the Provost, accordingly had it sent to Chessy, his country place. In 1689, the place thus left empty was filled by another statue of the King, in bronze, this time, cast by the Kellers from a model of Coyzevox. It was seven feet high, and represented Louis in the costume of a triumphant Roman; one of the bas-reliefs on the pedestal showed him distributing bread during the famine of 1662, while the other — less happy — was the triumph of Religion over Heresy, an allusion to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes which might well have been dispensed with. At the same time a bust of the King was placed on the opposite side of the square, at the corner of the Rues de la Vannerie and Jean de l’Epine (a little east of the present corner of l’Avenue Victoria and the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville). It was called from thence forth le coin du roi. The iron lantern directly beneath this bust became only too celebrated under Louis XVI.
The only other circumstance of this reign which we have to note in connection with the Hôtel de Ville is the tax called capitation, imposed in 1695 upon every head of whatever rank, as a means of filling the treasury which the war had emptied. The people, especially women of rank, pressed in such crowds to 366 to pay this tax, which they looked upon as a patriotic measure, that the Grand’ Salle was turned for a time into a receiver’s office, and is so represented in an old engraving of the period.
In the meantime it had become imperatively necessary to enlarge and rebuild, to a certain extent, the Châtelet. In a Déclaration du Roy, dated in the year 1672, he states that he has learned of the bad condition of the Chastelet de Paris, and is “touched by the misery of those confined there,” and so he has determined to rebuild it. Several adjoining houses were bought, but the work did not begin until twelve years later. A good deal of the original building was left standing. The new part was on the side towards the Pont au Change, but as a map of Paris of 1684 still gives the chapel of St. Leufroi and the Place Vallée de la Misère, it is evident that they were not interfered with.
We have seen that under Richelieu and Louis XIV., when the latter was still very young, the work on the Louvre had been once more started, only again to be interrupted, this time by the troubles of the Fronde. In 1660, however, Le Mercier was again empowered to go ahead, and it seemed as though at last the great palace was to be finished. Hardly, however, had the north-east pavilion reached the first floor when the architect died. Le Vau took his place — he had been working for Fouquet — and displayed such energy and talent that in three years the south 367 façade, carefully planned so as to accord with the work of Lescot, was finished, and the north façade had only to be carried on, where the hôtels of Rostaing and la Force had stood, and joined to the east façade, the plans for which Le Vau was then perfecting. Finally, these plans completed, and approved by the King, were about to be put into execution: this was to be the main side of the Louvre, the grand entrance was to be there, and it would be the great achievement of the architect’s life. The trenches had been dug, the scaffoldings prepared, the substructions had even in some places risen several feet above the ground, when suddenly an order came to stop the work. Colbert had bought the office of superintendent of the buildings from M. de Ratabon, and either from jealousy or because he really thought (as he said he did) that the plans were not sufficiently imposing, he insisted upon having them submitted to a careful inspection and comparison. This was in May, 1664; the next three years were spent in discussions, quarrels, and intrigues. Bernini, brought from Rome at the cost of infinite trouble and expense, prepared plans which, entirely out of accord with the rest of the building, pretentious and inappropriate, were adopted while he was in Paris and rejected as soon as he had left for Rome, which he did very soon, urging that at his age he did not dare to risk the severity of a winter in Paris. Charles Perrault, who had been largely instrumental in obtaining the rejection 368 of Bernini’s plan, now succeeded in bringing forward that of his brother, the physician, Claude Perrault, which, submitted some years before, had been favorably regarded by Colbert. Le Vau’s plan was finally abandoned as being too simple and “uniform,” and Perrault’s adopted. This was the famous East Colonnade. Le Vau had now not only the mortification of seeing this great colonnade rise in the place where he had thought to have erected his own most considerable work, but — a blow which is supposed to have killed him — in 1670 Perrault began building another wing directly in front of the really admirable one he had erected on the south; this was made necessary by the errors of construction of the great colonnade, which was seventy-two feet longer than the Louvre itself, and consequently overlapped the north and south wings which it was intended to join. Before Perrault could finish, however, the King had tired of it all and refused to give any more money, and for seventy-five years the view from the river presented the curious effect of two south façades, the roof and dome of the one in the rear rising above the three stories of the one in front. Le Vau’s still exists in part, and in the left pavilion, which he found and kept in his plan, there are some fragments of a cornice dating from Lescot and Goujon. The Louvre would now have been completely abandoned had not Louis first lodged a number of artists there, and later the various academies.
369Séguier, who had succeeded Richelieu as the patron of the Académie Française, died in 1672, and the Académie, which had been holding its meetings in his hôtel on the Rue du Bouloi (now la Cour des Fermes), was thus left homeless, until Colbert, himself a member, induced the King to become its patron and assign for its use two rooms near the Pavillon des Cariatides, in the ground floor of the Louvre (the present Salle Puget and Salle des Coustou of the modern sculpture gallery). These rooms were simply furnished, and for a long time the only arm-chair was reserved for the director, the other members, no matter of what rank, having only straw-bottomed chairs. The story goes that the old Cardinal d’Estrées on one occasion attended an assembly in so gouty and infirm a condition that an arm-chair had to be brought for him. Great murmurings, thereupon; the academic equality of the members had been destroyed. The King restored it by providing arm-chairs for all, and from then until now the Académie Française has possessed as many arm-chairs as members. It continued to hold its assemblies in the Louvre without interruption until suppressed by the decree of August 8, 1793. On January 12, 1673, the first great meeting was held in the new quarters. Three new members were installed, Fléchier, Racine, and the Abbé Gallois, and a brilliant company assembled to witness the ceremony. Racine’s speech was never published, but Fléchier, in his, highly extolled the enlightened 370 policy of the “greatest of Kings” in throwing open his own palace to the academicians. The forty members annually attended a musical mass in the chapel of St. Louis, which had been left unfinished by Le Mercier, on the second floor, almost directly above their rooms, and listened to a panegyric of the Saint King.
