The Story of Paris Part 16

Part II: The City

SECTION I

_The Cite--Notre Dame--The Sainte-Chapelle[178]--The Palais de Justice_[179]

[Footnote 178: Open 11-4 or 5. Closed Mondays and Chief Festivals.]

[Footnote 179: Open daily, except Sundays, 11-4.]

If the traveller will place himself on the Pont Royal, or on the Pont du Carrousel, and look towards the Cite when the tall buildings, the spire of the Sainte Chapelle and the ma.s.sive grey towers of Notre Dame are ruddy with the setting sun, he will enjoy a scene of beauty not easily surpa.s.sed in Europe. Across the picture, somewhat marred by the unlovely Pont des Arts, stride the arches of the Pont Neuf with their graceful curves; below is the little green patch of garden and the cascade of the weir; in the centre of the bridge the bronze horse with Henry IV., its royal rider, almost hidden by the trees, stands facing the site of the old garden of the Palais, where St. Louis sat on a carpet judging his people, and whence Philip the Fair watched the flames that were consuming the Grand Master and his companion of the Knights Templars. To the left are the picturesque mediaeval towers of the Conciergerie and the tall roof of the belfry of the Palais.

Around all are the embracing waters of the Seine breaking the light with their thousand facets. The island, when seen from the east as one sails down the river, is not less imposing, for the great mother church of Notre Dame, with the graceful b.u.t.tresses of the apse like folded pinions, seems to brood over the whole Cite.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHAPEL OF CHaTEAU AT VINCENNES.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: NEAR THE PONT NEUF.]

From the time when Julius Caesar addressed his legions on the little island of _Lutetia Civitas Parisiorum_ to the present day, two millenniums of history have been enacted there, and few spots are to be found in Europe where so many a.s.sociations are crowded together. In Gallo-Roman times the island was, as we have seen, even smaller, five islets having been incorporated with it since the thirteenth century.

Some notion of the changes that have swept over its soil may be conceived on scanning Felibien's 1725 map, where no less than eighteen churches are marked, scarce a wrack of which now remains on the island. We must imagine the old mediaeval Cite as a labyrinth of crooked and narrow streets, with the present broad Parvis of Notre Dame of much smaller extent, at a higher level, enclosed by a low wall and approached by steps. Against the north tower leaned the Baptistery (St. Jean le Rond) and St. Denis of the Ferry against the apse. St.

Pierre aux Boeufs, whose facade has been transferred to St.

Severin's on the south bank, stood at the east corner, St. Christopher at the west corner of the present Hotel Dieu which covers the site of eleven streets and three churches. The old twelfth-century hospital, demolished in 1878, occupied the whole s.p.a.ce south of the Parvis between the present Pet.i.t Pont and the Pont au Double. It possessed its own bridge, the Pont St. Charles, over which the buildings stretched, and joined the annexe (1606), which, until 1909, existed on the opposite side of the river.

NOTRE DAME.

The traveller who stands on the Parvis before the Church of Our Lady at Paris beholds the embodiment and most perfect expression of early Gothic architecture, the central type and model of the new style created by the genius of the masters of the Isle de France in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. On the west front the builders have lavished all their artistic powers in a synthetic exposition of their outlook on life and eternity. As the worshipper approaches the central portal his eye is arrested by a representation of the ultimate and most solemn fact of human destiny, the Last Judgment. On the lintel the dead are seen rising from their graves at the last trump; prelate, n.o.ble and serf in one equality of doom. Above, the fine figure of St. Michael is seen weighing souls in the balance. At his left the d.a.m.ned are hauled in chains by grinning demons to h.e.l.l: at his right the elect raise joyful eyes toward Heaven. Crowning the tympanum is Christ the Judge, flanked by angels, and by the Virgin and the Baptist kneeling in intercession while He shows His wounded hands.

