Old and New Paris Part 34

Most of the houses in this curious street are at least three centuries old. Wanderers in search of the quaint will pa.s.s from it to the Rue Grenier-sur-l'eau, which leads through the Rue des Barres to the very threshold of the Church of Saint-Gervais. The Rue Grenier-sur-l'eau is so narrow that it would scarcely admit of the pa.s.sage of a bath chair.

It is a lane of walls, without doors or windows, into which light scarcely penetrates.

The Island of Saint-Louis, between the ile Louviers, which precedes it above bridge, and the Island of the City, which follows it below, was nothing but pasture-land until the beginning of Louis XIII.'s reign.

It was composed at that time of two islets, a small one called the Isle of Cows, and a larger one known as the Isle of Notre Dame. In 1614 Christophe Marie, general constructor of the bridges of France, undertook to connect these two islets, to furnish them with streets and with a circ.u.mference of stone quays, and to join the whole to the right bank by a bridge leading to the Rue des Nonnains d'Hyeres.

In 1647 the work had been completed, and the island was covered with buildings. Its princ.i.p.al street crosses it lengthwise from east to west.

Rue Saint-Louis-en-l'ile it is called, and it contains two remarkable buildings, the Church of Saint-Louis and the Hotel Lambert. The Church of Saint-Louis was begun in 1664 by Louis Le Vau, continued by Gabriel Leduc, and completed in 1726 by Jacques Doucet, who constructed the cupola. The steeple, thirty metres high, is built of stone, and is in the form of an obelisk. The ornamental sculpture is the work of Jean Baptiste de Champaigne, nephew of the painter, Philippe de Champaigne.

The church contains fine paintings by Mignard, Coypel, Lemoine, and Eugene Delacroix.

At the beginning of the Rue Saint-Louis, towards the north, commanding a superb view of the Upper Seine, stands the Hotel Lambert, built by Le Vau, Louis XIV.'s princ.i.p.al architect. The first proprietor of the Hotel Lambert, Nicholas Lambert de Thorigny, spared nothing to make it a magnificent abode. The decoration of the interior was entrusted to Lesueur le Brun and other celebrated painters of the time. The treasures which the Hotel Lambert originally contained have in the course of its varied fortunes been dispersed. It pa.s.sed after the death of Lambert de Thorigny into the hands of M. de La Haye, farmer-general, and successively into those of the Marquis du Chatelet-Laumont, and of M.

Dupin, another farmer-general, brother of the celebrated Mme. d'epinay.

The internal decorations suffered much from these constant changes of ownership. At the death of M. de La Haye, the painting on the ceiling of one of the rooms, "Apollo listening to the prayer of Phaeton,"

by Lesueur, was removed from the Hotel Lambert to the Luxembourg Gallery, where it may still be seen. Most of the other paintings were transferred, at the time of the Revolution, to the Louvre.

Many distinguished persons have resided at the Hotel Lambert, including Voltaire when he was writing the "Henriade"; and it was here that M.

de Montalivet, in 1815, after the battle of Waterloo, had a celebrated interview with Napoleon. Later on the Hotel Lambert became a girls'

school; then a depot for military stores; until finally, towards 1840, it was offered for sale, and purchased by Prince Czartoryski, to whose family it still belongs.

The Quai d'Anjou, which looks towards the north, is rich in a.s.sociations of various kinds. The facade of Number 17 bears these words inscribed on a marble slab, "Hotel de Lauzun, 1657"; and beyond the princ.i.p.al door this other inscription: "Hotel de Pimodan." Lieut.-General Count de Pimodan was the first inhabitant of this hotel, which was built for him in 1657, and which he occupied until the time of his fall. It was the abode of the Marquis de La Vallee de Pimodan at the time of the Revolution. Under the reign of Louis Philippe a number of distinguished writers lived successively or simultaneously in the mansion: Roger de Beauvoir, who published a collection of tales called "The Hotel Pimodan"; Theophile Gautier, Charles Baudelaire, and others. It now gives shelter to a wonderful collection of books and objects of art brought together by Baron Pichon, one of the most eminent members of the Society of French Bibliophiles.

Quitting the Island of Saint-Louis to return to the quay and square of the Hotel de Ville, we reach the Avenue Victoria, which runs to the right of Boccador's facade, and which received this name in honour of Queen Victoria, who paid a visit to the Emperor and to the town of Paris in 1855, at the height of the Crimean War. The avenue in question leads to the Place du Chatelet, which is enclosed between two monumental facades, those of the Theatre Lyrique and of the Theatre du Chatelet.

