Old and New Paris Part 33

[Ill.u.s.tration: RUE DE RIVOLI.]

CHAPTER XXVI.

CENTRAL PARIS.

The Hotel de Ville--Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie--Rue Saint-Antoine--The Reformation.

The Hotel de Ville, new by its architecture, is old by its history, and to some extent by the buildings still surrounding it; though the ancient streets of the neighbourhood have during the last forty years been gradually disappearing. Close to the Church of St. Gervais and St. Protais stood the street significantly named Rue du Martroi--of martyrdom, or death-punishment; also the Rue de la Mortellerie, where the workers in "mortar"--stone-masons that is to say--were in the habit of meeting when out of work. With this may be connected the name of Place de Greve, formerly borne by what is now called the Place de l'Hotel de Ville. The word _greve_ signifies in the present day a strike. Originally it meant simply the condition of being without employment; and it was on the Place de Greve that artisans who found, like Oth.e.l.lo, their occupation gone, a.s.sembled in search of an employer. Afterwards this became a place of execution; and here it was that Ravaillac, Cartouche, Damiens, and such ill.u.s.trious victims as the Constable of Saint-Pol under Louis XI., and Lally-Tollendal under Louis XVI., were decapitated, quartered alive, and otherwise tortured.

"_La journee sera rude_," said Damiens, when, having already undergone various tortures, he learned that he was to be torn to pieces by four horses; and "rough" indeed have been the days pa.s.sed by the unhappy wretches brought to punishment on the Place de Greve.

After the Revolution of 1830, when the Hotel de Ville became all at once a place of high political importance, the open s.p.a.ce in front of it was looked upon as unworthy any longer to serve as a slaughter-ground, and the Place Saint-Jacques now became the head-quarters of the guillotine; which was afterwards to be transferred to the Place de la Roquette.

The region of Paris commanded by the Hotel de Ville forms a long irregular parallelogram, comprising, for the most part, the districts of Saint-Mery, Saint-Gervais and the a.r.s.enal, bounded on the south by the Seine, on the west by the Place du Chatelet and the Boulevard Sebastopol, on the east by the Saint-Martin Ca.n.a.l and the Boulevard Bourdon, on the north by the Rue de Rivoli and the Rue Saint-Antoine, rejoining the Boulevard Bourdon at the Place de la Bastille. To the construction of the Rue de Rivoli is due the happy change which has taken place in this populous region, formerly deprived of light and air, and so overcrowded that the inhabitants were always suffering from some serious epidemic. The streets of the neighbourhood must at that time have been good specimens of those so energetically condemned by Arthur Young in one of his descriptions of Paris.

"This great city," he wrote in the very year of the Revolution, "appears to be in many respects the most ineligible and inconvenient for the residence of a person of small fortune of any that I have seen; and vastly inferior to London. The streets are very narrow and many of them crowded, nine-tenths dirty, and all without foot-pavements. Walking, which in London is so pleasant and so clean that ladies do it every day, is here a toil and a fatigue to a man, and an impossibility to a well-dressed woman. The coaches are numerous, and, what is much worse, there is an infinity of one-horse cabriolets, which are driven by young men of fashion and their imitators, alike fools, with such rapidity as to be real nuisances and render the streets exceedingly dangerous without an incessant caution. I saw a poor child run over and probably killed, and have been myself many times blackened with the mud of the kennels. This beggarly practice of driving a one-horse b.o.o.by-hutch about the streets of a great capital flows either from poverty or wretched and despicable economy; nor is it possible to speak of it with too much severity. If young n.o.blemen at London were to drive their chaises in streets without footways as their brethren do at Paris, they would speedily and justly get very well threshed or rolled in the kennel.

