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diff --git a/41914-0.txt b/41914-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a733f34 --- /dev/null +++ b/41914-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6428 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41914 *** + +Transcriber's Note: + + Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have + been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. + + Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. + + On page 153, "corrival" should possibly be "co-rival". + On page 201, "Que ne fut rien" should possibly be "Qui ne fut rien" + On page 269, the phrase "with a strange, most ponderous, yet delicate + expression in the big, dull-glowing black eyes and it" possibly + contains a typo. + + + +THE STONES OF PARIS + +IN HISTORY AND LETTERS + + + + + [Illustration: Molière] + + + + + THE STONES OF PARIS + IN HISTORY AND LETTERS + + + BY + BENJAMIN ELLIS MARTIN + AND + CHARLOTTE M. MARTIN + + + IN TWO VOLUMES + + VOL. I + + + _ILLUSTRATED_ + + + NEW YORK + CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS + MDCCCXCIX + + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY + CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS + + + TROW DIRECTORY + PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY + + NEW YORK + + + + + TO + W. C. BROWNELL + IN CORDIAL TRIBUTE TO HIS + "FRENCH TRAITS" + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + + Three Time-worn Staircases 11 + + The Scholars' Quarter of the Middle Ages 73 + + Molière and his Friends 103 + + From Voltaire to Beaumarchais 191 + + The Paris of the Revolution 221 + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + +_From drawings by John Fulleylove, Esq. The portraits from photographs +by Messrs. Braun, Clément et Cie._ + + + Molière (from the portrait by Mignard in the Musée Condé, at + Chantilly) Frontispiece + + PAGE + The so-called Hôtel de la Reine Blanche (from a photograph + of the Commission du Vieux Paris) facing 28 + + Balcony of the Hôtel de Lauzun-Pimodan, on Île Saint-Louis 47 + + "Jean-sans-Peur," Duc de Bourgogne (from a painting by an + unknown artist, at Chantilly) facing 56 + + The Tower of "Jean-sans-Peur" 70 + + The Church of Saint-Séverin facing 74 + + Rue Hautefeuille, a Survivor of the Scholars' Quarter 81 + + The Interior of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre facing 82 + + Pierre de Ronsard (from a drawing by an unknown artist, + in a private collection) facing 88 + + Balcony over the Entrance of the Cour du Dragon 92 + + Clément Marot (from the portrait by Porbus le Jeune, in a + private collection) facing 94 + + René Descartes (from the portrait by Franz Hals, in the + Musée du Louvre) facing 100 + + The Stage Door of Molière's Second Theatre in Paris 114 + + The Stamp of the Comédie Française 121 + + The Molière Fountain facing 128 + + The Door of Corneille's Last Dwelling (from a drawing by + Robert Delafontaine, by permission of M. Victorien + Sardou) facing 142 + + Pierre Corneille (from the portrait by Charles Lebrun) + facing 148 + + Rue Visconti. On the right is the Hôtel de Ranes, and + in the distance is No. 13 facing 160 + + La Fontaine (from the portrait by Rigaud-y-Ros) + facing 176 + + Boileau-Despréaux (from the portrait by Largillière) + facing 184 + + Voltaire (from the statue by Houdon in the foyer of the + Comédie Française) facing 192 + + The Hôtel Lambert 198 + + The Seventeenth-century Buildings on Quai Malaquais, + with the Institute and the Statue of Voltaire facing 212 + + Charlotte Corday (from the copy by Baudry of the only authentic + portrait, painted in her prison) facing 222 + + The Refectory of the Cordeliers facing 230 + + The Carré d'Atalante in the Tuileries Gardens 236 + + The Girlhood Home of Madame Roland facing 244 + + No. 13 Quai Conti 258 + + Monogram from the former entrance of the Cour du Commerce, + believed to be the initials of the owner, one Girardot + (from a drawing by Robert Delafontaine, by permission + of M. Victorien Sardou) 269 + + + + +INTRODUCTORY + + +This book has been written for those who seek in Paris something more +than a city of shows or a huge bazaar, something better than the +_cabaret_ wherein François I. found entertainment, and yet not +quite--still in Hugo's phrase--the library that Charles V. esteemed +it. There are many lovers of this beautiful capital of a great people, +who, knowing well her unconcealed attractions, would search out her +records and traditions in stone, hidden and hard to find. This +legitimate curiosity grows more eager with the increasing difficulties +of gratifying it in that ancient Paris that is vanishing day by day; +and, in its bewilderment, it may be glad to find congenial guidance in +these pages. In them, no attempt is made to destroy that which is new +in order to reconstruct what was old. In telling the stories of those +monuments of past ages that are visible and tangible, reference is +made only to so much of their perished approaches and neighbors as +shall suffice for full realization of the significance of all that we +are to see. This significance is given mainly by the former dwellers +within these walls. We shall concern ourselves with the human +document, illustrated by its surroundings. The student of history can +find no more suggestive relics of mediæval Paris than the still +existing towers and fragments of the wall of Philippe-Auguste, which +shall be shown to him; for us, these stones must be made to speak, not +so essentially of their mighty builder as of the common people, who +moved about within that enclosure and gave it character. In like +manner, the walls, which have sheltered soldiers, statesmen, +preachers, teachers, workers in art and letters, illustrious men and +women of all sorts and conditions, will take on the personality of +these impressive presences. When we stand beneath the roof of that +favorite personage in history, that spoiled child of romance, who +happens to be dear to each one of us, we are brought into touch with +him as with a living fellow-creature. The streets of Paris are alive +with these sympathetic companions, who become abiding friends, as we +stroll with them; and allow none of the ache, confessed to be felt in +such scenes, despite her reasoning, by Madame de Sévigné. Nor do they +invite, here, any critical review of their work in life, but consent +to scrutiny of their lineaments alone, and to an appreciation of their +personal impress on their contemporaries and on us. So that essays on +themes, historic, literary, artistic, can find no place in this +record. Indeed, labor and time have been expended "in hindering it +from being ... swollen out of shape by superfluous details, defaced +with dilettanti antiquarianisms, nugatory tag-rags, and, in short, +turned away from its real uses, instead of furthered toward them." In +this sense, at least, the authors can say in Montaigne's words, "_ceci +est un livre de bonne foy_." + +In this presentation of people and places it has been difficult, +sometimes impossible, to keep due sequence both of chronology and +topography. Just as Mr. Theodore Andrea Cook found in the various +_châteaux_ of his admirable "Old Touraine," so each spot we shall +visit in Paris "has some particular event, some especial visitor, +whose importance overshadows every other memory connected with the +place." With that event or that visitor we must needs busy ourselves, +without immediate regard to other dates or other personages. Again, to +keep in sight some conspicuous figure, as he goes, we must leave on +one side certain memorable scenes, to which we shall come back. Each +plan has been pursued in turn, as has seemed desirable, for the sake +of the clearness and accuracy, which have been considered above all +else. The whole value of such records as are here presented depends on +the preliminary researches. In the doing of this, thousands of books +and pamphlets and articles have been read, hundreds of people have +been questioned, scores of miles have been tramped. Oldest archives +and maps have been consulted, newest newspaper clippings have not been +disregarded. Nothing has been thought too heavy or too light that +would help to give a characteristic line or a touch of native color. A +third volume would be needed to enumerate the authorities called on +and compared. Nor has any statement of any one of these authorities +been accepted without ample investigation; and every assertion has +been subjected to all the proof that it was possible to procure. Those +countless errors have been run to earth which have been started so +often by the carelessness of an early writer, and ever since kept +alive by lazy copiers and random compilers. These processes of sifting +are necessarily omitted for lack of space, and the wrought-out results +alone are shown. If the authors dare not hope that they have avoided +errors on their own part, they may hope for indulgent correction of +such as may have crept in, for all their vigilance. + +It is easier, to-day, to put one's hand on the Paris of the sixteenth +century than on that of the eighteenth century. In those remoter days +changes were slow to come, and those older stones have been left often +untouched. A curious instance of that aforetime leisureliness is seen +in the working of the _ordonnance_ issued on May 14, 1554, by Henri +II. for the clearing away of certain encroachments made on the streets +by buildings and by business, notably on Rue de la Ferronerie; that +street being one of those used "for our way from our royal _château_ +of the Louvre to our _château_ of the Tournelles." It was fifty-six +years later, to the very day, that the stabbing of Henri IV. was made +easy to Ravaillac, by the stoppage of the king's carriage in the +blockade of that narrow street, its obstructions not yet swept out, in +absolute disregard of the edict. From the death of the royal mason, +Charles V., who gave a new face and a new figure to his Paris, to the +coming of Henri IV., who had in him the makings of a kingly +constructor, but who was hindered by the necessary destruction of his +wars, there were two centuries of steady growth of the town outward, +on all sides, with only slight alterations of its interior quarters. +Many of these were transformed, many new quarters were created, by +Louis XIII., thus realizing his father's frustrated plans. Richelieu +was able to widen some streets, and Colbert tried to carry on the +work, but Louis XIV. had no liking for his capital, and no money to +waste for its bettering. His stage-subject's civic pride was unduly +swollen, when he said: "_À cette époque, la grande ville du roi Henri +n'était pas ce qu'elle est aujourd'hui._" + +At the beginning of the eighteenth century we find Paris divided into +twenty quarters, in none of which was there any numbering of the +houses. The streets then got their names from their mansions of the +nobility, from their vast monasteries and convents, from their special +industries and shops. These latter names survive in our Paris as they +survive in modern London. The high-swinging street lanterns, that came +into use in 1745, served for directions to the neighboring houses, as +did the private lanterns hung outside the better dwellings. Toward the +middle of that century the city almanacs began a casual numbering of +the houses in their lists, and soon this was found to be such a +convenience that the householders painted numbers on or beside their +doors. Not before 1789 was there any organized or official numbering, +and this was speedily brought to naught during the Revolution, either +because it was too simple or because it was already established. To +this day, the first symptom of a local or national upheaval, and the +latest sign of its ending, are the ladder and paint-pot in the +streets of Paris. Names that recall to the popular eye recently +discredited celebrities or humiliating events, are brushed out, and +the newest favorites of the populace are painted in. + +The forty-eight sections into which the Revolution divided the city +changed many street names, of section, and renumbered all the houses. +Each lunatic section, quite sure of its sanity, made this new +numbering of its own dwellings with a cheerful and aggressive +disregard of the adjoining sections; beginning arbitrarily at a point +within its boundary, going straight along through its streets, and +ending at the farthest house on the edge of its limits. So, a house +might be No. 1187 of its section, and its next-door neighbor might be +No. 1 of the section alongside. In a street that ran through several +sections there would be more than one house of the same number, each +belonging to a different section. "Encore un Tableau de Paris" was +published in 1800 by one Henrion, who complains that he passed three +numbers 42 in Rue Saint-Denis before he came to the 42 that he wanted. +The decree of February 7, 1805, gave back to the streets many of their +former names, and ordered the numbering, admirably uniform and +intelligible, still in use--even numbers on one side of the street, +odd numbers on the other side, both beginning at the eastern end of +the streets that run parallel with the Seine, and at the river end of +the streets going north and south. For the topographer all these +changes have brought incoherence to the records, have paralyzed +research, and crippled accuracy. In addition, during the latter half +of the nineteenth century, many old streets have been curtailed or +lengthened, carried along into new streets, or entirely suppressed and +built over. Indeed, it is substantially the nineteenth century that +has given us the Paris that we best know; begun by the great Emperor, +it was continued by the crown on top of the cotton night-cap of +Louis-Philippe, and admirably elaborated, albeit to the tune of the +cynical fiddling of the Second Empire. The Republic of our day still +wields the pick-axe, and demolition and reconstruction have been going +on ruthlessly. Such of these changes as are useful and guiltless are +now intelligently watched; such of them as are needlessly destructive +may be stopped in part by the admirable _Commission du Vieux Paris_. +The members of this significant body, which was organized in December, +1897, are picked men from the Municipal Council, from the official +committees of Parisian Inscriptions, and of Historic Works, from +private associations and private citizens, all earnest and +enthusiastic for the preservation of their city's monuments that are +memorable for architectural worth or historic suggestion. Where they +are unable to save to the sight what is ancient and picturesque, they +save to the memory by records, drawings, and photographs. The "Procès +Verbal" of this Commission, issued monthly, contains its illustrated +reports, discussions, and correspondence, and promises to become an +historic document of inestimable value. + +The words _rue_ and _place_, as well as their attendant names, have +been retained in the French, as the only escape from the confusion of +a double translation, first here, and then back to the original by the +sight-seer. The definite article, that usually precedes these words, +has been suppressed, in all cases, because it seems an awkward and +needless reiteration. Nor are French men and French women disguised +under translated titles. If Macaulay had been consistent in his +misguided Briticism that turned Louis into Lewis, and had carried out +that scheme to its logical end in every case, he would have given us a +ludicrous nomenclature. "Bottin" is used in these pages as it is used +in Paris, to designate the city directory: which was issued, first, in +a tiny volume, in 1796, by the publisher Bottin, and has kept his name +with its enormous growth through the century. + +The word _hôtel_ has here solely its original significance of a town +house of the noble or the wealthy. In the sense of our modern usage of +the word it had no place in old Paris. Already in the seventeenth +century there were _auberges_ for common wayfarers, and here and there +an _hôtellerie_ for the traveller of better class. During the absences +of the owners of grand city mansions, their _maîtres-d'hôtel_ were +allowed to let them to accredited visitors to the capital, who brought +their own retinue and demanded only shelter. When they came with no +train, so that service had to be supplied, it was "charged in the +bill," and that objectionable item, thus instituted, has been handed +down to shock us in the _hôtel-garni_ of our time. With the emigration +of the nobility, their stewards and _chefs_ lost place and pay, and +found both once more in the public hotels they then started. No +_hôtels-garnis_ can be found in Paris of earlier date than the +Revolution. + +In their explorations into the libraries, bureaus, museums, and +streets of Paris, the authors have met with countless kindnesses. The +unlettered _concierge_ who guards an historic house is proud of its +traditions, or, if ignorant of them, as may chance, will listen to the +tale with a courtesy that simulates sympathy. The exceptions to this +general amenity have been few and ludicrous, and mostly the outcome of +exasperation caused by the ceaseless questioning of foreigners. The +_concierge_ of Châteaubriand's last home, in Rue du Bac, considers a +flourish of the wet broom, with which he is washing his court, a +fitting rejoinder to the inquiring visitor. That visitor will find +Balzac's Passy residence as impossible of entrance now as it was to +his creditors. The unique inner court of the Hôtel de Beauvais must be +seen from the outer vestibule, admission being refused by a surly +_concierge_ under orders from an ungenerous owner. The urbanity of the +noble tenant of the mansion built over the grave of Adrienne +Lecouvreur is unequal to the task of answering civil inquiries sent in +stamped envelopes. All these are but shadows in the pervading sunshine +of Parisian good-breeding. In making this acknowledgment to the many +who must necessarily remain unnamed, the authors wish to record their +recognition of the sympathetic counsel of Mlle. Blanche Taylor, of +Paris, and of George H. Birch, Esq., Curator of the Soane Museum, +London. Cordial thanks are especially given to the officials of the +Hôtel de Ville, in the bureau of the Conservation du Plan de Paris, to +M. Charles Sellier of the Musée Carnavalet, to M. Monval, Librarian of +the Comédie Française, to M. G. Lenôtre, and to M. Victorien Sardou, +for unmeasured aid of all sorts, prompted by a disinterestedness that +welcomes the importunate fellow-worker, and makes him forget that he +is a stranger and a foreigner. + + + + +THREE TIME-WORN STAIRCASES + + + + +THREE TIME-WORN STAIRCASES + + +We are to see a Paris unknown to the every-day dweller there, who is +content to tread, in wearied idleness, his swarming yet empty +boulevards; a Paris unseen by the hurried visitor, anxious to go his +round of dutiful sight-seeing. This Paris is far away from the crowd, +bustling in pursuit of pleasure, and hustling in pursuit of leisure; +out of sound of the teasing clatter of cab-wheels, and the tormenting +toot of tram-horns, and the petulant snapping of whips; out of sight +of to-day's pretentious structures and pompous monuments. To find this +Paris we must explore remote quarters, lose ourselves in untrodden +streets, coast along the alluring curves of the quays, cruise for +sequestered islands behind the multitudinous streams of traffic. We +shall not push ahead just to get somewhere, nor restlessly "rush in to +peer and praise." We shall learn to _flâner_, not without object, but +with art and conscience; to saunter, in the sense of that word, +humorously derived by Thoreau from _Sainte-Terre_, and so transform +ourselves into pilgrims to the spots sacred in history and legend, in +art and literature. In a word, if you go with us, you are to become +Sentimental Prowlers. + +In this guise, we shall not know the taste of Parisine, a delectable +poison, more subtle than nicotine or strychnine, in the belief of +Nestor Roqueplan, that modern Voltaire of the boulevards. And we shall +not share "the unwholesome passion" for his Paris, to which François +Coppée owns himself a victim. Nor, on the other hand, shall we find +"an insipid pleasure" in this adventure, as did Voltaire. Yet even he +confesses, elsewhere, that one would "rather have details about Racine +and Despréaux, Bossuet and Descartes, than about the battle of +Steinkerk. There is nothing left but the names of the men who led +battalions and squadrons. There is no return to the human race for one +hundred engagements, but the great men I have spoken of prepared pure +and lasting pleasures for mortals still unborn." It is in this spirit +that we start, sure of seeking an unworn sentiment, and of finding an +undraggled delight, in the scenes which have inspired, and have been +inspired by, famous men and women. Their days, their ways, they +themselves as they moved and worked, are made alive for us once more +by their surroundings. Where these have been disturbed by +improvements, "more fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea," we get +curious suggestions from some forgotten name cut in the stone of a +street corner, from a chance-saved sign, a neglected _tourelle_, or a +bit of battered carving. And where the modern despoiler has wreaked +himself at his worst--as with the Paris of Marot, Rabelais, +Palissy--we may rub the magic ring of the archæologist, which brings +instant reconstruction. So that we shall seem to be walking in a vast +gallery, where, in the words of Cicero, at each step we tread on a +memory. "For, indeed," as it is well put by John Ruskin, "the greatest +glory of a building is not in its stones, or in its gold. Its glory is +in its _age_, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern +watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even of approval or +condemnation, which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the +passing waves of humanity." + +These stone and brick vestiges of the people of old Paris are to be +sought in its byways, narrow and winding; or hidden behind those broad +boulevards, that have newly opened up its distant quarters, on the +north or on the south. Sometimes these monuments have been brought +into full view across the grassed or gravelled spaces of recent +creation, so showing their complete and unmarred glory for the first +time in all the ages. Thus we may now look on Notre-Dame and the +Sainte-Chapelle, in dreamy surrender to their bedimmed beauty, that +persuades us that Paris can hold nothing in reserve more reverend in +comely old age. Yet, almost within touch of these two, stands a gray +tower, another sturdy survivor of the centuries. Between the northern +side of Notre-Dame and the river-bank, a happy chance has spared some +few of the streets, though fewer of the structures, of this earliest +Paris of Île de la Cité. This region recalls to us, by its +street-names in part, and partly by its buildings, its former +connection with the cathedral. In Rue des Chantres it lodged its +choristers, and Rue du Cloître-Notre-Dame records the site of the +clerical settlement, beloved by Boileau, wherein dwelt its higher +officials. Rue Chanoinesse has its significance, too, and we will stop +before the wide frontage of differing ages, whose two entrances, Nos. +18 and 20, open into the large courts of two mansions, now thrown into +one. This interior court was a garden until of late years, and while +grass and flowers are gone forever, it keeps its ancient well in the +centre and its stone steps that mounted to the _salons_. Those +_salons_, and the large court, and the smaller courts beyond--all +these courts now roofed over with glass--are piled high with every +known shape of household furniture and utensil in metal; notably with +the iron garden-chairs and tables, dear to the French. For this vast +enclosure is the storage _dépôt_ of a famous house-furnishing firm, +and is one more instance of the many in Paris of a grand old mansion +and its dependencies given over to trade. + +By the courtesy of those in charge, we may pass within the spacious +stone entrance arch of No. 18, and pick our way through the ordered +confusion, past the admirable inner façade of the main fabric, with +its stately steps and portal and its windows above, topped by tiny +hoods, to a distant corner; where, in the gloom, we make out the base +of a square tower and the foot of a corkscrew staircase. We mount it, +spirally and slowly. The well-worn stone steps are narrow, and the +turn of the spiral is sharp, for this tower was built when homes were +fortresses, when space was precious, and when hundreds huddled within +walls that will hardly hold one thriving establishment of our day. In +this steep ascent, we get scant assistance from our hold on the rude +hand-rail, roughly grooved in the great central column--one solid +tree-trunk, embedded in the ground, stretching to the top of the +stairs. Experts assure us that this tree was fully five hundred years +old, when it was cut down to be made the shaft of this stairway, +nearly five hundred years ago. For this stone tower is evidently of +late fifteenth-century construction. The mediæval towers were round, +whether built upon their own foundations or rebuilt from Roman towers; +and they gave way to square towers when battering-rams gave way to +guns, in the fifteenth century. Yet this pile of masonry is known as +"_la tour de Dagobert_," and with no wish to discredit this legend, +cherished by the dwellers in this quarter, we may quote Brantôme +concerning certain local traditions of the Tour de Nesle: "_Je ne puis +dire si çela soit vrai, mais le vulgaire de Paris l'affirme._" + +We can say, with certainty, that this tower was never seen by +Dagobert, for, long before this tree had sprouted from the ground, he +lived in the old Palace, the home of the early kings, at the other end +of the island. There he flourished, for the ten years between 628 and +638, in coarse splendor and coarser conviviality, his palace packed +with barbaric gold and silver, with crude wall paintings and curious +hangings. For this monarch made much of the arts of his day, whenever +he found leisure from his fighting and his drinking. Because of his +love of luxury, a century of cyclopædias has "curved a contumelious +lip" at his "corrupt court." On the other hand, he has been styled +"Saint Dagobert" by writers unduly moved to emotion by his gifts to +the churches at Saint-Denis, Rheims, Tours; and by his friendship for +certain bishops. But Rome, mindful of sundry other churches plundered +and destroyed by him, has not assented to this saintship. We may +accept his apt popular epithet, "_le bon_," which meant, in those +bellicose days, only merry or jovial; an easy virtue not to be denied +by priggish biographers to this genial ruffian. By turns, he devoted +himself to the flowing bowl in his palace there, and to building +religious edifices all over the face of France. And he has accentuated +the supremacy of the Church over all the warriors and the rulers of +his day, in the soaring majesty of the two towers that dominate the +buried outlines of his favorite church of Saint-Martin at Tours, solid +and lasting in their isolation. There the man is