The Stones of Paris in History and Letters Volume I Part 4

A vast and enthusiastic audience thronged, with joyous clatter, through narrow Rues Mazarine and Dauphine, coming from the river. The Cafe Procope, recently opened just opposite the theatre, was crowded after the performance, the drinkers of coffee not quite sure that they liked the new beverage. And so, at the top of their triumphs, we leave the players with whom we have vagabondized so long and so sympathetically.

Moliere, at the height of his career, had married Armande Bejart, he being forty years of age, she "aged twenty years or thereabout," in the words of the marriage contract, signed January 23, 1662. No one knows now, very few knew then, whether the bride was the sister or the daughter of Madeleine Bejart, Moliere's friend and comrade for many years, who doubled her role of versatile actress with that of provident cashier of the company. She was devoted to Armande, whom she had taken to her home from the girl's early schooling in Languedoc, and over whom she watched in the _coulisses_. She fought against the marriage, which she saw was a mistake, finally accepted it, and at her own death in 1672 left all her handsome savings to the wife of Moliere.

In the cast of the "ecole des Maris," first produced in 1661, appears the name of Armande Bejart, and, three months after the marriage, "Mlle. Moliere"--so were known the wives of the _bourgeoisie_, "Madame" being reserved for _grandes-dames_--played the small part of elise put for her by the author into his "Critique de l'ecole des Femmes." Henceforward she was registered as one of the troupe, the manager receiving two portions of the receipts for his and her united shares. She was a pleasing actress, never more than mediocre, except in those parts, in his own plays, fitted to her and drilled into her by her husband. She had an attractive presence on the boards, without much beauty, without any brains. Her voice was exquisite, opulent in tones that seemed to suggest the heart she did not own. For she was born with an endowment of adroit coquetry, and she developed her gift.

She was flighty and frivolous, evasive and obstinate, fond of pleasures not always innocent. Her spendthrift ways hurt Moliere's thrifty spirit, her coquetry hurt his love, her caprices hurt his honor. His infatuation, a madness closely allied to his genius, brought to him a fleeting happiness, followed by almost unbroken torments of love, jealousy, forgiveness. In his home he found none of the rest nor comfort nor sympathy so much needed, after his prodigious work in composing, drill-work in rehearsing, and public work in performing at his theatre, and at Versailles and Fontainebleau. He got no consolation from his wife for the sneers of venomous rivals, enraged by his supremacy, and for the stabs of the great world, eager to avenge his keen puncturing of its pretence and its priggishness.

And while he writhed in private, he made fun in public of his immitigable grief, and portrayed on the stage the betrayed and bamboozled husband--at once tragic and absurd--that he believed himself to be. These eleven years of home-sorrows shortened his life.

On the very day of his fatal attack, he said to the flippant minx, Armande: "I could believe myself happy when pleasure and pain equally filled my life; but, to-day, broken with grief, unable to count on one moment of brightness or of ease, I must give up the game. I can hold out no longer against the distress and despair that leave me not one instant of respite."

The church ceremony of their marriage had taken place on February 20, 1662, at Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, as its register testifies. He had already left his bachelor quarters on Quai de l'ecole, and had taken an apartment in a large house situated on the small open s.p.a.ce opposite the entrance of the Palais-Royal, the germ of the present _place_ of that name. His windows looked out toward his theatre, and on the two streets at whose junction the house stood--Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre and Saint-Honore. The first-named street, near its end on Quai du Louvre, held the Hotel de Rambouillet, which was a reconstruction of the old Hotel de Pisani, made in 1618, after the plan and under the eye of the Marquise de Rambouillet. She is known in history, as she was known in the _salons_ of her day, by her sobriquet of "Arthenice"--an anagram coined by Malherbe from her name Catherine.

Hither came all that was brilliant in Paris, and much that pretended to be brilliant; and from here went out the grotesque affectations of the _Precieuses Ridicules_. The mansion--one of the grandest of that period--having pa.s.sed into other hands, was used as a Vauxhall d'Hiver in 1784, as a theatre in 1792, and was partly burned in 1836. The remaining portion, which served as stables for Louis-Philippe, was wiped away, along with all that end of the old street, by the Second Empire, to make s.p.a.ce for the alignment of the wings of the Louvre.

The buildings of the Ministry of Finance cover a portion of the street, and the site of Moliere's residence, in the middle of the present Place du Palais-Royal, is trodden, almost every day of the year, by the feet of American women, hurrying to and from the Museum of the Louvre or the great shop of the same name.