This circ.u.mstance renders Paris an ineligible residence for persons, particularly families, that cannot afford to keep a coach; a convenience which is as dear as at London. The _fiacres_ (hackney coaches) are much worse than at that city; and chairs there are none, for they would be driven down in the streets. To this circ.u.mstance also it is owing that all persons of small or moderate fortune are forced to dress in black with black stockings: the dusky hue of this in company is not so disagreeable a circ.u.mstance as being too great a distinction; too clear a line drawn in company between a man that has a good fortune and another that has not. With the pride, arrogance, and ill-temper of English wealth, this could not be borne; but the prevailing good humour of the French eases all such untoward circ.u.mstances. Lodgings are not half as good as at London, yet considerably dearer. If you do not hire a whole suite of rooms at an hotel you must probably mount three, four, or five pair of stairs, and in general have nothing but a bed-chamber. After the horrid fatigue of the streets such an elevation is a delectable circ.u.mstance. You must search with trouble before you will be lodged in a private family, as gentlemen usually are in London; and pay a higher price. Servants' wages are about the same as at that city. It is to be regretted that Paris should have these disadvantages, for in other respects I take it to be a most eligible residence for such as prefer a great city. The society for a man of letters or one who has any scientific pursuit cannot be exceeded. The intercourse between such men and the great, which, if it is not upon an equal footing, ought never to exist at all, is respectable. Persons of the highest rank pay an attention to science and literature, and emulate the character they confer. I should pity the man who expected, without other advantages of a very different nature, to be well received in a brilliant circle at London because he was a Fellow of the Royal Society. But this would not be the case with a member of the Academy of Sciences at Paris; he is sure of a good reception everywhere. Perhaps this contrast depends, in a great measure, on the difference of the governments of the two countries. Politics are too much attended to in England to allow a due respect to be paid to anything else; and should the French establish a freer government, academicians will not be held in such estimation when rivalled in the public esteem by the orators who hold forth liberty and property in a free parliament."

Napoleon I. began the Rue de Rivoli, tracing it alongside the Tuileries Gardens and the Palais Royal to the Louvre as far as the Rue de Rohan.

Napoleon III. continued the great conception of his uncle and pushed on the Rue de Rivoli through the mean habitations and crowded streets in the neighbourhood of the Palais Royal, of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, and of the Halles as far as the upper part of the Rue Saint-Antoine.

The most celebrated, and certainly the most beautiful, monument in the street is the tower of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie; so named from its having been built close to the great butchers' market of Paris.

Constructed in 1153, the church, which at first was little more than a chapel, was rebuilt in 1380, but not completed with the princ.i.p.al porch and the tower until the reign of Francis I. The tower is now all that remains of the church, which in 1737, under the Revolution, was alienated by the Administration of Domains and soon afterwards pulled down. Having become private property, the tower pa.s.sed from hand to hand until 1836, when it was offered for sale, and purchased by the Munic.i.p.ality for 250,000 francs. This sum was not dear for a masterpiece of Gothic art in its last and most delicate period, when it was about to disappear in presence of the Graeco-Roman Renaissance. Begun under the reign of Louis XII. in 1508, the tower was finished fourteen years afterwards in 1522. It measures fifty-two metres in height from the stone foundations to the summit. The platform of the steeple (which is reached by a staircase of 291 steps) is surrounded by a bal.u.s.trade, which supports, at the north-west angle, a colossal statue of Saint Jacques. This statue replaces the ancient one which the Revolutionists of 1793 precipitated on to the pavement, though they respected the symbolical animals placed at the four corners of the bal.u.s.trade.

These have been carefully restored. From the height of the platform a magnificent view may be obtained.

"One sees," wrote Sanval under Louis XIV., "as one looks over the town the distribution and course of the streets like the veins in the human body. Unfortunately this incomparable view can no longer be obtained--not at least without much difficulty. The tower of Saint-Jacques has been put in the hands of an astronomical and meteorological society, which denies access to the public, though on rare occasions it admits a few favoured persons to its experiments, which take place at night."

It must here be mentioned that at the foot of the tower is a statue of Pascal, who continued from its top the observations he had begun from the summit of the Puy de Dome. The writer Nicholas Flamel, librarian to the University of Paris, and Pernelle, his wife, both buried in the vaults of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie, had been the benefactors of this church; and their memory is preserved in the name, Nicholas Flamel, given to the street which, beginning on the right of the tower, leads from the Rue de Rivoli to the Rue des Lombards.