The Académie des Inscriptions et des Medailles and the Academies of Sciences, of Architecture, and of Painting, were all established by Louis XIV. in the Louvre, only the last (in order to leave more room for the royal printing-office) was sent off for thirty years to a hôtel adjoining the Palais Royal. On its return were begun the art exhibitions for which Paris has ever since been famous. Article twenty-five of the constitution of this society requires that every year, on Saint Louis’ day, the members shall exhibit their works to the public. The exhibition of 1699, the first held after the return to the Louvre, lasted three weeks, and it is interesting to note the number of pictures then shown that have found their way back there. No less than four exhibited by the elder Coypel, for instance, hang to-day on the walls of the Grande Galerie. There was but one other exhibition (notwithstanding “article twenty-five”) held during the lifetime of Louis XIV.
The great Carrousel of 1662 impressed upon the King two things: one was the necessity of finishing the palace of the Tuileries, whose uncompleted wings 371 had formed a poor background for that superb pageant, and the other was the desirability of having a hall for theatrical shows and ballets in the palace. Le Vau, perhaps to console him for the way he had been treated in the matter of the Louvre, was given the work, but soon died, leaving d’Orbay to carry out his plans. The west façade was completed and an effort (whose results are severely criticized by Blondel) made to conform the work of Philibert Delorme and Jean Bullant with that of later architects. In the northern half of the west wing was the new theatre planned by Vigarini, the Italian engineer who had directed the arrangements for the great Carrousel. The corner pavilion, corresponding to the Pavillon de Flore at the south-west angle, was divided into suites of apartments for persons whose rank entitled them to live in the royal palace. In the second floor were the apartments of the King and Queen, the hall of the hundred members of the Swiss guard, who always lodged there during the stay of the King, and of the various officers of the royal household. The stair with which Le Vau replaced the beautiful one of Philibert Delorme, so greatly admired by Sauval, led from the hall of the Cent Suisses to a tiny chapel, now completed for the first time, its sacristy almost touching Vigarini’s theatre. This theatre was considered a marvel of size and elegance, especially its ceiling decorated by Noël Coypel after designs made by Le Brun. 372 Abbé De Pure tells of the wonderful process by which paper was hardened almost to the condition of stone and used in the decorations, the first mention we have of carton-pierre, which indeed is usually thought to be a quite modern invention. The elaborate mechanical contrivances for lowering and raising objects on the stage gave it its name of Salle des Machines. It was here that pantomimes, a form of entertainment lately imported from Italy, were first introduced to the Paris public; they became enormously popular, and for a long time quite superseded all other kinds of spectacles.
Before Louis XIV. transferred his interest to Versailles, the gardener Le Notre had turned the simple suburban park of Catherine de Médicis into a magnificent royal garden, whose great avenues and broad terraces formed a perfect setting for the palace. It was to him that the great esplanades, which permitted an unencumbered view of the long line of buildings and the broad terrace on the river-side, were due.
North of the Tuileries gardens, and a little beyond the Rue St. Honoré, stood a hôtel that had belonged originally to the Duc de Vendôme, son of Henry IV. and Gabrielle d’Estrées. When Luvois conceived his project of opening a new “Place Publique” in this quarter, it was bought and pulled down, and later the neighboring Capucin convent as well. Then Luvois died, and soon after it was discovered that the royal finances were too heavily involved to continue the 373 work. Accordingly, in 1699 the King proposed to the city to take the site and such materials as had already been collected and finish it — only Luvois’ plan was not to be used. This offer was accepted, and the younger Mansard employed. His plan provided for an octagonal space instead of a square, the eight façades being ornamented with Corinthian columns placed on substructions and surmounted by stone dormers of different designs. In the centre of the Place was an equestrian statue of Louis XIV., modelled by Girardon and cast by Keller. The whole was completed by 1701 and given the name of Place des Conquètes.
Another public work of the same nature was the opening of the Place des Victoires at the spot where the Rues Neuve des Petits Champs and Croix des Petit Champs meet. This was undertaken by a private individual, the Duke de la Feuillade, in recognition of the extraordinary favors shown him by the King. Here too, Mansard prepared the plans, though the work was under the direction of the architect Predot. The buildings surrounding it were in the accepted style of the day, a line of open arcades supporting Ionic columns, between which were the double row of windows of the second and third stories, the whole surmounted, of course, by a “Mansard” roof. In 1686 the statue which was to occupy the centre was put in position with characteristic ceremonies. The Duke de la Feuillade, at the head 374 of his regiment of the guard, rode three times around the Place, dismounting each time to prostrate himself before the monument; the Corps de Ville which had borne some of the expenses connected with opening the Place, took part, and in the evening fireworks were sent off at the Grève.
This statue of Louis XIV. represented him in coronation robes, and, sceptre in hand, treading under foot a Cerberus, type of the triple alliance, while a winged Victory, lightly balanced on a globe, was about to place a crown of laurel on his head. The whole group, made of lead and gilded over, was the work of the sculptor Martin van den Bogaert (Desjardins). Beneath it was the inscription, Viro Immortali.
On the marriage of the Duke d’Anjou to Henrietta of England, the King, his brother, gave him the use of the Palais Royal. After the ceremony, which took place in the palace chapel on the 31st of March, 1661, the young couple accompanied the King and Queen and the entire court to Fontainebleau to spend the summer season, and on their return established themselves in Richelieu’s old abode. The wing which the Cardinal had planned on the west facing the Rue Richelieu had never been finished; the pavilion on that side had been occupied by the Comte de Brion, from whom it took the name of Palais Brion, and later, as we said above, by the Academy of Painting. It was here, too, that Mlle. de la Vallière was 375 lodged after she left the service of Madame, the King’s sister-in-law.
