The Stones of Paris in History and Letters Volume Ii Part 10

There, on the northeastern corner of the two streets, stands a most ancient building well worth our regard. On the angle, reaching from just above its ground floor to the cornice, is hung a five-sided _tourelle_ of singular beauty. Its heavy supporting bracket is deeply and handsomely corbelled out, and at each angle is a slim colonette, delicately carved. The division line between its two stories is defined by a fine moulding. In the first story is cut a small ogival window, under a prettily crocketed head and a flat finial. This window is iron grated, and its grim visage is softened by a flowering plant set within. The panels of the lower story are plain, and those above are decorated with a lace-like pattern, graceful and elegant, whose lines and curves carry one's eye to the cornice. The plain facade of the house in Rue Vieille-du-Temple has been degraded by modern windows, while that in the other street remains most impressive, with its gabled end. All in all, no such delightful specimen of fifteenth-century Gothic as this Barbette turret can be found in our Marais.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Tourelle of the Hotel Barbette.]

Yet turret and structure are not, as is often stated, any portion of the original Hotel Barbette. That was built, at the end of the thirteenth century, by etienne Barbette, a man of wealth and importance, the Provost of Paris under Philippe "_le Bel_," and his Master of the Mint. The vast enclosure of his grandiose _hotel_ covered all the ground, from the old wall northward to the line of the present Rues de la Perle and du Parc-Royal; and eastwardly from this Rue Vieille-du-Temple to the gardens of Saint-Catherine du Val-des-ecoliers, near where now runs Rue Sevigne. This ample domain sufficed for the _menus plaisirs_ of this lucky man, and was merely his _pet.i.t sejour_. Under that blameless guise it served as the abode, a little more than a century later, when rebuilt after the mob had wrecked it, of Isabeau de Baviere, official wife of mad Charles VI.

Leaving him to the neglect of servants and to the companionship of Odette, the Queen escaped boredom here, by her dinners and suppers, b.a.l.l.s and fetes; here she invented, or first introduced, the masquerades that were soon the rage of Polite Society. She amused herself with other games, too; such as statecraft, in partnership with her husband's younger brother, Louis d'Orleans. It was from the Barbette that she mismanaged the kingdom, ground down the people with intolerable taxes, pushed the marriage of her daughter Catherine with Henry V. of England, plotted the shameful Treaty of Troyes, which made France an appanage of the English crown, and gave Paris to English troops.

After her husband's death, cast aside by Burgundy and England, she found a drearier refuge in the Hotel Saint-Paul than that to which she had condemned him there. In its corners she hid while Joan the Maid was undoing the evil work done by this shameless woman, and was bringing back to Paris the son hated by this shameless mother. All through those years she wept and moaned, witnesses have reported; left alone, as she was, with the memories of her l.u.s.ts and her treasons, with the wreckage of the animal beauty, for which, and for no other quality, she had been selected as the royal consort. Seven days after she learned of the signing of the Treaty of Arras she died, "_et son corps fut tant meprise_," says Brantome, that it was thrown into a boat at the water-gate of Saint-Paul, and, after an unseemly service in Notre-Dame, was sent by night down the Seine to Saint-Denis, "_ainsi ni plus ni moins qu'une simple demoiselle!_"

Partly destroyed by fire and partly rebuilt, we find the Hotel Barbette, after another hundred years and more, in the hands of the Comte de Breze, Seneschal of Normandy. Aged, ugly, crippled, as we see him in Hugo's verse, he is pleasantly remembered for the lovely widow he left for Henri II., and for his lovely tomb left, for our joy, in the cathedral of Rouen. When his widow, Diane de Saint-Vallier, became Diane de Poictiers, d.u.c.h.esse de Valentinois--an elderly siren of thirty-seven, who was yet "_fort aymee et servie d'un des grands rois et valeureux du monde_"--she wore always her widow's white and black, and kept to the last that whiteness of skin and purity of complexion that came, she claimed, from her only cosmetic, soap and water. Her coldness of heart had much to do with it, to our thinking. Brantome saw her when she had come to sixty-two, and was struck by her freshness, "_sans se farder_," as of thirty. He adds, with his ever-green susceptibility: "_C'est dommage que la terre couvre ce beau corps._" This property had gone, on her husband's death, in 1561, to his and her two daughters; who profited by its vast extent and by the example set by Francois I. in similar jobs, to open streets through it, and divide it into parcels for selling. Those streets were named Barbette and Trois-Pavilions, the latter now renamed Elzevir. And if any remnant exists of the second Hotel Barbette of Diane de Poictiers, it is this corner house and its lovely turret.