On the archivolts are, to the right of the spectator, demons and d.a.m.ned souls and quaint personifications of death: to his left the heavenly host, choirs of angels, seated prophets and doctors and the army of martyrs. On the jambs are the five wise and five foolish virgins; apostles and saints on the embrasures of the door; below them reliefs of the virtues, each symbolised above its opposite vice. On the central pillar stands Christ in act of blessing; below Him, bas-reliefs typifying the seven liberal arts.[180]

[Footnote 180: This portal suffered much from the vandalism of Soufflot and his clerical employers of the eighteenth century (p.

252): all that remains of the original carvings in the tympanum is a portion of the figure of Christ and the angels. The Revolutionary Chaumette, when it was proposed to destroy the Gothic _simulacra_ of superst.i.tion, protected the carvings on the west portals on the plea that they related to astronomy, to philosophy and the arts. The astronomer Dupuis was added to the Commission and the reliefs were saved.]

We turn to the lovely portal of the Virgin under the north tower. In the lower compartment of the tympanum is figured the ark of the Covenant attended by prophets and kings; above, is the burial of the Virgin, and crowning all, Our Lady in glory. On the archivolts are angels, patriarchs, prophets, and kings. The jambs and cas.e.m.e.nts are decorated with thirty-seven marvellously vivid reliefs of the signs of the Zodiac, the seasons and labours of the year, a kind of almanac of stone of rare invention and execution. On the embrasures of the door are, among others, the favourite Parisian saints: Denis, Genevieve and Stephen. On the central pier, below the Virgin and Child, are the Creation, Temptation and Fall. The whole of this portal will repay careful inspection.

St. Anne's portal, under the south tower, is more archaic, and indeed some of its sculptures are believed to have come from an earlier Romanesque building. Along the lintel are seen episodes in the life of St. Anne and in the life of Mary: in the central band, to the left, are the Presentation, the Annunciation, the Visitation; in the middle the Nativity in various scenes; to the right Herod, and the Adoration of the Magi. The whole of these reliefs are twelfth-century work, with the exception of the Presentation, which is thirteenth century. In the hemicycle above are the Virgin and Child under a Byzantine canopy with angels and founders on either side. On the central pier stands St.

Marcel, Bishop of Paris, banning the horrible serpent that made his lair in a tomb: the retreating serpent's tail is seen on the pier.

Both on this and on the north portal traces of painting still remain.

Before leaving, we note the beautiful mediaeval wrought hinges (restored) which came from the old church of St. Stephen and which have been copied for the central portal. The three portals were completed in 1208.

Above them and across the whole facade runs a gallery of kings, twenty-eight in number--a perennial source of controversy. Authorities are divided between the kings of France and the kings of Israel and Judah, the royal ancestry of the Virgin. From the a.n.a.logy of other cathedrals we incline to the latter view. The gallery dates not later than 1220, but the statues are modern reproductions. Yet higher, on the pierced bal.u.s.trade, is a group of the Virgin between two angels and on either side, over the N. and S. portals, Adam and Eve. A gallery of graceful columns knits the towers together (which were intended to be crowned by spires) before they soar from the facade.

Between the towers, in olden times, as we know from an illumination in a Froissart MS., stood a great statue of the Virgin. The whole of this glorious fretwork of stone, including the tracery of the rose window, was once refulgent with gold and azure and crimson, and the finished front in its mediaeval glory has been compared to a colossal carved and painted triptych.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NOTRE DAME--PORTAL OF ST. ANNE.]

On the central pier of the greater portal of the N. transept, called of the Cloister, we note a fine ancient statue of the Virgin, famed for its grace of expression. The smaller Porte Rouge, further eastward, is remarkable for some well-preserved antique sculpture: a Coronation of the Virgin in the tympanum and six scenes in the life of St. Marcel in the archivolt: some old gargoyles and reliefs may be seen on either side of the door.

We pursue our way by the east end of the cathedral, where in mediaeval times was an open waste, the Motte aux Papelards, the playground of the cathedral servants, the graceful outlines of the apse and the bold sweep of the flying b.u.t.tresses ever varying in beauty as we pace around. The south portal (ill seen through the iron railings) called of St. Stephen or of the Martyrs is decorated with statues of the saint and of other martyrs, with scenes of their martyrdom. The inscription (p. 88) may be seen at the base to the R.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NOTRE DAME--SOUTH SIDE.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: NOTRE DAME--SOUTH SIDE--FROM THE SEINE.]