Monsieur was devoted to building. Under him the galleries of the Cardinal were restored and magnificently decorated, the wing on the Rue Richelieu finished, and a new wing built to connect it with the buildings on the left of the second court. The main part of these additions, done under the direction of Jules Hardouin Mansard, were not carried out until the King, in utter violation of the conditions imposed by Richelieu, had given the palace to his brother outright, as a reward for his complaisance in the matter of the marriage of his son, the Duke de Chartres, with Mlle. de Blois, an illegitimate daughter of the King.
“Before the late Monsieur,” writes his second wife Madame, Princesse Palatine, “restored the Palais Royal and built the great apartment, this palace was abominable, and yet ever since the time of the Queen-Mother it has been admired.” This “great apartment” was in the new cross-wing. The façade on the Rue Richelieu was simply a carrying out of Le Mercier’s plans — two orders, Ionic and Corinthian, with a third of engaged columns, and a small attic above.
Under the new Duke of Orléans, the future regent, Mansard finished this part, and on his death Oppenord, the architect chosen to succeed him, built the gorgeous octagonal chamber, lighted from above, which joined it to the great apartment.
376In the two galleries, running the length of the building on the Rue Richelieu (the Palais Brion with Mlle. de la Vallière’s apartments had entirely disappeared) where hung the superb collection of pictures for which the Palais Royal became so celebrated. Doctor Maihows writes, “There is no master of any note who is not represented there by some admirably selected works.” All that were still on the market of Charles I.’s pictures were bought for it, that is how Van Dyck’s portrait of him with his family comes to be in Paris; and in Italy the collection of Prince Livio, containing Correggio’s Io, and that of Queen Christina with its masterpiece, by Raphael, a Madonna, which still goes by the name of the Madonna of the Orléans, were purchased for the regent by Crozat, whom he had sent to Rome for the purpose.
Clement XI. tried to prevent the removal of these pictures; a number of them, he objected, were “an outrage on decency;” upon which Crozat ended the discussion by impudently sending to inquire of his Holiness if that was why he wished them kept in Rome.
The Gallery of Eneas, so-called from the series of paintings by the younger Coypel, was the last of the regent’s additions to the Palais Royal. A small private stair led from it down to the Jardin des Princes (now taken up by shops, the passageway leading from the grand court to the Rue Montpensier, and a 377 part of the street itself), which was separated from the large garden by a light iron grating.
We are told that when the work was all finished, and the great collection of paintings hung, the Regent lost interest in the Palais Royal and removed the scene of his orgies elsewhere; only when word was sent to him that his agents had bought a new masterpiece did he return. His passion for pictures never forsook him.
“He has left St. Cloud,” writes Marais in June, 1723 — only six months before his death — and come back to Paris to see his pictures.”
A short distance to the east of the Palais Royal is the Church of St. Eustache.* Jaillot, in his “Recherches sur Paris,” says that he has been unable to discover its origin or the name of its founder. He states, however, that it was originally a chapel dedicated to Ste. Agnes, and that in the early part of the thirteenth century it was converted into a parish under the name of St. Eustache. In 1532 it was pulled down and a new and much larger building begun. The Chancellor Séguier, and de Bullion, Superintendent of Finances, contributed largely, but the church was not finished until 1642, the main doorway not even then. This church may be cited as a typical example of the architecture of the day.
“The Renaissance,” writes Viollet-le-Duc, “had 378 blotted out the last traces of the old national art, and if for some time longer religious buildings still followed the general plan of the French churches of the thirteenth century, the genius that had inspired them was extinguished, despised. They wanted to apply the forms of Roman architecture, which they barely knew, to the system of construction of ogival churches, which they despised without understanding. It was in this spirit of indecision that the great Church of St. Eustache at Paris was begun and finished; a building poorly conceived and badly carried out, a confused mass of débris collected from every direction, without agreement or harmony.”
Colbert was buried there in 1683, his last illness having been brought on, according to some of his biographers, by mortification at the ingratitude of the King. As he lay ill in his hôtel in the Rue des Petits Champs, Louis sent one of his gentlemen to him with a letter. The dying man pretended to be asleep so as to avoid receiving the messenger, and refused to read the letter. “I want to hear no more about the King; he may at least let me alone now.” Hated by his colleagues and by the people of Paris, who insisted on blaming on him all the taxes with which they had been burdened since 1672, the body had to be carried to St. Eustache by night accompanied by a guard, and the funeral of the last of the great Ministers of France — that series composed of Sully, Richelieu, Mazarin, and Colbert — hurried over in secret.
379The church is, indeed, close to the Halles, whose stormy population had been especially incensed by the imposition of a rental on the stalls hitherto let free, and some sort of violence might well have been expected from the famous dames de la Halle. These “ladies” had on more occasions than one displayed their power. In 1645, for instance, a deputation of them waited upon the Queen-Mother to ask that the nephew of the lately-deceased titulary of St. Eustache might be appointed curé in his place; they urged as one of their reasons that the cure had been a long time in the family, “descending from father to son.” Whether on that account or no the request was granted, and the next day the following placard was found posted on the church by some wag: “Notice — The cure of St. Eustache is in the gift of les dames de la Halle.”
On certain great holidays, such as New Year’s day, or after a victory, or on a royal marriage, a deputation composed of fish and flower-women waited upon the King — or after the birth of a Dauphin on the Queen — they presented an enormous bouquet, accompanied by an appropriate compliment, and in return were given a present of money and a collation. After the fearful winter of 1709, however, when the women of the Halle started for Versailles, carrying their starving children to exhibit, and determined to ask for food, they were stopped at the Pont de Sévres and marched back to Paris in short 380 order. Eighty years later they get there and conduct the return procession themselves.