By way of this corner, the body of Louis d'Orleans was carried to the Church of the Blancs-Manteaux, in the street of that name just behind us. It lay till morning in the nave, and about the bier gathered royalty and n.o.bility, all through the long November night. The church is gone, and so, too, is his chapel in the Church of the Celestins; and the monument, erected there by Louis XII. to his murdered grandfather and his martyred grandmother, has been placed in the Cathedral of Saint-Denis. The site of the Church of the Blancs-Manteaux is covered by the great central establishment of the Mont de Piete; its grounds are entirely built over; the street that took the name of the monastery, once a perilous _coupe-gorge_, has grown to be, not respectable, but characterless. We must be content with the phantoms of Saint Louis's white-mantled monks, strolling in their cloisters; later, grown fat and scampish, haunting the low _cabarets_ of this mal-famed street, and rehearsing, within their own precincts, those frenzied mysteries of the mediaeval stage, that led to the disbandment and the driving-out of the debauched order.

A step to the south from this street, along Rue Vieille-du-Temple, brings us to the ma.s.sive entrance-doors of No. 47. Their outer surfaces are richly carved with masks and with figures; on their inner side is an excellent bas-relief representing Romulus and Remus found by the shepherd, when the wolf is giving them suck. About the court, diminutive and dainty, the walls of the small _hotel_ are adorned with tasteful sculptures, and laden with dials, two of the sun and two of the moon. These anomalous adornments came here through the caprice of a Director of the Royal Observatory, who once occupied the house and who wreaked his scientific humor in this odd fashion. This is the Hotel de Hollande, a rebuilt remnant of the large mediaeval mansion of Marechal de Rieux. The street just in front of his _hotel_, some authorities insist, was the scene of the a.s.sa.s.sination of the Duc d'Orleans. Reconstructed early in the seventeenth century, the carvings, sculptures, and decorations of this elegant little _hotel_ are excellent examples of late Renaissance. Unluckily, the bas-reliefs and paintings of the interior may no longer be seen. Beyond this outer court is a smaller court, containing an attractive structure of a later date.

This Hotel de Hollande has borne that name since, in the reign of Louis XIV., it was the seat of the emba.s.sy representing Holland at his court. This being officially Dutch soil, at that time, we may see Racine coming through this entrance-doorway, in full wig and court costume; coming to present his son for introductions at The Hague, where the young man is to be a member of the French Emba.s.sy. We have seen the letters sent to him there by his thrifty father. There is another bit of history for us here. It was in this house that the firm "Roderigue Hortalez et Compagnie" started in business in 1776, with a capital of 3,000,000 francs. The firm was composed of Caron de Beaumarchais, with the governments of France and Spain for his silent partners; the former putting in 2,000,000 francs, and the latter the other million. The business of this house--and it did a lively business while it lasted--was to supply, secretly and unknown to the English officials in Paris, arms and equipments to the American colonies.

Anne de Montmorenci, the great constable of France, in alliance, against the Huguenots, with the Guises, his near neighbors in the Marais, outfought Conde and Coligny at Saint-Denis in 1567, and died, of the wounds he got in that battle, "in his own _hotel_ in Rue Saint-Avoie." So says the chronicle, and it tells us further that his was the grandest mansion in the town, with most extensive grounds; far surpa.s.sing in size and magnificence the Hotels Lamoignon and Carnavalet. It was sufficiently s.p.a.cious for the large-minded John Law, who established his bank in the building two centuries later.

When the crash came, and he sought more modest quarters, the State took the building for its _bureaux_. Now, no stone of the structure can be found, the street from which it had entrance--Saint-Avoie--is merged in that portion of Rue du Temple which crosses Rue Rambuteau, and this broad thoroughfare sweeps over the site of Montmorenci's palace and his gardens.

Turning from Rue Rambuteau into Rue du Temple, we are face to face, at No. 71, with a monumental gateway, richly carved, giving entrance to an ample court. The stately walls surrounding this court have suffered much from time, and more from man. The old facade of this wing on our left is hidden behind a paltry new frontage for shops, and on the roof of the central body before us a contemptible top story has been put.