After a short stay in their first home, Moliere and his wife set up housekeeping in Rue de Richelieu. It is not known if it was in the house of his later domicile and death. Their cook here was the famous La Foret, to whom, it is said, Moliere read his new plays, trying their effect on the ordinary auditor, such as made up the bulk of the audiences of that time. Servants were commonly called La Foret then, and the real name of this cook was Renee Vannier. Within a year, domestic dissensions came to abide in the household, and it was moved back to its first home, where Madeleine had remained, and now made one of the _menage_. To it came a new inmate in February, 1664, a boy, baptized at Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, having the great monarch for a G.o.dfather, and for a G.o.dmother Henrietta of England, wife of the King's brother, Philippe d'Orleans, and poisoned by him or his creatures a few years later, it is believed. These royal sponsors were represented at the christening by distinguished State servants, the whole affair giving ample proof of this player's position at the time.

A little later, we have hints that the small family was living farther east in Rue Saint-Honore, at the corner of Rue d'Orleans, still near his theatre, in a house swept away when that street was widened into Rue du Louvre. From this house was buried, in November, 1664, the child Louis, the burial-service being held at Saint-Eustache, their parish church, Moliere's baptismal church, his mother's burial church.

Here, too, in the following year, August, 1665, he brought to the font his newly born daughter, Esprit-Madeleine. In October of this same year he took a long lease of an apartment in their former house on the corner of Rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre, and there they stayed for seven years, removing once more, and for the last time, in October, 1672, to Rue de Richelieu.

Where now stands No. 40 of that street, Rene Baudelet, Tailor to the Queen by t.i.tle, had taken a house only recently builded, and from him Moliere rented nearly every floor. His lease was for a term of six years, and he lived only four and a half months after coming here. The first floor was set apart for his wife, whose ostentatious furnishing, including a bed fit for a queen, is itemized in the inventory made after her husband's death. He took for his apartment the whole second floor, s.p.a.ciously planned and sumptuously furnished; for he, too, was lavish in his expenditure and loved costly surroundings. His plate was superb, his wardrobe rich, his collection of dramatic books and ma.n.u.scripts complete and precious. His bedroom, wherein he died, was on the rear of the house, and its windows looked over the garden of the Palais-Royal, to which he had access from his terrace below, and thence by steps down to a gate in the garden wall. Thus he could get to his theatre by way of those trim paths of Richelieu's planning, as well as by going along the street and around the corner. You must bear in mind that the galleries of the Palais-Royal, with their shops, were not constructed until 1784, and that Rues de Valois and Montpensier were not yet cut; so that the garden reached, on either side, to the backs of the houses that fronted on Rues de Richelieu and des Bons-Enfants. Many of the occupants had, like Moliere, their private doors in the garden wall, with access by stone steps. One of these staircases is still left, and may be seen in Rue de Valois, descending from the rear of the Hotel de la Chancellerie d'Orleans, whose Doric entrance-court is at No. 19 Rue des Bons-Enfants.

The house now numbered 40 Rue de Richelieu and 37 Rue Montpensier was erected soon after 1767, when the walls that had harbored Moliere were torn down to prevent them from tumbling down. The present building has an admirable circular staircase climbing to an open lantern in the roof. The houses on either side, numbered 37 _bis_ and 35 Rue Montpensier, retain their original features of a central body with projecting wings, and so serve to show us a likeness of Moliere's dwelling. Their front windows look out now on the grand fountain of the younger Visconti's design, erected to Moliere's memory in 1844, at the junction of Rue de Richelieu and old Rue Traversiere, now named Rue Moliere. This fountain, flowing full and free always, as flowed the inspiration of his Muse, is surmounted by an admirable seated statue of the player-poet by Seurre, the figures of Serious and of Light Comedy, standing at his feet on either side, being of Pradier's design. And in Rue de Richelieu, a little farther south, at the present Nos. 23 and 23 _bis_--once one grand mansion, still intact, though divided--lived his friend Mignard, and here he died in 1795.

The painter and the player had met at Avignon in 1657-8, and grew to be life-long friends, with equal admiration of the other's art.

Indeed, Moliere considered that he honored Raphael and Michael Angelo, when he named them "_ces Mignards de leur age_." Certainly no such vivid portrait of Moliere has come down to us as that on the canvas of this artist, now in the gallery at Chantilly. It shows us not the comedian, but the man in the maturity of his strength and beauty.

His blond _perruque_, such as was worn then by all gallants, such as made his Alceste sneer, softens the features marked strongly even so early in life, but having none of the hard lines cut deeper by worry and weariness. The mouth is large and frank, the eyes glow with a humorous melancholy, the expression is eloquent of his wistful tenderness.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Moliere Fountain.]