In the neighboring cemetery of the Holy Innocents, where a new cloister, built in 1669, had replaced the old one forming the northern boundary of the Rue de la Ferronnerie, we will pause only long enough to note one new burial. The registers of St. Eustache contain the following entry:
“On Thursday, April 14, 1695, the defunct Jean de la Fontaine, one of the Forty, of the Académie Française, seventy-six years of age, living in the Rue Platrière, in the Hôtel Derval. . . . Died on the 13th of the present month, was buried in the cemetery of the Saints Innocents. Received 64 livres, 40 sols.”
From this dwelling in the Rue Platrière La Fontaine’s body must have been carried through the Quartier du Temple. Philip of Vendôme, great-grandson of Henry IV. and Gabrielle d’Estrées, had succeeded to the office of Grand Prior some eighteen years before. A trained solider, as well as a finished statesman, he did not take possession of his office till 1712, and then to gather around him a circle of the brightest men of the day. Chaulieu, Régnier, the Abbé Mangenot, and many others helped to make the Grand Prior’s Temple suppers famous.
During the reigns of Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. an extraordinary number of churches and religious houses were built in Paris, particularly in the Quarter 381 of the Marais. The ancient Church of Ste. Catherine du Val des Ecoliers, founded in the reign of Philip-Augustus, was rebuilt, and a relief of Saint Louis between the founders — two sergeants-at-arms — carved over the doorway. When the monks of the order were moved to the Rue St. Antoine, in 1767, the church was torn down.
The establishment of the Madelonnettes, opposite the Temple enclosure, was founded during the regency of Marie de Médicis by a rich wine merchant of Paris named Robert de Montry — it is said for the benefit of two depraved women whom he had encountered on the street, and succeeded in convincing of the error of their ways. Vincent de Paul, in his round of the religious establishments of the capital, found the Madelonnettes in need of discipline, and sent four sisters of the Visitation to administer it. A little later the convent became a house of correction for young women, and during the Terror a simple prison.
Other religious houses in the neighborhood were the “Filles du Sauveur,” the Sisterhood of Ste. Avoie, the Daughters of the Holy Sacrament — a boarding-school for young girls as well, which the Duchess d’Aiguillon installed in 1684 in the superb Hôtel de Turenne — and the Daughters of Calvary, whose vast enclosure occupied the site of the present streets of Ménilmontant and Bretagne; Perè Joseph, Richelieu’s active lieutenant, founded the order and Mme. 382 de Combalet, the minister’s niece, laid the cornerstone of the mother establishment in the “Marais du Temple.” Perè Joseph had expressed a wish to be buried in their chapel, but on his death the Capucins of the Rue St. Honoré claimed the body, and the Daughters of Calvary had to be satisfied with the heart, which, with his Capucin cloak, was preserved as a relic. Then there were the Blue Annonciades, or “Blue Girls,” as they were commonly called from the color of their cloaks, an order established in Paris in the Rue Culture Ste. Catherine by the Marquise of Verneuil. Later the Countess of Hameaux built them a church, beautiful in itself and containing some valuable paintings, as the altar-piece of the Annunciation, by Poussin. All of these communities were suppressed at the beginning of the Revolution, and the buildings either torn down or devoted to secular purposes.
The quarter contained two hospitals, that of the “Enfants Rouges,” or “Enfants Dieu,” and that of the Hospitalières, called “of the Place Royale.” The former was founded by Francis I. at the request of his sister, Marguerite de Navarre, for the benefit of orphans from the Hôtel Dieu. These children were always to be called Enfants Dieu — God’s children — and at first were dressed in red, to indicate that their carnal wants were supplied by charity. The Gothic church of this establishment was chiefly remarkable for its stained glass, thought to have been made from 383 designs of Jean Cousin. Two of the windows represented Francis I. and his sister caressing little children; others showed scenes from the life of Christ. “The window where Jesus Christ is seen fondling the little children whom some women present to him,” writes Sauval, “is undeniably one of the most beautiful, as well as the best, designed and painted in all Paris.” And yet when the hospital was suppressed in 1772 it did not occur to any one to save these wonderful windows, which for upwards of two hundred years had been the admiration and delight of connoisseurs.
The church and monastery of Mercy in the Rue de Chaume were built by the architect Pierre Cottard for the Seigneur de Braque, Marie de Médicis giving the ground on the yearly payment of a taper, to be presented by the monks to the Queen on Candlemas Day. The portal, with its engaged Corinthian columns, was finished in the eighteenth century by Boffrand, who added an entablature of composite order. On the high altar were two fine statues by François Auguier. When the Barbary Corsairs were finally driven out of the Mediterranean, the object for which this order had been founded ceased to exist. Nevertheless, the monks continued to occupy their convent until the suppression of the religious orders in 1790.
The large and rich Church of the Minimes, near the Place Royale, was dedicated in 1679; the chapels 384 were ornamented with the tombs of the various noble families who had built them, the Colberts, Valois, Angoulêmes, and so on. The valuable library belonging to the monastery, collected by Perè Jacob, the leading bibliographer of the seventeenth century, became national property on the suppression of the order in 1790 — at the same time that the monuments were taken to the museum of “Monuments Français” and the pictures scattered about among different galleries.
In addition to the churches and religious houses so numerous in this quarter, the Marais was filled with elegant palaces, some of them old, but many of them restored or built outright in the reigns of Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. With two of these, the Hôtels de Soubise and de Strasbourg, we will speak more particularly in the next chapter.
