The Churches of Paris Part 10

Eustache, that being his parish church at the time he was living in the Palais-Royal with his mother. Louis' last wife was also a parishioner of S. Eustache before her marriage with Scarron. As Frances d'Aubigne she seems to have been as much of a _devote_ as in her later days, for she arose at midnight, and attended matins at two of the clock. At that time she was in receipt of alms from a charitable lady of the parish, and her extraordinary career had scarcely commenced.

Funeral orations abounded at S. Eustache. In 1666 Anne of Austria was eulogised by a celebrated preacher, pere Senault, in no mild terms:--

Souffrez que je vous dise que si elle a vaincu la douleur et la mort, si elle a procure la paix a l'Europe, si elle a heureus.e.m.e.nt gouverne l'Etat pendant sa regence, si elle a obtenu des enfants du Ciel, ce n'a ete que parce qu'elle se confiait en Dieu et qu'elle l'a oblige de faire cent miracles en sa faveur parce qu'elle esperait en sa bonte, _spera in eo et ipse faciet_.

Ten years later a greater preacher, the eloquent Flechier, was called upon to sing the praises of Turenne, all the world following in the train of the king to hear him:

Quelle matiere fut jamais plus disposee a recevoir tous les ornements d'une grave et solide eloquence, que la vie et la mort de tres-haut et tres-puissant Prince Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, vicomte de Turenne, marechal general des camps et armees du roi et colonel general de la cavalerie legere? Ou brillent avec plus d'eclat les effets glorieux de la vertu militaire: conduite d'armees, sieges de places, prises de villes, pa.s.sages de rivieres, attaques hardies, retraites honorables, campements bien ordonnes, combats soutenus, batailles gagnees, ennemis vaincus par la force, dissipes par l'adresse, la.s.ses et consumes par une sage patience; ou peut-on trouver tant et de si puissants exemples que dans les actions d'un homme sage, modeste, liberal, desinteresse, devoue au service du prince et de la patrie, grand dans l'adversite par son courage, dans la prosperite par sa modestie, dans les difficultes par sa prudence, dans les perils par sa valeur, dans la religion par sa piete.

Yet another celebrated orator, Ma.s.sillon, was often heard at S.

Eustache, and in 1704, preaching upon the small number of the elect, so terrified were his hearers that they all rose as one man, when he p.r.o.nounced the words of the Supreme Judge. A lesser man, who rose to be a Cardinal, perhaps more by intrigues than anything else, was Guillaume Dubois. He was born at Brives-la-Gaillarde in 1657, and coming to Paris, he entered, while still quite young, the service of the _cure_ of S.

Eustache. Thence he obtained engagements as tutor to the great personages of the neighbourhood; entering the house of the Duc de Chartres, he managed to obtain the abbey of Saint-Just, in the diocese of Beauvais. A grand monument by Coustou was erected to his memory in the church of S. Honore, with an epitaph composed by Couture, which seems to be a slight satire upon the worldly-minded who love the rich things of this nether world. After giving the t.i.tles of the defunct, the lines go on: "_Quid autem hi t.i.tulis nisi arcus coloratus et fumus ad modic.u.m parens Viator, stabiliora, solidioraque bona mortuo apprecare, etc., etc. Mais que sont ces dignites? nuages brillants, fumee qui s'evapore. Pa.s.sant, demande a Dieu pour ce mort des biens plus stables et plus solides._"

S. Eustache is still famous for its processions, and few churches are so fitted for grand ceremonial; but what are the functions of to-day compared with those of the 18th century? Here is an extract from the archives giving an outline of the procession upon the Fete Dieu, 20th June, 1716, during the minority of Louis XV.:--

Several lacqueys bearing torches.

Footmen of M. le duc de Charot with lights at the top of their weapons.

Sixteen footmen of M. le Comte de Toulouse.

Six pages of my lord count.

The preceptor of the pages of M. the duc d'Orleans, the Regent, in long ca.s.sock and surplice; their tutor bearing a taper; twelve pages of His Royal Highness, and two sub-tutors.

The banner of the confraternity of the Holy Sacrament.

The cross of the clergy of S. Eustache.

An officer bearing a cushion for His Royal Highness.

The _Suisses_ armed, carrying halbards upon their shoulders and torches in their hands, the officers at their head accompanied by drums and fifes.

