The Story of Paris Part 23

"Amours au vireli m'en vois."

The streets of Paris, however, at midnight were unsafe even for sober ladies, and these soon fell among thieves, were stripped of the rest of their clothing, then taken up for dead by the watch and flung into the mortuary in the cemetery of the Innocents; but, to the terror of the gravedigger, were found lying outside the next morning, singing--

"Druin, Druin, ou es allez?

Apporte trois harens salez Et un pot de vin du plus fort."

Pursuing our way N. by the Rue St. Denis we pa.s.s (R.) the restored fourteenth-century church of St. Leu and St. Gilles, and on our L. two old reliefs of St. Peter and St. Andrew embedded in the corner of a modern house at the corner of the Rue St. Denis and the Rue etienne Marcel. Near by stood the Painters' Gate of the Philip Augustus wall.

We turn L. by the latter street and soon sight on our R. the ma.s.sive machicolated Tower of Jean sans Peur (p. 133). It was at the Hotel de Bourgogne that the Confreres de la Pa.s.sion de Jesus Christ were performing in the sixteenth century, and where in 1548 they were forbidden by royal decree to play the mystery of the Pa.s.sion any longer, and limited to profane, decent and lawful plays. From 1566-1576 the comediens of the Hotel de Bourgogne continued their performances, which at length became so gross that complaints were made of the _blasphemes et impudicites_ enacted there, and that not a farce was played that was not _orde_, _sale et vilaine_. Repeated ordinances were levelled at the actors, aiming at the purification of the stage and preventing words of _double entente_. It was here, too, that the most exalted and n.o.ble masterpieces of Corneille and Racine--_Le Cid_, _Andromaque_ and _Phedre_--were first enacted. We turn R. by the Rue Francaise, again R. by the Rue Tiquetonne, then L.

by the curious Rue Dus...o...b.. to the new Rue Reamur, where on the opposite side, to the L., is the narrow pa.s.sage between Nos. 100 and 102 that leads to the once notorious Cour des Miracles, so vividly portrayed in Victor Hugo's _Notre Dame_. It was here that Jean Du Barry and his mistress, Jeanne Vaubernier, kept a gambling-h.e.l.l.

Jeanne, subsequently married to Jean's brother, was the daughter of a monk and formerly known as Mademoiselle Lange. She it was who became the famous Du Barry, mistress of Louis XV. Here also dwelt Hebert, editor of the foul _Pere d.u.c.h.esne_. Both perished on the scaffold. We cross the Cour and leave by the Rue Damiette (L.), turn again L. and descend the Rue du Nil to the Rue des Pet.i.ts Carreaux. This we follow to the L., and continue down it and the busy and picturesque Rue Montorgeuil, noting (L.) No. 78, the curious house at the sign of the Rocher de Cancale. 72-64 were part of the roomy sixteenth-century posting house of the Golden Compa.s.ses, and have quaint reliefs carved on their facades. We may enter at 64, the s.p.a.cious old coaching yard, still used by market carts and waggons. The courtyard on the opposite side, No. 47, was the office of the old sedan-chair porters. We continue to descend, and at length sight the tall apse of the majestic church of St. Eustache, which towers over the Halles. Begun in 1532 by Pierre Lemercier, it was not completed until more than a century later by Jacques Lemercier, architect of the extended Louvre. We enter, by the side portal, the s.p.a.cious, lofty and beautiful interior with its not unpleasing mingling of Gothic and Renaissance architecture. It was here that in 1587 a friar reciting the story of the execution of Mary Queen of Scots roused his hearers to such a tempest of pa.s.sion that the whole congregation melted into a common paroxysm of tears.

Here, too, on 4th April 1791 was celebrated, amid the gloom and sorrow of a whole people, the funeral of their "Sovereign-Man," Mirabeau. Not till five o'clock did the league-long procession reach the church in solemn silence, interrupted only by the sound of m.u.f.fled drums and wailing music, "new clangour of trombones and metallic dirge-voice, amid the infinite hum of men." After the funeral oration a discharge of arms brought down some of the plaster from the vaultings of the church, and the body went--the first tenant--to the Pantheon of the heroes of the Fatherland. We leave by the west portal--a monstrous pseudo-cla.s.sic pile, added 1775-1778. To our L. is the vast area once covered by a congeries of picturesque Halles and streets:--the Halle aux Draps; the Marche des Herborists, with their mysterious stores of simples and healing herbs and leeches; the potato and onion markets; the b.u.t.ter and cheese markets; the fish market; the queer old Rue de la Tonnellerie, under whose shabby porticoes, sellers of rags, old clothes, iron and furniture, crowded against the bread market; the Marche des Prouvaires, beloved of thrifty housewives--all swallowed up by the vast modern structure of iron and gla.s.s, known as Les Halles.