The Palais de la Cité meantime had become more and more crowded. In 1671 the President, M. de Lamoignon, obtained a decree from the Council allowing him to take all the space that could be spared from the garden of the Bailliage in order to add two new courts to the hôtel; by this means there was added to the Palais the Salle Neuve, a long continuation of the Prisoner’s Gallery extending as far as the Rue de Harlay, and, what was of almost as much importance, two new issues, one on the Place Dauphine, by the Court de Harlay, and the other on the Quai de l’Horlage. Some new means of egress had 385 become absolutely necessary in order to disencumber what the royal decree calls “the avenues of the Palais, now the centre of the town, and the spot most resorted to by its inhabitants.”
The garden of the Bailliage did not disappear entirely, however; a narrow strip was left along the side of the Cour Neuve, and another larger one on the left side of the Rue Jerusalem, reaching behind the houses on the Quai des Orfèvres as far as the Rue de Harlay. Lamoignon, in a letter written in 1680, speaks of the “curious flowers” his mother cultivated there, with the aid of a certain gardener who had “commerce avec tous les curieux de fleurs.”
A serious accident that occurred some years later necessitated the rebuilding of the Hôtel du Bailliage — Saint Simon has left an account of it.
“On the 18th of the same month” (November, 1707), “the First President being at dinner at home in the Palais with his family and a number of Councillors, the floor suddenly gave way, and they all fell into a cellar where there were some beams, which prevented them from falling all the way to the bottom and from being injured as well; the children’s tutor was the only one who was hurt. The lady-President was so placed that she was the only one who did not fall. They were all terribly frightened, the First President so much so that he has never been the same man since.” When Boffrand was charged, though not till five years later, with the 386 task of repairing the hôtel, he did it very thoroughly, and added a new gallery.
Louis XIV.’s connection with the Palais de Justice begins and ends with a single occurrence. In 1655 though the Fronde had been finally put down, the Parliament gave signs of renewed agitations, Mazarin cut them short by a prompt and energetic intervention on the part of the young King. On the 15th of August the First President received a “lettre de cachet” announcing that a “bed of justice” would be held the next day. The Parliament was assembled in the Grand Chamber when Louis, who had been hunting at Vincennes, arrived in boots and riding-coat (Voltaire adds a whip, to complete the picture, doubtless). He was received with the usual ceremonial, and taking his place on the raised dais in the left corner, proceeded at once to the point. “Every one knows,” said he, “all the troubles that have been caused by the assemblies of Parliament. I wish to guard against these in future; I with to put a stop to those already begun, by the edicts that I have brought with me. . . . . Monsieur le Président, I forbid you to allow any assembly whatsoever.”
At the conclusion of this speech, which admitted of no reply, he arose and was escorted out again with the same ceremonial as on his arrival, and for the remaining sixty years of his reign he had no further need to return to the Palais.
387One of the last works of this long reign was the reconstruction of the “Samaritaine” on the Pont Neuf, long in a semi-ruinous condition. The tremendous breaking up of the ice in the river in 1709 had so weakened its piles that three years later the whole had to be rebuilt. The designs were furnished by Robert de Cotte, first architect to the King. It was in three stories, the first resting on piles, with windows overlooking the water; the second on a line with the bridge, and the third into which the new clock was built. Below this were the figures of Christ and the woman of Samaria, carved by Philippe Bertrand and René Frémin, while between them a stream of water flowed from the mouth of a carved head of a monster into a basin below. The bells of the new chimes, cast by Drouart and Ninville, occupied a gilded campanile above the clock. The concierge in charge of the reconstructed “Samaritaine” had the privilege of renting out the lower story, from which a stair fashioned between the piles led down to the water. We find the Duchess de Bourbon lodging there in the summer of 1717, in order to take the baths, and being driven away, too, by the couplets composed about her and the too attentive Marquis de Lassay, by the poets of the bridge.
For sixty years, as we have seen, Louis had not so much as recognized the Parliament; nevertheless, as his end approached he could think of no better persons to draw up the will (by which he proposed 388 to supplant the Duke of Orléans in everything but the name of Regent, in favor of his bastard son, the Duke of Maine) than the Chancellor Voysin and the First President de Mesme, nor any safer place in which to deposit it than the Palais itself. The King’s architect, Boffrand, constructed a safe in the thickness of the wall of the Tour de Montgommery furnished with iron-bound doors, heavy bolts, and bars. The utmost secrecy was observed, not only as to the hiding-place, but the contents of the will, known only to Mme. de Maintenon, who had inspired it, and a few others. The secret leaked out, however, and M. de Maisons, an ardent supporter of the Duke d’Orléans, tried to persuade the latter to attempt to carry the document off by a coup de main. His plan was to have an armed force in readiness, and at the moment of the King’s death to invest the Palais, introduce masons and locksmiths into the Tower, and so to cause the will to disappear. But the Duke’s methods, though less romantic, were much surer; he first secured the support of the members by holding out hopes of restoring its lost powers to the Parliament, and then on the day following the King’s death met them and the Peers in the Grand’ Chambre. All the approaches to the Palais were closely watched by a regiment of the guard, bought with the sum of six hundred thousand livres, paid over to the Duke de Guiche. After such precautions as these the matter went smoothly enough. The Duke 389 had the will brought and read aloud; he then protested against its clauses, calling upon those present to support him, and promising to restore the “right of remonstrance” to the Parliament from the moment when he should be master. Before the King’s party could even open their lips the vote was taken and the will annulled by almost unanimous consent, and then, “as it was noon, they all went to dinner.”
Ten days later a carefully arranged imitation of a “lit de justice” was held by order of the Regent. The little five-year-old King, accompanied by his governess, Mme. de Ventadour, who seated herself on the steps of the throne, took his place in the Grand’ Chambre, removed his hat, replaced it, and repeated his lesson:
“I am here, gentlemen, to assure you of my affection. Monsieur the Chancellor will make known to you my wishes.” Upon which the Chancellor Voysin proceeded solemnly to annul what he had himself drawn up with Mme. de Maintenon’s help — it was a question of keeping his place!