The dais of the Holy Sacrament, borne by high personages.

The _cure_ under the dais.

Monseigneur le duc d'Orleans carrying a taper, preceded by several officers of his house, and two chaplains in surplices.

An officer bearing a bouquet of His Royal Highness.

Forty of the body-guard, the councillor of Parliament, and the churchwardens.

A coach belonging to His Royal Highness, followed by eight guards on horseback.

The archers of the town bringing up the rear.

The watchmen of Paris arranged in a line from the church door to the Hotel de Soissons, on both sides of the Rue Coquilliere, with flags and officers at their head; drums to be beaten when His Royal Highness arrives at the church in his coach, and on his return.

In 1736 the _reposoir_[70] in the Palais-Royal was constructed from the design of Servandoni, the architect of S. Sulpice; and its importance attracted mult.i.tudes of curiosity-hunters from all parts of the town.

In 1729 Jean-Francois-Robert Secousse succeeded his uncle, and was the author of a pamphlet which he gave away to his parishioners ent.i.tled: _Lettre d'un Cure a N---- au sujet des Spectacles._ His successor, Jean-Jacques Poupart, was for some time confessor to Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette. When the storm arose, he took the oath to the Const.i.tution; but, finding the lengths to which it carried him, he retracted, went into hiding, and administered to his flock in secret.

During the early years of the Revolution, no church suffered more than S. Eustache. Situated in the midst of a populous district, it became the scene of untold horrors. But it was also the resting place for Mirabeau's body on its way to the Pantheon, on the 4th April, 1791; and had nothing worse than the funeral oration by Cerutti, p.r.o.nounced from the _banc-d'uvre_,[71] taken place, the sacrilege would have been but small. Trouble was looked for in the following May, when the hairdressers' a.s.sistants caused a service to be said for the great orator; but instead of the church being invaded by 10,000 persons, as was expected, a poor 600 were all that put in an appearance, and these were well conducted. Not so the Women's Club which was held in the building, if Lamartine's _Histoire des Girondins_[72] is to be trusted:

La societe revolutionnaire siegeait a Saint-Eustache; elle etait composee de femmes perdues, aventurieres de leur s.e.xe, recrutees dans le vice, ou dans les reduits de la misere, ou dans les cabanons de la demence. Le scandale de leurs seances, le tumulte de leurs motions, la bizarrerie de leur eloquence, l'audace de leurs pet.i.tions importuna le Comite de Salut Public, qui ferma le club.

On peut juger par la ce qu'il devait en etre de la pauvre eglise.

Pres de la siegeait aussi le fameux club de la rue Mauconseil.

Another club for women, founded by an actress named Lacombe, was dissolved after a speech of Robespierre's, in which we find that "Cette reunion de vraies sans-culottes ne saurait durer plus long-temps, parce qu'elle prete au ridicule et aux propos malins."

In 1793 the Feast of Reason was celebrated with as much profanity and indecency here as at Notre-Dame, as witness Mercier's account, told in the forcible language of Carlyle:

The corresponding festival in the church of S. Eustache offered the spectacle of a great tavern. The interior of the choir represented a landscape decorated with cottages and boskets of trees. Round the choir stood tables overloaded with bottles, with sausages, pork-puddings, pasties, and other meats. The guests flowed in and out through all doors; whosoever presented himself took part of the good things; children of eight, girls as well as boys, put hand to plate, in sign of Liberty; they drank also of the bottles, and their prompt intoxication created laughter. Reason sat in azure mantle aloft, in a serene manner; cannoneers, pipe in mouth, serving her as acolytes. And out of doors (continues the exaggerative man) were mad mult.i.tudes dancing round the bonfire of chapel-bal.u.s.trades, of priests' and canons' stalls; and the dancers--I exaggerate nothing--the dancers nigh bare of breeches, neck and breast naked, stockings down, went whirling and spinning, like those Dust-vortexes, forerunners of Tempest and Destruction.[73]

S. Eustache was re-opened for divine service sooner than many of the other churches, M. Poupart coming out of his hiding in June, 1795; but he had to share his church for some time with the philanthropists and the munic.i.p.al councillors, who held their meetings there upon certain days. And the church was, moreover, but four walls and a roof; nearly all the contents had vanished. The altars, the bronze statues, the pulpit, the pictures, the tombs, the slabs and epitaphs, all but the _banc-d'uvre_, had gone to the museum of the Pet.i.ts-Augustins; happily, for otherwise they would have gone into the fire.