The Halle au Ble, or corn market, last to disappear, was built on the site of the Hotel de la Reine which Catherine de' Medici had erected when frightened from the Tuileries by her astrologer Ruggieri. The site is now occupied by the Bourse de Commerce, but one curious decorated and channelled column, which conceals a stairway used by Catherine and her Italian familiar when they ascended to the roof to consult the stars, has been preserved.

The Rue Pirouette N. of the Halles reminds us that there, until the reign of Louis XVI., stood the royal pillory, a tall octagonal tower of two floors. The unhappy wretches condemned to exposure there were placed with head and hands protruding through holes in a revolving wheel, and were left for three hours on three market days, to the gibes and missiles of the populace. There, too, was a place of execution for state offenders, the Constable of Clisson in 1344 and _le pauvre Jacques_ (p. 147) in 1477 having perished on this spot.

From the Place St. Eustache we cross (L.) to the Rue Vauvilliers, formerly the Rue du Four St. Honore, the west side of which still retains much of its old aspect, and many of the shops, their old signs: _Au Chou Vert_; _Le Panier Fleuri_, etc. Descending this street southwards, a turn (R.) up the Rue de Vannes will bring us to the Ruggieri column, transformed (1812) into a fountain, as the inscription tells. Resuming our way down the Rue Vauvilliers we turn R. by the Rue St. Honore and opposite, at the corner of the Rue de l'Arbre Sec, find the old fountain of the Croix du Trahoir, erected in the reign of Francois I. and rebuilt by Soufflot in 1775. Here tradition places the cruel death of Queen Brunehaut (p. 29).

Descending this street to the Rue de Rivoli, we note, No. 144, to the L. an inscription marking the site of the Hotel de Montbazon where Coligny was a.s.sa.s.sinated. We cross to the Rue Perrault and soon reach the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois from whose tower rang the signal for the St. Bartholomew butchery. The porch was added in 1431 for the convenience of distinguished worshippers; for it was the parish church of the Chateau of the Louvre and consequently the royal chapel. The saints and martyrs on the portail and porch are therefore closely a.s.sociated with the history of Paris: opposite to us extends Perrault's famous E. facade of the Louvre.

SECTION IX

_Palais Royal--Theatre Francais--Gardens and Cafes of the Palais Royal--Palais Mazarin (Bibliotheque Nationale)_[235]_--St.

Roch--Vendome Column--Tuileries Gardens--Place de la Concorde--Champs elysees._

[Footnote 235: Open Tuesdays and Fridays, 10 to 4.]

From the Palais Royal Station of the Metropolitain we issue before the great palace begun by Richelieu (p. 212). To our L. stands the Theatre Francais, occupied by the Comedie Francaise since 1799, on the site of the old Varietes Amusantes or Palais Varietes built in 1787, a little to the W. of Richelieu's Theatre of the Palais Cardinal. This latter was the scene of Moliere's triumphs and of his piteous death, and the original home of the French Opera whose position is indicated by an inscription at the corner of the Rues de Valois and St. Honore. It was at the Theatre des Varietes, when the staid old Comedie Francaise was rent by rival factions that Chenier's patriotic tragedy, _Charles IX._, was performed on 4th November 1789, and the pit acclaimed Talma with frantic applause as he created the _role_ of Charles IX., and the days of St. Bartholomew were acted on the stage. The bishops tried to stop the performances, and priests refused absolution to those of their penitents who went to see them. The Royalists among the Comedians replied at the Nation (the Odeon) by playing a royalist repertory, _Cinna_ and _Athalie_, amid shouts from the pit for _William Tell_ and the _Death of Caesar_, and the stage became an arena where political factions strove for mastery. Men went to the theatre armed as to a battle. Every couplet fired the pa.s.sions of the audience, the boxes crying, "_Vive le Roi!_" to be answered by the hoa.r.s.e voices of the pit, "_Vive la nation!_" Shouts were raised for the busts of Voltaire and of Brutus: they were brought from the foyer and placed on the stage. The very kings of shreds and patches on the boards came to blows and the Roman toga concealed a poignard. For a time "idolatry" triumphed at the Nation, but Talma and the patriots at length won. A reconciliation was effected, and at a performance of the _Taking of the Bastille_, on 8th January 1791, Talma addressed the audience, saying that they had composed their differences. Naudet, the Royalist champion, was recalcitrant, and amid furious shouts from the pit, "On your knees, citizen!" at length gave way, embraced Talma with ill-grace, and on the ensuing nights the Revolutionary repertory, _The Conquest of Liberty_, _Rome Saved_, and _Brutus_, held the boards.