brought almost into +touch with us, while here only his name is recalled by this tower, +which he never saw. + +The shadow-land of ancient French history, into which we have made +this little journey, is not darker than this narrow staircase, as we +creep dizzily upward, losing count of steps, stopping to take breath +at the infrequent windows, round-topped at first, then square and +small. It is with surprise that we realize, stepping out on the +tower-roof, that our standing-place is only five floors from the +ground; and yet from this modest height, overtopped by the ordinary +apartment house of Paris, we find an outlook that is unequalled even +by that from Notre-Dame's towers. For, as we come out from the +sheltering hood of our stair-way top, the great cathedral itself lies +before us, like some beautiful living creature outstretched at rest. +Words are impertinent in face of the tranquil strength of its bulk and +the exquisite delicacy of its lines, and we find refuge in the +affectionate phrase of Mr. Henry James, "The dear old thing!" + +Beyond the cathedral square, over the bronze Charlemagne on his bronze +horse, glints the untravelled narrower arm of the Seine; we turn our +heads and look at its broader surface, all astir with little fidgetty +_bateaux-mouches_ and big, sedate barges. At both banks are anchored +huge wash-houses and bathing establishments. From this island-centre +all Paris spreads away to its low encircling slopes, to the brim of +the shallow bowl in which it lies. In sharp contrast with all that +newness, our old tower stands hemmed about by a medley of roofs of all +shapes and all ages; their red tiles of past style, here and there, +agreeably mellowing the dull dominant blue of the Paris slate. On +these roofs below jut out dormers, armed with odd wheels and chains +for lifting odd burdens; here on one side is an outer staircase that +starts in vague shadow, and ends nowhere, it would seem; far down +glimmers the opaque gray of the glass-covered courts at our feet. A +little toward the north--where was an entrance to this court, in old +days, from a gateway on the river-bank--is the roof that sheltered +Racine, along with the legal gentry of the Hôtel des Ursins. And all +about us, below, lies the little that is left of _la Cité_, the swept +and set-in-order leavings of that ancient network of narrow streets, +winding passages, blind alleys, all walled about by tall, scowling +houses, leaning unwillingly against one another to save themselves +from falling. This was the whole of Gallic Lutetia, the centre of +Roman Lutetia, the heart of mediæval Paris, the "Alsatia" of modern +Paris; surviving almost to our time, when the Second Empire let light +and air into its pestilent corners. Every foot of this ground has its +history. Down there, Villon, sneaking from the University precincts, +stole and starved and sang; there Quasimodo, climbing down from his +tower, foraged for his scant supplies; there Sue's impossibly dark +villany and equally impossible virtue found fitting stage-setting; +there, François, honest and engaging thief, slipped narrowly through +the snares that encompassed even vagabonds, in the suspicious days and +nights of the Terror. + +The nineteenth century, cutting its clean way through this sinister +quarter, cutting away with impartial spade the round dozen churches +and the hundreds of houses that made their parishes, all clustered +close about the cathedral and the palace, has happily left untouched +this gray tower, built when or for what no one knows. It is a part of +all that it has seen, in its sightless way, through the changing +centuries of steady growth and of transient mutilation of its town. It +has seen its own island and the lesser islands up-stream gradually +alter their shapes; this island of the city lengthening itself, by +reaching out for the two low-shored grassy eyots down-stream, where +now is Place Dauphine and where sits Henri IV. on his horse. The +narrow channel between, that gave access to the water-gate of the old +Palace, has been filled in, so making one island of the three, and Rue +de Harlay-au-Palais covers the joining line. So the two islands on the +east--Île Notre-Dame and Île aux Vaches--have united their shores to +make Île Saint-Louis. The third island, most easterly of all--Île des +Javiaux of earliest times, known later as Île Louvier--has been glued +to the northern bank of the mainland, by the earthing-in of the thin +arm of the river, along the line of present Boulevard Morland, and +Quai Henri IV. And the two great islands as we know them--the +permanent outcome of all these topographical transformations--have +been chained to each other and to both banks, by numerous beautiful +bridges. + +Our tower raised its head in time to see the gradual wearing away of +the mighty Roman aqueduct, that brought water to the Palais des +Thermes of the Roman rulers--whose immense _frigidarium_ is safe and +sound within the enclosure of the Cluny Museum--from the Bièvre, away +off on the southern outskirts. This aqueduct started at the point +where later was built the village of Arceuil--named from the mediæval, +or late, Latin _Arculi_--where was quarried the best stone that +builded old Paris; and curved with the valley of the Bièvre like a +huge railway viaduct, leaving that stream when it bent in its course +to the Seine near the Salpêtrière, and entering the town along the +easterly line of Rue Saint-Jacques, and so straight away to the baths. +This tower well remembers the new aqueduct, constructed massively on +the ruins of the Roman, between 1613 and 1633, from Rungis, still +farther south, to the Luxembourg Palace. Imperial and royal baths must +have pure water, while wells and rivers must perforce content the +townspeople. They had their aqueduct at last, however, laid, still +along the top of these others, during the Second Empire. It is worth +the little trip by rail to Arceuil to see the huge arches that climb +along the valley carrying these piled-up conduits. + +Our old tower has seen the baby town creep, from its cradle on the +shore, up that southern slope to where on its summit it found the tomb +of its patron, Sainte Geneviève--one tower of her abbey still shows +gray above the garden-walls of Lycée Henri IV.--and thence, its +strength so grown as to burst its girdle of restraining wall, it +strode far afield. Roman and Christian settlements, with all their +greenery--palace, abbey, and school, each set within its spacious +gardens--gradually gave place to these serried shining roofs we see, +here and there pierced by church spires and punctuated by domes. And +on the northern bank, our tower has seen the rising tide of the +centuries swallow up the broad marshes along the shore and the wide +woodlands behind; bearing down Roman villa and temple, Christian +nunnery and monastery, washing away each successive breakwater of +wall, until it surged over the crest of the encircling hills, now +crowned by the imposing basilica of the Sacred Heart on Montmartre. + +It may have been here in time to look down on the stately procession +escorting the little ten-year-old Henry IV., the new King of England, +from the Palace to the cathedral; wherein was celebrated the service +by which one English cardinal and two French bishops tried to +consecrate him King of France. It saw, when the ceremony was ended, +the turbulent mob of common French folk crowding about the boy-king +and his English escort as they returned, and ignominiously hustling +them into the Palace. Not many years later, on April 13, 1436, it +possibly saw the French soldiery march into Place de Grève, over the +bridge and through the streets behind, from their captured gate of +Saint-Jacques; and not many days thereafter, the English soldiery +hurrying along behind the northern wall from the Bastille to the +Louvre, and there taking boat for their sail to Rouen; the while the +Parisian populace, mad with joy on that wall, welcomed the incoming +friend and cursed the outgoing foe. + +Our tower has watched, from its own excellent point of view, the three +successive fires in and about the Palace, in 1618, 1736, and 1776. +Between them, these fires carried away the constructions of Louis +XII., the vast Salle des Pas-Perdus, the ancient donjon, the spires +and turrets and steep roofs that swarmed about the Sainte-Chapelle, +whose slender height seems to spring more airily from earth to sky by +that clearance. Only that chapel, the Salle-des-Gardes, the corner +tower on the quay, the kitchens of Saint-Louis behind it, and the +round-capped towers of the Conciergerie, are left of the original +palace. The present outer casing of this Tour de l'Horloge is a +restoration of that existing in 1585, but the thirteenth-century +fabric remains, and the foundations are far earlier, in the view of +the late Viollet-le-Duc. Its clock dates from 1370, having been twice +restored, and its bell has sounded, as far as our tower, the passing +of many historic hours. It rang menacingly an hour later than that of +Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, which had been advanced by the +queen-mother's eagerness, on Saint Bartholomew's night. It was _en +carillon_ all of Friday, June 12, 1598, for the peace procured by +Henri IV. between Spain and Savoy; and the birth of his son was +saluted by its joyous chimes, at two o'clock of the afternoon of +Friday, September 28, 1601. + +Nearly two years later--on Friday, June 20, 1603--our tower stared in +consternation, out over the end of the island, at the gallant Henry +treading jauntily and safely across the uncompleted arches of the +Pont-Neuf, from shore to shore. The new bridge was a wonder, and in +attempts to climb along its skeleton, many over-curious citizens had +tumbled into the river; "but not one of them a king," laughed their +king, after his successful stepping over. The bridge was built slowly, +and was at last ready for traffic on February 6, 1607, and has stood +so strong and stable ever since, that it has passed into a proverb as +the common comparison for a Frenchman's robust health. It is the only +bridge between the islands and either bank that has so stood, and this +tower has seen each of the others wrecked by fire or flood. The tall +wooden piles, on which the mediæval bridgeways were built, slowly +rotted, until they were carried away by the fierce current. And fire +found its frequent quarry in the tall houses that lined either side of +the roadway, shops on the lower floor, and tenants above. + +Thus our tower doubtless heard, on Friday, October 25, 1499, the +wrenching and groaning of the huge wooden piles of Pont +Notre-Dame--its first pile driven down by temporarily sane Charles +VI.--as they bent and broke and tumbled into the Seine, with their +burden of roadway and of buildings; whereby so thick a cloud of dust +rose up from the water, that rescue of the inmates was almost +impossible. Among the few saved, on that calamitous holiday of +Saint-Crespin and Saint-Crespinien, was a baby found floating +down-stream in its cradle, unwet and unharmed. So, too, Pont aux +Meuniers and all its houses and mills fell in fragments into the +stream on December 22, 1596. It was a wooden bridge, connecting the +island end of Pont au Change diagonally with the shore of the +mainland. It is reported that the dwellers on the bridge were rich +men, many of them slayers and plunderers of the Huguenots on the +festival of Saint Bartholomew. So it was said that the weak hand of +city supervision, neglecting the bridge, was aided by the finger of +God, pushing it down! + +The Petit-Pont dropped into the Seine no less than six times between +the years 1206 and 1393. The earliest Roman bridge, it had carried +more traffic than any later bridge, and had been ruined and +reconstructed time and again, until stone took the place of wood for +its arches and road-way and houses. But the wooden scaffoldings used +for the new construction were left below, and were the means of +sacrificing it to an old woman's superstition. On April 27, 1718, she +launched a _sébile_--a wooden bowl--carrying a bit of blessed bread +and a lighted taper, in the belief that this holy raft would stop +over, and point out, the spot where lay the body of her drowned son. +The taper failed in its sacred mission, and set fire to a barge loaded +with hay, and this drifted against the timbers under the arches, and +soon the entire bridge went up in flames. When again rebuilt, no +houses were allowed upon it. With the falling of all those bridges and +all that they held, the river-bed grew thick with every sort of +object, common and costly. Coins from many mints found their way +there, not only through fire and flood, but because the +money-changers, warily established on the bridges, dropped many an +illicit piece from their convenient windows into the river, rather +than let themselves be caught in passing counterfeits. This water +museum has been dragged from time to time, and the treasures have gone +to enrich various collections, notably that of M. Victorien Sardou. + +With all helpless Paris, our tower watched the old Hôtel-Dieu--on the +island's southern bank, where now is the green open space between +Petit-Pont and Pont au Double--burning away for eleven days in 1772, +and caught glimpses of the rescued patients, carried across Place du +Parvis to hastily improvised wards in the nave of Notre-Dame. + +Unscathed by fire, unmutilated by man, unwearied by watching, +"Dagobert's Tower" stands, penned in by the high old buildings that +shoulder it all around. Hidden behind them, it is unseen and +forgotten. The only glimpses to be got of its gray bulk are, one from +the neighboring tower of the cathedral, and another from the deck of a +river-boat as it glides under Pont d'Arcole; a glimpse to be caught +quickly, amid the quick-changing views of the ever-varied perspective +of the island's towers and buttresses, pinnacles and domes. + +Far away from the island and its river, over the edge of the southern +slope, behind the distant, dreary, outer boulevards, we find another +ancient staircase. It is within the vast structure known as "_la +maison dîte de Saint Louis_," commonly called the "_Hôtel de la Reine +Blanche_." The modern boulevard, which gets its name from the +astronomer, philosopher, and politician, Arago, has made a clean sweep +through this historic quarter, but it has spared this mansion and the +legend, which makes it the suburban dwelling of Blanche of Castile. +Hereabout was all country then, and a favorite summer resort of the +wealthy citizens, whose modest cottages and showy villas clustered +along the banks of the Bièvre; a free and wilful stream in the early +years of the thirteenth century, often in revolt and sometimes +misleading the sedate Seine into escapades, to the disquiet of these +_faubourgs_. From its gardens, portly meadows smiled townward to +Mont-Sainte-Geneviève, crowded with its schools, and to the convent +gardens, snuggling close under the shelter of the southern wall of +Philippe-Auguste. + +To-day, all this quarter is made malodorous by its many tanneries and +dye-works; they have enslaved the tiny Bièvre and stained it to a +dirty reddish brown; so that it crawls, slimy and sluggish and +ashamed, between their surly walls and beneath bedraggled bridges, +glad to sink into the Seine, under the Orleans railway station. Its +gardens and meadows are covered by square miles of stone, and the line +of the old wall is hidden behind and under modern streets. And this +so-called country home of Queen Blanche, become plain No. 17 Rue des +Gobelins, yet refuses, in its mediæval dignity, to regard itself as a +mere number in a street, and withdraws behind its wall, its shoulder +aslant, to express its royal unconcern for the straight lines of city +surveyors. These have not yet stolen all its old-time character from +the remaining section of the street, nor spoiled such of its old-time +façades as are left. This one at No. 19 demands our especial scrutiny, +by its significant portal and windows, and by the belief that it was +originally joined in its rear to No. 17, the two forming one immense +structure of the same style of architecture. When was its date, who +was its builder, what was its use, are undisclosed, so far, and we may +follow our own fancies, as we enter through the narrow gateway into +the front court of "Queen Blanche's house." Its main fabric on the +ground floor, with its low arched window, insists that it is +contemporary with the clever woman and capable queen, to whom legend, +wider than merely local, brings home this building. Yet its upper +windows, and the dormers of the wing, and the slope of the roof, +suggest a late fifteenth or an early sixteenth century origin; and the +cornice-moulding is so well worked out that it speaks plainly of a +much later date than the mediæval fortress-home. In a _tourelle_ at +either end is a grand spiral staircase, as in Dagobert's Tower, and, +like that, these turn on huge central oak trunks. Here, however, the +steps are less abrupt; the grooving of the hand-rail, while it +testifies to the stroke of the axe, is less rude; and daylight is +welcomed by wider windows. Each of the three floors, that lie between +the two staircase turrets, is made up of one vast hall, with no traces +of division walls. Whether or no a Gobelin once made usage of this +building, as has been claimed, it has now come into a tanner's +service, and his workmen tread its stairs and halls, giving a living +touch of our workaday world to these walls of dead feudalism. + + [Illustration: The So-called Hôtel de la Reine Blanche. + (From a photograph of the Commission du Vieux Paris.)] + +It was in 1200 that Blanche of Castile was brought to France, a girl +of twelve, for her marriage with little Louis, of the same ripe age. +His father, Philippe-Auguste, was a mighty builder, and Paris +flourished under him, her "second founder." In the intervals between +crusades against infidels and wars with Christians, he founded +colleges and gave other aid to the university on this bank; he pushed +on with his strong hand the building of Notre-Dame and of the old +Hôtel-Dieu on the island; he removed his residence from the ancient +Palace, there, to the Louvre on the northern bank, constructed by him +to that end--his huge foundation-walls, with some few capitals and +mouldings, may be seen deep down in the substructures of the present +Louvre--he shut in the unfenced cemetery of the Innocents from the +merry-makers who profaned it; he roofed and walled-in the open markets +in the fields hard by that burial-ground; and he paved the streets of +the _Cité_. To meet this last outlay, he was lavish with the money of +the citizens, notably of Gérard de Poissy, who was moved to donate +one-half of his entire fortune by the sight of the King, "sparing +neither pains nor expense in beautifying the town." Sparing himself no +pains for the bettering of his beloved capital, Philippe-Auguste +spared no expense to its worthy burghers, and in their purses he found +the funds for his great wall. This he planned and began, toward the +close of the twelfth century, when at home for awhile from the +warfaring, during which he had captured the "saucy Château-Gaillard" +of his former fellow-crusader, Richard the Lion-Hearted. + +Around the early Lutetia on the island, with the river for its moat, +there had been a Gallo-Roman wall, well known to us all; and there was +a later wall, concerning which none of us know much. We may learn no +more than that it was a work of Louis VI., "_le Gros_," early in the +twelfth century, and that it enclosed the city's small suburbs on +both banks of the mainland. Where this wall abutted on the two +bridge-heads that gave access to the island, Louis VI. converted the +wooden towers--already placed there for the protection of these +approaches by Charles II., "_le Chauve_," in the ninth century--into +great gateways and small citadels, all of stone. They were massive, +grim, sinister structures, and when their service as fortresses was +finished, they were used for prisons; both equally infamous in cruelty +and horror. The Petit Châtelet was a donjon tower, and guarded the +southern approach to the island by way of the ancient main-road of the +Gaul and the Roman, known later as the Voie du Midi, and later again +as the Route d'Orléans, and now as Rue Saint-Jacques. This _châtelet_ +stood at the head of Petit-Pont, on the ground where Quais +Saint-Michel and Montebello meet now, and was not demolished until +late in the eighteenth century. The Grand Châtelet ended the northern +wall where it met Pont au Change, and its gloomy walls, and conical +towers flanking a frowning portal, were pick-axed away only in 1802. +It had held no prisoners since Necker induced Louis XVI. to institute, +in La Force and other jails, what were grotesquely entitled "model +prisons." On the building that faces the northern side of Place du +Châtelet you will find an elaborate tablet holding the plan of the +dreary fortress and the appalling prison. When we stroll about the +open space that its destruction has left, and that bears the bad old +name, we need not lament its loss. + +Then came the wall of Philippe-Auguste, grandly planned to enclose +the closely knit island _Cité_ and its straggling suburbs on either +bank, with all their gardens, vineyards, and fields far out; and +solidly constructed, with nearly thirty feet of squared-stone height, +and nearly ten feet of cemented rubble between the strong side faces. +Its heavy parapet was battlemented, numerous round towers bulged from +its outer side, the frequent gates had stern flanking towers, and the +four ends on both river-banks were guarded by enormous towers, really +small fortresses. The westernmost tower on this southern shore--with +which section of the wall, built slowly from 1208 to 1220, we are now +concerned--was the Tour de Nesle, and its site is shown by a tablet on +the quay-front of the eastern wing of the Institute. Alongside was the +important Porte de Nesle. Thence the wall went southwesterly, behind +the line made by the present Rues Mazarine and Monsieur-le-Prince; +then, by its great curve just north of Rue des Fossés-Saint-Jacques, +it safeguarded the tomb and the abbey of Sainte Geneviève, and so bent +sharply around toward the northeast, within the line of present Rues +Thouin, du Cardinal-Lemoine, and des Fossés-Saint-Bernard, to the +easternmost tower on Quai de la Tournelle, and its river-gate, Porte +Saint-Bernard. That gate, standing until the end of the eighteenth +century, had been titillated into a triumphal arch for Louis XIV., in +whose time this quay was a swell promenade and drive. It still retains +one of its grand mansions, the Hôtel Clermont-Tonnerre, at No. 27 on +the quay, with a well-preserved portal. + +Of the stately sweep of this wall we may get suggestive glimpses by +the various tablets, that show the sites of the tennis courts made +later on its outer side, and that mark the places of the gates; such +as the tablet at No. 44 Rue Dauphine. The street and gate of that name +date from 1607, when Henri IV. constructed them as the southern outlet +from his Pont-Neuf, and named them in honor of the first _dauphin_ +born to France since Catherine de' Medici's puny sons. This Porte +Dauphine took the place, and very nearly the site, of the original +Porte de Buci, which stood over the western end of our Rue +Saint-André-des-Arts, and was done away with in the cutting of Rue +Dauphine. There was a gate, cut a few years after the completion of +the wall, opening into the present triangular space made by the +meeting of Rue de l'École-de-Médecine and Boulevard Saint-Germain, and +this gate bore this latter name. Of the original gates, that next +beyond Porte de Buci was Porte Saint-Michel, a small postern that +stood almost in the centre of the meeting-place of Boulevard +Saint-Michel and Rues Monsieur-le-Prince and Soufflot. Next came the +important Porte Saint-Jacques, mounting guard over the street now of +that name, nearly where it crosses the southern side of new Rue +Soufflot, named in honor of the architect of the Panthéon. On that +southwest corner is a tablet with a plan of the gate. It was a gate +well watched by friends within, and foes without, coming up by this +easy road. Dunois gained it, more by seduction than force, and entered +with his French troops, driving the English before him, on the +morning of Friday, April 13, 1436; and Henry of Navarre failed to gain +it by force from the League, on the night of September 10, 1590. Stand +in front of Nos. 174 and 176 of widened Rue Saint-Jacques, and you are +on the spot where he tried to scale that gate, again and again. + +More than suggestions of the wall itself may be got by actual sight of +sections that survive, despite the assertions of authorities that no +stone is left. At the end of Impasse de Nevers, within a locked gate, +you may see a presumable bit. In the court that lies behind Nos. 27 +and 29 Rue Guénégaud is a stable, and deep in the shadow of that +stable lurks a round tower of Philippe-Auguste, massive and unmarred. +At No. 4 Cour du Commerce a locksmith has his shop, and he hangs his +keys and iron scraps on nails driven with difficulty between the +tightly fitted blocks of another round tower. Turn the corner into +Cour de Rohan--a corruption of Rouen, whose archbishop had his +town-house here--and you shall find a narrow iron stairway, that +mounts the end of the sliced-off wall, and that carries you to a tiny +garden, wherein small schoolgirls play on the very top of that wall. +Down at the end of Cour de Rohan is an ancient well, dating from the +day when this court lay within the grounds of the Hôtel de Navarre, +the property of Louis of Orleans before he became Louis XII. In style +it was closely akin to the Hôtel de Cluny, and it is a sorrow that it +is lost to us. Its entrance was at the present Nos. 49 and 51 of Rue +Saint-André-des-Arts, and the very ancient walls in the rear court of +the latter house may have belonged to the Hôtel de Navarre. When Louis +sold this property, one portion was bought by Dr. Coictier, who had +amassed wealth as the physician of Louis XI., and this well was long +known by his name. It has lost its metal-work, which was as fine as +that of the well once owned by Tristan l'Hermite, Coictier's crony, +and now placed in the court of the Cluny Museum. + +Continuing along the course of the great wall, we find a longer +section, whereon houses have been built, and another garden. At the +end of the hallway of No. 47 Rue Descartes is a narrow stairway, by +which we mount to the row of cottages on top of the wall, and beyond +them is a small domain containing trees and bushes and flower-beds, +and all alive with fowls. Still farther, in a vacant lot in Rue +Clovis, which has cut deep through the hill, a broken end of the wall +hangs high above us on the crest, showing both solid faces and the +rubble between. Its outer face forms the rear of the court at No. 62 +Rue du Cardinal-Lemoine. Still another section can be seen in the +inner court of No. 9 Rue d'Arras, its great square stones serving as +foundation for high houses. And this is the last we shall see of this +southern half of the wall of Philippe-Auguste. + +When that monarch lay