The Place du Chatelet was formed in 1813 on the site of the Grand Chatelet; an ancient castle of Gallo-Roman origin, which defended at this point the entrance to the City. It had been entirely rebuilt in 1684; and in 1813 only a few towers of the original building remained.

The Chatelet was a court of justice with civil, criminal, and police tribunals. Beneath the buildings of the Grand Chatelet, and in the towers, were confined an enormous number of prisoners. Their dungeons were horrible. A Royal decree of the 23rd of August, 1780 (nine years, be it observed, before the Revolution) ordered the destruction of all subterranean prisons. The jurisdiction of the Chatelet having been abolished by the Revolution, its buildings remained unoccupied until 1802, when they were entirely destroyed.

Of the two theatres which shut in the Place du Chatelet, the one to which the ancient building gives its name is much the larger.

It accommodates 3,000 spectators, to whom some of the best-known spectacular pieces have been submitted, including _Michael Strogoff_, _Les Pilules du Diable_, etc.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PONT MARIE.]

The theatre on the other side of the Place du Chatelet, and which belongs to the town of Paris, has been occupied since the year 1887 by the Opera Comique, the establishment having been transferred to it soon after the disastrous fire which consumed the historic Salle Favart.

It was originally the Theatre Lyrique; directed by M. Carvalho, and a.s.sociated with the triumphs of Mme. Miolan Carvalho, and the earliest successes of Christine Nilsson. Burnt by the Communards in May, 1871, it was re-opened as a dramatic theatre under the t.i.tle of Theatre Lyrique-Historique, afterwards to become Theatre des Nations, Theatre Italien, Theatre de Paris, and finally in 1888 Opera Comique. The interior of the house is more remarkable for elegance than for comfort.

It holds 1,500 spectators. The Opera Comique, as here established, receives an annual subvention of 300,000 francs.

The Boulevard de Sebastopol, which starts from the north of the Place du Chatelet, was, as the name sufficiently denotes, constructed in 1855; opening a broadway through the compact ma.s.s of old houses enclosed between the Rue Saint-Denis and the Rue Saint-Martin. It caused the destruction of no interesting edifices, and its roadway, thirty metres wide, is lined solely with new and lofty houses five storeys high. Here traders, artisans, and even artists are to be found: engravers and workers in metal, lamp-manufacturers, workers in bronze, haberdashers, mercers, clock-makers, jewellers, druggists, opticians, confectioners, dyers, lace-makers, b.u.t.ton-makers, c.r.a.pe-makers, artificial flower makers, glovers, etc. This broad thoroughfare leads us to the end of the Boulevard Saint-Denis, pa.s.sing behind the chancel of the Church of Saint-Leu, whose front entrance belongs to the Rue Saint-Denis, and behind the square of the Conservatory of Arts and Trades, which belongs to the Rue Saint-Martin. The street of the Lombards (Rue des Lombards) so much enlarged as to be no longer recognisable, is still the headquarters of the drug trade, wholesale and retail. But it does not now, as in former days, possess a monopoly for confectionery and sweetmeats. Even the Faithful Shepherd (_Fidele Berger_), as one celebrated shop for the sale of bonbons was called, and which gave its t.i.tle to the comic opera by Adolphe Adam, has migrated to a newer and more fashionable locality.

The Rue de la Verrerie, just opposite, runs in a direct line to the Rue Saint-Antoine. It has preserved in a remarkable manner its physiognomy of two centuries ago; thanks to the architecture of its fine mansions, which has n.o.bly resisted the ravages of time. Who would ever imagine that this dark and narrow street, which is constantly blocked by the most ordinary traffic, was enlarged in 1671 and 1672 because it was the ordinary route along which Louis XIV., coming from the Castle of the Louvre to that of Vincennes, was in the habit of pa.s.sing, besides being the road by which foreign amba.s.sadors made their formal entry into Paris?

[Ill.u.s.tration: RUE ST.-LOUIS-EN-L'iLE.]