In the stormy year of 1830, when the July Revolution made an end for ever of the Bourbon cause in Paris, the Comedie Francaise again became a scene of fierce strife. _Hernani_, a drama in verse, had been accepted from the pen of Victor Hugo, the brilliant and exuberant master of the new Romantic school of poets who had determined to emanc.i.p.ate themselves from the traditions, long since hardened into dogmas, of the great dramatists of the siecle de Louis Quatorze. On the night of the first performance each side--Romanticists and Cla.s.sicists--had packed the theatre with partisans. The air was charged with feeling; the curtain rose, but less than two lines were uttered before the pent-up pa.s.sions of the audience burst forth:--

DOnA JOSEFA--"Serait-ce deja lui? C'est bien a l'escalier Derobe--"

The last word had not pa.s.sed the actress' lips when a howl of execration rose from the devotees of Racine, outraged by the author's heresy in permitting an adjective to stray into the second line of verse. The Romanticists, led by Theophile Gautier, answered in withering blasphemies; the Cla.s.sicists began to

"... prove their doctrine orthodox By apostolic blows and knocks,"

and the pit became a pandemonium of warring factions. Night after night the literary sects renewed their fights, and the representations, as Hugo said, resembled battles rather than performances. The year 1830 was the '93 of the cla.s.sic drama, but the pa.s.sions it evoked have long since been calmed and _Hernani_ and _Le Roi s'Amuse_, the latter suppressed by Louis Philippe after its first appearance, have taken their places in the cla.s.sic repertory of the Francais beside the tragedies of Corneille and Racine.

At No. 161 Rue St. Honore, now Cafe de la Regence, beloved of chess players, is the site of the Porte St. Honore of the Charles V. wall before which Joan of Arc was wounded at the Siege of Paris in 1429.

The old chess-players' temple where Diderot loved to watch the matches; where the author of _Gil Blas_ beheld in a vast and brilliantly lighted salon, a score of silent and grave _pousseurs de bois_ (wood-shovers) surrounded by crowds of spectators amid a silence so profound that the movement of the pieces alone could be heard; where Voltaire and D' Alembert were often seen; where Jean Jacques Rousseau, dressed as an Armenian, drew such crowds that the proprietor was forced to seek police protection; where Robespierre loved to play a cautious game and the young and impecunious Napoleon Bonaparte, an impatient player and bad loser, waited on fortune; where strangers from all corners of the earth congregated as in an arena where victory was esteemed final and complete; where Poles, Turks, Moors and Hindoos in their picturesque garbs made a scene unparalleled even at the Rialto of Venice; where on Sunday afternoons a seat was worth a monarch's ransom--this cla.s.sic Cafe de la Regence which, until 1852, stood on the Place du Palais Royal, no longer exists.

We enter the gardens of the Palais by the colonnade to the R. of the Theatre Francais and pa.s.s N. along the W. colonnade. On this side was situated the famous Cafe de Foy (p. 261), founded in 1700, whose proprietor was in early days alone permitted to place chairs and tables on the terrace. There, in the afternoon, would sit the finely apparelled sons of Mars, and other gay dogs of the period, with their scented perukes, amber vinaigrettes, silver-hilted swords and gold-headed canes quizzing the pa.s.sers-by. In summer evenings, after the conclusion of the opera at 8-30, the _bonne compagnie_ in full dress would stroll under the great overarching trees of the _grande allee_, or sit at the cafes listening to open-air performers, sometimes revelling in the moonlight as late as the small hours of the morning.