dying at Mantes, he found comfort in the thought +that he was leaving his Paris safe in the competent hands of his +daughter-in-law--whose beauty, sense, and spirit had won him +early--rather than in the gentle hold of his son, misnamed "_le_ +_Lion_." He lived, as Louis VIII., only three years, and "_la reine +blanche_" (the widowed queens of France wore white for mourning, until +Anne of Brittany put on black for her first husband, Charles VIII.) +became the sole protector of her twelve-year-old son, on whom she so +doted as to be jealous of the wife she had herself found for him. She +ruled him and his hitherto unruly nobles, and cemented his kingdom, +fractured by local jealousies. He is known to history as Saint Louis, +fit to sit alongside Marcus Aurelius, in the equal conscience they put +into their kingly duties. Voltaire himself ceases to sneer in the +presence of this monarch's unselfish devotion to his people, and gives +him praise as unstinted as any on record. + +His Paris, the Paris of his mother and his grandfather, was made up of +_la Cité_ on the island, under the jurisdiction of the bishop; the +northern suburb, _outre-Grand-Pont_ or _la Ville_, governed by the +_Prévôt des Marchands_; the southern suburb, _outre-Petit-Pont_ or +_l'Université_, appertaining to the "_Recteur_"; all ruled by the +_Prévôt_ of Paris, appointed by and accountable to the King alone. +Hugo's "little old lady between her two promising daughters" holds +good to-day, when the daughters are strapping wenches, and have not +yet got their growth. In all three sections, the priest and the +soldier--twin foes of light and life in all times and in all +lands--had their own way. They cumbered the ground with their +fortresses and their monasteries, all bestowed within spacious +enclosures; so walling-in for their favored dwellers, and walling-out +from the common herd outside, the air and sun, green sights, and +pleasant scents. There were no open spaces for the people of mediæval +days. Indeed, there were no "people," in our meaning of that word. The +stage direction, "Enter Populace," expresses their state. There were +peasants in the fields, toilers in the towns, vassals, all of +them--villains, legally--allowed to live by the soldier, that they +might pay for his fighting, and serve as food for his steel; sheep let +graze by the priest, to be sheared for the Church and to be burned at +the stake. This populace looked on at these burnings, at the cutting +out of tongues and slicing off of ears and hacking away of hands by +their lords, in dumb terror and docile submission. More than death or +mutilation, did they dread the ban of the Church and the lash of its +menacing bell. Their only diversion was made by royal processions, by +church festivals, by public executions. So went on the dreary round of +centuries, in a dull colorless terror, until it was time for the +coming of the short, sharp Terror dyed red. Then the White Terror, +that came with the Restoration, benumbed the land for awhile, and the +tricolored effrontery of the Second Empire held it in grip. Against +all royalist and imperial reaction, the lesser revolutions of the +nineteenth century have kept alive the essential spirit of the great +Revolution of 1789, inherited by them, and handed down to the present +Republic, that the assured ultimate issue may be fought out under its +Tricolor. France, the splendid creature, once more almost throttled by +priest and soldier, has saved herself by the courage of a national +conscience, such as has not been matched by any land in any crisis. + +They who by the grace of God and the stupidity of man owned and +ordered these human cattle of the darkest ages, had their homes within +this new, strong town-wall; in fat monasteries, secluded behind garden +and vineyard; in grim citadels, whose central keep and lesser towers +and staircase turrets, stables and outer structures, were grouped +about a great court, that swarmed with men-at-arms, grooms, and +hangers-on. And so, endless walls scowled on the wayfarer through the +town's lanes, narrow, winding, unpaved, filthy. On a hot summer day, +Philippe-Auguste stood at his open window in the old Palace, and the +odor of mud came offensively to the royal nostrils; soon the main City +streets were paved. When a king's son happened to be unhorsed by a +peripatetic pig nosing for garbage, a royal edict forbade the presence +of swine in the streets; the only exceptions being the precious dozen +of the abbey of Petit-Saint-Antoine. There were no side-paths, and +they who went afoot were pushed to the wall and splashed with mud, by +the mules and palfreys of those who could ride. They rode, the man in +front, his lady behind, _en croupe_. Open trenches, in the middle of +the roadway, served for drainage, naked and shameless; the graveyards +were unfenced amid huddled hovels; and the constant disease and +frequent epidemics that came from all this foulness were fathered on a +convenient Providence! This solution of the illiterate and imbecile +could not be accepted by the shining lights of science, who showed +that the plague of the middle of the sixteenth century came from +maleficent comets, their tails toward the Orient, or from malign +conjunctions of Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter. Ambroise Paré, the most +enlightened man of his day, had the courage to suggest that there were +human and natural causes at work, in addition to the divine will. And +the common-sense Faculty of Medicine, toward the close of the +sixteenth century, indicted the drains and cesspools as the principal +origin of all maladies then prevalent. + +The only street-lighting was that given fitfully by the forlorn +lanterns of the patrol, or by the torches of varlets escorting their +masters, on foot or on horse. Now and then, a hole was burned in the +mediæval night by a cresset on a church tower or porch, or shot out +from a _cabaret's_ fire through an opened door. When tallow candles +got cheaper, they were put into horn lanterns, and swung, at wide +intervals, high above the traffic. There, wind or rain put an untimely +end to their infrequent flicker, or a "thief in the candle" guttered +and killed it, or a thief in the street stoned it dead, for the snug +plying of his trade. The town, none too safe in daylight, was not at +all safe by night, and the darkness was long and dreary, and every +honest man and woman went to bed early after the sunset angelus. +Country roads were risky, too, and those who were unable to travel in +force, or in the train of a noble, travelled not at all; so that the +common citizen passed his entire existence within the confines of his +compact parish. Nor could he see much of his Paris or of his Seine; +he looked along the streets on stone walls on either side, and along +the quays at timbered buildings on the banks. These rose sheer from +the river-brink, and from both sides of every bridge, barring all +outlook from the roadway between; their gables gave on the river, and +from their windows could be seen only a little square of water, +enclosed between the buildings on both banks and on the neighboring +bridge. So that the wistful burgher could get glimpses of his river +only from the beach by the Hôtel de Ville, or from the occasional +ports crowded with boats discharging cargo. + +These cargoes were sold in shops on ground floors, and the tenants +were thick on the upper floors, of dwellings mostly made of timber and +plaster, their high-fronted gables looking on the street. This was the +custom in all towns in the Middle Ages, and it is a striking change +that has, in our day, turned all buildings so that their former side +has come to the front. The old Paris streets, in which shops and +houses shouldered together compactly, already dark and narrow enough, +were further narrowed and darkened by projecting upper floors, and by +encroaching shop-signs, swinging, in all shapes and sizes, from over +the doorways. Each shop sold its specialty, and the wares of all of +them slopped over on the roadway. Their owners bawled the merits and +prices of these wares in a way to shock a certain irritable Guillaume +de Villeneuve, who complains in querulous verse, "They do not cease to +bray from morning until night." With all its growth in coming years, +the city's squalor grew apace with its splendor, and when Voltaire's +Candide came in, by way of Porte Saint-Marcel here on the southern +side, in the time of Louis XV., he imagined himself in the dirtiest +and ugliest of Westphalian villages. For all its filth and all its +discomfort, this mediæval Paris--portrayed, as it appeared three +hundred years later, in the painful detail and inaccurate erudition of +Hugo's "Notre-Dame de Paris"--was a picturesque town, its buildings +giving those varied and unexpected groupings that make an +architectural picture; their roofs were tiled in many colors, their +sky-lines were wanton in their irregularity, and were punctuated by +pointed turrets and by cone-shaped tower-tops; and over beyond the +tall town walls, broken by battlements and sentry-boxes, whirled a +grotesque coronet of windmill sails. + +Turning from this attractive "_Maison de la Reine Blanche_," from this +quarter where her son Louis learned to ride and to tilt, and glancing +behind at the famous tapestry works, the Gobelins, of whose founder +and director we shall have a word to say later, we follow the avenue +of that name to Rue du Fer-à-Moulin. This little street, named for a +sign that swung there in the twelfth century, is most commonplace +until it opens out into a small, shabby square, that holds a few +discouraged trees, and is faced by a stolid building whose wide, +low-browed archway gives access to the court of the _Boulangerie +générale des Hôpitaux et Hospices_. This was the courtyard of the +villa of Scipio Sardini, whose name alone is kept alive by this Place +Scipion--all that is left of his gardens and vineyards. Yet his was a +notable name, in the days when this wily Tuscan was "_écuyer du Roi +Henri II._," and in those roaring days of swift fortunes for sharp +Italian financiers, under the queen-mother, Catherine de' Medici. This +man amassed scandalous riches, and built his villa, mentioned by +Sauval as one of the richest of that time, here amid the country +mansions that dotted this southern declivity. Of this villa only one +wing still stands, and it is with unlooked-for delight that we find +this admirable specimen of sixteenth-century architecture, of a style +distinct from that of any other specimen in Paris. The façade, that is +left in the court of the _Boulangerie_, is made up of an arcade of six +semi-circular arches on heavy stone pillars, a story above of +plum-colored brick cut into panels by gray stone, its square-headed +windows encased with the same squared stone, and an attic holding two +dormers with pointed hoods. Set in the broad band between the two +lower floors, were six medallions, one over the centre of each arch; +of these six, only four remain. These contain the heads of warriors +and of women, boldly or delicately carved, and wonderfully preserved; +yet time has eaten away the terra-cotta, wind and wet have dulled the +enamel that brightened them. The buildings about this court and behind +this unique façade are commonplace and need not detain us. It was in +1614 that the General Hospital took the villa and enlarged it; in +1636, to escape the plague, the prisoners of the Conciergerie were +installed here; and it has served as the bakery for the civil +hospitals of Paris for many years. + +We go our way toward our third staircase, not by the stupidly straight +line of Rue Monge, but by vagrant curves that bring us to the prison +of Sainte-Pélagie, soon to disappear, and to the Roman amphitheatre +just below, happily rescued forever. Here, in Rue Cardinal-Lemoine, we +slip under the stupid frontage of No. 49 to the court within, where we +are faced by the _hôtel_ of Charles Lebrun. We mount the stone steps +that lead up to a wide hall, and so go through to a farther court, now +unfortunately roofed over. This court was his garden, and this is the +stately garden-front that was the true façade, rather than that toward +the street; for this noble mansion--the work of the architect Germain +Boffrand, pupil and friend of Hardouin Mansart--was built after the +fashion of that time, which shut out, by high walls, all that was +within from sight of the man in the street, and kept the best for +those who had entry to the stiff, formal gardens of that day. + +Pupil of Poussin, _protégé_ of Fouquet, friend of Colbert, Lebrun was +the favorite court painter and decorator, and the most characteristic +exponent of the art of his day; his sumptuous style suiting equally +François I.'s Fontainebleau, and Louis XIV.'s Versailles. He aided +Colbert in the founding of the Royal Academy of Painting and +Sculpture, and in the purchase by the State of the Gobelins. This +factory took its name from the famous dyer who came from Rheims, and +tinted the clear Bièvre with his splendid scarlet, says Rabelais; so +that it took the name of _la Rivière des Gobelins_, of which Ronsard +sings. The statesman and the artist in concert built up the great +factory of tapestries and of furniture, such as were suitable for +royal use. Made Director of the Gobelins and Chancellor of the +Academy, and making himself the approved painter of the time to his +fellow-painters and to the buying public, Lebrun's fortune grew to the +possession of this costly estate, which extended far away beyond +modern Rue Monge. The death of Colbert--whose superb tomb in +Saint-Eustache is the work of his surviving friend--left him to the +hatred of Louvois, who pushed Mignard, Molière's friend, into +preferment. And Lebrun, genuine and honest artist, died of sheer +despondency, in his official apartment on the first floor of the +factory, facing the chapel. His rooms have been cut up and given over +to various usages, and no trace can be found in the Gobelins of its +first director. + +His body rests in his parish church, a few steps farther on, through +ancient Rue Saint-Victor, now curtailed and mutilated. Along its line, +before we come to the square tower of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet, we +skirt the dirty yellow and drab wall of the famous seminary alongside +the church, and bearing its name. Its entrance is at No. 30 Rue de +Pontoise, and among the many famous pupils who have gone in and out +since Calvin was a student here, we may mention only Ernest Renan. In +1838, the director of the school being the accomplished Dupanloup, +this boy of fifteen came fresh from Brittany to his studies here. We +shall follow him to his later and larger schools, in other pages. +When Jean "le Moine," the son of a Picardy peasant, came to sit in a +cardinal's chair, and was sent to Paris as legate by Pope Boniface +VIII., he established a great college in the year 1303. For it he +bought the chapel, the dwellings, and the cemetery of the Augustins +that were all in fields of thistles. So came the name "_du +Chardonnet_" to the church now built on the ruins of Lemoine's chapel, +in the later years of the seventeenth century. Lebrun decorated one of +its chapels for the burial of his mother, and his own tomb is there +near hers. Some of his work still shows on the ceiling; and in an +adjacent chapel, in odd proximity, once hung a canvas from the brush +of Mignard. In striking contrast, the busts of the two men face each +other in the Louvre; that of Mignard is alert with intelligence in +face and poise of head, while Lebrun's suggests a somewhat slow-witted +earnestness. + +From this short stay in the realm of Louis the Unreal, we go to the +island that bears the name of the Louis who was called a saint, but +who was a very real man. All the streets along here that take us to +the river, as far easterly as the one that bears the name of Cardinal +Lemoine, were cut through the grounds of his college and of the +Bernadins, an ancient foundation alongside. Of the buildings of this +vast monastery, the refectory remains, behind the wall on the western +side of Rue de Poissy. This characteristic specimen of thirteenth-century +architecture, but little spoiled by modern additions, is used for the +_caserne_ of the Sapeurs-Pompiers. Here, at the foot of the street on +the river-bank on our right, is the great space where Boulevard +Saint-Germain comes down to the quay, and where the old wall came down +to its great tower on the shore. On our left, as we cross broad Pont +de la Tournelle, we get an impressive view of Notre-Dame. And now we +find ourselves in a provincial town, seemingly far removed from our +Paris in miles and in years, by its isolation and tranquillity and +old-world atmosphere. Its long, lazy main street is named after the +royal saint, and its quays keep the titles of royal princes, Bourbon, +Orléans, Anjou. A great royal minister, Maximilien de Béthune, gives +his name to another quay, and his great master gives his to the new +boulevard crossing it. Henry often crossed his faithful Sully, but +they were at one in the orders issued, in the year before the King's +murder, for the sweeping away of the woodyards, that made this island +the storehouse of the town's timber, and for the construction of these +streets and buildings. The works planned by Henri IV. were carried out +by Marie de' Medici and Louis XIII. A concession was given for the +laying out of streets and for the buildings on this island, and for +the construction of a new stone bridge to the Marais, to the three +associates, Marie, Le Regrettier, Poultier, who gave their names to +the bridge and to two of the streets. There was already a small chapel +in the centre, the scene of the first preaching of the First Crusade, +and this chapel has been enlarged to the present old-time parish +church. Just within its entrance is the _bénitier_, filled with water +from the mouth of a marble cherub who wears a pretty marble "bang." +It came from the Carmelites of Chaillot, in souvenir of "Sister +Louise." + +The sites on the island's banks, newly opened in the early years of +Louis XIII.'s reign, were in demand at once for the mansions of the +wealthy, and a precocious city started up. Corneille's _Menteur_, new +to Paris and the island, rhapsodizes in one of his captivating +flights, this time without lying: + + "_J'y croyais ce matin voir une île enchantée, + Je la laissai déserte et la trouve habitée; + Quelque Amphion nouveau, sans l'aide des maçons, + En superbes palais à changé ses buissons._" + +We shall come hither again, in company with Voltaire to one of these +palaces, with Balzac to another. In these high old houses in these old +streets dwelt old families, served by old retainers devoted to their +mistresses, who hugged their firesides like contented tabby-cats. They +had no welcome for intruders into their "Ville-Saint-Louis" from the +swell quarters on the other side of the river, and it used to be said +that "_l'habitant du Marais est étranger dans l'Île_." + + [Illustration: Balcony of Hôtel de Lauzan-Pimodan on Île de + Saint-Louis.] + +Pont Louis-Philippe--an absurdly modern issue from this ancient +quarter--carries us to the quay of the Hôtel de Ville, and we may turn +to look in at Saint-Gervais, its precious window as brilliant as on +the day it was finished by Jean Cousin. Passing in front of the +imperious statue of Étienne Marcel, staring at the river that was his +grave, we cross Place de l'Hôtel-de-Ville, once Place de Grève, when +it had in the centre its stone cross reached by high steps, and its +busy gallows close at hand. We forget its horrid memories in the sight +of the new Hôtel de Ville, of no memories, good or bad, to dash our +delight in this most nearly perfect of modern structures; perfect in +design, execution, and material, a consummate scheme carried out to +the last exquisite detail by architects, sculptors, and decorators, +all masters of their crafts. + +Our direct road takes us through the Halles, their huge iron and glass +structures the lineal descendants of those heavy stone Halles, started +in the twelfth century here in the fields, when the small market on +the island no longer sufficed. Their square, dumpy pillars, and those +on which the houses all about were once supported, survive only in the +few left from the seventeenth-century rebuilding, now on the north +side of Rue de la Ferronerie. Standing in that arcade, we look out on +the spot where Ravaillac waited for the coming of Henri IV. The +wretched fanatic, worked on by whom we shall never know, had found +Paris crowded for the Queen's coronation, and had hunted up a room in +the "Three Pigeons," an inn of Rue Saint-Honoré, opposite the Church +of Saint-Roch. Here or in another tavern, while prowling, he stole +the knife. The narrow street was widened a little by Richelieu, and +few of its ancient buildings are left. Returning through this arcade, +once the entrance to the Cemetery of the Innocents, to Rue des +Innocents just behind, you will find many of the old _charniers_ +absolutely unchanged. They form the low-ceilinged ground floor of +nearly all these buildings between Rue Saint-Denis and Rue de la +Lingerie. Perhaps the most characteristic specimen is that one used +for a _remise de voitures à bras_, a phrase of the finest French for a +push-cart shed! And under No. 15 of this street of the Innocents, you +may explore two of the cemetery vaults in perfect preservation. They +are come to less lugubrious usage now, and serve as a club-room for +the teamsters who bring supplies to the markets over-night, and for +the market attendants who wait for them. Their wagons unloaded, here +they pass the night until daylight shall bring customers, drinking and +singing after their harmless fashion, happily ignorant or careless of +the once grisly service of these caves. The attendants in the +_cabaret_ on the entrance floor, tired as they are by day, will +courteously show the cellars, one beneath the other. One must stoop to +pass under the heavily vaulted low arches, and the small chambers are +overcrowded with a cottage piano and with rough benches and tables; +these latter cut, beyond even the unhallowed industry of schoolboys, +with initials and names of the frequenters of the club, who have +scarred the walls in the same vigorous style. The demure _dame du +comptoir_ above assures you that you will be welcomed between +midnight and dawn, but bids you bring no prejudices along, for the +guests are not apt, in their song and chatter, to "_chercher la +délicatesse_"! + +The Church of the Innocents, built by Louis "_le Gros_" early in the +twelfth century, had on its corner at Rues Saint-Denis and aux +Fers--this latter now widened into Rue Berger--a most ancient +fountain, dating from 1273. This fountain was built anew in 1550, from +a design of the Abbé de Clagny, not of Pierre Lescot as is claimed, +and was decorated by Jean Goujon. Just before the Revolution +(1785-88), when church and charnel-houses and cemetery were swept +away, this fountain was removed to the centre of the markets--the +centre, too, of the old cemetery--and has been placed, since then, in +the middle of this dainty little square which greets us as we emerge +from our _cabaret_. To the three arches it owned, when backed by the +church corner, a fourth has been added to make a square, and the +original Naiads of Goujon have been increased in number. Their fine +flowing lines lift up and lend distinction to this best bit of +Renaissance remaining in Paris. And here we are struck by the +ingenuity shown by making the water in motion a signal feature of the +decoration--another instance of this engaging characteristic of French +fountains. + +A few steps farther north take us to Rue Étienne Marcel, cutting its +ruthless course through all that should be sacred, in a fashion that +would gladden the sturdy provost. For all its destructive instincts, +it yet has spared to us this memorable bit of petrified history, the +tower of "_Jean-sans-Peur_." At No. 20, on the northern side of this +broad and noisy street, amid modern structures, its base below the +level of the pavement, stands the last remaining fragment of the Hôtel +de Bourgogne; which, under its earlier name in older annals as the +Hôtel d'Artois, carries us back again to the thirteenth century, for +this was the palace-fortress built by the younger brother of Saint +Louis, Robert, Count of Artois. He it was who fell, in his "senseless +ardor," on the disastrous field of Massouah, in 1250; when the pious +King and his devoted captains were made captive by the Sultan of +Egypt, and released with heavy fines, so ending that Sixth Crusade. + +The Hôtel d'Artois was a princely domain, reaching southward from the +wall of Philippe-Auguste to Rue Mauconseil, a road much longer then, +and extending from present Rue Saint-Denis to Rue Montorgueil, the two +streets that bounded the property east and west. Some of its +structures backed against the wall, some of them rested upon its +broken top. For the grounds and gardens enclosed within this northern +_enceinte_--completed between 1190 and 1208--stretched to its base, +leaving no room for a road on its inner side. Because of this plan, +and because this wall crumbled gradually, its broken sections being +surrounded and surmounted by crowding houses, no broad boulevards were +laid out over its line--as was done with its immediate successor, the +wall of Charles V.