At the corner of the Rue de la Verrerie and the Rue Saint-Martin stands the eglise Saint-Merry, or Mery. The name, spelt both ways, is in either form a corruption of Saint-Mederic, a monk of the monastery of Saint-Martin d'Autun, who lived a strange life in a cell, and died in odour of sanct.i.ty on the 29th of August, 1700. The church was reconstructed as long ago as the tenth century, at the expense of Odo the Falconer, whose body, enclosed in a tomb of stone, was discovered in 1520. The legs were encased in boots of gilded leather. Odo the Falconer was one of the warriors who defended Paris in 886 against the attacks of the Normans. The actual edifice was begun in the reign of Francis I., between 1520 and 1530, and not finished until 1612, under the minority of Louis XIII. Constructed in the form of a Latin cross, the Church of Saint-Merry has two lateral entrances. But from the south side, that is to say, from the Rue de la Verrerie, only a gate of the princ.i.p.al entrance can be seen, together with the two turrets terminating in bell towers, along which "chimaeras dire" are crawling. Buried under the Church of Saint-Merry are Chapelain, author of "La Pucelle," and the Marquis de Pomponne, Minister of Louis XIV. To the north of Saint-Merry stood the cloister of the canons, separated from the church by the facade of the Rue du Cloitre, and by two narrow little streets bearing the expressive names of Brisemiche and Taillepain, on account of the daily distributions of bread of which they were the scene. At the back of the church the name of the Rue des Juges-Consuls recalls the fact that the first Tribunal of Commerce created by Charles IX. was installed there in a mansion which had belonged to President Baillet in 1570.

The Tribunal of Commerce was, in the seventeenth century, the centre of a group of money-changers and bankers, who so infested the Rue Saint-Martin and the Rue Quincampoix as to render them impa.s.sable.

The Rue Quincampoix is for ever a.s.sociated with the name of Law, a Scotch banker related to the Argyll family, and son of a goldsmith and banker who died at Venice in 1729.

Law (John Lauriston Law) was born at Edinburgh in 1671, and he is said at an early age to have studied a.s.siduously the doctrine of chances, which he applied to games of hazard. Whether in virtue of his arithmetical combinations or of that luck which during a long course of years never deserted him, he won large sums of money at the gambling-table, after which he turned his attention to gambling on a wider scale: finance, that is to say. He was still in his twenty-fifth year when, as the result of a love affair, he fought a duel, for which he was sentenced to death. His punishment was commuted to that of imprisonment for life; but he succeeded in escaping, left England, and for some time travelled through the different states of Europe, playing everywhere with success, and proposing everywhere, but without success, a new system of public credit, due to his inexhaustible imagination.

The system would, according to its inventor, multiply one hundredfold the resources of the State by putting into circulation a quant.i.ty of paper money, based upon the revenue from taxes and Government property of all kinds, coin, according to Law, being insufficient for the requirements of a large nation. The Regent of Orleans, captivated by this brilliant scheme, saw in it the means of saving France, at the time (1716) threatened by national bankruptcy. He, in the first place, granted to Law the privilege of establishing a general bank with a capital of 6,000,000 francs, divided into 12,000 shares of 500 francs each, with a discount of 25 per cent. to anyone purchasing a thousand shares. The shares were readily taken and the bank proved a great success.

Then, in connection with the bank, Law started successively the Mississippi Company, the Senegal Company, the China Company, the French East India Company, and companies for coining the State money and farming the State revenue. Having now got into his hands all the sources of public income, he made over his bank to the State, and was himself appointed Controller-General of Finance. Instead, however, of helping commerce, Law's creations merely stimulated the spirit of speculation; so that priests, n.o.bles, merchants, shopkeepers, workmen, all began to gamble in stocks and shares. Intoxicated by his success, Law issued an excessive number of shares: "watering" them, according to the financial expression of the present day. In due time, notwithstanding all kinds of expedients (such as forced currency for the new paper money) to keep them at par, the shares lost value in the market, and soon fell to such a point that their depreciation caused a general panic. There was no cla.s.s in which some, and, indeed, many of Law's shareholders were not to be found; and ere long the inventor of the new system of credit became the object of so much public indignation that he went in danger of his life. There was a riot in the Palais Royal, and Law's carriage was stopped by a band of infuriated persons in the public street. A man of great nerve and of commanding presence, Law looked from the carriage window and exclaimed in a haughty tone: "Back, you rabble!" (_Arriere canaille!_) on which his a.s.sailants retired. This method of appeasing the stormy waters was tried the next day with less success by Law's coachman. His master was not inside the carriage. The vehicle, however, had been recognised, and the coachman found his progress impeded by an angry mob. "Back, you rabble!" he cried, in imitation of his master; when the mob, unwilling to receive from the servant the defiance which they had listened to in all humility from the master, tore him from his box and put him to death.