We may now enter the n.o.ble and harmonious interior, unhappily bared of its rich old decorations, its tombs and statues cleared away, its fine Gothic altar destroyed by clerical and royal vandals to give place to renaissance and pseudo-cla.s.sic pomposities (p. 252). We approach the choir from the right aisle, noting a fourteenth-century statue of the Virgin and Child on the left as we reach the entrance, perhaps the very statue before which _povre Gilles_ did his penance (p. 142) and proceed to examine all that remains of the "histories" in stone on the choir wall round the ambulatory, twenty-three in number, begun in 1319 by Master Jean Ravy, mason of Notre Dame, and finished (_parfaites_) by Master Jean le Bouteiller in 1351, all _dorez et bien peints_.

Those on the choir screen were destroyed by the Cardinal Archbishop de Noailles in 1725. On the north side are twelve reliefs drawn from earlier New Testament history: on the south are nine from later episodes in the life of Christ. These nave mediaeval sculptures of varying merit will repay careful examination. The gilding and colouring are modern. Of the jewelled splendour of the western rose and of the two great rose windows of the transepts the eye will never tire. With every changing light new beauties and new combinations of colour reveal themselves. Those who care to read the subjects will discern in the north transept rose, incidents depicted in the life of the Virgin, and eighteen founders and benefactors: in the south are apostles and bishops crowned by angels.

[Ill.u.s.tration: INTERIOR OF NOTRE DAME.]

We return to the Porte Rouge in the Rue du Cloitre opposite which is the Rue Ma.s.sillon, where at Nos. 4 and 6 we may note some remains of the cloisters and canons' dwellings, once a veritable city within a city, fifty-one houses with gardens sequestered within a wall having four gates. We continue to the Rue Chanoinesse, where, No. 10, is the site of Canon Fulbert's house: at No. 18, by the courtesy of Messieurs Allez Freres, we may visit the curious old fifteenth-century tower of Dagobert[181] which marks the site of the old port of St. Landry and affords a fine view of the north side of Notre Dame. We return to No.

10 and descend the Rue des Chantres to the Quai aux Fleurs: at No. 9, the site of the house of Abelard and Helose, an inscription recalls the names of the unhappy lovers,

"... for ever sad, for ever dear, Still breathed in sighs, still ushered with a tear."

[Footnote 181: Now (1911) demolished.]

We turn westward along the Quai and ascend on our L., the narrow Rue de la Colombe, across which a double line of stones traces the position of the Gallo-Roman wall, that enclosed the Cite. We continue to ascend, and on our L., No. 26 Rue Chanoinesse, we enter a small court where we find a portion of the old pavement of St. Aignan's church, with the almost effaced lineaments on the tombstones of those, now forgotten, who were doubtless famous churchmen in their time, and where St. Bernard wept a whole day, fearing that G.o.d had withdrawn from him the power of converting souls. This faint trace of the past wealth of churches remains, but where are the sanctuaries of Ste.

Genevieve des Ardents, St. Pierre des Arces, St. Denis of the Prison, St. Germain le Vieux, Ste. Croix, St. Symphorien, St. Martial, St.

Bartholomew, and the church of the Barnabites, which replaced that of St. Anne, which replaced the old Abbey church of St. Eloy, all cl.u.s.tering around their parent church of Our Lady like nuns under their patroness' mantle? Until comparatively recent times the church of St. Marine was used as a joiner's workshop, and one of the chapels of Ste. Madeleine, parish church of the water-sellers, served as a wine merchant's store! All that survives of the ancient splendour of the Cite are Notre Dame and some portions of the Palais, including the Ste. Chapelle.

We turn R. to the Rue d'Arcole that has swept away the old church of St. Landry, near which, until the reign of Louis XIII., a market was held for the sale of foundling children at thirty sous. The scandal was abolished by the efforts of the gentle St. Vincent de Paul, Anne of Austria's confessor. Turning L. along this street we emerge on the Parvis, which we skirt to the R. along the facade of the new Hotel Dieu, and reach the Rue de la Cite. We turn R., cross to the L. and follow the broad Rue de Lutece to the Palais de Justice.