It was from one of the tables of the Cafe Foy that Camille Desmoulins sounded the war-cry of the Revolution. Every day a special courier from Versailles brought the bulletins of the National a.s.sembly, which were read publicly amid clamorous interjections. Spies found their office a perilous one, for, if discovered, they were ducked in the basins of the fountains, and when feeling grew more bitter, risked meeting a violent death. Later the Cafe Foy made a complete _volte-face_, raised its ices to twenty sous and grew Royalist in tone. Its frequenters came armed with sword-sticks and loaded canes, raised their hats when the king's name was uttered, and one evil day planted a gallows outside the cafe, painted with the national colours. The excited patriots stormed the house, expelled the Royalists and disinfected the salon with gin. Next day the Royalists returned in force and cleansed the air with incense: after many fatalities the cafe was closed for some days and the triumph of the Jacobins at length made any suspicion of Royalism too perilous. During the occupation of Paris by the allies many a fatal duel between the foreign officers and the Imperialists was initiated there.

The extremer section of the Revolutionists frequented the Cafe Corazza, still extant on this side of the garden, which soon became a minor Jacobin's, where, after the club was closed, the excited orators continued their discussions: Chabot, Collot d'Herbois and other Terrorists met there. The Cafe Valois was patronised by the Feuillants, and so excited the ire of the Federes, who met at the Caveau, that one day they issued forth, a.s.sailed their opponents'

stronghold and burned the copies of the _Journal de Paris_ found there.

In the earlier days of the Revolution when its leaders looked for sympathy to England, "a brave and generous nation, whose name alone like that of Rome evokes ideas of Liberty," the people during an exhibition of anti-monarchical feeling went about destroying the insignia of royalty. On coming in the Palais Royal to the sign of the English king's head over a restaurant, an orator mounted a chair in the gardens, and informed them that it was the head of a good king, ruling over a free nation: it was spared, amid shouts of "_Vive la Liberte_." Later, at the Cafe des Milles Colonnes, the handsome Madame Romain, _La Belle Limonadiere_, sat majestically on a real throne used by a king whom Napoleon had overthrown.

We leave the gardens by the issue in the middle of the N. colonnade, mount the steps and at the corner of the Rue Vivienne and the Rue des Pet.i.ts Champs opposite, come upon the Palais Mazarin (p. 222), now the Bibliotheque Nationale, with a fine facade on each street. In the Rue Vivienne stood also the princely Hotel Colbert, of which only the name remains--the Pa.s.sage Colbert. We turn W. along the Rue des Pet.i.ts Champs and skirt the W. walls of the modernised palace northwards along the Rue de Richelieu to the main Cour d'Honneur, opposite the Square Louvois. Hence we may enter some rooms, which contain a magnificent and matchless collection of printed books, bindings and illuminated MSS. The second of the two halls where these treasures are exposed, the Galerie Mazarin, is a part of the old palace and retains its fine frescoed ceiling. As we retrace our steps down the Rue Richelieu we may enter, on our L. the equally rich and sumptuous museum of coins, medals, antiques, intaglios, gems, etc. Having regained the Rue des Pet.i.ts Champs, we resume our westward way, noting at No. 45, corner of the Rue St. Anne, the fine double facade of the Hotel erected by Lulli and bearing the great musician's coat-of-arms, a design of trumpets, lyres and cymbals, and soon cross the Avenue de l'Opera to the Rue St. Roch on our L. This we descend to the church of the same name, with old houses still nestling against it, famous for Bonaparte's whiffs of grape-shot that scattered the Royalist insurrectionary forces stationed there on 5th October 1795. We descend to the Rue de Rivoli. To our L., at the Place des Pyramids, a statue of Joan of Arc recalls her ill-advised attack on Paris, and to our R., on the railings of the Tuileries Garden opposite No. 230, Rue de Rivoli, is the inscription marking the site of the Salle du Manege (p.