--and it is not easy to trace it through modern +streets and under modern structures. The only fragment left is the +tower in the court of the Mont-de-Piété, entered from Rue des +Francs-Bourgeois, and it is of build less solid than those we have +seen on the southern bank. In the pavement of the first court is +traced the line of the wall up to this tower. With this exception, we +can indicate only the sites of the towers and the course of the wall. + +The huge Tour Barbeau was at the easternmost river end, on Quai des +Célestins, nearly at the foot of our Rue des Jardins-Saint-Paul. It +commanded Port Saint-Paul, chief landing-place of river boatmen, and +guarded the Pôterne des Barrés. That name was also given to the small +street--now Rue de l'Ave Maria--that led from this postern-gate. They +owe that name indirectly to Saint Louis. Returning from the Holy Land, +he had brought six monks from Mount Carmel, and housed them on the +quay, called now after their successors, the Célestins. The black +robes, striped white, of these six monks, made them known popularly as +"_les Barrés_." Our wall ran straight away from this waterside gate, +parallel with and a little to the west of present Rue des Jardins, +then a country road on its outer edge, to Porte Baudoyer, afterward +Porte Saint-Antoine, standing across the space where meet Rues +Saint-Antoine and de Rivoli. This was the strongest for defence of all +the gates, holding the entrance to the town, by way of the Roman and +later the Royal road from the eastern provinces. From this point the +wall took a great curve beyond the bounds of the built-up portions of +the town. The Pôterne Barbette, its next gate, in Rue Vieille-du-Temple, +just south of its crossing by Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, lost its old +name in this name taken from the Hôtel Barbette, built a century +later, outside the wall here. Next came the gate in Rue du Temple, +nearly half way between our Rues de Braque and Rambuteau. Through this +gate passed the Knights Templar to and from their great fortified +domain beyond. The Pôterne Beaubourg, in the street of that name, was +a minor gateway, having no especial history beyond that contained in +the derivation of its name, "_beaubourg_," from a particularly rich +settlement, just hereabout. Next we come to two most important gates, +Saint-Martin and Saint-Denis, across those two streets, that guarded +the approaches by the great roads from Senlis and Soissons, and the +heart of the land, old Île de France, and from all the northern +provinces. Between the Saint-Denis gate and that at Rue Montorgueil, +lay the property of the Comte d'Artois, and he cut, for his royal +convenience, a postern in the wall that formed his northern boundary. + +From this point our wall went in another wide curve to the river-bank, +within the lines of old Rues Plâtrière and Grenelle, the two now +widened into modern Rue Jean-Jacques-Rousseau. The country road that +is now Rue Montmartre was guarded by a gate, opened a few years after +the completion of the wall, and its site shown by a tablet in the wall +of No. 30 of that street. A small gate was cut at the meeting of +present Rues Coquillière and Jean-Jacques-Rousseau. Nearly opposite +the end of this latter street, where Rue Saint-Honoré passes in front +of the Oratoire, was the last public gate on the mainland. Thence the +course was straight away to the river shore, as you may see by the +diagram set in lighter stone in the pavement of the court of the +Louvre. These stones mark also the huge round of the donjon of the old +Louvre, on whose eastern or town side the wall passed to the +river-side Tour-qui-fait-le-Coin. This tower was of the shape and size +of the opposite Tour de Nesle, which we have already seen at the point +where the southern wall came down to the shore; and between the two +towers, a great chain was slung across the Seine to prevent approach +by river pirates. Pont des Arts is almost directly over the dip of +that chain. So, too, the river was protected at the eastern ends of +the wall; the Barbeau tower was linked to the solitary tower on Île +Notre-Dame, and that again across the other arm of the Seine, to the +immense tower on Quai de la Tournelle. This island Tour Loriaux rose +from the banks of a natural moat made by the river's narrow channel +between Île Notre-Dame and Île aux Vaches, and this bank was afterward +further protected by a slight curtain of wall across the island, with +a tower at either end. Four centuries later, when this island wall and +its towers had long since crumbled away, that moat was filled up--Rue +Poulletier, the modernized Poultier, lies over its course--and the two +small islands became large Île Saint-Louis. + +And now, we have seen _la Cité_, _la Ville_, _l'Université_, all +girdled about by Philippe-Auguste's great wall. The City could spread +no farther than its river-banks; the University was content to abide +within its bounds, even as late as the wars of the League; the Town +began speedily to outgrow its limits, and within two centuries it had +so developed that the capacious range of a new wall, that of Charles +V., was needed to enclose its bustling quarters. That story shall come +in a later chapter. + +One hundred years after the death of Robert of Artois, his estate +passed, by marriage, to the first house of Burgundy, whose name it +took, and when that house became extinct, in the days of Jean "_le +Bon_," second Valois King of France, it came, along with the broad +acres and opulent towns of that duchy, into his hands, by way of some +distant kinship. This generous and not over-shrewd monarch did not +care to retain these much-needed revenues, and gave them, with the +resuscitated title of Burgundy, to his younger son, "recalling again +to memory the excellent and praiseworthy services of our right dearly +beloved son Philip, the fourth of our sons, who freely exposed himself +to death with us, and, all wounded as he was, remained unwavering and +fearless at the battle of Poictiers." From that field Philip carried +away his future title, "_le Hardi_." By this act of grateful +recognition, rare in kings, were laid the foundations of a house that +was to grow as great as the throne itself, to perplex France within, +and to bring trouble from without, throughout long calamitous years. +This first Duke Philip seems to have had the hardihood to do right in +those wrong-doing days, for he remained a sufficiently loyal subject +of his brother Charles V., and later a faithful guardian, as one of +the "_Sires de la Fleur-de-Lis_," of his nephew, the eleven-year-old +Charles VI. He married Margaret, heiress of the Count of Flanders, and +widow of Philippe de Rouvre, last of the old line of Burgundy, and she +brought, to this new house of Burgundy, the fat, flat meadows and the +turbulent towns of the Lowlands, and also the Hôtel de Flandres in the +capital, where now stands the General Post-office in Rue +Jean-Jacques-Rousseau. + +Duke Philip, dying in 1404, bequeathed to his eldest son, John, +nick-named "_Jean-sans-Peur_," not only a goodly share of his immense +possessions, but also the pickings of a "very pretty quarrel" with +Louis de Valois, Duc d'Orléans. This quarrel was tenderly nursed by +John, who, as the head of a powerful independent house, and the leader +of a redoubtable faction, felt himself to be more important than the +royal younger brother. Ambitious and unscrupulous, calculating and +impetuous, he created the rôle on his stage, played with transient +success by Philippe-Égalité, four hundred years later. He rode at the +head of a brilliant train and posed for the applause of the populace. +He walked arm in arm with the public executioner, Capeluche, and when +done with him, handed him over to the gallows. Finding himself grown +so great, he schemed for sole control of the State. The one man in his +way was Louis of Orleans, the mad king's only brother, the lover of +the queen, and her accomplice in plundering and wasting the country's +revenues. He was handsome and elegant, open in speech and open of +hand, bewitching all men and women whom he cared to win. "_Qui veult, +peut_," was his braggart device, loud on the walls of the rooms of +Viollet-le-Duc's reconstructed Pierrefonds, whose original was built +by Louis. In its court you may see the man himself in Frémiet's superb +bronze, erect and alert on his horse. The horse's hoofs trample the +flowers, as his rider trod down all sweet decencies in his stride +through life. He was an insolent profligate, quick to tell when he had +kissed. In his long gallery of portraits of the women who, his swagger +suggested, had yielded to his allurements, he hung, with unseemly +taste, those of his lovely Italian wife, Valentine Visconti, and of +the Duchess of Burgundy, his cousin's wife; both of them honest women. +For this boast, John hated him; he hated him, as did his other +unlettered compeers, for his learning and eloquence and patronage of +poetry and the arts; he hated him as did the common people, who prayed +"Jesus Christ in Heaven, send Thou someone to deliver us from +Orleans." + + [Illustration: "Jean-sans-Peur," Duc de Bourgogne. + (From a painting by an unknown artist, at Chantilly.)] + +At last "_Jean-sans-Peur_" mustered his courage and his assassins to +deliver himself and France. Isabelle of Bavaria had left her crazed +husband in desolate Hôtel Saint-Paul, and carried her unclean court to +Hôtel Barbette--we shall see more of these residences in another +chapter--where she sat at supper, with her husband's brother, on the +night of November 23, 1407. It was eight in the evening, dark for the +short days of that "black winter," the bitterest known in France for +centuries. An urgent messenger, shown in to Orleans at table, begged +him to hasten to the King at Saint-Paul. The duke sauntered out, +humming an air, mounted his mule and started on his way, still +musical; four varlets with torches ahead, two 'squires behind. Only a +few steps on, as he passed the shadowed entrance of a court, armed +men--many more than his escort--sprang upon him and cut him down with +axes. He called out that he was the Duke of Orleans. "So much the +better!" they shouted, and battered him to death on the ground; then +they rode off through the night, unmolested by the terrified +attendants. The master and paymaster of the gang, who was watching, +from a doorway hard by, to see that his money was honestly earned, +went off on his way. A devious way it turned out to be, for, having +admitted his complicity to the Council, in his high and mighty +fashion, he found himself safer in flight than in his guarded topmost +room of this tower before us. He galloped away to his frontier of +Flanders, cutting each bridge that he crossed. It was ten years before +he could return, and then he came at the head of his Burgundian +forces, and bought the keys of Porte de Buci, stolen by its keeper's +son from under his father's pillow. Entering Paris on the night of +Saturday, May 28, 1418, on the following day, the Burgundians began +those massacres which lasted as long as there were Armagnacs to kill, +and which polluted Paris streets with corpses. Within a year, John, +lured to a meeting with the Dauphin, afterward Charles VII., went to +the bridge at Montereau, with the infinite precautions always taken by +this fearless man, and there he was murdered with no less treachery, +if with less butchery, than he gave to his killing of Louis of +Orleans. + +Valentine Visconti, widow of Orleans, had not lived to see this +retribution. Her appeal to the King for the punishment of the assassin +was answered by pleasant phrases, and soon after, in one of his sane +intervals, was further answered by the royal pardon to Burgundy, for +that "out of faith and loyalty to us, he has caused to be put out of +the world our brother of Orleans." She had counted on the King's +remembering that, in the early years of his madness, hers had been the +only face he knew and the only voice that soothed him. She crept away +to Blois with her children, and with Dunois, her husband's son but not +her own. The others were not of the age nor of the stuff to harbor +revenge, and to him she said: "You were stolen from me, and it is +_you_ who are fit to avenge your father." These are fiery words from a +rarely gentle yet courageous woman, grown vindictive out of her +constancy to a worthless man. She is the one pure creature, pathetic +and undefiled, in all this welter of perfidy and brutality. "She +shines in the black wreck of things," in Carlyle's words concerning +another "noble white vision, with its high queenly face, its soft +proud eyes," of a later day. There, at Blois, she died within the +year. + +It would carry us too far from this tower to follow the course of the +feud between the heirs of these two houses. "Philip the Good, Duke of +Burgundy, Luxembourg, and Brabant, Earl of Holland and Zealand, Lord +of Friesland, Count of Flanders, Artois, and Hainault, Lord of Salins +and Macklyn," was a high and puissant prince, and versatile withal. +"He could fight as well as any king going, and he could lie as well as +any, except the King of France. He was a mighty hunter, and could read +and write. His tastes were wide and ardent. He loved jewels like a +woman, and gorgeous apparel. He dearly loved maids-of-honor, and, +indeed, paintings generally, in proof of which he ennobled Jan van +Eyck.... In short, he relished all rarities, except the humdrum +virtues." Charles of Orleans, son of Louis, was of another kidney. +Spirited at the start, this prince was spoiled by his training, "like +such other lords as I have seen educated in this country," says +Comines; "for these were taught nothing but to play the jackanapes +with finery and fine words." Young Charles d'Orléans took his earliest +lessons in rhyme, and he rhymed through life, through his twenty-five +years of captivity in England, until he was old Charles, the pallid +figure-head of a petty, babbling, versifying court. And the quarrel +between the two houses came to nothing beyond the trifle of general +misery for France. + +It was only when Burgundy came into collision with the crafty Dauphin +of France, the rebellious son of Charles VII., who had fled from his +father's court and taken refuge with Duke Philip the Good, that this +great house began to fail in power. When that Dauphin, become Louis +XI., made royal entry into Paris, this Hôtel de Bourgogne showed all +its old bravery. From its great court, through its great gate on Rue +Saint-Denis, into the space behind the town gate of that name, Duke +Philip rode forth on the last day of August, 1461, at his side his +son--then Comte de Charolais, known later as Charles "_le +Téméraire_"--to head the glittering array of nobles, aglow with silken +draperies and jewels, their horses' housings sweeping the ground, who +await the new King. Few of them are quite sure "how they stand" with +him, and they hardly know how to greet him as he enters, but they take +the customary oaths when they get to Notre-Dame, and thence escort him +to the old palace on the island. There they feasted and their royal +master pretended to be jolly, all the while speculating on the speedy +snuffing-out of these flashing satellites. On the morrow he took up +his residence in the Hôtel des Tournelles, almost deserted within, and +altogether without. For the populace crowded about this Hôtel de +Bourgogne, all eyes and ears for the sight and the story of its +splendors. Its tapestries were the richest ever seen by Parisians, its +silver such as few princes owned, its table lavish and ungrudging. The +duke's robes and jewels were so wonderful that the cheering mob ran +after him, as he passed along the streets, with his attendant train of +nobles and his body-guard of archers. + +With his death died all the pomp and show of this palace. His son, +Charles the Bold, wasted no time in Paris from the fighting, for which +he had an incurable itch, but no genius. He kept this deserted house +in charge of a _concierge_ for his daughter Mary, "the richest heiress +in Christendom," who was promised to five suitors at once, and who +married Maximilian of Austria at last. Their grandson, the Emperor +Charles V., in one of the many bargains made and unmade between him +and François I.--the one the direct descendant of Louis of Orleans and +the other the direct descendant of John of Burgundy--gave up to the +French crown all that Burgundy owned in France, one portion of it in +Paris being this Hôtel de Bourgogne. By now this once most strongly +fortified and best defended fortress-home in all the town was fallen +into sad decay, its spacious courts the playground of stray children, +its great halls and roomy chambers a refuge for tramps and rascals. So +François, casting about for any scheme to bring in money, and greedy +to keep alive the tradition, handed down from Hugh Capet, that gave to +his crown all the ground on which Paris was built, sold at auction +this old rookery, along with other royal buildings and land in the +city, in the year 1543. This _hôtel_ was put up in thirteen lots, this +tower and its dependencies, Burgundian additions of the first years of +the fifteenth century, being numbered 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, and while all +the other structures were demolished, these were kept entire by the +purchaser, whose name has not come down to us. They may have been +"bid in" by the State, for they reappear as crown property of Louis +XIII.; and he gave "what was left of the donjon of the Hôtel d'Artois" +to the monks of Sainte-Catherine du Val-des-Écoliers, in exchange for +a tract of their land on the northern side of Rue Saint-Antoine, just +west of Place Royale. By this barter it would seem that he intended to +carry out one of his father's cherished schemes, to be spoken of in a +later chapter. + +In this donjon the good monks established "storehouses" for the poor, +a phrase that may be modernized into "soup-kitchens." These were under +the control of a certain "Père Vincent," who has been canonized since +as Saint Vincent de Paul. This peasant's son had grown up into a +tender-hearted priest, bountiful to the poor with the crowns he +adroitly wheedled from the rich. For he had guile as well as +loving-kindness, he was a wily and a jocular shepherd to his +aristocratic flock, he became the pet confessor of princesses and the +spiritual monitor of Louis XIII. So zealous was he in his schemes for +the relief of suffering men and women, and signally of children, that +Parliament expostulated, in fear that his asylums and refuges would +fill Paris with worthless vagrants and illegitimate children. His is +an exemplary and honored figure in the Roman Church, and his name +still clings to this tower; local legend, by a curious twisting of +tradition, making him its builder! + +While its buyer, at the auction, is unknown to us, we do know to whom +was knocked down one lot, that holds records of deeper concern to us +than all the ground hereabout, thick as it is with historic +footprints. The plot on the southeasterly corner of the property, +fronting on Rue Mauconseil, was purchased by a band of players for a +rental in perpetuity. The Parliament of Paris had not recognized the +King's claim to all these ownerships, and would not give assent to +some of the sales; and this perpetual lease was not confirmed by that +body without long delay. We may let the players wait for this official +warranty while we see who they are, whence they come, and what they +play. + +It was a religious fraternity, calling itself "_La Confrérie de la +Passion de Notre Seigneur, Jésus-Christ_," and it had been formed, +during the closing years of the fourteenth century, mainly from out of +more ancient companies. The most ancient and reputable of these was +"_La Basoche_," recruited from the law clerks of the Palais de +Justice, players and playwrights both. This troupe had enjoyed a long, +popular existence before it received legal existence from Philippe +"_le Bel_," early in that same fourteenth century. From its ranks, +reinforced by outsiders--among them, soon after 1450, a bachelor of +the University, François Villon--were enlisted the members of "_Les +Enfants sans Souci_." Other ribald mummers called themselves "_Les +Sots_." Men from all these bands brought their farcical grossness to +mitigate the pietistic grossness of our _Confrérie_, and this +fraternity soon grew so strong as to get letters-patent from Charles +VI., granting it permission for publicly performing passion-plays and +mysteries, and for promenading the streets in costume. Then the +privileged troupe hired the hall of Trinity Hospital and turned it +into a rude theatre, the first in Paris, the mediæval stage having +been of bare boards on trestles, under the sky or under canvas. On the +site of this earliest of French theatres are the Queen's fountain, +placed in 1732 on the northeast corner of Rues Saint-Denis and +Grenéta, and the buildings numbered 28 in the latter and 142 in the +former street. There, in 1402, the _confrères_ began the work that is +called play, and there they remained until 1545. Then, during the +construction of the new house, they took temporary quarters in the +Hôtel de Flandres, not yet cut up by its purchaser at the royal sale, +and settled finally, in 1548, in the Théâtre de l'Hôtel de Bourgogne. +By then an edict of François I. had banished from the stage all +personations of Jesus Christ and of all holy characters; such other +plays being permitted as were "profane and honest, offensive and +injurious to no one." + +The name "mystery" does not suggest something occult and recondite, +even although the Greek word, from which it is wrongly derived, +sometimes refers to religious services; it carries back, rather, to +the Latin word signifying a service or an office. The plays called +"mysteries" and "moralities" were given at first in mediæval Latin, +or, as time went on, in the vernacular, with interludes in the same +Latin, which may be labelled Christian or late Latin. They were +rudimentary essays in dramatic art, uncouth and grotesque, in tone +with that "twilight of the mind, peopled with childish phantoms." +Hugo's description of the "_très belle moralité, le bon jugement de +Madame la Vierge_," by Pierre Gringoire, played in the great hall of +the Palais de Justice, is too long and labored to quote here; well +worth quoting is the short and vivid sketch, by Charles Reade, of the +"Morality" witnessed in puerile delight by the audience, among whom +sat Gérard, the father of Erasmus, at Rotterdam, in the same brave +days of Louis XI. of France and Philip the Good of Burgundy. + +He shows us the clumsy machinery bringing divine personages, too +sacred to name, direct from heaven down on the boards, that they might +talk sophistry at their ease with the Cardinal Virtues, the Nine +Muses, and the Seven Deadly Sins; all present in human shape, and all +much alike. This dreary stuff was then enlivened by the entrance of +the Prince of the Powers of Air, an imp following him and buffeting +him with a bladder, and at each thwack the crowd roared in ecstasy. +So, to-day, the equally intelligent London populace finds joy in the +wooden staff of the British Punch. When the Vices had vented obscenity +and the Virtues twaddle, the Celestials with the Nine Muses went +gingerly back to heaven on the one cloud allowed by the property-man, +and worked up and down by two "supes" at a winch, in full sight of +everybody. Then the bottomless pit opened and flamed in the centre of +the stage, and into it the Vices were pushed by the Virtues and the +stage-carpenters, who all, with Beelzebub, danced about it merrily to +sound of fife and tabor. And the curtain falls on the first act. "This +entertainment was writ by the Bishop of Ghent for the diffusion of +religious sentiments by the aid of the senses, and was an average +specimen of theatrical exhibitions, so long as they were in the hands +of the clergy; but, in course of time, the laity conducted plays, and +so the theatre, we learn from the pulpit, has become profane." + +The dulness of moralities and mysteries was relieved by the farces, +spiced and not nice, of the "_Sots_" and the "Basoche" on their +boards. They made fun of earthly dignitaries, ridiculing even kings. +Thus they represented Louis XII., in his Orleans thirst for +money--never yet quenched in that family--drinking liquid gold from a +vase. Their easy-going monarch took no offence, avowing that he +preferred that his court should laugh at his parsimony, rather than +that his subjects should weep for his prodigalities. To win applause, +in his rôle of "_le Père du Peuple_," he encouraged the "powerful, +disorderly, but popular theatre," and he patronized Pierre Gringoire, +whose plays drew the populace to the booths about the Halles. The poet +and playwright, widower of Hugo's happily short-lived Esmeralda, had +been again married and put in good case by the whimsical toleration of +Louis XI., if we may accept the dates of Théodore de Banville's +charming little play. That monarch, easily the first comedian of his +time, allowed no rivals on the mimic stage, and it languished during +his reign. Nor did it flourish under François I., whose brutal vices +must not be made fun of. Henri IV., fearless even of mirth, which may +be deadly, not only gave smiling countenance to this theatre, but gave +his presence at times; thus we read that, with queen and court, he sat +through "_une plaisante farce_" on the evening of January 12, 1607. +The Renaissance enriched the French stage, along with all forms of +art, bringing translations through the Italian of the classic drama. +The theatre of the Hôtel de Bourgogne became La Comédie Italienne, and +its records recall famous names, on the boards and in the audience, +throughout long and honorable years. The troupe was not free from +jealousies, and did not escape secessions, notably that of 1598, when +the heavy old men of the historic house cut adrift the light comedians +and the young tragedians, who had been recruited within a few years, +mainly from the country. Those who remained devoted themselves to the +"legitimate drama," yet found place for approved modern work, such as +that of young Racine. The seceders betook themselves to buildings on +the east side of Rue de Renard, just north of Rue de la Verrerie, +convenient to the crowded quarter of la Grève; but removed shortly to +the theatre constructed for them from a tennis-court in Rue +Vieille-du-Temple, in the heart of the populous Marais. You shall go +there, a little later, to see the classic dramas of a young man from +Rouen, named Corneille. These players called themselves "_Les +Comédiens du Marais_," and by 1620 had permission from Louis XIII. to +take the title of "_La Troupe Royale_." A few years later, perhaps as +early as 1650, all the Paris of players and playgoers began to talk +about a strolling troupe in the southern provinces and about their +manager, one Poquelin de Molière. How he brought his comedies and his +company to the capital; how he put them both up in rivalry with the +two old stock houses; how he won his way against all their opposition, +and much other antagonism--this is told in our chapter on Molière. + +In the cutting up of the ancient domain of Robert of Artois, after the +royal sale, a short street was run north and south through the grounds, +and named François, since feminized into Rue Française. It lay between +the tower, whose lower wall may be seen in the rear of the court of +No. 8, and the theatre buildings, which covered the sites of present +Nos. 7 and 9 of this street and extended over the ground that now +makes Rue Étienne Marcel. The main entrance of the theatre was about +where now hangs the big gilt key on the northern side of that fragment +of Rue Mauconseil, still left after its curtailment by many recent +cuttings. Gone now is every vestige of the theatre and every stone of +the Hôtel de Bourgogne, except this tower of "_Jean-sans-Peur_." + + [Illustration: The Tower of "Jean-sans-Peur."] + +By happy chance, or through pious care, this precious fragment has +survived the centuries that looked with unconcern on things of the +past, and has come into the safe keeping of our relic-loving age. It +is an authentic document from the archives of the earliest +architecture of the fifteenth century, convincing in its proof of the +strength for defence of ducal homes in that day. Its massive stones +are scrupulously shaped and fitted, the grim faces of its quadrangular +walls are softened by wide ogival windows, its top is crowned all +around by a deep cornice. Above, the former corbelled machiolations, +heavy yet elegant, are debased into water-spouts, and a new roof has +been added. Only the southern and eastern sides of the oblong are +wholly disengaged, the other faces being mostly shut in by crowding +buildings. On the angle behind is a _tourelle_ supported by corbels, +and in the ogival door is a tympanum, in whose carvings we make out a +plane and a plumb-line. This was the device of John of Burgundy, worn +on his liveries, painted