The changes which took place in the buildings of the Cité during Louis XIV.’s reign were gradual and unimportant. St. Denis de la Chartre was restored and richly decorated by Gabriel Leduc, by order of Anne of Austria. The bas-relief of the high altar, carved out of a single piece of stone by Michel Anguier, was so greatly valued by the wardens 390 of the church that they went to the expense of having it painted and varnished!
Leduc at the same time designed a new high altar for St. Bartholomew, while at St. Pierre des Arcis the architect Lanchenu constructed a Greek portal which was pronounced to be “in good taste,” the highest meed of praise of the day.
The ancient Church of St. Eloi was entirely rebuilt in 1703 by Cartaud, its portal, greatly praised by Blondel in his Architecture Française, being removed to the Church of the Blancs-Manteaux, when the building was demolished, as late as the middle of the present century.
When Louis XIV. and Marie Thérèse made their “magnificent and triumphant entry into their good city of Paris,” in 1660, the Pont Notre Dame, newly restored was adorned with a great deal of imitation magnificence; imitation bronze and imitation marble were used lavishly, and the results were so much admired that it was determined to keep them there when the fête was over. The grand triumphal arch, made of wood and painted canvas, at the south end of the bridge, was only rivalled in elegance by the one on the south side of the island at the end of the Marché Neuf, where the King and Queen, as Hercules and Minerva, were represented, with Mercury uniting them, no other than Cardinal Mazarin. These decorations were probably prepared for the same purpose as those whose object is so naively expressed 391 in the registers recording the entry of Henry II., “that the people might not have to loiter about for nothing while awaiting the entry of the said King.”
It was not until some years later that Bullet erected an elegant Ionic doorway in the middle of the Notre Dame bridge, leading to the great pumps established by the city to supply a number of new fountains. These pumps were built on a sort of floating platform, and thus were always at exactly the same distance from the level of the water, a contrivance noted with much admiration by contemporary writers.
In 1699 Louis XIV. began the decorations of the choir of Notre Dame, which led to the despoiling of the Cathedral of so much that was not only beautiful in itself, but of the greatest historic interest. The choir stalls, the tombs with which it was paved, and the wonderful stained glass belonging to the twelfth century, all disappeared before the commonplace taste of the day. The new pavement was made of uniform squares of marble, and the remains of the archbishops, who were thus ruthlessly turned out of their resting-places, transferred to a crypt dug out for the purpose. It was, by the way, in making this crypt in 1711 that the remains of the altar to Jupiter, spoken of in the early part of this book, were discovered.**
Soufflot, in whom the chapter placed entire confidence, directed the alterations of the second half 392 of the eighteenth century. He destroyed the pillar which had divided the great west door, cut the carving of the last Judgment in two, and mutilated a quantity of other treasures of art which for him and the men of his time had become dead letters. He had not, as M. Edouard Drumont says, the fury that inspires an iconoclast to excuse him, but only the complacent self-satisfaction of ignorance.
On crossing the river to the left bank we find that many changes have taken place, not only in the University quarter itself, but in those new faubourgs which have grown up beyond it.
At the extreme north-east limit of this quarter the Porte St. Bernard, standing close to the Tournelle, and dating from the time of Philip-Augustus, was converted in 1674 into a triumphal arch. This work, designed to glorify Louis XIV. in his character of a benefactor and patron of commerce, was carried out by Blondel; it was adorned with bas-reliefs representing the “Grand roi” dispensing abundance among his grateful people, but it only stood until the latter part of the reign of Louis XVI.
South, and a little to the west of this, was established the manufactory of Gobelin tapestry, which we still find occupying the same site. Henry IV. had employed certain master-weavers, Comans and La Planche, to manufacture these tapestries, but their children and successors had parted company in 1629. The Comans took a house belonging to the 393 family of the dyer Gobelin; it was in the Faubourg St. Marcel, on the little Bièvre river, whose waters, beside being especially esteemed for the process of dyeing, were used as power for the machinery. Fouquet had indulged his taste for magnificence by setting up a studio of tapestry in the village of Maincy, the products of which were to swell the magnificent collections in his chateau near by; Le Brun was placed in charge. When the Superintendent of Finances fell into disgrace in 1661 the King seized the antique tapestries, and transplanted those in process of manufacture, together with the looms, etc., to the Gobelin house on the left bank, which was now formally established as a royal factory, not only for tapestry but for all sorts of furniture, with Le Bron for director. In 1699 all the other departments, as embroidery, bronze, ebony, and mosaic work, were suppressed, and from then until now, through all the vicissitudes of wars and revolutions, this establishment has continued to exist as the Manufacture des Gobelins. Proceeding to the west, we reach the spot chosen by Colbert and Perrault for the National Observatory which the King, acting on his Minister’s advice, was about to found. Cassini, after some persuasion, having agreed to take charge of it, Perrault’s hastily prepared plans were accepted and the building begun. In 1672 it was finished, but on Cassini’s arrival he found it entirely unsuited to its object, Perrault declined to make any change, and the King 394 sustained him. (Le Brun’s picture represents Cassini and the architect appearing before Louis XIV. to submit the question to him.) The small tower on the upper terrace was finally built in order that there might be some place from which observations could be taken. The building is entirely of stone, neither iron nor wood being used in its construction; it is a rectangle, the four sides corresponding to the four cardinal points, and the latitude of the south façade being identical with that of Paris. Through the large hall of the second floor is traced the meridian of Paris, and the intersecting point of these two lines is the base from which all the maps of France are constructed; the first complete one dates from Cassini’s time.