271). Northward hence extend Napoleon's Rues de Castiglione and de la Paix, the Regent Street of Paris, divided by the Place Vendome, which was intended by its creator, Louvois, to be the most s.p.a.cious in the city. A monumental parallelogram of public offices was designed to enclose the Place, but Versailles engulfed the king's resources and the ambitious scheme was whittled down, the area much reduced, and the site and foundations of the new buildings were handed over to the Ville. What the Allies failed to do in 1814 the Commune succeeded in doing in 1871, and the boastful Column of Vendome, a pitiful plagiarism of Trajan's Column at Rome, was laid in the dust, only however to be raised again by the Third Republic in 1875. We enter the Tuileries Gardens crossing the Terrace of the Feuillants, all that is left of the famous monastery and grounds where Lafayette's club of const.i.tutional reformers met. The beautiful gardens remain much as Le Notre designed them for Louis XIV: every spring the orange trees, some of them dating back it is said to the time of Francis I., are brought forth from the orangery to adorn the central avenue, and the gardens become vocal with many voices of children at their games--French children with their gentle humour and sweet refined play. R. and L. of the central avenue we find the two marble exhedrae, erected in 1793 for the elders who presided over the floral celebrations of the month of Germinal by the children of the Republic.

Of the gorgeous palace of the Tuileries at the E. end of the gardens, with its inharmonious but picturesque facade stretching across the western limit of the Louvre from the Pavilion de Flore to the Pavilion de Marsan, not one stone is left on another. We remember it after its fiery purgation by the Commune in 1871, a gaunt sh.e.l.l blackened and ruined, fitting emblem of the wreck which the enthroned wantonness and corruption of the Second Empire had made of France.

We fare again westward along the gardens and emerge into the Place de la Concorde by the gate adorned with Coysevox' statues, Fame and Mercury on Winged Horses, facing, on the opposite side of the vast area, Guillaume Coustou's Horse Tamers from Marly.

The Place, formerly of Louis XV., with its setting of pavilions adorned with groups of statuary representing the chief cities of France, was created by Gabriel in 1763-1772 on the site of a dreary, marshy waste used as a depot for marble. It was adorned in 1763 with an equestrian statue of Louis XV., by Pigalle, elevated on a pedestal which was decorated at the corners by statues of the cardinal virtues.

Mordant couplets, two of which we transcribe, affixed on the base, soon expressed the judgment of the Parisians:--

"_Grotesque monument! Infame piedestal!

Les vertus sont a pied, le vice est a cheval._"

"_Il est ici comme a Versailles, Toujours sans coeur et sans entrailles._"

After the fall of the monarchy the Place was known as the Place de la Revolution, and in 1792, Louis XV. with the other royal simulacra in bronze having been forged into the cannon that thundered against the allied kings of Europe, a plaster statue of Liberty was erected, at whose side the guillotine mowed down king and queen, revolutionist and aristocrat in one b.l.o.o.d.y harvest of death, ensanguining the very figure of the G.o.ddess herself, who looked on with cold and impa.s.sive mien. She too fell, and in her place stood a _fascis_ of eighty-three spears, symbolising the unity of the eighty-three departments of France. In 1795 the Directory changed the name to Place de la Concorde, and again in 1799 a seated statue of Liberty holding a globe was set up. In the hollow sphere a pair of wild doves built their nest--a futile augury, for in 1801 Liberty II. was broken in pieces, and the model for a tall granite column erected in its place by Napoleon I. One year pa.s.sed and this too disappeared. After the Restoration, among the other inanities came, in 1816, a second statue of Louis XV., and the Place resumed its original name. Ten years later an expiatory monument to Louis XVI. was begun, only to be swept away with other Bourbon lumber by the July Revolution of 1830. At length the famous obelisk from Luxor, after many vicissitudes, was elevated in 1836 where it now stands.

The Place as we behold it dates from 1854, when the deep fosses which surrounded it in Louis XV.'s time, and which were responsible for the terrible disaster that attended the wedding festivities of Louis XVI.

and Marie Antoinette, were filled up, and other improvements and embellishments effected. The vast s.p.a.ce and magnificent vistas enjoyed from this square are among the finest urban spectacles in Europe. To the north, on either side of the broad Rue Royale which opens to the Madeleine, stand Gabriel's fine edifices (now the Ministry of Marine and the Cercle de la Rue Royale), designed to accommodate foreign amba.s.sadors. To the south is the Palais Bourbon, now the Chamber of Deputies; to the east are the gardens of the Tuileries, and to the west is the stately Grande Avenue of the Champs elysees rising to the colossal Arch of Triumph crowning the eminence of the Place de l'etoile. As our eyes travel along the famous avenue, memories of the military glories and of the threefold humiliation of Imperial France crowd upon us. For down its ample way there marched in 1814 and 1815 two hostile and conquering armies to occupy Paris, and in 1871 the immense vault of the Arc de Triomphe, an arch of greater magnitude than any raised to Roman Caesars, echoed to the shouts of another exultant foreign host, mocking as they strode beneath it at the names of German defeats inscribed on its stones. And on the very Place de la Concorde, German hussars waltzed in pairs to the brazen music of a Uhlan band, while a line of French sentries across the entrance to the Tuileries gardens gazed sullenly on. To this day the mourning statue of Stra.s.sbourg with her sable drapery and immortelles, still keeps alive the bitter memory of her loss.

