Royal Palaces and Parks of France Part 9

On the arrival of the news the empress had called in General Trochu, the Military Governor of Paris, and asked him if he could guarantee order.

He replied in the affirmative. Some hours later a group of deputies came to the empress and counselled her to sign, not an abdication, but a momentary renunciation of her powers as regent. Eugenie refused point-blank.

The throng, pa.s.sing by the left bank, had arrived at the Chamber of Deputies, and the formal sitting became a revolutionary one. At three o'clock the imperial dynasty was proclaimed as at an end, and a provisionary government installed. Henri Rochefort, the present editor of the "_Intransingeant_," was delivered from the prison of Sainte Pelagie and made a member of the government.

By this time the mob which had invaded the Place de la Concorde became menacing. The cry, "Aux Tuileries," first launched by the street gamins, soon became the slogan of the crowd. To say it was to do it; the great iron gates were closed, but in default of a protecting force of arms it was an easy matter to scale them.

Behind the curtained windows of the palace the empress witnessed the a.s.sault and murmured to her ladies-in-waiting: "It is then finished."

She turned towards the Prince de Metternich and the Chevalier Nigra, and, in the voice of a suppliant, demanded: "_Que me consillez vous?_"

"You must leave at once, Madame; in a moment the palace will be invaded."

The empress became resigned and accompanied by Madame Le Breton, Metternich and Nigra started for the Pavilion de Flore, pa.s.sing through the Galerie de Musee and the Galerie d'Apollon, finally leaving by the gate of the Louvre, which is opposite Saint Germain l'Auxerrois.

The empress was at last out of the palace, but not yet out of danger. A band of manifestants, making for the Hotel de Ville and shouting; "Vive la Republique," recognized the empress, but she mounted an empty fiacre with Madame Le Breton, and giving the driver the first address that entered her mind thus escaped further indignities, and perhaps danger.

Finally she found a refuge with Doctor Evans, the American dentist living in the Avenue Malakoff, from whose house she left for England on the following day.

This is the Frenchman's point of view of one of the picturesque incidents of history. It disposes of the legend that the empress left the Tuileries in the carriage of Doctor Evans, but this cannot be helped, with due regard for the consensus of French opinion. Doctor Evans was a family friend, besides being the dentist who cared for the imperial teeth, and it is not going beyond the truth to state that the fortunate American acquired not a little of his vogue and wealth by his a.s.sociation with Napoleon III and his family.

By this time the populace had invaded the palace and cursed with indignities unmentionable the marble halls, and the furnishings in general, and pillaged such portable property as pleased the individual fancies of the spoilsmen.

After the signing of the Peace Treaty by the Bordeaux a.s.sembly, which now represented the governmental head, and Thiers had become president, that worthy would do away with the cannon of which the National Guard still held possession in their garrison on the b.u.t.te of Montmartre. The orders which he sent forth came to be the signal for another outbreak on the part of the populace. On March 18 the Commune was proclaimed and Citoyen Dardelle, an old African hunter, was appointed military governor of the Tuileries. Whatever this individual's military qualifications may have been, he delivered himself to the enjoyment of a high and dissolute life in his luxurious apartments in the palace; a fact which was speedily made note of by the still restless populace.

The Citoyen Rousselle, a member of the Communal Government, had the idea of organizing a series of popular concerts in the gardens of the Tuileries for the profit of the wounded in the late friction.

Hung on the walls, at the entrance of each apartment was a placard which read: "Fellow men, the gold with which these walls were built was earned by your sweat." "To-day you are coming to your own." "Remain faithful to your trust and see to it that the tyrants enter never more."

During one of these public concerts a poem of Hegesippe Moreau was read which terminated as follows, and set the populace aflame.

"Et moi j'applaudirai; ma jeuneusse engourdie Se rechauffera a ce grand incendie."

He referred to the burning of the former abode of emperors and kings as a sort of sacrifice to the common good. The public had held itself in hand very well up to this moment, but applauded the verses vociferously.

The last of the concerts was held on May 21, the same day as the Army of Versailles entered Paris. Night came, and with it the raging, red flames springing skywards from the roof of the Tuileries.

In a few moments the flames had enveloped the entire building. All the forces that it was possible to gather had been ordered upon the scene, but they were unable to save the old palace, and by one o'clock in the morning it was but a ma.s.s of smoking ruins. The Communards had done their work well. Before leaving its precincts they had sprinkled coal oil over every square metre of carpet, window-hangings and tapestries, and the slow-match was not long in pa.s.sing the fire to its inflammable timber. The library of the Louvre was destroyed, but the museums, galleries and their famous collections fortunately escaped.