Early in 1667 we find Moliere leasing a little cottage, or part of a cottage, at Auteuil, for a retreat at times. He needed its pure air for his failing health, its quiet for his work, and its distance from the disquiet of his home with Armande and Madeleine. He had laid by money; and his earnings, with his pension from the King--who had permitted to the troupe the t.i.tle of "His Majesty's Comedians"--gave him a handsome income. He was not without shrewdness as a man of affairs, and not without tact as a courtier. Success, in its worst worldly sense, could come only through royal favor in that day, and no man, whatever his manliness, seemed ashamed to stoop to flatter.

Racine, La Fontaine, the sterling Boileau, the antiquely upright Corneille, were tarred, thickly or thinly, with the same brush.

Auteuil was then a tranquil village, far away from the town's turmoil, and brought near enough for its dwellers by the silent and swift river. Now it is a bustling suburb of the city, and the site of Moliere's cottage and grounds is covered by a block of commonplace modern dwellings on the corner of Rue Theophile Gautier and Rue d'Auteuil, and is marked by a tablet in the front wall of No. 2 of the latter street. It has been claimed that this is a mistaken localization, and that it is nearly opposite this spot that we must look for his garden and a fragment of his villa, still saved. The conscientious pilgrim may not fail to take that look, and will ring at the iron gate of No. 57 Rue Theophile Gautier. It is the gate of the ancient _hotel_ of Choiseul-Praslin, a name of unhappy memory in the annals of swell a.s.sa.s.sins. The ducal wearer of the t.i.tle, during the reign of Louis-Philippe, stabbed his wife to death in their town-house in the Champs elysees, and poisoned himself in his cell to save his condemnation by his fellow-peers of France. The ancient family mansion has been taken by "_Les Dominicaines_," who have devoted themselves for centuries to the education of young girls, and have placed here the Inst.i.tution of Saint Thomas of Aquinas.

A white-robed sister graciously gives permission to enter, and leads the visitor across the s.p.a.cious court, through the stately rooms and halls--all intact in their old-fashioned harmony of proportion and decoration--into the garden that stretches far along Rue de Remusat, and that once spread away down the slope to the Seine. Here, amid the magnificent cedar trees, centuries old, stands a mutilated pavilion of red brick and white stone or stucco, showing only its unbroken porch with pillars and a fragment of the fabric, cut raggedly away a few feet behind, to make room for a new structure. Over the central door are small figures in bas-relief, and in the pediment above one reads, "_Ici fut la Maison de Moliere._" It would be a comfort to be able to accept this legend; the fact that prevents is that the pavilion was erected only in 1855 by the owner of the garden, to keep alive the a.s.sociations of Moliere with this quarter!

It is in his garden, behind the wall that holds the tablet, that we may see the player-poet as he rests in the frequent free hours, and days withal, that came in the actor's busy life then. Here he walks, alone or with his chosen cronies: Rohault, his sympathetic physician; Boileau, a frequent visitor; Chapelle, who had a room in the cottage, the quondam schoolfellow and the man of rare gifts; a pleasing minor-poet, fond of fun, fonder of wine, friendly even to rudeness, but beloved by all the others, whom he teased and ridiculed, and yet counselled shrewdly. He sympathized with, albeit his sceptic spirit could not quite fraternize with, the sensitive vibrating nature of Moliere, that brought, along with acutest enjoyment, the keenest suffering. In this day-and-night companionship, craving consolation for his betossed soul, Moliere gave voice to his sorrows, bewailing his wife's frailties and the torments they brought to him--to him, "born to tenderness," as he truly put it, but unable to plant any root of tenderness in her shallow nature--loving her in spite of reason, living with her, but not as her husband, suffering ceaselessly.

This garden often saw gayer scenes of good-fellowship and feasting, and once a historic frolic, when the _convives_, flushed with wine, ran down the slope to the river, bent on plunging in to cool their blood, and were kept dry and undrowned by Moliere's steadier head and hand. His _menage_ was modest, and his wife seldom came out from their town apartment, but his daughter was brought often for a visit from her boarding-school near by in Auteuil. He was beloved by all his neighbors, to whom he was known less by his public repute than by his constant kindly acts among them. It was not the actor-manager, but the "_tap.i.s.sier valet-de-chambre du Roi_," then residing in Auteuil, who signed the register of the parish church, as G.o.d-father of a village boy on March 20, 1671; just as he had signed, in the same capacity, the register of Saint-Roch on September 10, 1669, at the christening of a friend's daughter, Jeanne Catherine Toutbel. These signatures were destroyed when all the ancient church registers, then stored in the Hotel de Ville, were burned by the Commune.