To re-enter the city we will not pass through the ancient gateway of St. Michel, for in 1684 this was torn down and replaced by a fountain still in existence in the middle of this century. It stood at the end of the Rue St. Hyacinthe, and bore the following inscription, composed by Santeul:
Hoc in monte suos reserat sapientia fontes.
Ne tamen hanc puri respue fontis aquam.
It was Louis XIV. who introduced the study of French jurisprudence into the law schools of the University, those ancient schools which we have seen established in the Rue St. Jean de Beauvais, on the left bank of the river. On December 28, 1679, M. 395 de Launay, Parliamentary advocate, opened his course of lectures with an address delivered in French. “To-day,’ said he, “when we behold the language of our own land raised nearly to the level of Greek and Latin, would it not be an insult to have recourse to a foreign language in which to expound a system of jurisprudence which she has formulated?” It was not, however, until a century later that the buildings of the law schools in any way corresponded to the dignity and importance of their functions.
It may be worth while to note, in passing, that the monument to Jacques Souvré, by François Anguier, which is now preserved in the Louvre, was placed in the Commanderie de St. Jean de Latran, just opposite the old law schools, during this reign.
The College of Beauvais was placed under the direction of Rollin in 1697, and during the fifteen years of his administration reached the highest state of prosperity. Unfortunately he became involved in the Jansenist dispute, and was finally expelled by order of the King. The scholars, who seem to have changed wonderfully in character and habits since the roystering days of the early part of the seventeenth century, are described as bursting into tears when the news was brought. There was nothing but weeping and sobbing. . . . Presently they all withdrew to their rooms, in order to give themselves up more freely to their grief!”
On the 25th of June, 1667, a solemn procession 396 wound its way up through the narrow streets of the Montagne Ste. Geneviève bearing the remains of Descartes, sent from Stockholm, where he had died, for burial in the Church of Ste. Geneviève. The abbot, wearing his miter and carrying the cross, accompanied by all the canons, met the cortége at the door, and when the vesper services for the dead were over, the body was interred in a place hollowed out for it between the chapels of Ste. Geneviève and St. Francis.
On the following day the funeral oration was to be delivered by M. Pierre Lallemand. Just, however, as he was about to mount to the pulpit at the conclusion of the service, a prohibition arrived from the Court. Louis XIV., doubtless misinformed as to the nature of Descartes’ teachings, refused to allow the author of Meditations Métaphysiques to be freely eulogized in a Christian church.
Ever since their return under Henry IV. the Jesuits had devoted themselves more and more to the instruction of youth. As their power increased, and the opposition to them weakened, their success in this particular line of activity grew more pronounced. Soon their College of Clermont becoming too small, new buildings must be added, and accordingly who do we find laying the corner-stone in 1628 but the Prévôt de la Ville, accompanied by the four sheriffs, whose sons are being educated by the order.
To commemorate this event medals were struck 397 bearing a likeness of the King and the arms of the city. The University protested, but quite uselessly, and the Jesuits, now fully embarked on that stream of success and prosperity which was to carry them so long and so far, presently acquired some of the University property itself — i.e., the Colleges of Marmontiers and Mans. It was when this last transaction was finally accomplished, through the good offices of the King, that the order out of gratitude changed the name of their establishment to the one it still bears — Collège Louis le Grand.
Quite close, in the College of Plessis, we are again reminded of Rollin, as it was here that he was educated. A contemporary describes his emotion on revisiting it in the character of rector and meeting his former principal and masters.
On the 6th of February, 1661, twelve doctors were gathered in consultation in one of the rooms of the Palais Mazarin. Guénaud undertook the difficult task of announcing the result to the patient — Mazarin. It was a sentence of death, but the Cardinal, who had rightly interpreted before this the anxiety expressed on the faces of some of those about him and the barely dissimulated joy on those of others, received the news calmly. His imitation of Richelieu seemed destined to be carried out to the very end. Richelieu was fifty-eight when he died, and had ruled France for eighteen years. Mazarin was the same age, and had entered upon the eighteenth year of his 398 ministry. Such coincidences were not without their effect upon him.
Just a month later he sent for two “notaires garde-notes” of the Châtelet, and with admirable lucidity dictated to them the entire plan for the foundation of a college to be called after his name, and to contain his library. Every detail was entered into with the most minute care.
The courses, entirely free, were to be for the benefit of sixty young men of good family, natives of the provinces which had been acquired by France during his ministry.
The academy, which was to supplement the education gained in the college, was only to receive fifteen. It must be remembered that in the seventeenth century the nobility had not generally availed themselves of the educational facilities of the universities. The main point was to train their sons to be manly and quick-witted, and to have them bred up in the manners and habits of the great world in which they were to move. Mazarin had this in mind, and especially provided that fencing, riding and dancing were to be taught in the academy. We may note here that his views were so little understood by those who were charged with developing them that the architects left the riding-school out of their plans, and the University struck out the entire clause. The result was that the first families never had anything to do with it, only the 399 sons of the poorer nobility deigning to go there to be educated.
But to return to Mazarin’s will. His library, one of the most valuable in the world at that time, was to be insured by every possible means against injury or loss, and to be open to the public twice a week. Three days later he was dead, and in little over a week the executors, determined to carry out these generous plans at once, met to consult about the site. Immediately difficulties arose; every plan suggested met with some objection. At one time it seemed as though all were agreed upon the Jardin des Plantes, when suddenly Vallot, the King’s head physician, said he would never consent to the garden being moved to Vincennes, as was proposed, and after him came the rector of the University with a still more effectual obstacle. He announced decidedly that he would refuse to allow the new college to be placed beyond the limits of the University; and as he was entirely within his rights, that plan was given up. Many others met with a like fate.