Around the tower of Saint-Jacques is a large square, well planted with trees. Further on, towards the east, the Rue de Rivoli runs past the Hotel de Ville and the Napoleon Barracks. Of the Church of Saint-Gervais, one side of which looks towards the Rue de Rivoli, mention has already been made. Close to the point where the Rue de Rivoli and the Rue Saint-Antoine meet, is an offshoot from the Rue Saint-Antoine called Rue Francois Miron, after the independent provost of merchants under the reign of Henri IV. In this street stands the Hotel de Beauvais. From the windows of this mansion Anne of Austria, accompanied by the Queen of England, Cardinal Mazarin, Marshal Turenne, and other ill.u.s.trious personages, witnessed the procession headed by her son, Louis XIV., and her daughter-in-law, Marie Therese of Austria, when the newly married couple made their solemn entry into Paris through the Gate of Saint-Antoine, August 26, 1660.

Running from the Rue Saint-Antoine to the Rue Charlemagne is a narrow street scarcely twelve feet broad, with walls of extraordinary height.

Rue Percee it was originally named. For some years past it has been called Rue du Prevot, because at its south-east corner it joins the former mansion of the Provost of Paris, of which the princ.i.p.al entrance is in the Rue Charlemagne. The series of open courtyards known as the Pa.s.sage Charlemagne, in which all sorts of trades are carried on, lead to the very centre of one of the most interesting and least known monuments of old Paris. It is composed of two blocks of parallel buildings constructed in the style of the first years of the sixteenth century, when French architects were beginning to throw aside the fantasies of Gothic art to subject themselves to the straight lines of the Neo-Roman style. After pa.s.sing through various hands, and finally from Francois Montmorency, Governor of Paris, to Cardinal Charles de Bourbon--the structure was presented by the latter to the Jesuits, who attached to it a chapel dedicated to St. Louis and St. Paul. The Church of St. Louis and St. Paul possesses, among various works of modern art, the first picture known to have been painted by Eugene Delacroix: "Christ in the Garden of Olives." This work is dated 1816.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FAcADE OF THE CHURCH OF ST. GERVAIS AND ST. PROTAIS.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE APSIS, FROM THE RUE DES BARRES.]

The house given to the Jesuits was taken from them in 1767 on their expulsion from France, and it then became the general repository of all maps, plans, and other doc.u.ments relating to the French navy, and at the same time the Library of the Town of Paris. A pa.s.sage leading from the Rue Saint-Antoine to the Rue Saint-Paul separated formerly the Church or Chapel of Saint-eloi, where Charles VI. was baptised, from the cemetery of the same name, where the man in the iron mask, under the name of Marchiali, was buried. Here, too, Rabelais, Hardouin, and Mansard, the architect, were interred. Rabelais died on the 9th of April, 1553, in the Rue des Jardins, not very far from the mercers' house where Moliere went to live nearly a century later.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TOWER OF SAINT-JACQUES-LA-BOUCHERIE.]

The Rue Saint-Antoine was interrupted, until the Revolution of 1789, by the Bastille. This fortress was composed of eight towers, four looking towards the Town, that is to say towards the Rue Saint-Antoine, and four towards the country, that is to say the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.

Curiously enough it was no despot, but etienne Marcel, Provost of the Merchants, who built the original Bastille, destined afterwards to be enlarged (in 1370) by Hugues Aubriot, Provost of Paris.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HoTEL DE BEAUVAIS.]

It was from the Hotel de la Rochepot, in the Rue Saint-Antoine, that Henri II. was accustomed to view the burning at the stake of his Protestant victims. In this street, too, was one of the earliest of the Protestant places of worship established in France at the very beginning of the Reformation. Few persons are aware, though the fact has been pointed out by M. Athanase Coquerel the younger, that the Reformation of the sixteenth century, before breaking out in Germany and elsewhere, had already appeared in Paris. It had for cradle the left bank of the Seine separated at the time from the town and its suburbs, and divided into quarters subject to two special jurisdictions: the University and the vast territory of the Abbaye of Saint-Germain-des-Pres. Was it not natural, asks M. Coquerel, in spite of the jealous vigilance of the Sorbonne, that the schools of Paris in which Abailard had so boldly attacked scholasticism should be the first to wake up to the new spiritual life? When professor at the college of Cardinal Lemoine, Lefevre d'etaples published in 1512 his "Commentary on St. Paul," in whose epistles he pointed out, five years before Luther, the essential doctrines of the Reformation. This book was dedicated to the powerful abbe of Saint-Germain, Briconnet, under whose auspices was formed in Paris the first group of ardent propagators of the new ideas.