and carved everywhere. Louis of Orleans had +chosen a bunch of knotted fagots as his emblem, with the motto "_Je +l'ennuie_;" and Burgundy's arrogant retort was the plane that cut +through all that was not in plumb-line with his measurements, and the +motto in Flemish "_Ik houd_," meaning "_Je le tiens_." + +The great hall within has been partitioned off into small rooms, fit +for the workingmen and their families formerly installed here; so that +its ancient aspect of amplitude and dignity is somewhat marred. We +"must make believe very much," to see either the sinner John mustering +here his assassins, who file out through that door to their rendezvous +with Orléans, or the saint Vincent gathering here his herd of hungry +children. Happily, the grand stairway, on one side, is unmutilated, +and it serves to bring home to us the ample magnificence of these +Burgundian dukes. Dagobert's stair crawls, through twisting darkness, +within its tower; Blanche's stair modestly suggests a venture toward +ease and elegance in life; here we mount the stairway of a feudal +_château_, broad and easy and stately, fitting frame for bejewelled +courtiers and iron-clad men-at-arms. Its one hundred and thirty-eight +steps, each a single stone, turn spaciously about the central column, +which does not reach to the tower top. Its upper section is carved +into a stone pot, from which springs a stone oak-tree to the centre of +the vaulted ceiling of the broad platform that ends the stairway, the +ribs of the vaulting outlined by carved branches and foliage. On each +floor below, a large chamber, deserted and dreary, opens on the +landing-place; from this upper stage a narrow staircase leads, through +the thickness of the wall and up through the _tourelle_ on the angle, +to the tiny chamber occupied by John of Burgundy, tradition tells us. +Here in his bedroom, that was an arsenal, at the top of his +impregnable tower, the fearless one found safety and sleep. We peep +out from his one small window, and far down we see the swarming length +of Rue Étienne Marcel, and hear the low pervasive murmur of Paris all +astir, accented by the shrill cries of the boys from the adjoining +school, at play in the courtyard of our tower. Their voices chase back +to their shadowy haunts all these companions of our stroll through the +ages, and call us down to our own time and to our Paris of to-day. + + + + +THE SCHOLARS' QUARTER OF THE MIDDLE AGES + + + + + [Illustration: The Church of Saint-Séverin.] + + + + +THE SCHOLARS' QUARTER OF THE MIDDLE AGES + + +On that river-bank of the City-Island which is called Quai aux Fleurs, +you will find a modern house numbered 11; and you will read, in the +gold letters of the weather-stained stone slab set in the front wall, +that here, in 1118, dwelt Héloise and Abelard. Their ideal heads are +carved over the two entrance doors. This is the site of the pleasant +residence occupied by Canon Fulbert, looking across its own garden and +the beach to the river--one of the dwellings in the cloisters that +were set apart for the clergy and clerks of the cathedral, and of the +many parish churches clustering about it. The chapter of Notre-Dame +owned nearly all this end of the island eastwardly from the boundaries +of the old Palace, and had built up this clerical village of about +three dozen small houses, each within its garden and clump of acacias, +all sequestered and quiet. You may see one of these houses, still +owned by the cathedral, and happily left unchanged, at No. 6 Rue +Massillon. Its low two stories and tiled roof on the court keep their +old-time look, and within is a good staircase, with a wooden railing +of the days before wrought iron came into use. Boileau-Despréaux has +mounted this staircase, for he certainly visited this abode of the +Abbé Ménage, who had literary and scientific _salons_ here, on +Wednesday evenings. Boileau himself lived in these cloisters for many +years, and here he died; and here had died Philibert Delorme and +Pierre Lescot. These and many another, not connected with the Church, +sought this quarter for its quiet. It was quiet enough, shut in as it +was by its own walls, that made of it a _cité_ inside the City of the +Island. The two gates at the western ends of present Rues du +Cloître-Notre-Dame and Chanoinesse, with two others on the shore, were +safely closed and barred at nightfall, against all intrusion of the +profane and noisy world without. So greedy for quiet had the dwellers +grown, that they would not permit the bridge--the Pont-Rouge, the +seventeenth-century predecessor of Pont Saint-Louis--to step straight +out from Saint Louis's island to their own, lest the speed of traffic +should perturb them; they made it turn at an angle, until it set its +twisted foot on the retired spot where now Rues des Ursins and des +Chantres meet in a small open space. The southern shore by the side of +the cathedral was given up to the Archbishop's palace and garden; and +the piece of waste land, behind the cathedral and outside the wall, +known as Le Terrain, was in 1750 banked up into the quay at the end of +the present pretty garden. All around the northern and eastern sides +of the original Notre-Dame, stretched the Gothic arched cloisters, and +in them the Church taught what little it thought fit its scholars +should learn. + +Here, toward the end of the eleventh century, Pierre Abelard was an +eager pupil of Guillaume de Champeaux; and early in the next century, +here and in the gardens of Saint-Geneviève, he was a honey-tongued +teacher. He lodged in the house of Canon Fulbert, in whose niece of +seventeen--less than half his own age--he found an ardent learner, not +alone in theology. Here, on this spot, she taught herself that +devotion to the poor-spirited lover who was so bold-spirited a +thinker; a devotion, that, outlasting his life by the twenty years of +her longer life, found expression in her dying wish, put into verse by +Alexander Pope: + + "May one kind Grave unite each hapless Name, + And graft my Love immortal on thy Fame." + +He died at the Priory of Saint-Marcel near Châlons, whose prior sent +the body, at her request, to Héloise, then Abbess of the Convent at +Nogent-sur-Seine, and famed as a miracle of erudition and piety. She +was buried in the grave she there dug for him, and in 1800, when her +convent was destroyed, leaving no stone, the tomb and its contents +were removed to the Museum of French Monuments in Paris, and in 1817 +they were placed in Père-Lachaise. + +We willingly lose sight of Abelard's sorry story in face of his +splendid powers. These came into play at a period of mental and +spiritual awakening, brought about by unwonted light from all quarters +of the sky. Theological questions filled the air; asked, not only by +priests and clerks, but by the silly crowd and by wistful children, +and by gray-headed men sitting on school benches. The Crusades, +failing in material conquest, had won the Holy Land of Eastern +Learning; and Constantinople, lost later to the Christian world, gave +to it fleeing Greek scholars, carrying precious manuscripts, Byzantine +logic and physics, all through Europe. Pious soldiers, coming home +with wealth; stay-at-home churchmen, who had amassed riches; royalty, +anxious to placate Rome--all these built colleges, founded +scholarships, endowed chairs, subsidized teachers. + +From the cloisters on the island--the cradle of the University, as the +Palace at the other end of the island was the cradle of the Town--from +the new cathedral that Abelard had not seen, the schools stepped over +to the mainland on the south. There, on the shore, were built the +College of the Four Nations, and the School of Medicine, alongside +that annex of the old Hôtel-Dieu, which was reached by the little +bridge, that went only the other day, and that led from the central +structure on the island. From this shore the scholars' quarter spread +up the slope to the summit of Mont-Sainte-Geneviève. There teachers +and scholars met in the cloisters of the great abbey, that had grown +up around the tomb of the patron saint of Paris, where now stands the +Panthéon. Of the huge basilica, its foundations laid by Clovis--who +had paid for a victory by his baptism into Christianity--there is left +the tower, rising, aged and estranged, above the younger structures of +the Lycée Henri IV. Its foundations under ground are of Clovis, its +lower portion is of eleventh-century rebuilding, its upper portion of +the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The plan of his cloisters, +and some of its stones, are kept in the arches of the college court, +to which one enters from No. 23 Rue Clovis. And, in the street named +for his wife, Clotilde, you may see the massive side wall of the abbey +refectory, now the college chapel. + +Around about the southern side of the abbey, and around the schools on +the slope below, that were the beginning of the University, +Philippe-Auguste threw the protecting arm of his great wall. Within +its clasp lay the _Pays Latin_, wherein that tongue was used +exclusively in those schools. This language, sacred to so-called +learning and unknown to the vulgar, seemed a fit vehicle for the lame +science of the doctor, and the crippled dialectics of the theologian, +both always in arms against the "new learning." It was not until the +close of Henri IV.'s reign, that it was thought worth while to use the +French language in the classes. All through the Middle Ages, this +University was a world-centre for its teaching, and through all the +ages it has been "that prolific soil in which no seeds, which have +once been committed to it, are ever permitted to perish." While _la +Cité_ was the seat of a militant Church, and _la Ville_ the +gathering-place of thronging merchants, this hill-side swarmed with +students, and their officials were put to it to house them properly +and keep them orderly. They got on as best they might, ill-lodged, +ill-fed, ill-clad, often begging, always roistering, in the streets. +By day the sedate burghers of the other quarters trembled for their +ducats and their daughters, and found peace only when night brought +the locking of the gate of the Petit-Châtelet, and the shutting up in +their own district of the turbulent students. + +Turbulent still, the students of our day, of every land and all +tongues--except Latin--stream through the streets of the Latin +Quarter, intent on study, or on pleasure bent. Only the Revolution has +ever thinned their ranks, what time the Legislative Assembly nearly +wrecked the parent University, with all its offspring throughout +France. Napoleon rescued them all, and by his legislation of 1806 and +1808, the University has been builded solidly on the foundations of +the State. The ancient scholars' quarter, unlighted and undrained and +unhealthful, is almost all gone; its narrow, tortuous streets are +nearly all widened or wiped out; open spaces and gardens give it +larger lungs; its dark, damp, mouldy colleges have made way for +grandiose structures of the latest sanitation. Yet the gray walls of +the annex of the Hôtel-Dieu still gloom down on the narrow street; the +fifteenth-century School of Medicine, its vast hall perverted to base +uses, is hidden behind the entrance of No. 15 Rue de la Bucherie; and +above the buildings on the west side of Rue de l'Hôtel-Colbert rises +the rotunda of its later amphitheatre. Rue Galande retains many of its +houses of the time of Charles IX., when these gables on the street +were erected. Except for the superb façade at No. 29 Rue de la +Parcheminerie--a municipal residence dating from about the middle of +the eighteenth century--that venerable street remains absolutely +unaltered since its very first days, when the parchment-makers took it +for their own. Some of their parchment seems to be still on sale in +its shop windows. In the ancient house No. 8 Rue Boutebrie you will +find as perfect a specimen of a mediæval staircase, its wooden rail +admirably carved, as is left in Paris. And the street of the Mountain +of Sainte-Geneviève still winds, stonily steep, up the slope. + + [Illustration: Rue Hautefeuille, a Survivor of the Scholars' Quarter.] + +Nothing of Rue du Fouarre, as it was known to Rabelais and Dante, is +left but its name in the broadened curtailment of this most ancient +street. That name comes from the old French word meaning "forage," and +was given to it at the time when the wealthier students bought near +there and brought into it the trusses of hay and straw, which they +spread on the floor for seats during the lectures, the reader himself +being seated on a rude dais at the end of the hall. The forage market +is still held, not far away, in Place Maubert. And the churches of +Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre and of Saint-Séverin are unchanged, except by +age, since those days when their bells were the only timekeepers for +lecturers and lectured; giving signal, throughout the day, for the +divisions of the classes, until vespers told that the working-day was +done. The schools opened with the early mass at Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, +then the chapel adjoining the Hôtel-Dieu, now an exquisite relic of +simple twelfth-century Gothic. Still older had been Saint-Séverin, a +chapel of the earliest years of the monarchy, destroyed by the Normans +when they camped just here in 866, besieging the island city and +making their onslaught on the wooden tower that guarded the abutment +of the Petit-Pont on the mainland. The twelve heroes, who held that +tower against the Norman horde, are commemorated by the tablet in the +wall of Place du Petit-Pont. Saint-Séverin was rebuilt in the thirteenth +century, and its vast burial-ground on the south covered by the +buildings and the street of la Parcheminerie. So that of the University +seen by Dante, we can be sure only of the body of Saint-Séverin--its +tower was built in 1347--and of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, and the +buildings that are glued to it. + + [Illustration: The Interior of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre.] + +Dante's bronze figure looks pensively down from the terrace of the +Collége de France on all the noise and the newness of modern Rue des +Écoles. The date of his short stay in Paris cannot be fixed, but it +was certainly after his exile from Florence, therefore not earlier +than 1302, and probably not later than 1310, his own years being a +little less, or a little more, than forty. There can be no doubt as to +his having visited Paris, for Boccaccio, his admirer and biographer, +records the fact; told him perhaps by the elder Boccaccio, who lived +in the capital--where his famous son was born--and who probably met +the expatriated poet there. And in the tenth canto of "_Paradiso_," we +find these words in Longfellow's translation: + + "It is the light eternal of Sigieri, + Who, reading lectures in the street of straw, + Did syllogize individious verities." + +This closing line, meaning that Sigier of Brabant had the courage to +speak truths that were unpopular, explains why he was Dante's favorite +lecturer. In Balzac's pretty fragment of romance, in which the great +Frenchman makes so vivid the presence of the great Italian, the home +of the latter is in one of the small houses on the extreme eastern end +of the City Island--such as the modest dwelling in which died +Boileau-Despréaux, four centuries later. From there, Balzac has Dante +ferried over to Quai de la Tournelle, and so stroll to his lectures. +But Dante's home was really in that same street of straw, to which he +had come from his quarters away south on the banks of the Bièvre, too +far away from the schools. He had taken up his abode in that rural +suburb, on first coming to Paris, as did many men of letters, of that +time and of later times, who were drawn to the pleasant, quiet country +without the walls. + +There was one among these men to whose home, tradition tells us, Dante +was fond of finding his way, after he had come to live in the narrow +town street. The grave figure goes sedately up Rue Saint-Jacques, +always the great southern thoroughfare, passing the ancient chapel of +the martyrs, Saint-Benoît-le-Bétourné, and the home and shelter for +poor students in theology, started by the earnest confessor of Saint +Louis, Robert de Sorbon. The foundations of his little chapel, built +in 1276, were unearthed in 1899 during the digging for the new +Sorbonne; and its walls are outlined in white stone in the gray +pavement of the new court. Not a stone remains of the old Sorbonne, +not a stone of the rebuilt Sorbonne of Richelieu, except his chapel +and his tomb; well worth a visit for the exquisite beauty of its +detail. But the soul of the historic foundation lives on, younger than +ever to-day, in its seventh century of youth. Through Porte +Saint-Jacques, Dante passes to the dwelling, just beyond, of Jean de +Meung, its site now marked by a tablet in the wall of the house No. +218 Rue Saint-Jacques. No doubt it was a sufficiently grand mansion in +its own grounds, for it was the home of the well-to-do parents of the +poet, whose lameness gave him the popular nickname of "_Clopinel_," +preferred by him to the name by which he is best known, which came +from his natal town. In this home, a few years earlier, he had +finished his completion of "Le Roman de la Rose," one of the earliest +of French poems, a biting satire on women and priests, begun by +Guillaume de Lorris. "_Clopinel_" carried on the unfinished work to +such perfection, that he is commonly looked on as the sole author. +Dante admired the work as fully as did Chaucer, who has left a +translation into English of a portion:--so admirable a version that it +moved Eustace Deschamps to enthusiasm in his ballad to "_le grand +translateur, noble Geoffroi Chaucer_." And Dante liked the workman as +well, his equal in genius, many of their contemporaries believed; and +we shall not aggrieve history, if we insist on seeing the grim-visaged +Florentine and the light-hearted Gaul over a bottle of _petit vin de +Vouvray or de Chinon_--for the vineyards of this southern slope of +Paris had been rooted up by the builder early in the twelfth +century--in the low-browed living-room, discussing poetry and +politics, the schism in the Church, the quarrel between the French +King and his spiritual father of Rome. + +Behind us in Rue Saint-Jacques, beneath the new Sorbonne, we have left +the site of the chapel of Saint-Benoît-le-Bétourné. The entrance to +its cloisters and gardens was opposite Rue du Cimetière-Saint-Benoît, +a short street, now widened, that retains a few of its ancient houses, +the cemetery at its farther end being entirely builded over. This +entrance-gate is standing in the gardens of the Cluny Museum, and we +see it as it was first seen by the boy François Villon, and last seen +when he fled under it, after killing a priest in the cloisters. He got +his name from the worthy canon of Saint-Benoît, Guillaume de Villon, +who took in the waif and gave him a roof and food, and tried to give +him morals; and it is by his name that the poet is known in history +rather than by the other names, real or assumed, that he bore during +his shifty life. He lived here with his "more than father," as the +young scamp came to own that the canon had been; whose house in the +cloister gardens, named "_la Porte Rouge_," was not far from the house +of the canon Pierre de Vaucel, with whose niece François got into his +first scrape. Loving her then, he libelled her later in his verse. + +Full of scrapes of all sorts were his thirty short years of life--he +was born in the year of the burning of Joan the Maid, and he slips out +of sight and of record in 1461--and it needed all his nimble wits to +keep his toes from dangling above ground and his neck from swinging in +a noose. They did not keep him from poverty and hunger and prison. +Parliament, nearly hanging him, banished him instead from Paris, and +the footsore cockney figure is seen tramping through Poitou, Berri, +Bourbonnais. Louis XI. finds him in a cell at Meung and, sympathizing +with rascality that was not political, sets him free and on foot +again; so playing Providence to this starveling poet as he did to +Gringoire. And from Meung, François Villon steals out of history, +leaving to us his "Small" and "Large Testament," a few odes and +sonnets, with bits of wholly exquisite song. No French poet before him +had put _himself_ into his verse, and it is this flavor of personality +that gives its chiefest charm to his work. We are won by the graceless +vagabond, who casts up and tells off his entire existence of merriment +and misery, in the words of Mr. Henley's superb translation: + + "Booze and the blowens cop the lot." + +He seems to be owning to it, this slight, alert figure of bronze in +Square Monge, as he faces the meeting-place of wide modern streets. +The spaciousness of it all puzzles him, who prowled about the darkest +purlieus, and haunted the uncleanest _cabarets_, of the old University +quarter. He is struck suddenly quiescent in his swagger; his face, +slightly bent down, shows the poet dashed with the reprobate; his +expression and attitude speak of struggling shame and shamelessness. +His right hand holds a manuscript to his breast, his left hand clasps +the dagger in his belt. Behind, on the ground, lie the mandolin of the +poet-singer and the shackles of the convict. It is a delightfully +expressive statue of François Villon, by his own election one of the +"_Enfants sans Souci_," and by predestination a child of grievous +cares. + +From Square Monge it is but a step to the tablet that marks the place +of Porte Saint-Victor, on the northern side of the remnant left of the +street of that name. It is but a step in the other direction to the +tablet on the wall of No. 50 Rue Descartes, which shows the site of +Porte Saint-Marcel, sometimes called the Porte Bordée. Through either +of these gates of the great wall one might pass to the home of a poet, +a hundred years after Villon had gone from sight; like him, born to +true poetry, but unlike him who was born to rags, Pierre de Ronsard +was born to the purple. He was a gentleman of noble lineage, he had +been educated at the famous Collége de Navarre, the college at that +period of Henri III. and of the Duke of Guise, _le Balafré_--its site +and its prestige since taken by the École Polytechnique--he had +entered the court of the Duke of Orleans as a page, he had gone to +Scotland as one of the escort of Madeleine of France, on her marriage +with James V. He was counted among the personal friends of Mary Stuart +and of Charles IX., and by him was selected always as a partner in +tennis. That King visited Ronsard here, and so, too, did his brother +Henri III. Tasso found his way here, while in Paris in 1571, in the +train of Cardinal Louis d'Este. It seems that nothing in all France +was to Tasso's taste, except the windmills on Montmartre; easily in +view, at that day, from the Louvre, at whose windows he watched the +ceaseless whirling of their sails, which mitigated his boredom. Twenty +years earlier, Rabelais was fond of ferrying across the river, from +his home in Rue des Jardins-Saint-Paul, to prowl about his once +familiar haunts in this quarter, and to drop in on Ronsard and Baïf, +the leaders of the school of "learned poets." They lived in Rue des +Fossés-Saint-Victor, the street formed over the outer ditch of the +wall, now named Rue du Cardinal-Lemoine. Their house and grounds, just +at the corner of present Rue des Boulangers, have been cut through and +away by the piercing of Rue Monge. Here, Ronsard looked across the +meadows to the Seine, while he strolled in the gardens, book in hand, +eager "to gather roses while it is called to-day," in the words of Mr. +Andrew Lang's version of the "Prince of Poets." For Ronsard's +deafness, which had cut short his adroit diplomatic career, had given +him quicker vision for all beauty; and his verse, Greek and Latin and +French, trips to the music made in him by the sights and scents of +summer, by roses and by women, by the memories of "shadow-loves and +shadow-lips." And, still rhyming, this most splendid of that +constellation--those singers, attuned to stately measure, called the +Pleiades--died in the year 1585, soon after his sixtieth birthday. + + [Illustration: Pierre de Ronsard. + (From a drawing by an unknown artist, in a private collection.)] + +From here we go straight away over the hill of Sainte-Geneviève and +through Porte Saint-Michel--nearly at the meeting-place of Rues +Soufflot and Monsieur-le-Prince and Boulevard Saint-Germain--to the +house, also in the fields outside the wall, where dwelt Clément Marot, +a poet who sang pleasantly of the graces of life, too, but who had a +more serious strain deep down. The "_Cheval d'Airan_"--so was the +house named--was a gift to the poet from François I. "for his good, +continuous, and faithful services." These services consisted chiefly +in the writing of roundelays and verses, in which "he had a turn of +his own," says Sainte-Beuve; a turn of grace and of good breeding, and +no passion that should startle the King's sister, good Marguerite of +Navarre, who had made him her groom of the chamber. He had been a +prisoner at Pavia with the King, and his life had been spent in the +camp and the court. At Ferrara, in 1534, he had met his +fellow-countryman Calvin, and returned to Paris to prove his +strengthened convictions in the new heresies by those translations of +the psalms, which carried comfort to Calvin and to Luther, and which +have given to their writer his permanent place in French literature. +During this period he lived in this grand mansion, the site of which +is exactly covered by the houses No. 27 Rue de Tournon and No. 30 Rue +de Condé. And from here Marot went into exile, along with the +well-to-do Huguenots, who clung together in this quarter outside the +wall. "_Nous autres l'appelons la Petite Genève_," said d'Aubigné, and +that appellation held for a long time. Its centre was the short, +narrow lane in the marshes, named later Rue des Marais-Saint-Germain, +and now Rue Visconti, wherein the persecuted sect had their hidden +place of worship. On its corner with the present Rue de Seine was the +home of Jean Cousin, that gentleman-worker in stained glass--the sole +handicraft allowed to men of birth--who has left for our joy that +exquisite window in the Church of Saint-Gervais. At the western end of +the lane was the residence built for himself by Baptiste du Cerceau, +son of the illustrious Jacques Androuët, and as stanch as was his +father for the faith. His great mansion took up the whole end of the +block, on the ground covered now by the equally large building that +makes 32 Rue Jacob, 21 Rue Bonaparte, and 23 and 25 Rue Visconti. A +portion of this latter structure may be of the sixteenth century. +Baptiste du Cerceau, a Huguenot by birth and bringing-up, had yet +joined Henri III.'s famous "Forty-Five," in 1575, when he was only +twenty years old. For ten years he served that King as soldier and +architect, and then, rather than attend mass or conform against his +convictions, he left King and court and home in 1585. He came back +with Henri IV. as royal architect, to find that his elegant residence +had