Zigzag Journeys in Europe Part 33

"It was a still night, August 24, 1572. The defenceless Huguenots were unsuspicious of danger, while armed a.s.sa.s.sins were lurking in every house. At last the heavy clang of a great bell fell on the breathless evening air, and the slaughter began.

"All that summer night the streets ran with blood. The young and the old, the daughter, the mother, the n.o.bleman and the beggar,--all who bore the name of Huguenot,--were cut off without mercy. None were spared. Even women murdered women, and children, it is said, impelled by the maddening example, applied the dagger to other children in their beds. The streets of Paris ran with blood. From thirty to seventy thousand persons were slain in the city and in the towns of France on this night and a few days following it.

"The new Queen of Navarre, Marguerite de Valois, had gone to bed on the fatal eve, by the express order of Catharine. Just as she was going to sleep, she says, a man knocked with hands and feet at her door, shouting 'Navarre! Navarre!' The nurse, thinking it was the king, opened the door. A Protestant gentleman, bleeding, and pursued by four archers, threw himself on her bed for protection. The archers rushed after him, but were stayed by the appearance of the captain of the guard. The young queen hid the wounded Huguenot in one of her closets, and cared for him until he was able to escape. Such scenes took place in nearly all the houses of the n.o.bility.

"Coligny was rudely murdered, and his body thrown out of the window of his apartments into the courtyard, where it is said to have been kicked by the Duc de Guise. The young king was in a court of the palace of the Louvre, with his mother, when the great bell began to toll. At first he trembled with fear and horror. He recovered presently from his fear, and, running to the palace window, became so excited at the sight of blood that he fired upon the wretched fugitives who were attempting to escape by swimming across the Seine.

"But the young king never knew a happy hour after that dreadful night.

He grew pale and thin, and his tortured conscience and shattered brain called up in his solitary hours the images of the slain.

"Two years after the ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve the young king lay dying. His disease, it has been said, was caused by poison, which had been applied to the leaves of one of his favorite books for the purpose, by his unnatural mother. His sufferings were dreadful in the extreme. Historians tell us that he sweat drops of blood. His mental anguish was as fearful as his bodily distress. He would cry out to his nurse, '_Ah, nourrice, ma mie, ma bonne! que du sang, que d'a.s.sa.s.sinats! Oh quels mauvais conseils j'ai suivis! Oh Seigneur Dieu, pardonnez moi, et faites moi misericorde!_' 'Ah, nurse, my good nurse! What blood! What murders! Oh what bad counsels I followed! Lord G.o.d, pardon me! Have mercy on me!'

"Historians cover the memory of Charles IX. with infamy, but his first impulses were usually kind, and his first intentions good. He does not seem to have inherited the disposition of that monster of wickedness, his mother. His most evil acts could hardly be called his own. Left to himself he would have been deemed a most polished and amiable prince, though wanting in decision. As a victim of bad counsellors, pity should mingle with the censure that follows his name."

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHARLES IX. AND CATHARINE DE MEDICI.]

CHAPTER XV.

PARIS.

Paris the Beautiful.--Notre Dame.--Tuileries and Louvre.--Garden of the Tuileries.--Bois de Boulogne.--Church of the Invalides.-- Napoleon's Tomb.--Place de la Concorde.--Story of the Man of the Iron Mask.--Versailles and the Trianons.--Story of the Dauphin.-- Fontainebleau.--The Seine.--Water-Omnibuses.--A Wonderful Boat.-- Tommy's French.--A Surprise.--St. Eustache.--Moliere.--Young French Heroes.--Wyllys Wynn's Poem.

Paris the beautiful!

City of light hearts, smiling faces, charming courtesies, and gay scenes everywhere!

City of dark tragedies of history that have hardly left behind a scar!

The tropical forest gives no warning of poison lurking under the flowers; the bright Southern sky wears no trace of the tempest. Paris says to the stranger, "I am beautiful: I have ever been beautiful, and I wear loveliness like a crown."

The streets are as gay as the summer sunshine in them; the boulevards, as the wide streets and avenues for pleasure walks are called, seem channels of happiness, through which the tides of life run as brightly as they glimmer along the Seine. "La belle Paris!" says the stranger as he comes, and "La belle Paris!" he utters respectfully as he goes.

We do not wonder that the French love it; that Napoleon gloried in it, and that Mary Queen of Scots left it with a heavy heart. Here human nature has light, warmth, and glow; and love, sympathy, and patriotism are everywhere to be seen.

"Where are the ruins caused by the siege and the Commune?" asked Frank Gray, after the Cla.s.s had been driven through a number of streets. "I do not see the first sign of there having been a recent war and revolution."

"In the fall of 1870," said Master Lewis, "shot and sh.e.l.l for a long period fell around the city and into it like rain. In the following spring the Commune was declared the government of Paris, and it seemed bent on destroying the city's beauty, and overturning its monuments of art. The Vendome Column, which celebrated the victories of Napoleon the Great, was pulled down as a monument of tyranny; the Palace of the Tuileries and the Hotel de Ville were set on fire; and the wealthy citizens who had endured the siege by a foreign foe fled from their own countrymen. To-day most of the houses destroyed by the war and the Commune are rebuilt, and the streets are as splendid as in the gay days of the Empire."