During forty-three years the Reformation spread gradually through the university, the court, and the town; always keeping for headquarters the Faubourg Saint-Germain, which gained the name of "little Geneva," and which is now the most Catholic quarter in Paris. The first Protestant put to death in France for his religious views was one of the pupils of Lefevre d'etaples, a student named Pauvent, born in the year 1524. The martyrdom of Pauvent was followed by that of many other Huguenots.

Calvin was then studying at Paris, but could not remain there. The rector of the university, Nicholas Cop, a secret promoter of the Reformation, had commissioned the young Calvin to write a discourse for the re-opening of the term, which, according to custom, was delivered on November 1, 1533, in the Church of the Mathurins, built on a portion of the site of the Emperor Julian's baths. The heresies contained in this discourse were denounced to the Parliament by several monks. The rector found it necessary to take flight to Bale, where he became a pastor. Calvin followed his example, and was obliged, it is said, to escape through one of the windows of his college.

The first place in Paris where the Reformation was publicly preached was the Louvre. Here Queen Margaret of Navarre, sister of Francis I., Briconnet's studious and learned friend, ordered her chaplain, Gerard Roussel, and other disciples of Lefevre d'etaples to preach in her presence; for which reason Lemaud, of the Order of Cordeliers, declared publicly in the pulpit that she deserved to be put into a sack and thrown into the Seine. The rage of the priests was shared by the people, and the cry of "Death to the heretics!" was frequently heard about the town. "To be thrown into the river," says a chronicler of the time, "it was only necessary to be called a Huguenot in the open street, to whatever religion one might belong." In all the public places of Paris, on the bridges, and in the cemeteries Protestants were constantly burned. In 1535 Francis I., followed by his three sons, the court, the Parliament, and the guilds of all the trade a.s.sociations, took part in a general procession, which halted at six of the public places, where six Protestants, suspended by iron chains, were burnt to death.

"L'estrapade" this form of punishment was called; and not many years ago the name was still borne by an open s.p.a.ce on the left bank of the Seine.

Henri II. imitated his father. One day he a.s.sisted, from the window of a house in the Rue Saint-Antoine, at the execution of a Protestant tailor who was burnt alive. But the eyes of the martyr, steadily fixed on his, so frightened him that though this was not the last heretic he sentenced to death, it was the last he saw die.

The Protestants of Paris had not at that time either churches or clergy, but they already had schools. "Hedge schools" they were called, from being held in the country. They would not have been permitted in the town.

The first Protestant place of worship established in Paris was at a house in the Pre-aux-Clercs. Protestant congregations were often surprised; and in 1557 a number of Protestants a.s.sembled for worship at a house in the Rue Saint-Jacques, opposite the building where the Lycee Louis le Grand is now located, were besieged by a number of priests attached to the College du Plessis. The populace took part in the attack; and after remaining indoors six hours, those who at last went out were stoned, and in several instances killed. The rest of the congregation, to the number of 135, were made prisoners, and many of them sentenced to death. Among those executed was the young and beautiful widow of a member of the Consistory, Mme. de Graveron, who, "seated on the tumbril, showed a rosy countenance of excellent beauty."

Her tongue had been cut out, which was often done in those days to prevent the exhortations which martyrs might address to the mob. At other times, as afterwards at the execution of Louis XVI., a constant rolling of drums was kept up. It was granted to Mme. de Graveron as a special favour that flames should be applied only to her feet and face, and that she should be strangled before her body was burnt.

The Protestant poet, Clement Marot, to whom Francis I. had given a house, called the House of the Bronze Horse (now Number 30, Rue de Conde and 27, Rue de Tournon), translated at this epoch some of the psalms into French verse; and his version had an extraordinary vogue even at the court. The students who, at the close of day, were accustomed to amuse themselves in the Pre-aux-Clercs opposite the Louvre, replaced their ordinary songs by the psalms of Clement Marot; and it became the fashion with the lords and ladies of the court to cross the Seine in order to hear the singing of the "clerks." Often they would themselves join in, and the Huguenot King of Navarre, Antoine de Bourbon, was frequently seen singing the psalms in the "meadow" at the head of a long procession of courtiers and students.