A year and a half went by and still nothing was decided, when Colbert, who had never given up the first place that had been suggested, namely, the Petit Nesle, laid before the King plans prepared by Le Vau, who was then at work on the Louvre, showing the college buildings describing a great semicircle, in the centre of which was the doorway of the chapel, which thus faced the new gallery 400 of the Louvre in a most effective manner. That settled it; the King at once ordered the adoption of Le Vau’s plans, and that the buildings should occupy the site indicated.
The next difficulty was to get possession. Then, as now, the value of property increased wonderfully when a purchaser was in sight. A host of tenants and owners had to be satisfied, down to the fishermen and washwomen who rented the stalls at the foot of the Tower. Finally, all these matters being settled, two architects, Lambert and d’Orbay, were chosen to assist Le Vau, and the work was begun.
Each end of the semicircle was to terminate in a massive pavilion. That on the west, originally intended for the riding, dancing, and fencing schools, bore the name of Pavillon des Arts up to the time of the Revolution; the other stood precisely on the site of the Tour de Nesle, and was called the Pavillon de la Bibliothèque. This and the chapel were still unfinished when, in 1672, it was decided to definitely organize the college.
Fresh difficulties arose. As each suite of apartments had been finished, individual who had nothing whatever to do with the administration of the college had, upon one pretext or another, established themselves in them. The most embarrassing and difficult to deal with of all these interlopers was the Duc de Mazarin, the Cardinal’s heir, and one of the executors. This personage had installed himself between the chapel 401 and the library, and declined to leave. His claims had to be submitted to the Council and an order issued expelling all outsiders from the building before he was gotten rid of.
Finally, before the college could be opened it was necessary to have the formal consent of the King and the University. That of the King was easy to get; it had, in fact, been already given; but with the University it was another matter. In October, 1674, the executors presented their request, humbly asking that the new college be admitted to the bosom of the University. This was finally granted, but not until many of the explicit provisions of the founder had been done away with, and on condition that the theatre that had been established in the Rue Guénézaud by Molière’s troupe should be closed. Moreover, although formally organized under the name of the Collège Mazarin, it was popularly known until the Revolution as the Collège des Quatre Nations.
There now remained only one more matter to be settled before the courses could be opened. On September 6, 1684, Mazarin’s body, which had been at Vincennes since his death, was brought with much ceremony and deposited in the chapel — only the heart was claimed by the “Théatins,” whom he had first introduced into France. Four years more were allowed to elapse, and finally in October, 1688, the college was opened.
Meantime the King had been carrying into execution 402 a plan which his predecessors for many hundreds of years had had in mind. This was the foundation of some sort of asylum for old and disabled soldiers. Louis XI. got so far as to pension them. Henry III. established a home called “La Charité Chrètienne,” which was to be supported from the pensions of the lay monks. This institution, although added to by Henry IV., was abolished in 1597, and the inmates scattered about in the different monasteries. Louis XIII. began the Commandery of St. Louis, but the work was interrupted in 1635, to be taken up and successfully finished by Louis XIV.
The hôtel which was now founded on the outskirts of the Faubourg St. Germain, under the name of Les Invalides, was to receive as a part of its support a certain proportion of the revenues of such religious houses as were in the habit of receiving lay monks.
On the 3oth of November, 1670, the King laid the corner-stone, the architect being Libéral Bruant. Mansard (the younger), who succeeded him, carried out his plan, but added to it the second building called the “Dôme des Invalides,” finished only in 1735.
The north façade is in three stories, surmounted by a “Mansard” roof. The main entrance in the middle was then, as now, surmounted by a bas-relief of Louis XIV. mounted, flanked by statues of Mars and Minerva. Between this façade and the esplanade is a court, shut off by a grating of gilded iron-work, and laid out in flower-beds and grass. A vestibule 403 ornamented with columns leads to the Court of Honor, a great open space surrounded by a double arcade, on the further side of which is the entrance to the “église St. Louis” belonging to Bruant’s plan. “Conceived in the same spirit as the rest of the building, it has the same cold grandeur.” Communicating with it, but, as we have said, entirely independent of the original plan, is Mansard’s “église du Dôme,” the entrance to which from the south he made the principal portal of the building. Entering from the Place Vauban, we come first to a large and handsome courtyard, from which a flight of stairs leads to the church, in the form of a Greek cross, with Doric pillars in the lower part and Corinthian above.
The Dôme of the Invalides, so noticeable a feature in all views of Paris, is encircled by a range of forty composite columns, and richly ornamented with trophies in bas-relief, the whole gilded and surmounted by an open-work lantern. “The details and ornamentation of the Dôme attest only too clearly the decadence of taste, which became ever less and less pure towards the close of the reign,” says Martin in his Histoire de France; but he admits that its general aspect is “striking.”
One other feature of the Paris of Louis XIV. we must mention before closing this chapter, that is the changed aspect of the boulevards or ramparts with which the northern part of the city was protected in 404 1536 against possible attacks of the English then ravaging Picardy.
In 1668, when suburbs were rapidly growing up, especially beyond the northern quarters, and Vauban had surrounded France itself with a triple line of fortified places, these defences were deemed of no further use and converted into shady avenues, but little frequented, though, until the middle of the eighteenth century.
They may be traced on the right bank in the line of the present Boulevards Bourdon, Beaumarchais, Filles du Calvaire, Temple, St. Martin, St. Denis, Bonne Nouvelle, Poissonnière, Montmartre, des Italiens, Capucines, and de la Madeleine, and cease at their junction with the wall of Louis XIII., at the end of the present Boulevard Malesherbes. It is these that are meant when “the Boulevards” are spoken of. On the left bank, they started at a point just east of the Jardin des Plantes, and described a more irregular semicircle, to the Invalides. The line is now almost effaced.
Footnotes
* See page 281.
** See pages 61, 68, 110 and 114.