On the night of Friday, February 16, 1673, while personating his _Malade Imaginaire_--its fourth performance--Moliere was struck down by a genuine malady. He pulled through the play, and, as the curtain went down at last, he was nearly strangled by a spasm of coughing that broke a blood-vessel. Careful hands carried him around to his bedroom on the second floor of No. 40, where in a few days--too few, his years being a little more than fifty--death set him free from suffering.

This fatal crisis was the culmination of a long series of recurrent paroxysms, coming from his fevered life and his fiery soul, that "o'er informed the tenement of clay," in Dryden's phrase. And his heart had been crushed by the death of his second boy, Pierre-Jean-Baptiste-Armand, in October of the previous year. Then, on the physical side, he had been subjected throughout long years to constant exposure to draughts on the stage, and to sudden changes within and without the theatre, most trying to so delicate a frame. His watchful friend, Boileau, had often urged him to leave the stage before he should break down.

Moreover, it distressed Boileau that the greatest genius of his time, as he considered Moliere, should have to paint his face, put on a false mustache, get into a bag and be beaten with sticks, in his ludicrous role of comic valet. But all pleading was thrown away. The invalid maintained that nothing but his own management, his own plays, and his own playing, kept his theatre alive and his company from starvation; and so he held on to the end, dying literally in harness.

His wife appeared too late on the last scene, the priest who was summoned could not come in time, and the dying eyes were closed by two stranger nuns, lodging for the time in the house.

The arm-chair, in which sat the _Malade Imaginaire_ on the last night of his professional life, is treasured among the relics of the Theatre Francais. It is a ma.s.sive piece of oak furniture, with solid square arms and legs; the roomy back lets down, and is held at any required angle by an iron ratchet; there are iron pegs in front for the little shelf, used by the sick man for his bottles and books. The brown leather covering is time-worn and st.i.tched in spots. It is a most attractive relic, this simple piece of stage property. Its exact copy as to shape, size, and color is used on the boards of the Theatre Francais in the performances of "Le Malade Imaginaire." And, with equal reverence, they kept for many years in the ancient village of Pezenas, in Languedoc--where the strolling troupe wintered in 1655-6, playing in the adjacent hamlets and in the _chateaux_ of the _seigneurie_ about--the big wooden arm-chair belonging to the barber Gely, and almost daily through that winter occupied by Moliere. Upon it he was wont to sit, in a corner, contemplating all who came and went, making secret notes on the tablets he carried always for constant records of the human doc.u.ment. It has descended to a gentleman in Paris, by whom it is cherished.

The _cure_ of Saint-Eustache, the parish church, refused its sacrament for the burial of the author of "Tartufe." "To get by prayer a little earth," in Boileau's words, the widow had to plead with the King; and it was only his order that wrung permission from the Archbishop of Paris for those "maimed rites" that we all know. They were accorded, not to the player, but, as the burial register reads, to the "_Tap.i.s.sier valet-de-chambre du Roi_." Carried to his grave by night, he was followed by a great concourse of unhired mourners, of every rank and condition; and to the poor among them, money was distributed by the widow. The grave--in which was placed the French Terence and Plautus in one, to use La Fontaine's happy phrase--was dug in that portion of the cemetery of the Chapel of Saint-Joseph, belonging to Saint-Eustache, that was styled consecrated by the priesthood. This cemetery going out of use, the ground, which lay on the right of the old road to Montmartre, was given to a market. This, in its turn, was cleared away between 1875 and 1880, and on the site of the cemetery are the buildings numbered 142 and 144 Rue Montmartre, 24 and 26 Rue Saint-Joseph. Over the grave, as she thought, the widow erected a great tombstone, under which, tradition says, Moliere did not lie.

Tradition lies, doubtless, and Armande's belated grief and posthumous devotion probably displayed themselves on the right spot. The stone was cracked--going to bits soon after--by a fire built on it during the terrible winter a few years later, when the poor of Paris were warmed by great out-of-door fires. The exact spot of sepulture could not be fixed in 1792, when the more sober revolutionary sections were anxious to save the remains of their really great men from the desecrations of the Patriots, to whom no ground was consecrate, nor any memories sacred. Then, in the words of the official doc.u.ment, "the bones which seemed to be those of Moliere" were exhumed, and carried for safe keeping to the Museum of French Monuments begun by Alexandre Lenoir in 1791, in the Convent of the Pet.i.ts-Augustins. Its site is now mostly covered by the court of the Beaux-Arts in Rue Bonaparte.