The Cla.s.s took rooms in the _Grand Hotel_, one of the largest and finest houses for public entertainment in Europe. Its first visit was to the ancient Cathedral of Notre Dame, whose history is as old as Christianity in France, and which even before that period was a Pagan temple. Here _Te Deums_ for all of the nation's victories have been sung; funeral orations of kings have been p.r.o.nounced, confessions of sin for a thousand years have been made, and ma.s.ses innumerable celebrated. Here Napoleon the Great was crowned, and Napoleon III. was married. Here the G.o.ddess of Reason, after being borne through the streets in state, was enthroned during the Revolution of 1793. It has thirty-seven chapels.

In entering the cathedral the Cla.s.s seemed to be in a new world. The rose-colored windows flooded the edifice with a soft light; and beyond it was a blaze of candles amid clouds of incense, for the priests in their gorgeous vestments were administering at the altar.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE G.o.dDESS OF REASON CARRIED THROUGH THE STREETS OF PARIS.]

The boys pa.s.sed through the waves of light reverently, and stood near the altar. A choir of altar boys suddenly rose amid the smoke and lights and glitter of priestly robes, and sang most melodiously. It seemed very solemn and grand, but the thought of the a.s.sociations of the place was even more awe-inspiring. The scene was one that had been enacted for more than a thousand years, under the groined roof of the same stately edifice, and the past seemed to hang, a weight of gloom, in the very air.

On each one's paying half a franc, the Cla.s.s was admitted into the sacristy, where the sacred relics, purchased in the East by St. Louis himself, are kept. Among them is a supposed piece of the true cross and a pretended part of the Crown of Thorns which was put upon the Saviour's head before the Crucifixion.

The second day that the Cla.s.s spent in Paris was the most delightful of the whole tour.

"I shall go with you to-day," said Master Lewis, "to the most beautiful place in Europe, the most beautiful garden in Europe, and one of the most beautiful picture-galleries in the world."

"The Tuileries?" asked Frank.

"The Louvre?" asked Ernest.

"Both," said Master Lewis.

"The Tuileries and the Louvre are now one. Francis I. began the building of the Louvre in 1541; Catharine de Medici commenced the Tuileries in 1564; Napoleon III. united the two palaces in the four years following 1852. The two palaces have been growing about three hundred years. The Tuileries was partly burned by the Commune. The united palaces cover twenty-four acres. Think of it! Twenty-four acres of art, ornament, pictures, and splendor!"

The garden of the Tuileries is the favorite promenade of wealthy and fashionable Parisians, and seemed to the boys too beautiful for reality. Graceful statues rise on every hand from flower-beds, bowers, by cool fountains, and in the shade of grand old trees,--statues in marble, stone, and bronze; Grecian, Roman, French. Airy terraces, basins bordered with rich foliage and gorgeous flowers carry the eye hither and thither, and call out some new expression of admiration at almost every step.

"How happy the life of a French king must have been!" said Tommy Toby.

"How unhappy the lives of French kings have been!" said Master Lewis.

"If you would have a view of royalty that makes a peasant's life seem desirable, read the history of the old French kings."

The beautiful forests of France extend to the very outskirts of the city. One of these, the Bois de Boulogne, is the favorite park of Paris. It contains more than two thousand acres. It has an immense aquarium, pavilions of birds, and a garden for ostriches and ca.s.sowaries, and its princ.i.p.al avenue is one hundred yards wide.

The Cla.s.s visited this park on a beautiful afternoon, pa.s.sing through the Champs Elysees, a splendid avenue filled with equipages. In this walk the boys saw the famous _Arc de Triomphe_ and the _Palais de l'Industrie_, in which the World's Fair was held in 1855, when nearly two million strangers beheld Paris in her glory. The Arc de Triomphe was begun in 1806, the year of the battle of Austerlitz, and was finished by Louis Philippe. It commemorates the victories of Napoleon, and is the most magnificent imperial monument in the world.

No scene in Paris seemed to inspire a part of the Cla.s.s with so much awe as the tomb of Napoleon. At the entrance to the crypt of the dome of the church of the Invalides, containing the conqueror's remains, are these words: "I desire that my ashes may rest on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people whom I have loved so well."

From a bal.u.s.trade above the tomb under the beautiful dome the boys looked down in silence on the sarcophagus, or stone coffin, which is of Finland granite. The monolith on which it rests is porphyry, and weighs 130,000 pounds. The monument cost nine million francs.

A beautifully tinted light fell upon the sarcophagus.

"Look," said Tommy, "see--"

An armed guard approached, with a solemn gesture of the hand. He simply said,--

"Be reverent."

[Ill.u.s.tration: GARDEN OF THE TUILERIES.]

The Hotel des Invalides, an asylum for disabled soldiers, of which the church and dome are a part, was founded by Louis XIV. The dome is gilded, and is three hundred and thirty feet high.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FOUNTAIN IN THE CHAMPS ELYSeES.]

Ernest Wynn, who seemed to have a part of some old ballad always upon his lips, repeated some fine lines to Master Lewis as they went out of the church,--a quotation from an old song, ent.i.tled "Napoleon's Grave." (At St. Helena.)

"Though nations may combat and war's thunders rattle, No more on thy steed wilt thou sweep o'er the plain; Thou sleep'st thy last sleep, thou hast fought thy last battle, No sound can awake thee to glory again."

The delightful _Place de la Concorde_, which is between the Garden of the Tuileries and the Champs Elysees, and which has been called the most delightful spot in any European city, had been pa.s.sed through by the Cla.s.s in their walk to the park, and it was decided to give an afternoon to a visit to it. Here stands the obelisk of Luxor, brought from the ruins of Thebes.