In 1804, Pius VII., dragged to Paris by Napoleon to perform the coronation ceremony, was invited to visit S. Eustache and bless a statue of the Blessed Virgin; which he did with "_une bonte paternelle_." The occasion naturally called forth all the ceremonial of which the church was capable: _Suisses_ (beadles), vergers, _MM. les maires_, and _MM.

les marguilliers_, magistrates, _juges de paix_, clergy, M. le cure Bossic, and his eminence the cardinal archbishop. His Holiness was received at the church door by the archbishop, M. de Belloy, and divers other bishops and dignitaries of church and state; who had to submit to hearing a Latin oration by the _cure_. The music was brilliantly executed by a large choir, and the ceremonial of an imposing character; peculiarly touching was the moment when the archbishop, an old man of ninety-six, who had to be supported by two prelates, mounted the steps of the altar, and presented the linen cloth to his Holiness for wiping his hands. After ma.s.s a reception took place in one of the chapels, and a number of the faithful had the honour of "kissing the papal slipper,"

says the account of the ceremony signed by a number of the dignitaries present.

Among the celebrities buried in the church or the burial-ground hard by are the following: Bernard de Girard, Seigneur du Haillan, historian, who died in 1610; Marie Jars de Gournay, the adopted daughter of Montaigne, and the editress of his essays; Vincent Voiture, poet and wit, who died in 1650; the Academician Francois de la Motte-le-Vayer; the poet Isaac Benserade; another Academician Furetiere; the graceful music-maker, Rameau; the painter, Lafosse; a superintendent of finance, Claude de Bullion (a curiously appropriate name); Phelippeau, duke of la Vrilliere; the chancellor d'Amenonville; a peer and marshal, Francois d'Aubusson de la Feuillade, who worshipped his king, the fourteenth Louis, and elevated a wondrous monument to his glory, the prancing steed and man in the Place des Victoires; and a medicine man of the same king a member, too, of the Academy, Martin Cureau de la Chambre, aged seventy-five when he died in 1669. The physician is said to have been the consulter-general of the king, and they carried on a secret correspondence, in which the former thought that the sovereign would "_court grand risque de faire a l'avenir de mauvais choix de ministres_," if he survived Cureau. The last curate buried in the church was Poupart, in 1796.

What is now the market of S. Joseph was formerly the burial-ground dedicated to that Saint. It belonged to the parish of S. Eustache, and in 1630 Chancellor Seguier built a chapel therein at his own expense.

Here Moliere and La Fontaine were buried, but the monuments were carried off to the museum of the Pet.i.ts-Augustins, where they remained until 1818, when they were re-erected at Pere-la-Chaise. Moliere was also born in the parish, at a house, since pulled down, which occupied the site of the corner of the rue St. Honore and the rue du Pont Neuf, formerly de la Tonnellerie.

The following epitaphs used to be in the church, and are interesting; the two first for their quaintness; the last as a record of an architect of S. Eustache, if not the original builder:

BARTHeLeMI TREMBLET, SCULPTEUR DU ROY, DeCeDe A L'AGE

DE 61 ANS, EN 1629.

Louvre me donna l'etre et Paris la fortune.

J'eus l'honneur d'etre au roy, St. Eustache a mes os; Pa.s.sant, au nom de Dieu, si je ne t'importune, Durant ce mien sommeil, pries pour mon repos.

Le monde n'a este a _Francoise Gallois_ que pa.s.sage a l'eternite; Elle y a demeure comme toujours Preste d'en sortir, Les XXIII annees De son age, n'ont estees qu'innocence, Les quarte de son mariage, que paix Et concorde, les vertus furent ses Exercices, la piete son contentement, La crainte de Dieu la conduite de Sa vie qu'elle finit le XXVIIe Aoust MDCXVI. Si chrestiennement, Que _Richard Pet.i.t_, son mary, Conser secret, du roy, M. et C. de Fr. ne console l'affliction de son Absence que par la souvenance De sa mort.