To the south of the Champs elysees is the Cours de la Reine, planted by Catherine de' Medici, for two years the most fashionable carriage drive in Paris. This we follow and at No. 16 find the charming Maison Francois I. brought from Moret, stone by stone, in 1826. To the north, in the Cours de Gabriel, a fine gilded grille, surmounted with the arms of the Republic, gives access to the elysee, the official residence of the President. It was once Madame Pompadour's favourite house in Paris, and the piece of land she appropriated from the public to round off her gardens is still retained in its grounds. In the Avenue Montaigne, leading S.W. from the Rond Point (once the Allee des Veuves, a retired walk used by widows during their term of seclusion) Nos. 51 and 53 stand on the site of the notorious Bal Mabille,[236]

the temple of the baccha.n.a.lia of the gay world of the Second Empire.

In 1764 the Champs elysees ended at Chaillot, a little to the W. of the Rond Point, an old feudal property which Louis XI. gave to Philippe de Comines in 1450, and which in 1651 sheltered the unhappy widow of Charles I. Here Catherine de' Medici built a chateau, but chateau and nunnery of the Filles de Sainte Marie, founded by the English queen, disappeared in 1790. S. of the Champs elysees on the opposite bank of the Seine rises the gilded dome of the Invalides, and to the S.W. stretches the vast field of Mars, the scene of the Feast of Pikes, and now enc.u.mbered with the relics of four World-Fairs.

[Footnote 236: A description of this and of other public b.a.l.l.s of the Second Empire will be found in Taine's _Notes sur Paris_, which has been translated into English.]

The Paris we have rapidly surveyed is, mainly, enclosed by the inner boulevards, which correspond to the ramparts of Louis XIII. on the north, demolished by his successor between 1676 and 1707, and the line of the Philip Augustus wall and the Boulevard St. Germain on the south. Beyond this historic area are the outer boulevards which mark the octroi wall of Louis XVI.; further yet are the Thiers wall and fortifications of 1841. Within these wider boundaries is the greater Paris of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, of profound concern to the economical and social student, but of minor interest to the ordinary traveller. The vogue of the brilliant and gay inner boulevards of the north bank so familiar to the foreigner in Paris is of comparatively recent growth. In the early nineteenth century the boulevard from the Place de la Madeleine to the Rue Cambon was almost deserted by day and dangerous by night--a vast waste, the proceeds of the confiscated lands of the Filles de la Conception. From the Boulevard Montmartre to the Boulevard St. Martin followed lines of private hotels, villas, gardens and convent walls. A great mound which separated the Boulevard St. Martin from the Boulevard du Temple was not cleared away until 1853. From 1760 to 1862 the Boulevard du Temple was a centre of pleasure and amus.e.m.e.nt, where charming suburban houses and pretty gardens alternated with cheap restaurants, hotels, theatres, cafes, marionette shows, circuses, tight-rope dancers, waxworks, and cafes-chantants. In 1835, so lurid were the dramas played there, that the boulevard was popularly known as the _Boulevard du Crime_.

In the early nineteenth century the favourite promenade of Parisian _flaneurs_ was displaced from the Palais Royal to the Boulevard des Italiens, whither the proprietors of cafes and restaurants followed. A group of young fellows entered one evening a small _cabaret_ near the Comedie Italienne (now Opera Comique), found the wine to their taste and the cuisine excellent, praised host and fare to their friends, and the modest _cabaret_ developed into the Cafe Anglais, most famous of epicurean temples, frequented during the Second Empire by kings and princes, to whom alone the haughty proprietor would devote personal care. The sumptuous cafes Tortoni, founded in 1798, and De Paris, opened 1822, have long since pa.s.sed away. So has the Cafe Hardy, whose proprietor invented _dejeuners a la fourchette_, although its rival and neighbour, the Cafe Riche, stills exists. Many others of the celebrated cafes of the Boulevards have disappeared or suffered a transformation into the more popular Bra.s.series and Tavernes of which so many, alternating with the theatres, restaurants and dazzling shops that line the most-frequented evening promenade of Paris, invite the thirsty or leisurely pleasure-seeker of to-day.