Those same supposed bones of Moliere were transferred, early in the present century, to the Cemetery of Pere-Lachaise, where they now lie in a stone sarcophagus. By their side rest the supposed bones of La Fontaine, removed from the same ground to the same museum at the same time; La Fontaine having really been buried, twenty-two years after Moliere's burial, in the Cemetery of the Innocents, a half-mile from that of Saint-Joseph!

Our ignorance as to whether these be Moliere's bones, under the monument in Pere-Lachaise, is matched by our unacquaintance with the facts of his life. And we know almost as little of Moliere the man, as we know of the man called Shakespeare--the only names in the modern drama which can be coupled. We have no specimens of the actual ma.n.u.script, and few specimens of the handwriting, of either. The Comedie Francaise has a priceless signature of Moliere given by Dumas _fils_, and there are others, it is believed, on legal doc.u.ments in notaries' offices, but no one knows how to get at them.

His portraiture by pen, too, would have been lost to us, but for an old lady who has left a detailed and vivid description of "Monsieur Moliere." This Madame Poisson was the daughter of Du Croissy, whose name appears in the troupe's early play-bills; and the wife of Paul Poisson, also an actor with Moliere, and with his widow. Madame Poisson died in 1756, aged ninety-eight, so that she was an observant and intelligent girl of fifteen at the time of Moliere's death. In her recollections, written in 1740, she says that he was neither stout nor thin; in stature he was rather tall than short, his carriage n.o.ble, his leg very fine, his walk measured, his air most serious; the nose large, the mouth wide, the lips full, his complexion dark, his eyebrows black and heavy, "and the varied movements he gave them"--and, she might have added, his whole facial flexibility--"made him master of immense comic expression."

"His air most serious," she says; it was more than that, as is proven by hints of his companions, and shown by strokes in the surviving portraits. All these go to a.s.sure us of his essential melancholy. Not only did he carry about with him the traditional dejection of the comic actor, but he was by character and by habit contemplative--observant of human nature--as well as introspective--peering into his own nature. The man who does this necessarily grows sad. Moliere's sadness was mitigated by a humor of equal depth, a conjunction rare in the Latin races, and found at its best only in him and in Cervantes. This set him to writing and acting farces; and into them he put sentiment for the first time on the French stage. There is a gravity behind his buffoonery, and a secret sympathy with his b.u.t.ts. So, when he came to write comedy--that hard and merciless exposure of our common human nature, turned inside out for scorn--he left place for pity in his ridicule, and there is no cruelty in his laughter. His wholly sweet spirit could not be soured by the injustices and insolences that came into his life. If there was a bitter taste in his mouth, his lips were all honey. "_Ce rire amer_," marked by Boileau in the actor's Alceste, was only his stage a.s.sumption for that character. The inborn good-heartedness that made his comedy gracious and unhostile, made his relations with men and women always kindly and generous. You see that sympathy with humanity in Mignard's portrait, and in the bust in the foyer of the Comedie Francaise, made by Houdon from other portraits and from descriptions. Under the projecting brow of the observer are the eyes of the contemplator, shrewd and speculative, and withal infinitely sorrowful, with the sadness of the man who knew how to suffer acutely, mostly in silence and in patience; and this is the face of the man who made all France laugh!

PIERRE CORNEILLE stands in bronze on the bridge of his natal town, Rouen, where he stood in the flesh of his twenty-eight years, among other citizens who went to welcome Louis XIII. and his ruler, Richelieu, on their visit in 1634. The young advocate by profession and poet by predilection presented his verses in greeting and in honor of the King, and was soon after enrolled one of the small and select band of the Cardinal's poets. With the Cardinal's commission and a play or two, already written when only twenty-three, he made his way to Paris. For nearly thirty years, the years of his dramatic triumphs, Corneille lived alternately in Paris and in Rouen, until his mother's death, in 1662, left him free to make his home in the capital. In that year he settled in rooms in the Hotel de Guise, now the Musee des Archives, whose ducal owner was a patron of the Theatre du Marais, close at hand. At his death, in or about 1664, Corneille sent in a rhymed pet.i.tion for rooms in the Louvre, where lodging was granted to men of letters not too well-to-do. His claim was refused, and he took an apartment in Rue de Clery during that same year. It was a workman's quarter, and none of its houses were very grand, but that of Corneille is spoken of as one of the better sort, with its own _porte-cochere_.

Pierre's younger brother, Thomas, came to live in the same house. And from this time on, the two brothers were never parted in their lives.