Cy-devant git le corps D'honorable homme _Charles David_, vivant sujet du Roy Es-uvres de maconnerie, doyen des jures et bourgeois De Paris, architecte et conducteur du batiment de l'Eglise De ceans, lequel apres avoir vescu avec _Anne Lemercier_ Sa femme l'es.p.a.ce de 53 ans, il deceda le quatrieme jour De decembre 1650 age de 98 ans.

S. Eustache has suffered much of late years by fire and the doings of wicked men. In 1844 fire attacked the organ, and smoke and water destroyed a great portion of the church. L'abbe Duguerry, who was shot in 1871 by the Communists, was _cure_ at the time of the conflagration; and in order to rebuild the organ, he inst.i.tuted a lottery, and appealed for aid to the whole country. Ten years later the new organ was built, and inaugurated under a new _cure_, Gaudereau, Duguerry having been appointed to the Madeleine. It was an exquisite instrument, of delicious tone and with a large number of stops. But alas! during the Commune it suffered again, several bombs having exploded in the church. Gla.s.s was smashed, organ pipes pierced, and a great deal of damage done to the roof; and it was several years before the church was restored to its pristine beauty. In 1879 the organ was finished, having been reconstructed and very much enlarged by J. Merklin, under a committee of organists and musicians; other instruments may be larger, but few are so beautiful in tone. Several of the Paris organs are fine, and the French school of organists is of all the least conventional. One is not bored by Rinck and his fellows; one does not hear choruses by Handel intended to be sung, or solos by the same master upon flute and clarionet stops with a poor tum-tum accompaniment, or sonatas written for the pianoforte or violin. That, to some of us, peculiarly irritating form of composition, the fugue, is rarely heard (except at the Madeleine), and Batiste, I think, must have held them in holy horror as did Berlioz, and, was it Chopin? Many a time for years I heard Batiste "touch" the S.

Eustache organ, and surely no more divine sounds (if organ notes can be divine?) have ever been drawn from an instrument than when he played some soft, tender, pathetic melody upon the _voix celeste_ or _vox humana_ with accompaniment upon the far-off stops and tremolo; it was, in effect, what one might conceive a chorus of Angels accompanying some beautiful human voice. I know all the princ.i.p.al Paris organs, and most of them have been played upon by distinguished musicians; I also heard Lefebure-Wely frequently in former days; but no one seemed to equal or to excel Batiste in taste. His soft pa.s.sages were perfection; and when he made the instrument thunder forth in all its _fortissimo_, it was grand in the extreme. Such an admiration had I for the musician, that I looked upon him as an invisible master, and my enthusiasm led me one day to waylay him as he came down the stairs. Query, if one admires an artist or an author, a poet or a musician, is it wise to see him in the flesh? Some painters and pianists, some violinists or singers, have been appropriately built, so to speak. Nature, sometimes una.s.sisted, more often aided and pruned, has turned out bodies which are fitted to become the cases of distinguished minds. But everyone knows instances of actors and actresses who are nought minus their war-paint; of painters who might be grocers, and of poets as un-ideal in appearance as any publican or b.u.t.terman. On the other hand, there are exquisites behind the counters, ethereal-looking butchers, and poetic vendors of cooked ham and beef. It is as if nature had made a number of bodies and minds, and shuffling them like a pack of cards, had tossed them together without any thought or heeding. Such seemed to have been the case with Batiste, for he was the exact model of the French Mossoo so dear to _Punch_--the Mossoo one so rarely sees out of that sportive periodical. Nevertheless, the soul within that commonplace body was able to peal forth in most sublime sounds which touched the hearts of all who heard them. Batiste's was essentially emotional playing of the highest order. Never shall I forget the thrill which went through the crowd when he played Chopin's "Funeral March" at the funeral of the dear old _cure_, l'abbe Simon--the very type of the courteous, fine-gentleman priests of other days, without their vices. When, years ago, the abbe Simon and Duguerry his friend, sat side by side, their finely chiselled features and longish hair, their elegant manner, and courteous bearing, reminded one of the portraits of Flechier, Ma.s.sillon and Bossuet.

It may interest musicians to know the composition of the S. Eustache organ, and as many of the stops are French, I may as well give them in their original names. It has four manuals, and 72 stops; 4356 pipes and 20 pedals.

Grand Orgue 54 notes, 16 stops.

Positif 54 " 14 "