Another carriage story of the same period, likewise a.s.sociated with finance, has a less tragic conclusion. A footman who had learnt, by listening to the conversation of his master at dinner-table, the art of speculating, had at last made a sufficiently large fortune to be able to buy himself a carriage. As soon as he had taken possession of it, he paid a visit to the Rue Quincampoix, a narrow street near the Rue Saint-Martin, where the bankers, brokers, and speculators interested in Law's various enterprises had their headquarters. After transacting a little business, the enriched flunkey entered a much-frequented cafe and refreshed himself. Some time afterwards, in a fit of absence due either to preoccupation or to the effect of alcoholic liquors, he left the cafe and, instead of getting into his carriage, got up behind it.

"You have made a mistake, sir," called out the coachman; "your place is inside." "I know it is," replied the proprietor of the vehicle, suddenly recovering his presence of mind; "I wanted to see whether there was room for a pair of lacqueys behind."

If footmen became aristocrats, n.o.blemen, in those subversive days, turned tradesmen.

The Regent made his money with the greatest ease, by simply fixing the official value of the shares he held at a figure which suited his book.

The members of the Court followed his lead. One of them, the Duke de la Force, did business on an extended scale. Nothing was too high or too low for him; and on one occasion, being unable to realise the value of his paper in any more profitable form, he took for it the contents of a grocer's shop. It was now necessary to sell the goods; on which the licensed grocers of the capital complained to the Lieutenant of Police that the Duke was entering into illegal compet.i.tion with them. The Lieutenant did his duty, and the Duke's tea and sugar were confiscated.

A footman named Languedoc, sent by his master to the Rue Quincampoix to sell some shares at a fixed rate, disposed of them for 500,000 francs more than the appointed price, and pocketing the balance, started as a gentleman on his own account, engaged servants and changed his name to that of Monsieur de La Bastide, by which he was thenceforth known.

In times of feverish speculation the surest winners are the brokers--those happy intermediaries who, whether their clients buy or sell, sink or swim, steadily take their commission. A famous intermediary of the Rue Quincampoix was a certain hunchback, who used to let out his hump as a desk for buyers, sellers, and dealers of all kinds. In a comparatively short time he is said to have realised as much as 50,000 francs.

When the financial crash arrived, it was felt necessary to punish someone, and proceedings were taken against Law by the Parliament of Paris. Law, as completely ruined as the most unfortunate of his victims, escaped to Belgium, and thence to England, to die ultimately in Italy.

"When I took service in France," he wrote to the Duke of Orleans, "I had as much property as I needed. I was without debts and I had credit; I left the service without property of any kind. Those who placed confidence in me have been driven to bankruptcy, and I have not the means of paying them."

At the time of his great failure, and for a long time afterwards, if not to the present day, Law was looked upon as a mere swindler; whereas he was nothing worse than a sanguine, over-confident, perhaps even reckless speculator. It has been seen that by his speculations he impoverished himself as well as others.

"The machine he had invented," says one of his critics, M. Gautier, "was ingenious; but in a country like France, without industrial resources, it could not find sufficient motive power. Law thought he could remove this difficulty by joining to his mechanism an artificial motive power.

He was wrong. The banks can no more found credit than credit can produce capital. They can turn to the best account a value that exists. But to create value is beyond their power."

According to another French economist, M. Leva.s.seur, "Law acted with the precipitation and violence of a man who, penetrated with the truth of his own ideas, marches straight towards his goal without caring whether the generality of persons understand him or not, and who becomes irritated when natural obstacles present themselves which he had not foreseen."

Law himself, while a.s.serting his own moral integrity, admitted that he had made mistakes. "I do not maintain," he said, "that I was right on every point. I acknowledge that I committed errors, and that if I had to begin again I should act differently. I should advance more slowly but more surely, and should not expose the State and my own person to the dangers necessarily resulting from a general panic." He persisted, however, in a.s.serting that, though his mode of action had been faulty, he nevertheless possessed the true secret of national wealth. "Do not forget," he wrote from his place of exile, "that the introduction of credit has done more for commercial transactions between the countries of Europe than the discovery of India; that it is for the Sovereign to give credit, not to receive it, and that the people of every country have such absolute need of it that they must return to it in spite of themselves, however much they may mistrust the principle."