fallen into ruin. + + [Illustration: Balcony over the Entrance of the Cour du Dragon.] + +When Bernard Palissy, released from his dungeon in Bordeaux, came to +Paris, he was made "Worker in Earth and Inventor of Rustic Figulines," +for the new abode in the Tile Fields, beyond the Louvre, that was +planned for the Queen-Mother, Catherine de' Medici. "Bernard of the +Tuileries," as he was known, in order to be near his work, lodged on +the northern side of Rue Saint-Honoré, just east of present Rue de +Castiglione. Later he removed to Rue du Dragon, nearly opposite the +little street now named in his honor, and so became one of the colony +of "_la Petite Genève_." Here he worked as he worked always in his +passion for perfection in ornamental pottery, giving to it all "my +affection for pursuing in the track of enamels," in his own quaint +words. For his single-mindedness in praising his Creator, and in +making worthy images of His creations, he was looked on as a +"_huguenot opiniâtre_," and hated by the powers of the Church and +State, who, failing to burn him, because of the mercy of the Duke of +Mayenne, cast him into the Bastille. With all Paris hungry, during the +siege of the League by Henry of Navarre, the prisoners took their +turn, and this old man renewed the experience of his youth, when he +had starved himself for his beloved enamels. And so, at the age of +eighty, in the year of the stabbing by Jacques Clément of the most +Christian King, Henri III., Bernard Palissy died in his cell +"naturally," the report said. A medallion of the great potter may be +seen over the entrance of a house in Rue du Dragon, and his statue +stands in the little garden of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, not far away. +He is in his workman's garb, gazing down at a platter on which he has +stamped his genius in clay. + +We have seen John Calvin, fresh from Picardy, a student at the Collége +du Cardinal-Lemoine, in Rue Saint-Victor, and this is his only +residence in Paris known to us. Appointed Curé of Pont l'Evêque, at +the age of sixteen, he was induced by a daring relative to read the +Bible, and the ultimate result was Calvinism, as it has been +interpreted by his bigoted disciples. The immediate result was his +persecution by the Sorbonne, and his flight to Ferrara, about the year +1534. There he met with welcome and protection, as did many a +political fugitive of the time, from Renée, the reigning duchess, as +kindly a creature as was her father, Louis XII. of France. But her +goodwill could not prevail against the ill-will of the Church, and +Calvin was forced to find his way finally to Switzerland, to live +there for thirty useful years. Marot, who was with Calvin in Ferrara, +went back to Paris, still countenanced at court; but no favor of king +or king's sister could save a sinner who would eat meat during Lent; +and in 1543 Marot was forced to flee to Italy, and died in Turin in +1544. He lives less in his special verse than in his general +influence, along with Rabelais and Montaigne, in the formation of +French letters. These three cleansed that language into literature, by +purging it of the old Gallic chaos and clumsiness of form. + +So the Church made a desert, and called it peace, and "Little Geneva" +was at last laid waste, and those leaders, who escaped the cell and +the stake, were made refugees, because they had been insurgents +against enslaved thought. But they left behind them him who has been +styled the "Martyr of the Renaissance," Étienne Dolet. Here, in Place +Maubert, this bronze figure on the high pedestal, which he somehow +makes serve as a Protestant pulpit, looks all the martyr, with his +long, stubborn neck, his stiff spine of unbending conviction, his +entire attitude of aggressive devotion to principle. In life he was so +strong and so genuine that he made friends almost as many as enemies. +That glorious woman, Marguerite of Navarre--whose absurd devotion to +her brother Francis is only a lovable flaw in her otherwise faultless +nature--stood by Dolet as she stood by so many men who had the courage +to study and think and speak. She saved him from execution, when he +had killed a man in self-defence at Lyons, and she should have been +allowed to sit at table with the friends who gave him a little dinner +in the _Pays Latin_ to celebrate his escape. Among those about the +board were Marot, Rabelais, Erasmus, Melancthon, tradition says, and +says no more. We are told nothing about the speechmakers, and we can +only guess that they were terribly in earnest. Dolet was soon again in +arrest for printing books forbidden by the Church; his trial resulted +in an acquittal. Soon again he was arrested for importing the +forbidden literature, and escaped from prison. Rearrested, he was +speedily convicted, and on August 3, 1546, he was burned in Place +Maubert, on the spot where they have put his statue. + + [Illustration: Clément Marot. + (From the portrait by Porbus le Jeune, in a private collection.)] + +It was during one of his visits in later life to Paris that Erasmus +came to be among these _convives_; perhaps at the time he was +considering, before declining, the offer of François I. to make him +the head of the great Collége Royal, planned--and no more than +planned--by the King on the site of the Hôtel de Nesle, where Mazarin +afterward placed his College of the Four Nations, now the seat of the +Institute. Many years before this visit, some time between 1492 and +1497, Erasmus had lived in Paris, a poor and unhappy student in the +Collége Montaigu. It had earned the nickname of "_Collége des +Haricots_," because of the Lenten fare lavished on its inmates--beans, +stale eggs, spoiled fish, and that monotony broken by frequent fasts. +Erasmus had a Catholic conscience, as he owns, but a Lutheran stomach +withal, and this semi-starvation, with the filth and fleas in the +rooms, sickened him and drove him home to cleanly and well-fed +Flanders. From this college, he says in his "Colloquia," "I carried +nothing but a body infected with disease, and a plentiful supply of +vermin." A few years later young Rabelais suffered similar horrors at +the same college, and has cursed its memories through Grangousier's +capable lips. This "galley for slaves" was indeed used as a prison +during the Revolution, and was torn down in 1845, to give place to +the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève. + +From Place Maubert we walk up Rue Monge--named from the great _savant_ +of the First Empire--and down to the seventeenth century, to where, on +the corner of Rue Rollin, we find the tablet that records the scene of +Blaise Pascal's death in 1662. He lived and died in the house of his +sister, in the fields just beyond Porte Saint-Marcel. Thirty-one years +before, he had left Auvergne for Paris, a precocious lad of eight, +already so skilled in mathematics and geometry that he produced his +famous treatises while still in his teens, and at the age of +twenty-three was known for his abilities throughout Europe. No man +dying, as he did, not yet forty years of age, has left so distinct and +permanent an impress on contemporary, and on later, thought. + +He gained the honor of being hated by the Church, and the Jesuits +named him "_Porte d'Enfer_." His only answer was the philosophic +question, "How can I _prove_ that I am not the gate of Hell?" This +many-sided genius invented the first calculating machine and the first +omnibus. The line was started on March 18, 1662, and ran from the +Palace of the Luxembourg to the Bastille. Its route was probably by +Rue de la Harpe--almost all gone under Boulevard Saint-Michel--across +Petit-Pont and the Island and Pont Notre-Dame, to Place de Grève, and +thence by Rues François-Miron and Saint-Antoine, to the gate and the +prison at the end. + +It was long a matter of dispute between the towers of +Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie and Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas--this +latter much nearer his home--as to which one had been selected by +Pascal for the experiments he made, to prove his theory of atmospheric +pressure, and to refute the theory of his opponents. Within a few +years this question has been answered by an old painting, found in a +curiosity shop, which represents Pascal, barometer in hand, standing +on the top of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, beside the statue of the +Chimæra, that has been carried to the Cluny Museum. This figure alone +would fix the spot, but, in addition, the picture gives a view of old +Paris that could be seen only from this point of view. This elegant +isolated tower--all that is left of a church dating from the +beginnings of Christian construction, and destroyed during the +Revolution--was itself erected late in the fifteenth and early in the +sixteenth century, and shows the last effort of mediæval Gothic in +Paris. It is now used as a weather observatory. Pascal's statue, by +Cavelier, has been placed under the great vaulted arch that forms its +base, and all about, in the little park, are instruments for taking +and recording all sorts of atmospheric changes. + +It may have been while driving between this tower and his sister's +house, that Pascal's carriage was overturned on Pont-Neuf, and he +narrowly escaped death by falling or by drowning. From that day he +gave up his service to science, and gave himself up solely to the +service of God. Into his "Thoughts" he put all his depth of +reflection and his intensity of feeling, all his force and finish of +phrase. Yet, always behind this Christian philosopher, we are +conscious of the man of feeling, who owns that he could be drawn down +from his high meditations, and could be drawn up from his profound +melancholy, by "_un peu de bon temps, un bon mot, une louange, une +caresse_." + +His body was laid in the Abbey Church of Sainte-Geneviève, and was +removed, on the destruction of that edifice in 1807, to its successor +in tradition and sentiment, Saint-Étienne-du-Mont. It rests at the +base of one of the outer pillars of the Lady Chapel, opposite the spot +of Racine's final sepulture. The two tablets from their original tombs +have been set in the pillars of the first chapel on the southern side +of the choir, just behind the exquisite rood-screen. + +When aged Rue Rollin was quite young it was christened Rue +Neuve-Saint-Étienne, and it was bordered by cottages standing in their +own gardens, looking down the slope across the town to the river, this +being the highest street on the hill-side. Its length has been +lessened by Rue Monge, and that portion left to the east of the new +street is now Rue de Navarre. Rue Monge was cut through the crest of +the hill, so that one must mount by stone steps to the old level of +the western end of Rue Neuve-Saint-Étienne, named anew in honor of the +scholar and historian, who has given his name also to the great +college, since removed from this quarter to Boulevard Rochechouart, +away off on the northern heights. Charles Rollin was an earnest +student, an unusually youthful Rector of the University, and +principal of the College of Beauvais in 1696, and a writer of history +and _belles-lettres_ of great charm but little weight. He was, withal, +an honest soul, somewhat naïve, of simple tastes and of quiet life. So +he came to this secluded quarter, when a little over seventy, and here +he died in 1741. His cottage is numbered 8 in the street, and is +occupied by the school of Sainte-Geneviève, whose demure maidens do no +violence to his tranquil garden in which they stroll. For their use a +small pavilion has been built in the rear of the garden, but there is +no other change. The two Latin lines, inscribed by him in praise of +his rural home within the town, remain on an inner wall of his cottage +at your left as you enter. + +Fifty years later another writer found a quiet home in this same +street. Hidden behind the heavy outer door of No. 4, a roomy mansion +built in 1623 by a country-loving subject of Louis XIII., is a tablet +that tells of the residence here, from 1781 to 1786, of Jacques-Henri +Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. A man of finer qualities and subtler charm +than Rollin, his work is of no greater weight in our modern eyes, for +with all the refinement of imagination and the charm of description +that made his pen "a magic wand" to Sainte-Beuve, his emotional +optimism grows monotonous, and his exuberant sensibility flows over +into sentimentality. In the court of his house is an ancient well, and +behind lies a lovable little garden, with a rare iron rail and +gateway. This traveller in many lands, this adorer of nature, took +keen delight in his outlook, from his third-story windows, over this +garden and the gardens beyond, to the Seine. Here in 1784 he wrote +"Studies from Nature," an instantaneous success, surpassed only by the +success of "Paul and Virginia," published in 1786. Possibly no book +has ever had such a vogue. It was after reading this work, in Italy, +that the young Bonaparte wrote to Bernardin: "Your pen is a painter's +brush." Yet his reading of the manuscript, before its publication, in +the _salon_ of Madame Necker, had merely bored his hearers, and the +humiliated author had fled from their yawns to this congenial +solitude. + +The narrow street has suffered slight change since those days, or +since those earlier days, when René Descartes found a temporary home, +probably on the site of present No. 14, a house built since his day +here. That was between 1613, when he first came from Brittany, and +1617, when he went to the Netherlands. But there can be found no trace +of the stay in this street, nor of the secluded home in the Faubourg +Saint-Germain, of the founder of Cartesian philosophy--the first +movement in the direction of modern philosophy--the father of modern +physiology, as Huxley claims, and of modern psychology, as its +students allow. His wandering life, in search always of truth, ended +in 1650, at the court of Christina of Sweden. His body was brought +back to France by the ambassador of Louis XIV., and placed in the old +Church of Sainte-Geneviève. In 1793, the Convention decreed its +removal to the recently completed and secularized Panthéon, and from +there it was carried for safe keeping, along with so many others, to +the Museum of French Monuments. In 1819 it found final resting-place +in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, in the third chapel on the southern side of +the choir. The man himself lives for us on the wonderful canvas of +Franz Hals in the gallery of the Louvre. + + [Illustration: René Descartes. + (From the portrait by Franz Hals, in the Musée du Louvre.)] + +The Paris of the north bank has its slope, that looks across the Seine +to this southern slope, and that has come to be its Scholarly Quarter. +The high land away behind the lowlands stretching along the northern +bank was taken early by the Romans for their villas, and then by +nobles for their _châteaux_, and then by the _bourgeoisie_ for their +cottages. As _la Ville_ grew, its citizens gave all their thought to +honest industry and to the honest struggle for personal and municipal +rights, so that none was left for literature. When its time came, the +town had spread up and over these northern heights, and men of letters +and of the arts were attracted by their open spaces and ample outlook. +So large a colony of these workers had settled there, early in the +nineteenth century, that some among them gave to their hill-side the +name of "_la Nouvelle Athènes_." Its vogue has gone on growing, and it +is crowded with the memories of dead pen-workers, and with the +presence of living pen-workers. So, too, are the suburbs toward the +west, and this Scholars' Quarter on the southern bank, which is barely +touched on in this book, given so greatly as it is to history, +archæology, architecture, and other arts. All this wide-spread +district awaits the diligent pen that has given us "The Literary +Landmarks of London," to give us, as completely and accurately, "The +Literary Landmarks of Paris." + + + + +MOLIÈRE AND HIS FRIENDS + + + + +MOLIÈRE AND HIS FRIENDS + + +In the early years of the seventeenth century there stood a low, wide, +timbered house on the eastern corner of Rues Saint-Honoré and des +Vieilles-Étuves. To the dwellers in that crowded quarter of the Halles +it was known as "_la Maison des Singes_," because of the carved wooden +tree on its angle, in the branches of which wooden monkeys shook down +wooden fruit to an old wooden monkey at its foot. This house, that +dated from the thirteenth century surely, and that may have been a +part of Queen Blanche's Paris, was torn down only in 1800, and a slice +of its site has been cut off by Rue Sauval, the widened and renamed +Rue des Vieilles-Étuves. The modern building on that corner, numbered +92 Rue Saint-Honoré, is so narrow as to have only one window on each +of its three floors facing that street. Around the first story, above +the butcher's shop on the entrance floor, runs a balcony with great +gilt letters on its rail, that read "_Maison de Molière_." High up on +its front wall is a small tablet, whose legend, deciphered with +difficulty from the street, claims this spot for the birthplace of +Molière. This is a veracious record. The exact date of the birth of +the eldest son of Jacques Poquelin and Marie Cressé, his wife, is +unknown, but it was presumably very early in January, 1622, for, on +the fifteenth of that month, the baby was baptized "Jean Poquelin," in +his father's parish church of Saint-Eustache--a new church not quite +completed then. The name "Baptiste" was, seemingly, added a little +later by his parents. + +On this corner the boy lived for eleven years; here his mother died, +ten years after his birth, and here his father soon married again; he +removed, in 1633, to a house he had inherited, the ground floor of +which he made his shop of upholstery and of similar stuffs, the family +residing above. It was No. 3 Rue de la Tonnellerie, under the pillars +of the Halles, possibly, but not certainly, on the site of the present +No. 31 Rue du Pont-Neuf. In a niche, cut in the front wall of this +modern building, has been placed a bust of Molière and an inscription +asserting that this was his birthspot, a local legend that harms no +one, and comforts at least the _locataire_. + +Hereabout, certainly, the boy played, running forward and back across +the market. On its northern side, near the public pillory, was another +house owned by his father, on the old corner of Rue de la Réale, and +its site is now covered by the pavement of modern Rue Rambuteau. It is +pleasant to picture the lad in this ancient quarter, as we walk +through those few of its streets unchanged to this day, notably that +bit of Rue de la Ferronerie, so narrow that it blocked the carriage of +Henri IV., a few years before, and brought him within easy reach of +the knife of Ravaillac as he sprang on the wheel. + +François Coppée, not yet an old man, readily recalls the square squat +columns of the old Halles, and, all about, the solid houses supported +by pillars like the arcades of Place des Vosges; all just as when +young Poquelin played about them. Plays, as well as play, already +attracted him; he loved to look at the marionettes and the queer +side-shows of the outdoor fairs held about the Halles; and his +grandfather, Louis Cressé, an ardent playgoer, often took him to laugh +at the funny fellows who frolicked on the trestles of the Pont-Neuf, +and at the rollicking farces in the Théâtre du Marais. No doubt he +saw, too, the tragedies of the theatre of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and +this observant boy may well have anticipated the younger Crébillon's +opinion, that French tragedy of that day was the most absolute farce +yet invented by the human mind. For this was a little while before the +coming of Corneille with true tragedy. + +This son of the King's upholsterer cared nothing for his father's +trade, and not much for books. He learned, early, that his eyes were +meant for seeing, and he not only saw everything, but he remembered +and reflected; showing signs already of that bent which gave warrant, +in later life, for Boileau's epithet, "Molière the Contemplator." + +He was sent, in 1636, being then fourteen years old, to the Collége de +Clermont, named a little later, and still named, Lycée Louis-le-Grand. +Rebuilt during the Second Empire, it stands on its old site behind +the Collége de France, in widened Rue Saint-Jacques. Here, during his +course of five years, he was sufficiently diligent in such studies as +happened to please him; and was prominent in the plays, acted by the +scholars at each prize-giving. He made many friendships with boys who +became famous men; with one, just leaving school as he came, who +especially stood his friend in after life--the youthful Prince de +Conti, younger brother of the great Condé. And this elder brother +became, years after, the friend and protector of the young +actor-playwright, just as he was of some others of that famous group, +Racine, La Fontaine, Boileau. All these, along with all men eminent in +any way, were welcomed to his grand seat at Chantilly, and were +frequent guests at his great town-house, whose _salon_ was a rival to +that of the Hôtel de Rambouillet. His mansion, with its grounds, +occupied the whole of that triangular space bounded now by Rues de +Vaugirard, de Condé, and Monsieur-le-Prince. At the northern point of +that triangle, nearly on the ground now covered by the Second Théâtre +Français, the Odéon, stood the prince's private theatre; wherein +Molière, by invitation, played the rôles of author, actor, manager. +Molière's customary rôle in this great house was that of friend of the +host, who wrote to him: "Come to me at any hour you please; you have +but to announce your name; you visit can never be ill-timed." + +Jean-Baptiste Poquelin betook himself early to the boards for which +he was born, from which he could not be kept by his course at college +or at law. He studied law fitfully for a while; sufficiently, withal, +to lay up a stock of legal technicalities and procedure, which he +employed with precision in many of his plays. So, too, he took in, no +doubt unconsciously, details of his father's business; and his +references, in his stage-talk, to hangings, furniture, and costumes, +are frequent and exact. + +The father, unable to journey with the King to Narbonne in the spring +of 1642, as his official duties demanded, had his son appointed to the +place, and the young man, accompanying the court and playing +_tapissier_ on this journey, saw, it is said, the execution of +Cinq-Mars and de Thou. In the provinces at this time, or it may have +been in Paris earlier, he met, became intimate with, and soon after +joined, a troupe of strolling players, made up of Joseph Béjart, his +two sisters Madeleine and Geneviève, and other young Parisians. + +This troupe was touring in Languedoc early in 1642, and was rather +strong in its talent and fortunate in its takings; in no way akin to +that shabby set of barnstormers satirized by Scarron in his "Roman +Comique." We cannot fix the date of Poquelin's _début_ in the company, +but we know that--with the unhallowed ambition of the born and +predestined comedian--he began in tragedy, and that he was greeted by +his rural audiences with hootings, punctuated by the pelting of fried +potatoes, then sold at the theatre door. And we know that the troupe +came north to Rouen in the autumn of 1643, playing a night or two in +the natal town of Corneille. It is a plausible and a pleasing fancy +that sees the glory of French dramatic art of that day, at home on a +visit to his mother, receiving free tickets for the show, with the +respects of the young recruit to the stage, the glory of French +dramatic art at no distant day. The troupe had gone to Rouen and to +other provincial towns only while awaiting the construction of their +theatre in the capital, contracted for during the summer. At last, on +the evening of December 31, 1643, it raised its first curtain to the +Parisian public, under the brave, or the bumptious, title of +"l'Illustre Théâtre." + +To trace, from his first step on Paris boards, the successive sites of +Molière's theatres is a delightful task, in natural continuation of +that begun in an earlier chapter, where those theatres in existence +before his time were pointed out. In England, we know, stage-players +were "strollers and vagabonds" by statute; not allowed to play within +London's walls. All their early theatres were outside the City limits. +The Globe, the summer theatre of Shakespeare and his "fellows"--"whereon +was prepared scaffolds for beholders to stand upon"--was across the +Thames, on Bankside, Southwark. So, too, were the Hope, the Rose, the +Swan. The Curtain was in Shoreditch, Davenant's theatre in Lincoln's +Inn Fields, and the Blackfriars theatre on Ludgate Hill, just without +the old wall. + +The early playhouses of Paris were built--but for another reason--on +the outer side of the town wall of Philippe-Auguste, and their +seemingly unaccountable situations are easily accounted for by +following on either bank the course of that wall, already plainly +mapped out in preceding pages. + +This magnificent wall of a magnificent monarch had lost much of its +old significance for defence with the coming of gunpowder, and a new +use was found for it, in gentler games than war, as the town outgrew +its encircling limits. In the Middle Ages, tennis--the oldest +ball-game known--was a favorite sport of kings and of those about +them. It was called _le jeu de paume_, being played with the hand +until the invention of the racket; the players standing in the ditch +outside the wall, against which the ball was thrown. Beyond the ditch +was built the court for onlookers, the common folk standing on its +floor, their betters seated in the gallery. When the game lost its +vogue, these courts were easily and cheaply turned into the rude +theatres of that day, with abundant space for actors and spectators; +those of low degree crowding on foot in the body of the building, +those who paid a little more seated in the galleries, those of high +degree on stools and benches at the side of the stage, and even on the +stage itself. This encroachment on the stage, within sight of the +audience, grew to such an abuse that it was done away with in 1759, +and the scene was left solely to the players. + +Where a tablet is let into the wall of the present Nos. 12 and 14 Rue +Mazarine, then named the Fossé-de-Nesle--the ancient outer ditch of +the old wall--a roomy playhouse had been contrived from a former +tennis-court owned by Arnold Mestayer, a solid citizen of the town, +captain of the Hundred Musketeers of Henri IV.'s day. This was the +theatre taken by the Béjart troupe and named "l'Illustre Théâtre." +Here young Poquelin made his first bow to Paris. The building stood on +the sites of the present Nos. 10, 12, and 14 Rue Mazarine, its only +entrance for spectators reached by an alley that ran along the line +between Nos. 14 and 16, and so through to Rue de Seine, to where the +buildings extended over the ground now covered by Nos. 11 and 13. +These latter houses are claimed by local legend for