The face of the original lofty attic, above the cornice, carried pilasters in continuation of those below, and these have been brutally mutilated by a line of low windows just over the cornice. For all that, there is a majesty in the stately arcades of these lower stories, and in the unspoiled lower walls, up which climb graceful Corinthian pilasters from ground to cornice. They are similar to those of the Hotel Lamoignon, built before this Hotel de Saint-Aignan was transformed from a former structure by de Muet, who doubtless admired, perhaps unconsciously imitated, the best features of the earlier architecture. He has put, in this almost intact right wing, just such a stone staircase, of easy grade and no hand-rail, as that we have seen in the residence built for Diane de France.

There is hardly any history to detain us here, and the great names that once resounded in this court make only far-away echoes now.

Claude de Mesme, Comte d'Avaux, a diplomat of the seventeenth century, built this _hotel_. At his death, it came to the Duc de Saint-Aignan, a royal Purveyor at the head of Louis XIV.'s Council of Finance. He was a relative of Madame de Scudery, wife of the Georges whom we have met in his sister's _salon_. Through his wife's influence with Saint-Aignan, Georges was presented to the King, and succeeded in obtaining a pension--useful to supplement such of his sister's earnings as came in his way. His merits, for which the royal bounty was granted, seem to have been of so momentous a literary character as to be p.r.o.nounced equal to those of Corneille!

When Olivier de Clisson--Constable of France after the death of his comrade-in-arms, the mighty Duguesclin--brought back Charles VI.

victorious to Paris, after crushing the revolt in Ghent under Philip van Artavelde, he found the Marais du Temple fast being reclaimed and built upon. At one corner of the Templars' former wood-yard, on a street to be named du Chaume, now merged in the southern end of Rue des Archives, opposite the end of Rue de Braque, was the fortress-home of his wife, Marguerite de Rohan, within the family enclosure. Here de Clisson made his head-quarters, giving his name to the _hotel_. Its entrance, an ogival portal sunk beneath two impressive round turrets, built of different sizes through some vagary, still remains; a most impressive relic, imbedded in more recent walls.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Gateway of the Hotel de Clisson.]

It was de Clisson, who, quite without his consent, gave the King one of the several shocks which culminated in his madness. King and Constable had supped together in the royal apartment of the Hotel Saint-Paul, and the Constable went on his way home. Lighted by the main facts of the affair, we may easily track him. After crossing Rue Saint-Antoine and pa.s.sing through one of the narrow lanes to Rue Neuve-Sainte-Catherine--now the eastern end of Rue des Francs-Bourgeois --he should have kept along this street to this new home of his. Perhaps the old soldier was not quite sure of his way, so soon after supper and the plentiful _pet.i.t vin de l'hotel Saint-Paul_, for he found himself beyond his corner, up in Rue Sainte-Catherine, now Rue Sevigne; and there, in front of a baker's shop opposite the spot where now is the Carnavalet, he was set upon by a band of men led by Pierre de Craon, a crony of Louis d'Orleans. They left the tough old warrior in the baker's doorway, bleeding from many wounds, but not quite killed. The King was summoned, came hastily in scanty clothing, and it was long before he recovered from his affright. When he had rallied, he started out to punish the a.s.sailant of his favorite captain, and it was on his way to Brittany, with whose duke de Craon had taken refuge, that the King received the final blow to his reason.

The history of the Hotel de Clisson would weary us, were it told in detail. We may jump to the year 1553, when it came to Anne d'Est, wife of Francois de Lorraine, Duc de Guise. He and his family were beginning to feel and to show their growing power, and he found these walls not wide enough for his swelling consequence. He bought the Hotels de Laval and de la Roche-Guyon, whose grounds adjoined his own; so adding to his estate, while others, following the example of Francois I., were cutting up and selling their Paris lands. Soon the Hotel de Guise was made up of several mansions, rebuilt and run together, within one enclosure, bounded by Rues de Paradis (now the western end of Rue des Francs-Bourgeois), du Chaume (now des Archives), des Quatre-Fils, and Vieille-du-Temple. The heirs of the last Guise, who died in 1671, sold this property at the end of the seventeenth century, and it came into the grasping hands of Madame de Soubise; bought with the savings of the French peasants, squeezed from them by Louis XIV.'s farmers of taxes, and by him poured into the lap of this lady, one of the many ladies so turning an honest penny. Her complaisant husband, Francois de Rohan, Prince de Soubise, began to tear down much of the old work, and to replace it by new work, in 1706. For thirty years he kept the most skilful artists and artisans of that day employed on the place within and without; and he left the Hotel de Soubise much as we find it now. To him we owe this striking _cour d'honneur_, square with curved ends, and framed in a colonnade of coupled columns, that leads a covered gallery from the grand entrance around to the portal of the main building. This is his facade of three stories, with pediment, its columns both composite and Corinthian. For general effect this court has no parallel in Paris.