They had married sisters, and the two families dwelt in quiet happiness under the common roof. This house in Rue de Clery cannot be fixed. It may be one of the poor dwellings still standing in that old street, or it may no longer exist. It is the house famous in anecdotal history for owning the trap-door in the floor between the working-rooms of the brothers, which Pierre--at loss for an adequate rhyme--would lift up, and call to Thomas, writing in his room below, to give him the wished-for word.

This dull street formed the background of a touching picture, when, in 1667, Corneille's son was brought home, wounded, from the siege of Douai. The straw from the litter was scattered about the street as the father helped them lift his boy to carry him into the house, and Corneille was summoned to the Chatelet, for breaking police regulations with regard to the care of thoroughfares; he appeared, pleaded his own cause, and was cast in damages!

Here in 1671, Corneille and Moliere, in collaboration, wrote the "tragedy-ballet 'Psyche'"; this work in common cementing a friendship already begun between the two men, and now made firmer for the two years of Moliere's life on from this date. The play was begun and finished in a fortnight, to meet the usual urgency of the King in his amus.e.m.e.nts. Moliere planned the piece and its spectacular effects, and wrote the prologue, the first act, and the first scenes of the second and third acts; Corneille's share being the rest of the rhymed dialogue and the songs. It was set to music by Lulli--"the incomparable Monsieur Lulli," as he was called by Moliere--whose generous laudation of the musician was not lessened by his estimate of the man. For Lulli was not an honest man, and he prospered at the expense of his fellows. His magnificent home was built by money borrowed from Moliere, whose widow was repaid as we have seen. Lulli's _hotel_ is still in perfect condition as to its exterior, at the corner of Rues des Pet.i.ts-Champs and Sainte-Anne. This latter front is the finer, with its pilasters and composite capitals, its masks carved in the keystones of the low _entresol_ windows, and the musical instruments placed above the middle window of the first grand floor.

They make a pretty picture, not without a touch of the pathetic--and M. Gerome has put it on canvas--as they sit side by side, planning and plotting their play: Moliere at the top of his career, busy, prosperous, applauded; Corneille past his prime and his popularity, beginning to bend with age and to break in spirit. He had, by now, fallen on evil days, which saw him "satiated with glory, and famished for money," in his words to Boileau. Richelieu may not have done much for him, but he had been at least a power in his patronage, and his death, in 1642, had left the old poet with no friend at court, albeit the new minister, Mazarin, had put him on the pension list. His triumphs with "Le Cid" and "Les Horaces" had not saved him from--nor helped him bear--the dire failures of "Attila" and of "Agesilas."

Poetry had proved a poor trade, royalty had forgotten him, Colbert's economies had left his pension in arrears along with many others, and finally, after Colbert's death, the new minister, Louvois, had suppressed it entirely. Against the earlier default he had made patient and whimsical protest in verse; each official year of delay had been officially lengthened to fifteen months; and Corneille's Muse was made to hope that each of the King's remaining years of reign might be lengthened to an equal limit!

The contrast between the two figures--the King of French Tragedy shabby in Paris streets, the King of French people resplendent at Versailles--is sharply drawn by Theophile Gautier in his superb verses, read at Corneille's birthday fete at the Comedie Francaise, on June 6, 1851. Gautier had not been able to find any motive for the lines, which he had promised to prepare for a.r.s.ene Houssaye, the director, until Hugo gave him this cue.

The faithful, generous Boileau--the man called "stingy," because of his exactness, which yet enabled him always to aid others--offered to surrender his own well-secured and promptly-paid pension in favor of his old friend; a transfer not allowed by the authorities, and the King sent a sum of money, at length, to Corneille. It came two days before the poet's death, when he might have quoted, "I have no time to spend it!" There is extant a letter from an old Rouen friend of his who, visiting Paris in 1679, describes a walk he took with Corneille, then aged seventy-three. In Rue de la Parcheminerie--that ancient street on the left bank of the Seine, which we have already found to be less spoiled by modern improvements than are its neighbors--Corneille sat down on a plank by a cobbler's stall, to have one of his worn shoes patched. That cobbler's stall, or its direct descendant, may be seen in that street, to-day. Corneille counted his coppers and found just enough to pay the cobbler's paltry charge; refusing to accept any coin from the proffered purse of his friend, who, then and there, wept in pity for such a plight for such a man.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Door of Corneille's Last Dwelling.

(From a drawing by Robert Delafontaine, by permission of M. Victorien Sardou.)]