THE SAINTE CHAPELLE AND THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE.

Entering the Cour du Mai by the great iron grille which has replaced the old stone portal, flanked by two towers, a pa.s.sage on the left leads us to the Cour de la Ste. Chapelle (p. 86). We enter by the west porch of the lower chapel. On the central pier is a restored figure of the Virgin whose original is said to have bowed her head to the famous Scotch theologian Duns Scotus, in recognition of his championship of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, in 1304: in the decoration of the base of the column and of the embrasures of the door, the Fleur-de-Lys of St. Louis is seen alternating with the Castilian Tower of his mother, Blanche of Castile, a decorative motive repeated in the painting of the chapel.

Beautiful as are the vaultings and proportions of the lower chapel, and the decoration, copied, as in the upper chapel, from traces of the original colouring found under the whitewash, the visitor will doubtless prefer to ascend, after a cursory inspection, the narrow, winding stairway to the resplendent upper sanctuary, whose dazzling brilliancy moved an ancient writer to declare that "in the contest between light and darkness in architecture, the creator of the Ste.

Chapelle in the pride of his victory built with light itself." In the apse, flooded by streams of colour falling from the windows, is the platform or tribune where, in a rich reliquary of gold, glittering with precious stones, and under a baldachin, the holy relics from Constantinople were exposed in days of old. Part of the tribune is preserved and one of the staircases by which it is ascended, that to the N., is said to date from the founder's time, and may often have been trodden by the very feet of St. Louis himself. Little else of the interior furniture has escaped destruction. The beautiful high altar, the rood loft, the choir stalls, have long disappeared. Four only of the statues of the apostles bearing the crosses of consecration are said to be originals--the fourth and fifth on each side of the nave counting from the west door; the relics, or all that escaped the political storms of the _annee terrible_, are now at Notre Dame, and the reliquary that contained them went to feed the hungry war-chest of the revolutionary armies. But the thirteenth-century jewelled windows, as left to us by the admirable restorers of 1855, are of paramount interest. The wealth of design and amplitude of the series are truly amazing. The panels, numbering about eleven hundred, are a compendium of sacred history and a revelation of the world to come: the whole scene from the Creation to the Apocalypse is unrolled before our eyes, pictured in a transparent symphony of colour. Seven windows of the nave and four of the apse deal with Old Testament history: three at the end of the apse with the New. The eighth window of the nave (the first to the R. of entrance), dealing with the story of the Translation of the relics from Constantinople, although the most restored--nineteen only of the sixty-seven subjects are original--is perhaps the most interesting, for among the nineteen may be seen St.

Louis figured by the contemporary artist: receiving the relics at Sens; a.s.sisting to carry the relics, barefoot; taking part at the exposition of the relics with his queen and his mother; receiving an emba.s.sy from the Emperor Baldwin; carrying the Byzantine cross which holds a portion of the true cross. Another of the original panels contains a representation of the Cite with the enveloping arms of the Seine. The rose window at the west end is obviously later, and dates from the fifteenth century.

In olden times the lower part of the central window of the apse was made of white gla.s.s that the people ma.s.sed in the courtyard below might behold the relics as St. Louis and his successors, after exhibiting them to the privileged congregation in the chapel, turned round to show them. Against the south wall of the nave is a little oratory with a squint through which it is said Louis XI. used to venerate the relics un.o.bserved.

We step out from the west door of the upper chapel to examine the more richly decorated upper portal. The carvings are all modern and, except such as were suggested by traces of the old work, are copied from the west front of Notre Dame and other churches. Many a solemn and many a strange scene have been enacted in this royal oratory; the strangest of all perhaps when Charles V. of France, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV., and his son Wenceslaus, king of the Romans, in the _role_ of the three Holy Kings, came to venerate the relics and laid oblations before the shrine.