A light elegant staircase, its ceiling delicately painted, leads to the first floor, whose rooms retain some of their mouldings, their wood-carvings, their decorated doorways and ceilings. Gone, however, are the tapestries, "the most beautiful in the world and most esteemed in Christendom, after those of the Vatican," Sauval a.s.sures us.

Vast and magnificent as was this palace, it did not suffice for the son of this prince, the Cardinal Armand Gaston de Rohan, Bishop of Strasburg, who, says Sauval, "was, in his prosperity, very insolent and blinded." On the site of the demolished Hotel de la Roche-Guyon he built for himself the Palais Cardinal, now commonly known as the Hotel de Strasbourg. The library, great and precious, which he there collected, together with his _hotel_ and his blind insolence, came to his grand-nephew, the Cardinal de Rohan of the Diamond Necklace, the last cardinal of a family of cardinals.

At his death, in 1803, desertion and emptiness came to the Hotel de Strasbourg, as they had already come to the Hotel de Soubise. The huge size of the buildings rendered them unfit for private residences. At length they were taken for the State by the Emperor, at the urging of Daunou, Director of the Archives of France. By the decree of March 6, 1808, those archives took for their own the Hotel de Soubise, and the Hotel de Strasbourg was given to the Imprimerie Imperiale. No after-revolution nor any change of rulers has troubled them. As their contents grew, new structures have been added, over the gardens and on the street behind, all done in good taste, all suggesting the uses for which they are meant. The Imprimerie, entered from Rue Vieille-du-Temple, through a court containing a statue of Gutenberg, does the work for the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, for the Ministers and for the Inst.i.tute. Its _Bulletin des Lois_, issued to all the Communes of France, carries to completion the mission meant for it when it was begun by Louis XIII., Hugo a.s.serts.

The archives of France must be studied and may not be described. This amazing collection of ma.n.u.scripts, charters, diplomas, letters, and autographs begins with the earliest day of writing and of records in France, and comes down through all the centuries. It is a spot for unhurried and unhindered browsing during long summer days.

Just in this region is to be seen, better than anywhere, an aspect of the Marais not yet seen in our historic strolling. It is the Marais of to-day and of every day, the work-a-day Marais, whose heart is here in this street of the Temple and the old street of the Temple. In them, and in the streets that cross them, are numerous mansions of a bygone time, with little to say to us in architecture, nothing at all to say to us in history or letters. Side by side with them are tall buildings and huge blocks of modern construction; new and old held and possessed by factories, warehouses, show-rooms; their upper portions given over to strange handicrafts, strangely met together. The making of syphon-tops is next door on the same floor to the wiring of feathers, as Daudet discovered. These narrow streets between the buildings, and these walled-in courts within them, are hushed all through the working-hours, save for the ceaseless m.u.f.fled rumble of the machinery, and the unbroken low murmur of the human toilers, both intent on their tasks.

Suddenly at noon, these streets are all astir with an industrial, unarmed mob, and the whole quarter is given over to an insurrection, peaceful and unoffending. These workers are making their way to restaurant or _rotisserie_ or _cabaret_; some of them saunter along, taking their breakfast "_sur le pouce_." The men, in stained blouses, are alert, earnest, and self-respecting; the girls, direct of gaze, frank of manner, shrill of voice, wear enwrapping ap.r.o.ns, that fall from neck to ankle, and their hair, the glory of the French working-woman who goes hatless, is dressed with an artless art that would not dishonor a drawing-room. We can carry away with us, from these last scenes, no more captivating memory than this of the most modern woman of our Marais.