Nowhere may the traveller gain a better impression of the essential gaiety and sociability of the Parisian temperament than by sitting outside a cafe on the boulevards on a public festival and observing his neighbours and the pa.s.sers-by: their imperturbable good humour; their easy manners; their simple enjoyments; their quick intelligence, alert gait and expressive gestures; the wonderful skill of the women in dress. The glittering halls of pleasure that appeal to so many visitors, the Bohemian cafes of the outer boulevards, the Folies Bergeres, the Moulins Rouges, the Bals Bulliers, with their meretricious and vulgar attractions, frequented by the more facile daughters of Gaul, "whose havoc of virtue is measured by the length of their laundresses' bills," as a genial satirist of their s.e.x has phrased it--all these manifestations of _la vie_, so unutterably dull and sordid, are of small concern to the cultured traveller. The intimate charm and spirit of Paris will be heard and felt by him not amid the whirlwind of these saturnalia largely maintained by the patronage of English-speaking visitors, but rather in the smaller voices that speak from the inmost Paris which we have essayed to describe. Nor can we bid more fitting adieu to Lutetia than by translating Goethe's words to Eckermann: "Think of the city of Paris where all the best of the realms of nature and art in the whole earth are open to daily contemplation, a world-city where the crossing of every bridge or every square recalls a great past, and where at every street corner a piece of history has been unfolded."

SECTION X

_The Basilica of St. Denis and the Monuments of the Kings, Queens and Princes of France._

No historical pilgrimage to Paris would be complete without a visit to the Sanctuary of its protomartyr and the burial-place of its kings.

Taking train from the Gare du Nord, either main line or local train-tramway and being arrived at the railway station of the grimy industrial suburb of St. Denis, we cross the ca.n.a.l and continue along the Rue du Chemin de Fer and the Rue de la Republique, to the Cathedral, architecturally the most important relic of the great age of the early ecclesiastical builders. The west facade before us, completed about 1140 by Abbot Suger, is of profound interest, for here we may behold the round Romanesque arch side by side with the Pointed, and the very first grip of the new Gothic on the heavy Norman architecture it was about to overthrow. The sculptures on the W.

portals, however, almost wholly and clumsily renewed, need not detain us long. We enter and descend from the sombre vestibule. As we wait for the verger we revel in the airy and graceful symmetry of the nave and aisles; the beautiful raised choir and lovely apse with its chevets and round of chapels, where structural science and beauty of form are so admirably blended. The choir was so far advanced in 1143 that ma.s.s was sung at the high altar during a heavy storm while the incomplete ribs of the new Gothic vaulting swayed over head. In 1219, however, Suger's structure was nearly destroyed by fire and the upper part of the choir, the nave and transepts were afterwards rebuilt in the pure Gothic of the times, the more active reconstruction being effected between 1231 and 1281. A visit to the monuments is unhappily a somewhat mingled experience. Owing to the inscrutable official regulations in force, the best of the mediaeval tombs are only seen with difficulty and from a distance that renders any appreciation of their beauty impossible.[237] The monuments are mainly those claimed by Lenoir for his Museum at Paris when the decree of 1792 was promulgated, ordering the "effacement of the proud epitaphs and the destruction of the Mausoleums, that recalled the dread memories of kings": they were restored to their original places so far as possible by Viollet le Duc. The head of St. Denis is said to have been found when his shrine was desecrated and appropriated by the revolutionists, and in the cant of the time was brought back to Paris by "a miracle greater and more authentic than that which conveyed it from Montmartre to St. Denis, a miracle of the regeneration of opinion, registered not in the martyrology but in the annals of reason."

[Footnote 237: We cannot too strongly impress on the traveller the desirability of visiting the admirable Musee de Sculpture Comparee at the Trocadero where casts of the most important sculpture and architecture in France, including many of the monuments, here and elsewhere in Paris, may be conveniently studied.]