Molière's +residence, and it may well be that the rear part of the theatre served +as sleeping-quarters for the troupe. The interior of No. 11 is of very +ancient construction, its front being of later date. In the wall +between it and No. 9--a low wooden structure, possibly a portion of +the original fabric--is hidden the well that served first the +tennis-players and then the stage-players. There is no longer any +communication between these houses in Rue de Seine and those in Rue +Mazarine. These latter were built in 1830, when the street was +widened, that portion of the old theatre having been demolished a few +years earlier. + +It was in June, 1644, that the name Molière first appears, signed--it +is his earliest signature in existence--among the rest of the company, +to a contract with a dancing man for the theatre. How he came to +select this name is not known, nor was it known to any of his young +comrades; for he always refused to give his reasons. What is known, is +that it was a name of weight even then, proving that, within the first +six months of the theatre's existence, his business ability had made +him its controlling spirit. But his abilities as manager and as actor +could not bring success to the theatre. Foreign and civil wars made +the State poor; wide-spread financial troubles made the people poor; +that cruelly cold winter froze out the public. "_Nul animal vivant +n'entra dans notre salle_," are the bitterly true words, put into the +mouth of the young actor-manager, by an unknown writer of a scurrilous +verse. + +He and the troupe were liberated from their lease within the year, +and, early in 1645, they migrated over the river to the _Jeu de Paume +de la Croix-Noire_. On either end of the long, low building at No. 32 +Quai des Célestins is a tablet; the western one showing where stood +the Tour Barbeau that ended the wall on this river-bank; that at the +eastern end marking the site of this theatre, just without the wall. +It had an entrance on the quay-front for the boatmen and other water-side +patrons, another in Rue des Barrés for its patrons coming by coach. +Molière lodged in the house--probably a portion of the theatre--at the +corner of the quay and of Rue des Jardins-Saint-Paul--that country +lane wherein had died Rabelais, nearly a century earlier. Little Rue +des Barrés, already seen taking its name from the barred or striped +gowns of the monks who settled there, is now Rue de l'Ave-Maria, and +at its number 15 you will find the stage entrance of this theatre, +hardly changed since it was first trodden by the players from over the +river. There is the low and narrow door, one of its jambs bent with +the weight of the more modern structure above, and beyond is the +short alleyway, equally narrow, by which they passed to the stage. At +its inner end, where it opens into a small court, is the stone rim of +a well, half hidden in the wall. It is the well provided in each +tennis-court for the players, and handed on, with the court itself, +for the use of the actors. Molière has leaned over this well-curb to +wash away his rouge and wrinkles. It is an indisputable and attractive +witness of his early days. In Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, where he +knelt at the altar for his marriage and stood at the font with his +son; in Saint-Eustache, where he carried his second son for baptism; +in Saint-Roch, where he wrote his name as godfather of a friend's +daughter--within these vast and dim aisles, his bodily presence is +vaguely shadowed forth; _here_ we can touch the man. + + [Illustration: Stage Door of Molière's Second Theatre in Paris.] + +What sort of plays were presented at this house we do not know, the +only record that remains referring to the production of "Artaxerxes" +by one Mignon. Whatever they played, neither the rough men of the quay +and of Port Saint-Paul, nor the _bourgeoisie_ of the Marais, nor the +fine folk of Place Royale, crowded into the new theatre. + +During this disastrous season, the troupe received royal commands to +play at Fontainebleau before the King and court, and later, by +invitation of the Duc de l'Éperon, at his splendid mansion in Rue de +la Plâtrière--that mansion in which lived and died La Fontaine, half a +century later. Neither these fashionable flights, nor the royal and +noble patronage accorded to the troupe, could save it from failure and +final bankruptcy. Molière, the responsible manager, was arrested for +the theatre's poor little debt for candles and lights. He was locked +up for a night or two in the dismal prison of the Grand Châtelet, once +the fortress of Louis "le Gros," torn down only in 1802, on whose site +now sparkles the fountain of Place du Châtelet. From this lock-up, +having petitioned for release to M. d'Aubray, Civil Lieutenant of the +town and father of the Marquise de Brinvilliers, Molière was released +by the quickly tendered purse of Léonard Aubry, "Royal Paver and +Street Sweeper," who, when filling in the Fossé-de-Nesle and laying +out over it the present Rue Mazarine a year before, had made fast +friends with the young actor. "For his good service in ransoming the +said Poquelin," the entire troupe bound itself to make Aubry whole for +his debt. + +Now they cross the river again to their former Faubourg Saint-Germain, +taking for their house the _Jeu de Paume de la Croix-Blanche_, outside +the wall on the south side of the present Rue de Buci, between the +_carrefour_ at its eastern end and Rue Grégoire-de-Tours. Here they +played, still playing against disaster, from the end of 1645 to the +end of 1646, and then they fled from Paris, fairly beaten, and betook +themselves to the southern provinces. We cannot follow their +wanderings, nor record their ups and downs, during the twelve years of +their absence. In the old play-bills we find the names of Béjart +_aîné_ and of his brother Louis, of their sisters Madeleine and +Geneviève. Toward the end of their touring they added to the family, +though not to the boards, Armande, who had been brought up in +Languedoc, and who was claimed by them to be their very young sister, +and by others to be the unacknowledged daughter of Madeleine. + +Molière, the leader and manager of the troupe from the day they +started, was then only twenty-five years of age, not yet owning or +knowing his full powers. These he gained during that twelve years' +hard schooling and rude apprenticeship, so that he came back to the +capital, in 1658, master of his craft, with a load of literary luggage +such as no French tourist has carried, before or since. + +Under princely patronage, won in the provinces, his troupe appeared +before Louis XIV., the Queen-Mother, and the entire court, on October +24, 1658, in a theatre improvised in the Salle des Gardes of the old +Louvre, now known as the Salle des Caryatides. The pieces on that +opening night were Corneille's "Nicomède" and the manager's "Le +Docteur Amoureux." In November, the "_troupe de Monsieur_"--that title +permitted by the King's brother--was given possession of the theatre +in the palace of the Petit-Bourbon. It stood between the old Louvre, +with which it was connected by a long gallery, and the Church of +Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, and was torn down in 1660 to make place for +the new colonnade that forms the present eastern face of the Louvre. +The dainty Jardin de l'Infante covers the site of the stage, just at +the corner of the Egyptian Gallery. + +In this hall Molière's company played for two years, on alternate +nights with the Italian comedians, presenting, along with old standard +French pieces--for authors in vogue held aloof--his provincial +successes, as well as new plays and ballets invented by him for the +delectation of the _Grand Monarque_. From this time his remaining +fifteen years of life were filled with work; his brain and his pen +were relentlessly employed; honors and wealth came plentifully to him, +happiness hardly at all. + +While at this theatre Molière lived just around the corner on Quai de +l'École, now Quai du Louvre, in a house that was torn away in 1854 for +the widening of present Rue du Louvre. Many of the buildings left on +the quay are of the date and appearance of this, his last bachelor +home. + +Driven from the Petit-Bourbon by its hurried demolition in 1660, +Molière was granted the use and the privileges of the _Salle_ of the +former Palais-Cardinal, partly gone to ruin and needing large +expenditure to make it good. It had been arranged by Richelieu, just +before his death, for the presentation of his "Mirame." For the great +cardinal and great minister thought that he was a great dramatist too, +and in his vanity saw himself the centre of the mimic stage, as he +really was of the world-stage he managed. He is made by Bulwer to say, +with historic truth: "Of my ministry I am not vain; but of my muse, I +own it." His theatre in his residence--willed at his death to the +King, and thenceforward known as the Palais-Royal--was therefore the +only structure in Paris designed especially and solely for playhouse +purposes. It stood on the western corner of Rues Saint-Honoré and de +Valois, as a tablet there tells us. During the repairs Molière took +his troupe to various _châteaux_ about Paris, returning to open this +theatre on January 20, 1661. This removal was the last he made, and +this house was the scene of his most striking successes. + +It is not out of place here to follow his troupe for a while after his +death, and so complete our record of those early theatres. His widow, +succeeding to the control of the company, was, within three months, +compelled to give up the Cardinal's house to Lulli, the most popular +musician of that day, and a scheming fellow withal. The unscrupulous +Florentine induced the King to grant him this Salle des Spectacles for +the production of his music. The opera held the house until fire +destroyed it in 1763, when a new "Academy of Music" was constructed on +the eastern corner of the same streets; this, also, was burned in +1781. Above the tablet recording these dates on this eastern-corner +wall is a fine old sun-dial, such as is rarely seen in Paris, and +seldom noticed now. + +The widow Molière, being dispossessed, found a theatre in Rue +Mazarine, just beyond her husband's first theatre, "in the +Tennis-Court where hangs a Bottle for a Sign." For it had been the +_Jeu de Paume de la Bouteille_, and now became the Théâtre Guénégaud, +being exactly opposite the end of that street. Within the structure at +No. 42 Rue Mazarine may be seen the heavy beams of the front portion +of its fabric, where was the entrance for the public. The space +behind, now used for a workshop, with huge pillars around its four +sides, served for the audience, and the stage was built farther +beyond. On the court of this house, and on the contiguous court of No. +43 Rue de Seine, stood a large building, whose first floor was taken +by Madame Molière, and in its rear wall she cut a door to give access +to her stage. The entrance for the performers was in the little +Passage du Pont-Neuf, and under it there are remains of the +foundations of the theatre. Here, in May, 1677, the widow took the +name of Madame Guérin on her marriage with a comedian of her company. +And we feel as little regret as she seems to have felt for her loss of +an illustrious name. In the words of a derisive verse of the time: + + "_Elle avoit un mari d'esprit, qu'elle aimoit peu; + Elle prend un de chair, qu'elle aime davantage._" + + [Illustration: COMÉDIE FRANÇAISE 1680] + +This was the first theatre to present to the general public "lyric +dramas set to music," brought first to France by Mazarin for his +private stage in the small hall of the Palais-Royal, where they were +presented as "_Comédies en Musique, avec machines à la mode +d'Italie_." They bored everybody, the fashion for opera not yet being +set. On October 21, 1680, by letters-patent from royalty, the troupe +of the Théâtre Guénégaud was united to that of the Hôtel de +Bourgogne, and to the combined companies was granted the name of +Comédie Française, the first assumption of that now time-honored +title. The theatre became so successful that the Jansenists in the +Collége Mazarin--the present Institute--made an uproar because they +were annoyed by the traffic and the turmoil in the narrow street, and +succeeded in driving away the playhouse in 1688. After a long search, +the Comédie Française found new quarters in the _Jeu de Paume de +l'Étoile_, built along the outer edge of the street made over the +ditch of the wall, named Rue des Fossés-Saint-Germain, now Rue de +l'Ancienne-Comédie. At its present No. 14, set in the original front +wall of the theatre, between the second and third stories, a tablet +marks the site; above it is a bas-relief, showing a Minerva reclining +on a slab. She traces on paper, with her right hand, that which is +reflected in the mirror of Truth, held in her left hand. At the rear +of the court stands the old fabric that held the stage. Since those +boards were removed to other walls--the story shall be told in a later +chapter--the building has had various usages. It now serves as a +storehouse for wall-paper. During the Empire it was taken for his +studio by the artist Antoine-Jean Gros, the successor of David and the +forerunner of Géricault; so standing for the transition from the +Classic to the Romantic school. It is not true that he killed himself +in this studio. He went out from it, when maddened by the art critics, +and drowned himself in the Seine in the summer of 1835. + +It was a great bill with which the Comédie Française opened this house +on the night of April 18, 1689, for it was made up of two +masterpieces, Racine's "Phèdre" and Molière's "Le Médecin Malgré Lui." +A vast and enthusiastic audience thronged, with joyous clatter, +through narrow Rues Mazarine and Dauphine, coming from the river. The +Café 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. + +Molière, at the height of his career, had married Armande Béjart, 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 Béjart, Molière's friend and comrade for many +years, who doubled her rôle 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 +Molière. + +In the cast of the "École des Maris," first produced in 1661, appears +the name of Armande Béjart, and, three months after the marriage, +"Mlle. Molière"--so were known the wives of the _bourgeoisie_, +"Madame" being reserved for _grandes-dames_--played the small part of +Élise put for her by the author into his "Critique de l'École 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 Molière'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'École, and had taken +an apartment in a large house situated on the small open space 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-Honoré. The first-named street, near its end on Quai du +Louvre, held the Hôtel de Rambouillet, which was a reconstruction of +the old Hôtel 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 +"Arthénice"--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 _Précieuses Ridicules_. The mansion--one of the grandest of that +period--having passed 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 space 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 Molière'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, Molière 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 Forêt, to whom, it is said, Molière 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 Forêt then, +and the real name of this cook was Renée 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 _ménage_. To it came a new inmate in February, 1664, a boy, +baptized at Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, having the great monarch for a +godfather, and for a godmother Henrietta of England, wife of the +King's brother, Philippe d'Orléans, 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-Honoré, at the corner of Rue d'Orléans, 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, Molière'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, René Baudelet, Tailor to the +Queen by title, had taken a house only recently builded, and from him +Molière 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, spaciously 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 +manuscripts 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 Molière, 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 Hôtel de la Chancellerie d'Orléans, 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 Molière 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 Molière's +dwelling. Their front windows look out now on the grand fountain of +the younger Visconti's design, erected to Molière's memory in 1844, at +the junction of Rue de Richelieu and old Rue Traversière, now named +Rue Molière. 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, Molière considered that he honored Raphael and Michael Angelo, +when he named them "_ces Mignards de leur âge_." Certainly no such +vivid portrait of Molière 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. + + [Illustration: The Molière Fountain.] + +Early in 1667 we find Molière 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 title 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 +Molière's cottage and grounds is covered by a block of commonplace +modern dwellings on the corner of Rue Théophile 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 Théophile Gautier. It is the gate of the +ancient _hôtel_ of Choiseul-Praslin, a name of unhappy memory in the +annals of swell assassins. The ducal wearer of the title, during the +reign of Louis-Philippe, stabbed his wife to death in their town-house +in the Champs Élysées, 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 Institution of Saint Thomas of Aquinas. + +A white-robed sister graciously gives permission to enter, and leads +the visitor across the spacious 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 Rémusat, +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 Molière._" 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 +associations of Molière 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 +Molière, that brought, along with acutest enjoyment, the keenest +suffering. In this day-and-night companionship, craving consolation +for his betossed soul, Molière 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 Molière's steadier head and +hand. His _ménage_ 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 +"_tapissier valet-de-chambre du Roi_," then residing in Auteuil, who +signed the register of the parish church, as god-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 Hôtel de Ville, were burned by the Commune. + +On the night of Friday, February 16, 1673, while personating his +_Malade Imaginaire_--its fourth performance--Molière 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 Molière, should have to paint his face, put on a +false mustache, get into a bag and be beaten with sticks, in his +ludicrous rôle 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 Théâtre +Français. It is a massive 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 stitched 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 Théâtre +Français in the performances of "Le Malade Imaginaire." And, with +equal reverence, they kept for many years in the ancient village of +Pézénas, in Languedoc--where the strolling troupe wintered in 1655-6, +playing in the adjacent hamlets and in the _châteaux_ of the +_seigneurie_ about--the big wooden arm-chair belonging to the barber +Gély, and almost daily through that winter occupied by Molière. 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 document. It has descended to a +gentleman in Paris, by whom it is cherished. + +The _curé_ 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 +"_Tapissier 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, Molière 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 document, "the +bones which seemed to be those of Molière" were exhumed, and carried +for safe keeping to the Museum of French Monuments begun by Alexandre +Lenoir in 1791, in the Convent of the Petits-Augustins. Its site is +now mostly covered by the court of the Beaux-Arts in Rue Bonaparte. +Those same supposed bones of Molière were transferred, early in the +present century, to the Cemetery of Père-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 +Molière's burial, in the Cemetery of the Innocents, a half-mile from +that of Saint-Joseph! + +Our ignorance as to whether these be Molière's bones, under the +monument in Père-Lachaise, is matched by our unacquaintance with the +facts of his life. And we know almost as little of Molière 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 +manuscript, and few specimens of the handwriting, of either. The +Comédie Française has a priceless signature of Molière given by Dumas +_fils_, and there are others, it is believed, on legal documents 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 +Molière." 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 Molière, 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 Molière'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 noble, +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 assure 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. Molière'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 butts. 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 assumption 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 Comédie Française, 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 Hôtel de Guise, now the Musée des +Archives, whose ducal owner was a patron of the Théâtre du Marais, +close at hand. At his death, in or about 1664, Corneille sent in a +rhymed petition 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 Cléry 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-cochère_. +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 Cléry 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 Châtelet, 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 Molière, 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 Molière'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 +amusements. Molière 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 Molière--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 Molière, whose widow was repaid as we have seen. Lulli's +_hôtel_ is still in perfect condition as to its exterior, at the +corner of Rues des Petits-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. Gèrôme has put it on canvas--as they sit side by side, planning and +plotting their play: Molière 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 "Agésilas." +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 Théophile Gautier in his superb +verses, read at Corneille's birthday fête at the Comédie Française, on +June 6, 1851. Gautier had not been able to find any motive for the +lines, which he had promised to prepare for Arsène 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. + + [Illustration: 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 Cléry, 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 ignoble. 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'Évêque. That street was wiped out of existence +by the cutting of Avenue de l'Opéra 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-cochère_, 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 Cléry, 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 classicism. + +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-Honoré, 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 Théâtre 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 Théâtre du Marais, which had been +started by seceders from the theatre of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, as has +been told in our first chapter. After a temporary lodgment in the +quarter of the Hôtel de Ville, it was soon permanently housed in the +recast tennis-court of the "_Hôtel Salé_." 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 "_Hôtel Salé_," the work +of Lepautre, is still in perfect condition behind the houses of Rue +Vieille-du-Temple. Its principal portal is at Rue Thorigny, 5, with a +side entrance in Rue Saint-Gervais-des-Coutures. Known at first as the +Hôtel Juigné, it was popularly renamed, in the seventeenth century, +the "_Hôtel Salé_," because its rapacious owner, Aubray de Fontenay, +had amassed 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 pass into the grand court, +and find facing us the dignified façade, 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 noble 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 +balustrade. In the rooms above, kept with reverence by the +bronze-maker who occupies them, admirable panelling and carvings are +found. The façade on the gardens--now shrunk from their former +spaciousness 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 Théâtre du Marais had been established here by the famous +Turlupin, made immortal in Boileau's verse, who, with his two comic +_confrères_--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 Molière. 