Before we turn away from the building we should observe on the west facade above the rose window wherein the architect has literally sported with the difficulties of construction in stone a charming design of fleurs-de-lys framed by quatrefoils along the bal.u.s.trade; the central design is an R. (rex), crowned by two angels. The present spire is a fourth erection. The second, which replaced the original spire in 1383, was one of the wonders of Paris, and fell a victim to fire in 1630. A third, erected by Louis XIII., was demolished in 1791, and in 1853 La.s.sus, Viollet le Duc's princ.i.p.al colleague in the restoration of the chapel, designed the graceful fleche we see to-day.

We return to the Cour du Mai: on the R., before we ascend the great stairway, we look down on the nine steps leading from the Vestibule (now a Cafe Restaurant) of the Conciergerie, up which those doomed to the guillotine ascended to the fatal tumbrils awaiting them in the courtyard. We ascend to the Galerie Marchande: the stairway, rebuilt after the fire of 1776, replaced the old flight of stairs at whose feet heralds proclaimed treaties of peace and tournaments, criminals were branded, and books condemned by the Parlement, burned. Here Pantagruel loved to stand and cut the stirrup-straps of the fat councillors' mules, and see the _gros sufle de conseiller_ fall flat when he tried to mount; and here the clercs of the Basoche planted the annual May-tree, brought from the forest of Bondy, with much playing of drums and trumpets and elaborate ceremony.

The Galerie Marchande, formerly known as the Galerie Merciere, was once a busy and fashionable bazaar, where lines of shops displayed fans, shoes, slippers and other dainty articles of feminine artillery.

The further galleries were also invaded by the traders, who were only finally evicted in 1842. We turn R. and enter the Grande Salle or, as it is now known, the Salle des Pas Perdus. It, too, was once a busy mart, booksellers especially predominating, most of whom had stations there, much as we see them to-day, round the Odeon Theatre. Verard's address was--"At the image of St. John the Evangelist, before Notre Dame de Paris, and at the first pillar in the Grande Salle of the Palais de Justice, before the chapelle where they sing the ma.s.s for Messieurs of the Parlement." Gilles Couteau's address was at "The Two Archers in the Rue de la Juiverie and at the third pillar at the Palais." Every pillar had its bookseller's shop. In 1618 the great chamber, the finest of its kind in Europe, with its rich stained gla.s.s, its double vaultings resplendent with blue and gold, was gutted by fire, and its long line of statues of the kings of France, from Pharamond to Henry IV.--the _rois faineants_ with pendent arms and lowered eyes, the valiant warrior kings with heads and arms erect--disappeared for ever. This was the hall where the clercs of the Basoche performed their _farces_, _sottises_ and _moralites_, and where Victor Hugo has placed the scene of the famous performance of the _moralite_, composed by Pierre Gringoire,[182] so vividly described in the opening chapters of _Notre Dame_.

[Footnote 182: Notes exist of payments in 1502, 1505 to Pierre Gringoire, _histrion et facteur_ for the mysteries--well and honestly performed--at the entries of Madame la reine, before the portail of the Chatelet.]

Debrosse, who built the new Salle in 1622, left a n.o.ble and harmonious Renaissance chamber, which, again restored after the fire of 1776, endured until its destruction by fire during the Commune. The present rather frigid hall was completed in 1878 by J.L. Duc, who respected the traditional form and amplitude of the older structures. Nearly opposite the monument to Malesherbes (R.) was the position of the old Pilier des Consultations, where the lawyers were wont to give gratuitous legal help to the poor. The best time to visit the Hall is in the afternoon, when the courts are sitting and when the footsteps of the lawyers and their clients are indeed lost amid the buzz of conversation as they pace up and down.

The _Premiere Chambre_ to the L., in the north-west corner of the Hall, is one of the most profoundly interesting in the agglomerated ma.s.s of buildings known as the Palais de Justice. This, now somewhat reduced in size, was the old _Grande Chambre_, rebuilt by Louis XII.

on the occasion of his marriage with Princess Mary of England, which replaced the earlier bed-chamber of St. Louis.