For a dozen years the lamentable ruins of the old palace of the Tuileries reared their singed walls, a witness and a reproach to the tempestuosity of a people. Finally, in 1882, Monsieur Achille Picard undertook their removal for thirty-three thousand francs, and within a year not a vestige, not an unturned stone remained in its original place as a witness to this chapter of Paris history.

Two porticos of the Pavillon de l'Horloge, originally forming a part of the Tuileries, have been re-erected on the terrace of the Orangerie, facing the Place de la Concorde.

There remain but two survivors of the late imperial sway in France, the Empress Eugenie who lives in England, and Emile Olivier, "_l'homme au coeur leger_," who lives at Saint Tropez in the Midi.

A Paris journalist a year or more ago, while sitting among a little coterie of literary and artistic folk at Lavenue's famous terrace-cafe, recounted the following incident clothed in most discreet language, and since it bears upon the Tuileries and its last occupants it is repeated here.

"Last night beneath the glamour of a September moon I saw a black shadow silently creep out from beneath the gloom of the arcades of the Rue de Rivoli just below the Hotel Continental. It crossed the pavement and pa.s.sed within the railings of the gardens opposite, one of the gates to which, by chance or prearranged design, was still open. It moved slowly here and there upon the gravelled walks and seated itself upon a solitary bench as if it were meditating upon the splendid though sad hours that had pa.s.sed. Was it a wraith; was it Eugenie, late empress of the French?"

To have remembered such a dream of fancy for forty long years one must have been endowed with superhuman courage, or an inexplicable conscience.

The Rue des Pyramides, which has been prolonged to the banks of the Seine, will give those of the present generation who have never seen the Tuileries an exact idea of its location. If it still existed the facade of the palace would front upon this street.

The most moving history of the detailed horrors of the Commune, particularly with reference to the part played by the Tuileries therein, is to be found in Maxime Ducamp's "_Les Derniers Convulsions de Paris_."

One relic of the Tuileries left unharmed found a purchaser in a Roumanian prince, at a public sale held as late as 1889. This was the ornately beautiful iron gate which separated the Cour du Carrousel from the Cour des Tuileries. Roumanian by birth, French at heart and Parisian by adoption, this wealthy amateur, for a trifle over eight thousand francs, became the owner of a royal souvenir which must have cost five hundred times that sum.

The eastern front of the Tuileries opened into a courtyard formed under the direction of the first Napoleon. It was separated from the Place du Carrousel by a handsome iron railing with gilt spear-heads extending the whole range of the palace. From this court there were three entrances into the Place du Carrousel, the central gate corresponding with the central pavilion of the palace, the other two having their piers surmounted by colossal figures of victory, peace, history and France. A gateway under each of the lateral galleries also communicated on the north with the Rue de Rivoli, and on the south with the Quai du Louvre.

The Place du Carrousel was named in honour of a tournament held upon the spot by Louis XIV in 1662. It communicated on the north with the Rue Richelieu and the Rue de l'Ech.e.l.le, and on the south with the Pont Royal and the Pont du Carrousel. To-day in the square stands the triumphal arch erected by Napoleon in 1806, after the designs of Percier and Fontaine.

The newly laid-out and furbished-up gardens make the Place du Carrousel even more attractive than it was when set about with flagged areas, gravelled walks and paved road ways, and, while the monumental and architectural accessories excel the horticultural embellishments in quant.i.ty, the general effect is incomparably finer at present than anything known before.

Plans for rebuilding the Place du Carrousel provide for a division into three distinct parts, three grand _pelouses_, _a boulingrins a la Francais_, or lawns of a circ.u.mscribed area, according to the best traditions of Le Notre, a border of flowers and a few decoratively disposed clumps of flowering shrubs, the whole combined in such a way that the perspective and vista down the Champs Elysees will in no manner suffer. The architect-landscapist, M. Redon, who has been charged with the work, has drawn his inspiration from a series of unexecuted designs of Le Notre which have recently been brought to light from the innermost depths of the national archives. It was a safe way of avoiding an anachronism, and this time a government architect has chosen well his plan of execution.

In later years the question of the reembellishment of the Garden of the Tuileries has ever been before the public, but little has actually been changed save the remaking of certain garden plots, the planting of a few shrubs or the placing of a few statues.

The Garden of the Tuileries has a superficial area of 232,632 square metres. It is the most popular of all open s.p.a.ces in the capital to the Parisian who would take his walks abroad not too far from the centre of things. The chief curiosity of the garden is the celebrated chestnut tree which burst into flower on the day of Napoleon's arrival from Elba--March 20. The precocious tree has ever been revered by the Bonapartists since, though the tree has never performed the trick the second time.