[Ill.u.s.tration: PONT AU CHANGE, PLACE DU CHaTELET, AND BOULEVARD DE SEBASTOPOL.]

"We must render to this man," says M. Leva.s.seur, "the justice he merits.

He was not, as has sometimes been said, an adventurer who had come to France to profit by the weakness of the Regent. If he was wanting in that political prudence by which nations should be guided, and if he was wrong in some of his theories, he had at least fixed principles, and he occupied his whole life, not in making his fortune, but in ensuring the triumph of his ideas.... France allowed him to die in poverty. Yet if the recollection of the misery caused by the ruin of his system was somewhat too recent to give place to grat.i.tude, France ought nevertheless to have felt grateful to him for the generous ideas he had put forth. He laboured to extend the commerce of the country, to re-establish the navy, to found colonies. He suppressed onerous privileges. He endeavoured to do away with venality in the magistracy; to create a less tyrannical and more simple administration of the tax system. Finally he established a bank, which, could it have survived, would have helped powerfully to develop commerce and would have augmented considerably the wealth of the country."

It is not generally known that, besides introducing a new system of credit, Law was the inventor of pictorial advertis.e.m.e.nts. Specimens, however, have been preserved of the pictures issued by him in connection with the "flotation" of his Mississippi scheme, one of which represents the Indians on the banks of the river, dancing with joy at the approach of the French, who had come to civilise them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PALMIER FOUNTAIN, PLACE DU CHaTELET.]

CHAPTER XXVII.

CENTRAL PARIS (_continued_).

Rue de Venise--Rachel--St. Nicholas-in-the-Fields--The _Conservatoire des Artes et Metiers_--The _Gaite_--Rue des Archives--The Mont de Piete--The National Printing Office--The Hotel Lamoignon.

The Rue Quincampoix and the Rue Saint-Martin are connected by a narrow lane or alley scarcely ten feet wide, called Rue de Venise, which has a sinister renown in connection with the speculative mania of Law's time. Here it was, in the month of April, that a rich banker was enticed, under pretext of a sale of shares, and a.s.sa.s.sinated by Laurent de Mille and Count Horn, that same Count Horn whose servant, pa.s.sing himself off as master, played so infamous a trick upon poor Angelica Kaufmann, ancestress of Pauline in the drama of _The Lady of Lyons_. A little higher up in the Rue de Venise, and, leading likewise to the Rue Quincampoix, is the Pa.s.sage Moliere, which owes its name to the Theatre Moliere, opened on the 4th of June, 1791, with a representation of the _Misanthrope_. In 1793 it was re-baptised Theatre des Sans-Culottes.

Its first director under its new name was Boursault-Malesherbes, comedian, member of the Convention, and farmer of public games. Closed and re-opened a score of times, this house became in the early years of Louis Philippe's reign a theatre for dramatic instruction, where Mlle.

Rachel received her first lessons from Saint-Aulaire.

Universally recognised as one of the greatest of French actresses, Rachel, of Jewish race, was born on the 28th of February, 1821, at Munf, a Swiss village in the Canton of Argovia. Her father and mother were, however, both French; the former, Jacques Felix, being a native of Metz, the latter, Esther Hayn, of Guers, in the department of the Lower Rhine.

In the year 1831, Rachel, under her true name of Elisa, was a street singer at Lyons, where Choron, director of an important musical academy, chanced to hear her. He was so struck by the beauty of her voice that he called upon Elisa's parents, and induced them to settle in Paris, where he promised to take charge of their little daughter's musical education. He suggested that she should adopt in lieu of "Elisa" the more impressive name of Rachel. But before her studies had progressed very far she lost her voice; and Choron placed her in a dramatic cla.s.s directed by Saint-Aulaire. This professor, a retired comedian who understood the art of acting better than he had ever practised it, had taken the Salle Moliere just spoken of; and here during the years 1834, 1835, and 1836 Rachel was made to play a great variety of parts, including nearly every leading character in the plays of Corneille, Racine, and Moliere. The charges for admission to the Salle Moliere were moderate, but the house was always full when Rachel had been announced to play, and the tickets on these occasions were sold at a premium.