Dumas' Paris Part 21

"'Yes,' said Dantes; 'do you then know him?'

"'No,' replied Villefort; 'a faithful servant of the king does not know conspirators.'

"'It is a conspiracy, then?' asked Dantes, who, after believing himself free, now began to feel a tenfold alarm. 'I have already told you, however, sir, I was ignorant of the contents of the letter.'

"'Yes, but you knew the name of the person to whom it was addressed,' said Villefort.

"'I was forced to read the address to know to whom to give it.'

"'Have you shown this letter to any one?' asked Villefort, becoming still more pale.

"'To no one, on my honour.'

"'Everybody is ignorant that you are the bearer of a letter from the isle of Elba, and addressed to M. Noirtier?'

"'Everybody, except the person who gave it to me.'"

The Rue Coq-Heron is one of those whimsically named streets of Paris, which lend themselves to the art of the novelist.

The origin of the name of this tiny street, which runs tangently off from the Rue du Louvre, is curious and nave. A shopkeeper of the street, who raised fowls, saw, one day, coming out of its sh.e.l.l, a _pet.i.t coq_ with a neck and beak quite different, and much longer, than the others of the same brood. Everybody said it was a heron, and the neighbours crowded around to see the phenomenon; and so the street came to be baptized the Rue Coq-Heron.

In the Rue Chaussee d'Antin, at No. 7, the wily Baron Danglars had ensconced himself after his descent on Paris. It was here that Dantes caused to be left his first "_carte de visite_" upon his subsequent arrival.

Among the slighter works of Dumas, which are daily becoming more and more recognized--in English--as being masterpieces of their kind, is "Gabriel Lambert." It deals with the life of Paris of the thirties; much the same period as does "Captain Pamphile," "The Corsican Brothers," and "Pauline,"

and that in which Dumas himself was just entering into the literary life of Paris.

Like "Pauline" and "Captain Pamphile," too, the narrative, simple though it is,--at least it is not involved,--shifts its scenes the length and breadth of the continent of Europe, and shows a versatility in the construction of a latter-day romance which is quite the equal of that of the unapproachable mediaeval romances. It further resembles "The Corsican Brothers," in that it purveys a duel of the first quality--this time in the Allee de la Muette of the Bois de Boulogne, and that most of the Parisians in the story are domiciled in and about the Boulevard des Italiens, the Rue Taitbout, and the Rue du Helder; all of them localities very familiar to Dumas in real life. In spite of the similarity of the duel of Gabriel to that of De Franchi, there is no repet.i.tion of scene or incident detail.

The story deals frankly with the brutal and vulgar malefactor, in this case a counterfeiter of bank notes, one Gabriel, the son of a poor peasant of Normandy, who, it would appear, was fascinated by the ominous words of the inscription which French bank notes formerly bore.

LA LOI PUNIT DE MORT LE CONTREFACTEUR

Dumas occasionally took up a theme which, unpromising in itself, was yet alluring through its very lack of sympathy. "Gabriel Lambert" is a story of vulgar rascality unredeemed by any spark of courage, wit, or humanity.

There is much of truth in the characterization, and some sentiment, but little enough of romance of the gallant vagabond order.

Dumas never attempted a more difficult feat than the composition of an appealing story from this material.

Twenty years after the first appearance of "Gabriel Lambert," in 1844, M.

Amedee de Jallais brought Dumas a "scenario" taken from the romance.

Unsuitable and unsympathetic though the princ.i.p.al character was, Dumas found the "scenario" so deftly made that he resolved to turn the book into a drama. This was quickly done, and the rehearsals promised a success. On the evening of the first performance Dumas showed himself full of confidence in the play--confidence which amounted almost to certainty; for he said to a friend with whom he promenaded the corridors of the theatre while awaiting the rise of the curtain: "I am sure of my piece; to-night, I can defy the critics." Some of these gentlemen, unfortunately overhearing him, were provoked to hostility, and, finding unhappy phrases here and there in the piece, they laid hold of them without mercy. Only the comic part of the drama, a scene introduced by Dumas, in which a vagabond steals a clock in the presence of its owner with superb audacity, disarmed their opposition. But the verve of this comic part could not save the play, says Gabriel Ferry, in narrating this anecdote. The antipathy aroused by the princ.i.p.al character doomed it, and the career of the piece was short.