Age and poverty took up their abode with him--as well as his more welcome comrade, the constant Thomas--in his next dwelling. We cannot be sure when they left Rue de Clery, and we find them first in Rue d'Argenteuil in November, 1683, the year of Colbert's death. That old road from the village of Argenteuil had become, and still remains, a city street absolutely without character or temperament of its own; it has not the merit even of being ign.o.ble. And the Corneille house at No. 6, as it was seen just before its destruction, was a gloomy and forbidding building. It had two entrances--as has the grandiose structure now standing on its site--one in Rue d'Argenteuil, on which front is a tablet marking this historic scene of the poet's death, and the other in Rue de l'eveque. That street was wiped out of existence by the cutting of Avenue de l'Opera in 1877-8, which necessitated the demolition of this dreary old house. Its most attractive relic is now in the possession of M. Victorien Sardou, at his country house, at Marly-le-Roi, in the _porte-cochere_, with its knocker. Every guest there is proud to put his hand on the veritable knocker lifted so often by Corneille's hand.

That hand had lost its fire and force by this time, and the poet's last months were wretched enough in these vast and desolate rooms on the second floor, so vast and desolate that he was unable to keep his poor septuagenarian bones warm within them. Here came death to him on Sunday, October 1, 1684. They buried him in his parish church, Saint-Roch, a short step from his home; and on the western pillar within the entrance a tablet to his memory was placed in 1821. The church was so short a step, that, feeble and forlorn as he was, he had found his way there early of mornings during these last years. And in his earlier years, when living in Rue de Clery, he had often hurried there, drawn by the strong and splendid Bossuet, whose abode was either in Rue Sainte-Anne hard by, or in the then new mansion still standing in Place des Victoires. Here in the church, as we stand between Corneille's tablet and Bossuet's pulpit, the contrast is brought home to us of the two forms of eloquence that most touch men: that of this preacher burning with ancient Hebraic fire, and that of this dramatist glowing with the white-heat of cla.s.sicism.

After the burial, the bereft Thomas removed to rooms in Cul-de-sac des Jacobins, only a little way from his last home with Pierre. This blind alley has now been cut through to the market of Saint-Honore, and become a short commonplace street, named Saint-Hyacinthe. Twenty years the younger of the two, Thomas was, during his life, and has been in his after-renown, unduly overshadowed by his imperishable brother. He had a rare gift of versification, and a certain skill in the putting together of plays. Of them he constructed a goodly lot, some few of them in collaboration. His "Timocrate," played for eighty consecutive nights at the Theatre du Marais, was the most popular success on the boards of the seventeenth century. His knack in pleasing the public taste was as much his own as was his mastery of managers, by which he got larger royalties than any playwright of his day. He was a competent craftsman, too, in more weighty fabrications, and turned out, from his factory, translations and dictionaries, which have joined his plays in everlasting limbo.

All the early theatrical productions of Pierre Corneille were originally put on the stage of the Theatre du Marais, which had been started by seceders from the theatre of the Hotel de Bourgogne, as has been told in our first chapter. After a temporary lodgment in the quarter of the Hotel de Ville, it was soon permanently housed in the recast tennis-court of the "_Hotel Sale_." There it remained until 1728, when Le Camus bought the place and turned the theatre into stables. Where stands modern No. 90 in the widened Rue Vieille-du-Temple was the public entrance of the theatre. The "_Hotel Sale_," the work of Lepautre, is still in perfect condition behind the houses of Rue Vieille-du-Temple. Its princ.i.p.al portal is at Rue Thorigny, 5, with a side entrance in Rue Saint-Gervais-des-Coutures. Known at first as the Hotel Juigne, it was popularly renamed, in the seventeenth century, the "_Hotel Sale_," because its rapacious owner, Aubray de Fontenay, had ama.s.sed his wealth by farming out the salt tax--that most exacting and irritating of the many taxes of that time.

Through a lordly arch in Rue Thorigny, we pa.s.s into the grand court, and find facing us the dignified facade, its imposing pediment carved with figures and flowers. Within is a stately hall, made the more stately by the placing at one end of a n.o.ble chimney-piece, a copy of one at Versailles. In the centre a superb staircase rises, wide and easy, through a sculptured cage, to the first floor; its old wrought-iron railing is of an exquisite pattern; nothing in all Paris is nearer perfection than this staircase, its railing, and its bal.u.s.trade. In the rooms above, kept with reverence by the bronze-maker who occupies them, admirable panelling and carvings are found. The facade on the gardens--now shrunk from their former s.p.a.ciousness to a small court--is most impressive, with ancient wrought-iron balconies; in its pediment, two vigilant dogs watch the hands that move no more on the great clock-face between them.