But persecution, which for a time had ceased, began anew: Marot was obliged to fly. In spite of the danger by which they were threatened, the deputies of the Protestant churches of France met at Paris in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and there, in 1559, held their first national Synod. Francis I., husband of Mary Stuart, allowed the cruel work of his father to be continued. Under his reign the ill.u.s.trious chancellor Du Bourg was burnt and hanged; as to which Voltaire declared that "this murder did more for Protestantism than all the eloquent works produced by its defenders." Cardinal de Lorraine made many other victims, surrounding on one occasion a Protestant place of a.s.sembly, and taking all he could find within. There were secret pa.s.sages, however, communicating with the buildings around, so that many persons effected their escape. The secret head-quarters of the Reformed Church in France were in the Rue des Marais-Saint-Germain, now called the Rue Visconti. Its ancient name, which need scarcely have been changed, was borne by it for more than three centuries; during which time it was inhabited, or frequently visited, by all the old Protestants of Paris: by the D'Aubignes and the Du Moulins; as later on by the Duke de la Rochefoucauld, Mme. de Sevigne, Racine and Voltaire, Mme. Clairon and Adrienne Lecouvreur.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHURCH OF ST. LOUIS AND ST. PAUL.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: RUE DE RIVOLI AND HoTEL DE VILLE.]

Meanwhile the Reformation was constantly gaining ground in Paris.

Coligny and his two brothers, one of whom was a cardinal, joined it openly; whereupon a monk, Jean de Han, preached against him, taking for his text, "Ite in castellum quod contra vos est," and translating it thus: "Fall upon Chatillon, who is against you." On becoming Regent, Catherine de Medicis, hesitating between the two religions, tried to bring together the Chatillons and those champions of Catholicism, the Guises. With a view to conciliation the conference of Poissy was held; and though no positive result was secured, the Reformed religion was allowed to be practised openly, though its places of worship were, for the most part, beyond the City walls.

From time to time, however, a Protestant "temple" was attacked and burnt; and once, when one of these onslaughts caused a riot, Gabaston, Chief of the Watch, was hanged for arresting indiscriminately the rioters of both religions. The ma.s.sacre of Va.s.sy (directed by Guise, who boasted that he would cut the edict of toleration in favour of the Protestants with the edge of his sword) and two civil wars were but the prelude to the terrible Ma.s.sacre of Saint Bartholomew.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RUE GRENIER-SUR-L'EAU.]

The extermination of the heretics had been recommended many times to Catherine de Medicis by Philip II., by the Duke of Alva, and by Pope Saint Pius V. (Letter 12 of Charles IX. and Papal Bull of August 1, 1568). The queen, after much hesitation, took a sudden resolution, when the Guises aggravated the situation by causing the a.s.sa.s.sination of Coligny. Catherine obtained, at the last moment, the consent of the king. But it was the brother and successor of Charles, it was Henri III.

who a.s.sumed the direction of the ma.s.sacre, and posted himself on the centre of the bridge of Notre Dame, in order to see what took place on both banks of the river. How the bell of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois gave the signal for the ma.s.sacre, and how Coligny, after escaping with some severe wounds from the first attack, was afterwards put to death, has already been told. In the midst of the general slaughter a few Huguenots of distinction remained safe. Charles IX. kept in his own room the eminent surgeon, Ambroise Pare, of whom he had need, and his old nurse, Philippe Richard, whom he loved. Nor did anyone venture to attack Renee, daughter of Louis XII., a zealous Protestant, who was fortunate enough to save a few of her young co-religionists by giving them shelter in her mansion on the left bank of the river. Two days after the ma.s.sacre thanksgivings were offered up by the clergy, who headed a procession in which all the Court, with the exception of Henri of Navarre, afterwards Henri IV. of France, took part. The King was congratulated from the pulpit by the Bishop of Asti on having "in one morning purged France of heresy." Little did the prelate foresee that the Church of Saint-Thomas of the Louvre in which he was preaching would, some two centuries later, become the recognised centre of this same heresy.