It remains, however,--in the book, at any rate,--a wonderful characterization, with its pictures of the blue Mediterranean at Toulon, the gay life of the Parisian boulevards, its miniature portrait of the great Vidocq, and the sinister account of the prison of Bicetre, which, since the abandonment of the Place de la Greve, had become the last resort of those condemned to death.

The tale is a short one, but it vibrates between the _rues_ and the boulevards, from the Hotel de Venise in the Rue des Vieux-Augustins (now the Rue Herold), where Gabriel, upon coming to Paris, first had his lodgings, to the purlieus of the fashionable world,--the old Italian Opera in the Rue Pelletier,--and No. 11 Rue Taitbout, where afterward Gabriel had ensconced himself in a luxurious apartment.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NoTRE DAME DE PARIS]

CHAPTER XI.

LA CITe

It is difficult to write of La Cite; it is indeed, impossible to write of it with fulness, unless one were to devote a large volume--or many large volumes--to it alone.

To the tourists it is mostly recalled as being the _berceau_ of Notre Dame or the morgue. The latter, fortunately, is an entirely modern inst.i.tution, and, though it existed in Dumas' own time, did not when the scenes of the D'Artagnan or Valois romances were laid.

Looking toward Notre Dame from the Pont du Carrousel, one feels a veritable thrill of emotion as one regards this city of kings and revolutions.

The very buildings on the Ile de la Cite mingle in a symphony of ashen memories. The statue of the great Henri IV., bowered in trees; the two old houses at the apex of the Place Dauphine, in one of which Madame Roland was born; the ma.s.sive Palais de Justice; the soaring Sainte Chapelle, which St. Louis built for the Crown of Thorns, and "to the glory of G.o.d and France," and the towers of the Conciergerie, whose floor is for ever stained with the tears of Marie Antoinette.

Romance and history have both set their seal upon the locality, and no one better than Dumas has told its story in romance.

Henri of Navarre being Protestant, the Church would not open its doors to him, and thus his marriage to the talented but wicked Margot, sister of Charles IX., took place on a platform erected before its doors.

In the opening chapter of "Marguerite de Valois," Dumas refers to it thus:

"The court was celebrating the marriage of Madame Marguerite de Valois, daughter of Henri II. and sister of King Charles IX., with Henri de Bourbon, King of Navarre; and that same morning the Cardinal de Bourbon had united the young couple with the usual ceremonial observed at the marriages of the royal daughters of France, on a stage erected at the entrance to Notre Dame. This marriage had astonished everybody, and occasioned much surmise to certain persons who saw clearer than others.

They could not comprehend the union of two parties who hated each other so thoroughly as did, at this moment, the Protestant party and the Catholic party; and they wondered how the young Prince de Conde could forgive the Duke d'Anjou, the king's father, for the death of his father, a.s.sa.s.sinated by Montesquieu at Jarnac. They asked how the young Duke de Guise could pardon Admiral de Coligny for the death of his father, a.s.sa.s.sinated at Orleans by Poltrot de Mere."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _La Cite_]

The Tour de Nesle is one of those bygones of the history of Paris, which as a name is familiar to many, but which, after all, is a very vague memory.

It perpetuates an event of bloodshed which is familiar enough, but there are no tangible remains to mark the former site of the tower, and only the name remains--now given to a short and unimportant _rue_.

The use of the t.i.tle "La Tour de Nesle," by Dumas, for a sort of second-hand article,--as he himself has said,--added little to his reputation as an author, or, rather, as a dramatist.

In reality, he did no more than rebuild a romantic drama, such as he alone knows how to build, out of the framework which had been unsuccessfully put together by another--Gaillardet. However, it gives one other historical t.i.tle to add to the already long list of his productions.

The history of the Conciergerie is most lurid, and, withal, most emphatic, with regard to the political history of France. For the most part, it is more a.s.sociated with political prisoners than with mere sordid crime, as, indeed, to a great extent were many of the prisons of France.

The summer tourist connects it with Marie Antoinette; visits the "Cachot de Marie Antoinette;" the great hall where the Girondists awaited their fate; and pa.s.ses on to the Palais des Beaux Arts, with never a thought as to the great political part that the old prison played in the monarchial history of France.

To know it more fully, one should read Nogaret's "Histoire des Prisons de Paris." There will be found anecdotes and memoirs, "_rares et precieux_"