The Theatre du Marais had been established here by the famous Turlupin, made immortal in Boileau's verse, who, with his two comic _confreres_--baker's boys, like the brothers Coquelin of our day--kept his audiences in a roar with his modern French farces _farcied_ with old Gaulish grossness. It was he who invented the comic valet--badgered and beaten, always lying and always funny--who was subsequently elaborated into the immortal Sganerelle by Moliere. He, while a boy, had sat in this theatre, watching Turlupin; and when he had grown into a manager, he is said to have bought some of the stage copies of these farces, when Turlupin's death disbanded his troupe.

These "_Comediens du Marais_" were regarded with a certain condescension not unmingled with disdain by their stately _confreres_ left at the Hotel de Bourgogne, who were shocked when Richelieu, becoming bored by their dreary traditional proprieties, sent for Turlupin and his troupe to give a specimen of their acting in his palace. And the great cardinal actually laughed, a rare indulgence he allowed himself, and told the King's Comedians that he wished they might play to as good effect!

Still, the Theatre du Marais was not entirely given over to farce, for it alternated with the tragedy of the then famous Hardy; and Mondory, the best tragedian of the day, was at one time the head of the troupe. Mondory had brought back from a provincial tour, in 1629, the ma.n.u.script of "Melite," by a young lawyer of Rouen, named Corneille.

This piece was weak, but it was not a failure. And so, when the author came to town, his tragedies were played at this theatre and drew crowds to the house. There they first saw the true tragic Muse herself on the French boards. Those rough, coa.r.s.e boards of that early theatre he planed and polished, with conscience and with craft, and made them fit for her queenly feet; and through her lips he breathed, in sublime tirades, his own elevation of soul, to the inspiration of that shabby scene. For the first time in the French drama, he put skill into the plot, art into the intrigue, taste into the wit; in a word, he gave to dramatic verse "good sense"--"the only aim of poetry," Boileau claimed--and showed the meaning and the value of "reason" on the stage; and for the doing of this Racine revered him.

As to Corneille's personality, we are told by Fontenelle--his nephew, a man of slight value, a better talker than writer, an unmoved man, who prided himself on never laughing and never crying--that his uncle had rather an agreeable countenance, with very marked features, a large nose, a handsome mouth, eyes full of fire, and an animated expression. Others who saw Corneille say that he looked like a shopkeeper; and that as to his manner, he seemed simple and timid, and as to his talk, he _was_ dull and tiresome. His enunciation was not distinct, so that in reading his own verses--he could not recite them--he was forcible but not graceful. Guizot puts it curtly and cruelly, when he writes that Corneille was dest.i.tute of all that distinguishes a man from his equals; that his appearance was common, his conversation dull, his language incorrect, his timidity ungainly, his judgment untrustworthy. It was well said, in his day, that to know the greatness of Corneille, he must be read, or be seen in his work on the stage. He has said so in the verse that confesses his own defects:

"_J'ai la plume feconde et la bouche sterile, Et l'on peut rarement m'ecouter sans ennui, Que quand je me produis par la bouche d'autrui._"

In truth, we must agree with Guizot, that the grand old Roman was irrevocably doomed to pa.s.s unnoticed in a crowd. And he was content that this should be. For he had his own pride, expressed in his words: "_Je sais ce que je vaux._" He made no clamor when Georges de Scudery was proclaimed his superior by the popular voice, which is always the voice of the foolish. And when that shallow charlatan sneered at him in print, he left to Boileau the castigation that was so thoroughly given. His friends had to drive him to the defence of his "Cid" in the Academy, to which he had been elected in 1647. His position with regard to the "Cid" was peculiar and embarra.s.sing; it was Richelieu, the jealous playwright, who attacked the successful tragedy, and it was Richelieu, the all-potent patron, who was to be answered and put in the wrong. The skirmish being ended, with honor to Corneille, he retired into his congenial obscurity and his beloved solitude. And there the world left him, alone with his good little brother Thomas, both contented in their comradeship. For in private life he was easy to get on with, always full of friendliness, always ready of access to those he loved, and, for all his brusque humor and his external rudeness, he was a good husband, father, brother. He shrank from the worldly and successful Racine, who reverenced him; and he was shy of the society of other pen-workers who would have made a companion of him. His independent soul was not softened by any adroitness or tact; he was clumsy in his candor, and not at home in courtier-land; there was not one fibre of the flunky in his simple, sincere, self-respecting frame; and when forced to play that unwonted role, he found his back not limber enough for bowing, his knees not sufficiently supple to cringe.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pierre Corneille.