Statues innumerable are scattered here and there through the garden and give a certain sense of liveliness to the area. Some are by famous names, others by those less renowned, but as a whole they make little impression on one, chiefly, perhaps, because one does not come to the Garden of the Tuileries to see statues.

To the left and right are the terraces, first laid out by the celebrated Le Notre. Like the hanging gardens of Babylon, they overlook a lower level of _parterres_, gravelled walks and ornamental waters. Along the Rue de Rivoli is the Terra.s.se de l'Orangerie, and on the side of the river is the Terra.s.se de la Marine.

According to the original plans of Le Notre the garden was set down as five hundred _toises_ in length, and one hundred and sixty-eight _toises_ in width, the latter dimension corresponding to that of the facade of the palace.

Along the shady avenues of this admirable city garden of to-day an enterprising _concessionaire_ has won a fortune by renting out rush-bottomed chairs to nursemaids, retired old gentlemen with red ribbons in their b.u.t.tonholes, and trippers from across the channel. It is a perfectly legitimate enterprise and a profitable one it would seem, and has been in operation considerably more than half a century.

It was from the Gardens of the Tuileries in 1784 that took place Blanchard's celebrated ascension in Montgolfier's balloon and brought forth the encomium from the British Royal Society that the body was not in the least surprised that a Frenchman should have solved the problem of "volatability." The French monarch, more practical, was so mightily pleased with the success of the experiment that he bestowed upon the author the sum of four hundred thousand francs from his treasury to be used for the perfection of the art.

CHAPTER VIII

THE PALAIS CARDINAL AND THE PALAIS ROYAL

With the Louvre and the Tuileries the Palais Royal shares the popular interest of the traveller among all the monuments of Paris. No other edifice evokes more vivid souvenirs of its historic past than this hybrid palace of Richelieu. One dreams even to-day, of its sumptuousness, its legends, its amusing and extravagant incidents which cast a halo of romantic interest over so many ill.u.s.trious personages. So thoroughly Parisian is the Palais Royal in all things that it has been called "the Capital of Paris."

Not far from the walled and turreted stronghold of the old Louvre rose the private palaces, only a little less royal, of the Rambouillets, the Mercoeurs and other n.o.bles of the courtly train. They lived, too, in almost regal state until Armand du Plessis de Richelieu came to humble their pride, by fair means or foul, by buying up or destroying their sumptuous dwellings, levelling off a vast area of land, and, in 1629, commencing work on that imposing pile which was first known as the Palais Cardinal, later the Palais d'Orleans, then as the Palais de la Revolution and finally as the Palais Royal.

It was near, yet far enough away from the royal residence of the Louvre not to be overshadowed by it. The edifice enclosed a great square of ground laid out with symmetrically planted trees and adorned with fountains and statues.

From the great central square four smaller courts opened out to each of the princ.i.p.al points of the compa.s.s; there were also, besides the living rooms, a chapel, two theatres, ballrooms, boudoirs and picture galleries, all of a luxury never before dreamed of but by kings.

The main entrance was in the Rue Saint Honore, and over its portal were the graven arms of Richelieu, surmounted by the cardinal's hat and the inscription: "Palais Cardinal." Like his English compeer, Wolsey, Richelieu's ardour for building knew no restraint. He added block upon block of buildings and yard upon yard to garden walls until all was a veritable labyrinth. Finally the usually subservient Louis saw the condition of things; he liked it not that his minister should dwell in marble halls more gorgeous than his own. As a matter of policy the Cardinal ceased to build more and at his death, as if to atone, willed the entire property to his king.

As the Palais Cardinal, the edifice was subjected to many impertinent railleries from the public which, as a whole, was ever antagonistic to the "_Homme Rouge_." They did not admit the right of an apostolic prelate of the church to lodge himself so luxuriously when the very precepts of his religion recommended modesty and humility. Richelieu's contemporaries did not hesitate to admire wonderingly all this luxury of life and its accessories, and Corneille, in the "_Menteur_" (1642), makes one of the princ.i.p.al characters say:

"Non, l'univers ne peut rien voir d'egal Aux superbes dehors du Palais Cardinal; Toute une ville entiere avec pompe batie, Semble d'un vieux fosse par miracle sortie, Et nous fais presumer a ses superbes toits Que tous ses habitants sont des dieux ou des rois."

The ground plan of the Palais Cardinal was something unique among city palaces. In the beginning ground values were not what they are to-day in Paris. There were acres upon acres of greensward set about and cut up with gravelled walks, great alleyed rows of trees, groves without number and galleries and colonnades innumerable. Without roared the traffic of a great city, a less noisy traffic than that of to-day, perhaps, but still a contrasting maelstrom of bustle and furor as compared with the tranquillity within.