Conde now abjured at Saint-Germain-des-Pres, and Henri de Navarre at the Louvre; but the Reformed Church was far from being destroyed. Only a few months after the ma.s.sacre, Berenger de Portal left to this church (whose re-establishment he ardently desired) a sum sufficient for the maintenance of the pastors and the education of candidates for the ministry.

The Rue Saint-Antoine touches the Boulevard Bourdon, thus named in memory of Colonel Bourdon, of the 11th Dragoons, killed at Austerlitz.

The building which now dominates all this district is the a.r.s.enal, built by the Emperor in 1807 as a granary of reserve for provisioning Paris; at present occupied by manufacturers and workmen of various kinds.

The a.r.s.enal was erected on the site of the "little a.r.s.enal," built by Francis I. The new structure extends south to the Quai Morland, so styled in honour of the colonel of the Cha.s.seurs of the Guard killed at Austerlitz. Augmented and renovated by various architects, the a.r.s.enal contains a library of which the charming writer, Charles Nodier, was at one time the custodian. The collection was first formed by M. d'Argenson and the Marquis de Paulmy, Minister of State, who was the last Governor of the a.r.s.enal before the suppression of this military establishment by Louis XVI. in 1788, on the eve of the Revolution. To gratify his own private tastes as a bibliophile, M. de Paulmy had got together a library of about 100,000 volumes and 10,000 ma.n.u.scripts, which was increased by the addition of upwards of 26,000 works from the sale of the Duke de la Valliere's collection. To prevent the dispersion of the books after his death, M. de Paulmy sold the collection in 1785 to the Count of Artois for a certain number of annuities, which the Count omitted to pay. The library was, all the same, looked upon as government property, and confiscated as such in 1790. Enriched by the confiscation of other libraries in the neighbourhood, the Library of the a.r.s.enal was thrown open to the public by the Imperial Government, which at the same time undertook the payment of the annuities due to M. de Paulmy's heirs. It now comprises about 350,000 volumes, 6,500 ma.n.u.scripts, and a magnificent collection of prints. It contains, among other interesting doc.u.ments, the original papers composing the archives of the Bastille, published in part by M. Ravaisson. A clock of ebony and gilt by Louis le Roy, which adorns the entrance, is said to be worth upwards of 40,000 francs; and two of the side rooms are full of curious woodwork, and of interesting objects of all kinds.

In a room occupied at one time by the Duke de Sully are preserved the archives of the Saint-Simonians, including the sealed memoirs of Le Pere Enfantin, which are not to be published until thirty years after his death; Enfantin's colossal bust in the style of Michael Angelo's Moses, a portrait of Saint-Simon, and another of Mme. Therese, the divinity, or at least the Egeria, of the sect.

It was at the a.r.s.enal, when Charles Nodier was librarian, that Victor Hugo, in the midst of a great literary gathering, recited his first poems, soon afterwards to be given to the world under the t.i.tle of "Odes et Ballades."

A complete list of the writers who have occupied the post of librarian at the a.r.s.enal would include Ancelot, Paul Lacroix (better known as Le Bibliophile Jacob), edouard Thierry, Hippolyte Lucas, and the Viscount de Bornier, author of "La Fille de Roland," "Agamemnon," "Attila," and "Mahomet."

Among the interesting places in the neighbourhood of the a.r.s.enal must be mentioned the little covered market to which the name of Ave Maria has been given. It marks the site of the old tennis court of the Black Cross, where Moliere erected his second theatre after the failure of the first; and with so little success that he was imprisoned for debt contracted in the name of the company.

The Rue des Nonnains d'Hyeres, which joins the Rue Saint-Antoine, leads to the Pont Marie, by which the Seine is crossed to reach the Island of Saint-Louis. Parallel to this street is the Rue Geoffrey Lasnier, which is scarcely five-and-twenty feet wide, and which has nothing whatever attractive about it. Here, nevertheless, at No. 26, stands the hotel built by the Constable de Montmorency, and restored in the early part of the eighteenth century, when it was known as the Hotel de Chalons.