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 "_Comédiens du Marais_" were regarded with a certain +condescension not unmingled with disdain by their stately _confrères_ +left at the Hôtel 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 Théâtre 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 +manuscript of "Mélite," 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, coarse 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 destitute 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 féconde et la bouche stérile, + Et l'on peut rarement m'écouter 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 pass 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 Scudéry +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 embarrassing; 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 rôle, he +found his back not limber enough for bowing, his knees not +sufficiently supple to cringe. + + [Illustration: Pierre Corneille. + (From the portrait by Charles Lebrun.)] + +And in what light he was looked upon by the lazy pensioned lackeys of +the court, who hardly knew his face, and not at all his worth, is +shown by this extract from one of their manuscript chronicles: +"_Jeudi, le 15 Octobre, 1684. On apprit à Chambord la mort du bonhomme +Corneille._" + + * * * * * + +JEAN RACINE came to Paris, from his native La Ferté-Milon in the old +duchy of Valois--by way of a school at Beauvais, and another near +Port-Royal--in 1658, a youth of nineteen, to study in the Collége +d'Harcourt. That famous school was in the midst of the Scholars' +Quarter, in that part of narrow, winding Rue de la Harpe which is now +widened into Boulevard Saint-Michel. On the site of the ancient +college, direct heir of its functions and its fame, stands the Lycée +Saint-Louis. The buildings that give on the playground behind, seem to +belong to the original college, and to have been refaced. + +Like Boileau-Despréaux, three years his senior here, the new student +preferred poetry to the studies commonly styled serious, and his +course in theology led neither to preaching nor to practising. He was +a wide and eager reader in all directions, and developed an early and +ardent enthusiasm for the Greeks and the Latins. + +As early as 1660 he had made himself known by his ode in celebration +of the marriage of Louis XIV.; while he remained unknown as the author +of an unaccepted and unplayed drama in verse, sent to the Théâtre du +Marais. + +Racine's Paris homes were all in or near the "_Pays Latin_," for he +preserves its ancient appellation in his letters. On leaving college, +in 1660-61, he took up quarters with his uncle Nicolas Vitart, steward +and intendant of the Duchesse de Chevreuse, and secretary of her son +the Duc de Luynes. Vitart lived in the Hôtel de Luynes, a grand +mansion that faced Quai des Grands-Augustins, and stretched far back +along Rue Gît-le-Coeur. It was torn down in 1671. La Fontaine had +lodgings, during his frequent visits to Paris at this period, a little +farther west on Quai des Grands-Augustins, and he and Racine, despite +the eighteen years' difference of age, became close companions. La +Fontaine made his young friend acquainted with the _cabarets_ of the +quarter, and Racine studied them not unwillingly. Just then, too, +Racine doubtless met Molière, recently come into the management of the +theatre of the Palais-Royal. An original edition of "Les Précieuses +Ridicules," played a while before this time at the Hôtel du +Petit-Bourbon, bears on its title-page "_Privilège au Sr. de Luyne_." +This was Guillaume de Luyne, bookseller and publisher in the Salle des +Merciers of the Palais de Justice; and at his place, a resort for +book-loving loungers, we may well believe that the actor-manager made +acquaintance with the young poet, coming from his home with the Duc de +Luynes, within sight across the narrow arm of the river. + +Not as a poet was he known in this ducal house, but as assistant to +his uncle, and the probable successor of that uncle, who tried to +train him to his future duties. Among these duties, just then, was the +construction of the new Hôtel de Luynes for the Duchesse de Chevreuse. +This is the lady who plays so prominent a rôle in Dumas's authentic +history of "The Three Musketeers." The _hôtel_ that was then built for +her stands, somewhat shorn of its original grandeur, at No. 201 +Boulevard Saint-Germain, and you may look to-day on the walls +constructed under the eye of Jean Racine, acting as his uncle's +overseer. This uncle was none too rigid of rule, nor was the +household, from the duchess down, unduly ascetic of habit; and young +Racine, "nothing loath," spent his days and eke his nights in somewhat +festive fashion. His anxious country relatives at length induced him +to leave the wicked town, and in November, 1661, he went to live at +Uzés, near Nîmes, in Languedoc. Here he was housed with another uncle, +of another kidney; a canon of the local cathedral, able to offer +church work and to promise church preferment to the coy young cleric. + +Racine was bored by it all, and mitigated his boredom, during the two +years he remained, only by flirting and by stringing rhymes. The +ladies were left behind, and the verses were carried to the capital, +on his return in November, 1663. He showed some of them, first to +Colbert and then to Molière, who received the verse with scant praise, +but accepted, paid for, and played "La Thébaïde"--a work of promise, +but of no more than promise, of the future master hand. It was at this +period, about 1664, that Racine, of his own wish, first met Boileau, +who had criticised in a kindly fashion some of the younger poet's +verses. Thus was begun that friendship which was to last unmarred so +many years, and to be broken only by Racine's death. + +With Corneille, too, Racine made acquaintance, in 1665, and submitted +to him his "Alexandre." He was greatly pleased by the praise of the +author of the "Cid"; praise freely given to the poetry of the play, +but along with it came the set-off that no talent for tragedy was +shown in the piece. It was not long before the elder poet had to own +his error, and it is a sorrow to record his growing discontent with +the younger man's triumphs. Racine believed then and always, that +Corneille was easily his master as a tragic dramatist; a belief shared +with him by us of to-day, who find Corneille's tragedies as +impressive, his comedies as spirited, as ever, on the boards of the +Comédie Française; while Racine's tragic Muse seems to have outlived +her day on those boards, and to have grown aged and out of date, along +with the social surroundings amid which she queened it. + +Racine's reverence for his elder and his better never wore away, and +on Corneille's death--when, to his place in the Academy, his lesser +brother Thomas was admitted--it fell to Racine, elected in 1673, to +give the customary welcome to the new Academician, and to pay the +customary tribute to his great forerunner. He paid it in words and in +spirit of loyal admiration, and no nobler eulogy of a corrival has +been spoken by any man. + +On his return to town, in 1663, Racine had found his uncle-crony +Vitart living in the new Hôtel de Luynes, and in order to be near him +he took lodging in Rue de Grenelle. It was doubtless at the eastern +end of that street, not far from the Croix-Rouge--a step from Boileau +in Rue du Vieux-Colombier, and not far from La Fontaine on Quai +Malaquais. Here he stayed for four years, and in 1667 he removed to +the Hôtel des Ursins. This name had belonged to a grand old mansion on +the north bank of Île de la Cité, presented by the City of Paris to +Jean Juvénal des Ursins, _Prévôt des Marchands_ under Charles VI. In +the old prints, we see its two towers rising sheer from the river, +and behind them its vast buildings and spacious grounds extending far +away south on the island. According to Edouard Fournier, a painstaking +topographer, all this structure was demolished toward the end of the +eighteenth century, and over its site and through its grounds were cut +the three streets bearing its name of des Ursins--Haute, Milieu, +Basse. Other authorities claim that portions of the hotel still stand +there, among them that portion in which Racine lived; his rooms having +remained unaltered up to 1848. The street is narrow and dark, all its +buildings are of ancient aspect, and on its south side is a row of +antiquated houses that plainly date back to Racine's day and even +earlier. It is in one of these that we may establish his lodgings. + +The house at No. 5, commonly and erroneously pointed out as his +residence, is of huge bulk, extending through to Rue Chanoinesse on +the south. No. 7 would seem to be still more ancient. No. 9 is simply +one wing of the dark stone structure, of which No. 11 forms the other +wing and the central body, massive and gloomy, set back from the +street behind a shallow court, between these wings. In the low wall of +this court, under a great arch, a small forbidding door shuts on the +pavement, and behind, in a recess, is an open stairway leading to the +floor above. No. 13 was undoubtedly once a portion of the same fabric. +All these street windows are heavily barred and sightless. These three +houses evidently formed one entire structure at first, and this was +either an outlying portion of the Hôtel des Ursins, or a separate +building, erected after the demolition of that _hôtel_, and taking the +old name. In either case, there can be no doubt that these are the +walls that harbored Racine. The tenants of his day were mostly men of +the law who had their offices and residential chambers here, by reason +of their proximity to the Palais de Justice. With these inmates Racine +was certainly acquainted--the magistrates, the advocates, the clerks, +of whom he makes knowing sport in his delightful little comedy, "Les +Plaideurs." It was played at Versailles, "by royal command," before +King and court in 1668. This was not its original production, however; +it had had its first night for the Paris public a month earlier, and +had failed; possibly because it had not yet received royal approval. +Molière, one of the audience on that first night, was a more competent +critic of its quality, and his finding was that "those who mocked +merited to be mocked in turn, for they did not know good comedy when +they saw it." This verdict gives striking proof of his innate loyalty +to a comrade in trade, for he and the author were estranged just then, +not by any fault of Molière, and he had the right to feel wronged, and +by this unasked praise he proved himself to be the more manly of the +two. + +The piece was an immediate success at Versailles. The _Roi Soleil_ +beamed, the courtiers smiled, the crowd laughed. The players, +unexpectedly exultant, climbed into their coaches as soon as they were +free, and drove into town and to Racine, with their good news. This +whole quiet street was awakened by their shouts of congratulation, +windows were thrown open by the alarmed burghers, and when they +learned what it meant, they all joined in the jubilation. + +Racine lived here from 1667 to 1677, and these ten years were years of +unceasing output and of unbroken success. Beginning with his +production of "Andromaque" in the first-named year, he went, through +successive stage triumphs, to "Phèdre," his greatest and his last play +for the public stage, produced on New Year's Day of 1677, at the Hôtel +de Bourgogne. It was on these boards that almost all his plays were +first given. + +Then, at the age of thirty-seven, at the top of his fame, in the +plenitude of his powers, he suddenly ceased to write for the stage. +This dis-service to dramatic literature was brought about by his +forthcoming marriage, by his disgust with the malice of his rivals, by +his weariness of the assaults of his enemies, by his somewhat sudden +and showy submission to the Church--that sleepless assailant of player +and playwright. He hints at the attitude of the godly in his preface +to "Phèdre," assuring them that they will have to own--however, in +other respects, they may or may not esteem this tragedy--that it +castigates Vice and punishes Badness as had no previous play of his. +Doubtless he was hardened in this decision, already made, by the hurt +he had from the reception of this play in contrast with the reception +of a poorer play for which his own title was stolen, which was +produced within three nights of his piece, and was acclaimed by the +cabal that damned the original. Nor was it only his rivals and +enemies who decried him. "_Racine et le café passeront_," was La +Harpe's contemptuous coupling of the playwright with the new and +dubious drink, just then on its trial in Paris. His _mot_ has been +mothered on Madame de Sévigné, for she, too, took neither to Racine +nor to coffee. And a century later it pleased Madame de Staël to +prove, to her own gratification, that his tragedies had already gone +into the limbo of out-worn things. + +Racine's whole life--never notably sedate hitherto, with its frequent +escapades and its one grand passion--was turned into a new current by +his love match with Catherine de Romenet. On his marriage in June, +1677--among the _témoins_ present were Boileau-Despréaux and Uncle +Vitart, this latter then living in the same house with his +nephew--Racine ranged himself on the side of order and of domestic +days and nights. He gave proof of a genuine devotedness to his wife; a +good wife, if you will, yet hardly a companion for him in his work at +home and in the world outside. It is told of her, that she never saw +one of his pieces played, nor heard one read; and Louis, their +youngest son, says that his mother did not know what a verse was. + +The earliest home of the new couple was on Île Saint-Louis. Neither +the house nor its street is to be identified to-day, but both may +surely be seen, so slight are the changes even now since that +provincial village, in the heart of Paris, was built up from an island +wash-house and wood-yard under the impulse of the plans prepared for +Henri IV., by his right hand, Sully. And in this parish church, +Saint-Louis-en-l'Île--a provincial church quite at home here--we find +Racine holding at the font his first child, Jean-Baptiste, in 1678. + +Two years later he moved again, and from early in 1680 to the end of +1684 we find him at No. 2 Rue de l'Eperon, on the corner of Rue +Saint-André-des-Arts. Here his family grew in number, and the names of +three of his daughters, Marie-Catherine, Anne, and Élisabeth--all born +in this house--appeared on the baptismal register of his parish church, +Saint-André-des-Arts. This was the church of the christening of +François-Marie Arouet, a few years later. The Place Saint-André-des-Arts, +laid out in 1809, now covers the site of that very ancient church, +sold as National Domain in 1797, and demolished soon after. + +This residence of Racine was left intact until within a few years, +when it was replaced by the Lycée Fénelon, a government school for +girls. There they read their "Racine," or such portions as are +permitted to the Young Person, not knowing nor caring that on that +spot the author once lived. + +From here he removed, at the beginning of the year 1685, to No. 16 Rue +des Maçons. That street is now named Champollion, and the present +number of his house cannot be fixed. It still stands on the western +side of the street, about half way up between Rue des Écoles and Place +de la Sorbonne; for none of these houses have been rebuilt, and the +street itself is as secluded and as quiet as when Racine walked +through it. Here were born his daughters Jeanne and Madeleine, both +baptized in the parish church of Saint-Séverin--a venerable sanctuary, +still in use and quite unaltered, except that it has lost its +cloisters. And in this home in Rue des Maçons he brought to life two +plays finer than any of their forerunners, yet, unlike them, not +intended for public performance. "Esther" was written in 1689 to +please Madame de Maintenon, and was performed several times by the +girls at her school of Saint-Cyr; first before King and court, later +before friends of the court and those who had sufficient influence to +obtain the eagerly sought invitation. "Athalie," written for similar +semi-public production, two years later, failed to make any +impression, when played at Versailles by the same girls of Saint-Cyr. +After two performances, without scenery or costumes, it was staged no +more, and had no sale when published by the author. Yet Boileau told +him that it was his best work, and Voltaire said that it was nearer +perfection than any work of man. Indeed, "Athalie," in its grandeur +and its simplicity, may easily outrank any production of the French +pen during the seventeenth century. And, as literature, these two +plays are almost perfect specimens of Racine's almost perfect art and +diction; of that art, wherein he was so exquisite a craftsman; of that +diction, so rich, so daring, so pliable, so passionate, yet +restrained, refined, judicious. + +In May, 1692, we learn by a letter to Boileau, Racine was still in Rue +des Maçons, but he must have left it shortly after, for in November of +this year he brought to be christened, in Saint-Sulpice, his youngest +child, Louis. This is the son who has left us an admirable biography +of his father, and some mediocre poems--"La Religion" and "La Grâce" +being those by which he is best known. So that Saint-Sulpice was, +already in November, 1692, the church of his new parish; and the house +to which he had removed in that parish, wherein the boy was born, +stands, quite unchanged to-day, in Rue Visconti. That street was then +named Rue des Marais-Saint-Germain, having begun life as a country +lane cut through the low marshy lands along the southern shore. It +extends only from Rue de Seine to Rue Bonaparte, then named Rue des +Petits-Augustins. Near its western end, at the present number 21, the +Marquis de Ranes had erected a grand mansion; and this, on his death +in 1678, was let out in apartments. It is asserted that it is the +house of whose second floor Racine became a tenant. Within the great +concave archway that frames the wide entrance door is set a tablet, +containing the names of Racine, of La Champmeslé, of Lecouvreur, and +of Clairon, all of whom are claimed to have been inhabitants of this +house. That tablet has carried conviction during the half-century +since it was cut and set, about 1855, but its word is to be doubted, +and many of us believe that the more ancient mansion at No. 13 of the +street was Racine's home. Local tradition makes the only proof at +present, and the matter cannot be absolutely decided until the lease +shall be found in that Parisian notary's office where it is now filed +away and forgotten. We know that Mlle. Lecouvreur lived in the +house formerly tenanted by Racine, and that she speaks of it as being +nearly at the middle of the street, and this fact points rather to No. +13 than to No. 21. And we know that Mlle. Clairon had tried for a long +time to secure an apartment in the house honored by memories of the +great dramatist and the great actress; for whose sake she was willing +to pay the then enormous rental of 200 francs. But the tablet's claim +to La Champmeslé as a tenant is an undue and unpardonable excess of +zeal. Whatever Racine may have done years before in his infatuation +for that bewitching woman, he did not bring her into his own dwelling! + + [Illustration: Rue Visconti. + On the right is the Hôtel de Ranes, and in the distance is No. 13.] + +She had come from Rouen, a young actress looking for work, along with +her husband, a petty actor and patcher-up of plays; for whose sake she +was admitted to the Théâtre du Marais. How she made use of this chance +is told by a line in a letter of Madame de Sévigné, who had seen her +play Atalide in "Bajazet," and pronounced "_ma belle fille_"--so she +brevets her son's lady-love--as "the most miraculously good +_comédienne_ that I have ever seen." It was on the boards of the Hôtel +de Bourgogne that she showed herself to be also the finest +_tragédienne_ of her time. She shone most in "Bajazet," and in others +of Racine's plays, creating her rôles under his admiring eye and under +his devoted training. He himself declaimed verse marvellously well, +and had in him the making of a consummate comedian, or a preacher, as +you please. La Champmeslé was not beautiful or clever, but her stature +was noble, her carriage glorious, her voice bewitching, her charm +irresistible. And La Fontaine sang praises of her _esprit_, and this +was indeed fitting at his age then. She lived somewhere in this +quarter, when playing in the troupe of the widow Molière at the +Théâtre Guénégaud. When she retired from those boards, she found a +home with her self-effacing husband in Auteuil, and there died in +1698. + +The first floor in the right wing of the court of both 13 and 21 is +said to be the residence of Adrienne Lecouvreur. She had appeared in +1717 at the Comédie Française, in Rue de l'Ancienne-Comédie, and had +won her place at once. The choice spirits of the court, of the great +world, of the greater world of literature, were glad to meet in +fellowship around her generous and joyous table. Among them she found +excuse for an occasional caprice, but her deepest and most lasting +passion was given to the superb adventurer, Maurice de Saxe. His +quarters, when home from the wars--for which her pawned jewels +furnished him forth--were only a step down Rue Bonaparte from her +house, on Quai Malaquais. They were at No. 5, the most ancient mansion +left on the quay, with the exception of No. 1, hid behind the wing of +the Institute. He died at Chambord on November 30, 1750, and at this +house, May 17, 1751, there was an auction of his effects. + +There came a time when the meetings of these two needed greater +secrecy, and he removed to Rue de Colombier, now named Rue Jacob. The +houses on the north side of this ancient street had--and some of them +still have--gardens running back to the gardens of the houses on the +south side of Rue Visconti. These little gardens had, in the dividing +fence, gates easily opened by night, for others besides Adrienne and +Maurice, as local legend whispers. Scribe has put their story on the +stage, where it is a tradition that the actress was actually poisoned +by a great lady, for the sake of the fascinating lover. He stood by +her bedside, with Voltaire and the physician, when she was dying in +1730, at the early age of thirty-eight, in one of the rooms on this +first floor over the court. Voltaire had had no sneers, but only +praise for the actress, and smiles for the woman whose kind heart had +brought her to his bedside, when he was ill, where she read to him the +last book out, the translation of the "Arabian Nights." He was stirred +to stinging invective of the churlish priest of Saint-Sulpice, who +denied her church-burial. In the same verse he commends that good man, +Monsieur de Laubinière, who gave her body hasty and unhallowed +interment. He came, by night, with two coaches and three men, and +drove with the poor body along the river-bank, turning up Rue de +Bourgogne to a spot behind the vast wood-yards that then lined the +river-front. There, in a hole they dug, they hid her. The fine old +mansion at No. 115 Rue de Grenelle, next to the southeast corner of +Rue de Bourgogne, covers her grave. In its garret, thrown into one +corner and almost forgotten, is a marble tablet, long and narrow, once +set in a wall on this site, to mark the spot so long ignored--as its +inscription says--where lies an actress of admirable _esprit_, of +good heart, and of a talent sublime in its simplicity. And it recites +the efforts of a true friendship, which got at last only this little +bit of earth for her grave. + +Yet a few years further on, the same wing on the court of this dingy +old house sparkled with the splendid personality of Hippolyte Clairon, +who outshines all other stars of the French stage, unless it be +Rachel. Here she lived the life of one of those prodigal princesses, +in whose rôles she loved to dazzle on the boards of the Comédie +Française, where she first appeared in 1743. It was her public and not +her private performances that shocked the sensitive Church into a +threat of future terrors for her. When, in the course of a theatrical +quarrel, she refused to play, she was sent to prison, being one of +"His Majesty's Servants," disobedient and punishable. She preferred +possible purgatory to present imprisonment, and went back to her duty. + +To this house again came Voltaire, as her visitor this time, along +with Diderot and Marmontel and many such men. Garrick came, too, when +in Paris--came quietly, less eager to proclaim his ardent admiration +for the woman than his public and professional acclamation of the +actress in the theatre. Her parts all played, she left the stage when +a little past forty, and, sinking slowly into age and poverty and +misery, she died at the age of eighty in 1803. + +All these flashing fireworks are dimmed and put to shame by the gentle +glow and the steadfast flame of the wood-fire on Racine's home +hearthstone. It lights up the gloomy, mean street, even as we stand +here. He was, in truth, an admirable husband and father, and it is +this side of the man that we prefer to regard, rather than that side +turned toward other men. Of them he was, through his over-much +ambition, easily jealous, and, being sensitive and suspicious as well, +and given to a biting raillery, he alienated his friends. Boileau +alone was too big of soul to allow any estrangement. These two were +friends for almost forty years, in which not one clouded day is known. +The letters between them--those from 1687 to 1698 are still +preserved--show the depth of Racine's manly and delicate feeling for +his friend, then "in his great solitude at Auteuil." They had been +appointed royal historiographers soon after Racine's marriage in 1677, +and, in that office, travelled together a good deal, in the Ghent +campaign of 1678 and again with the army in other fields. They worked +together on their notes later, and gathered great store of material; +but the result amounted to nothing, and they were posthumously lucky +in that their unfinished manuscript was finally burned by accident in +1726. + +Whether with Boileau in camp, or alone in the Luxembourg campaign of +1683--Boileau being too ill to go--or at Namur in 1692, or with the +King and court at Fontainebleau, Marly, Versailles, in these royal +residences where he had his own rooms, wherever he was, Racine never +seemed to cease thinking of his home, that home in Rue des Maçons when +he first went away, and for the last seven years of his life in Rue +Visconti. When absent from home he wrote to his children frequently, +and when here he corresponded constantly with his son, who was with +the French Embassy at The Hague. To him he gave domestic details and +"trivial fond records" of what his mother was doing, of the colds of +the younger ones, and of the doings of the daughter in a convent at +Melun. He sends to this son two new hats and eleven and a half _louis +d'or_, and begs him to be careful of the hats and to spend the money +slowly. + +Yet he was fond of court life, and, an adroit courtier, he knew how to +sing royal prowess in the field and royal splendor in the palace. He +had a way of carrying himself that gave seeming height to his slight +stature. His noble and open expression, his fine wit, his dexterous +address, his notable gifts as a reader to the King at his bedside, +made him a favorite in that resplendent circle. And he was all the +more unduly dejected when the _Roi Soleil_ cooled and no longer smiled +on him; he was killed when Madame de Maintenon--"Goody Scarron," "Old +Piety," "the hag," "the hussy," "that old woman," are the usual pet +epithets for her of delicious Duchesse d'Orléans--who had liked and +had befriended him, saw the policy of showing him her cold shoulder, +as she had shown it to Fénelon. From this shock, Racine, being already +broken physically by age and illness, seemed unable to rally. As he +sank gradually to the grave he made sedulous provision for his family, +dictating, toward the last, a letter begging for a continuance of his +pension to his widow, which, it is gladly noted, was afterward done. +He urged, also, the claim of Boileau to royal favor: "We must not be +separated," he said to his amanuensis; "begin your letter again, and +let Boileau know that I have been his friend to my death." + +His death came on April 21, 1699. His body lay one night in the choir +of Saint-Sulpice, his parish church, and then it was carried for +burial to the Abbey of Port-Royal. On the destruction of that +institution, his remains were brought back to Paris, in 1711, and +placed near those of Pascal, at the entrance of the lady-chapel of +Saint-Étienne-du-Mont. Racine's epitaph, in Latin, by Boileau, the +friend of so many men who were not always friendly with one another, +is cut in a stone set in the first pillar of the southern aisle of the +choir. + + * * * * * + +JEAN DE LA FONTAINE began to come to Paris, making occasional +excursions from his native Château-Thierry, in Champagne, toward 1654, +he being then over thirty years of age. A little later, when under the +protection and in the pay of the great Fouquet, his visits to the +capital were more frequent and more prolonged. He commonly found +lodgings on Quai des Grands-Augustins, just around the corner from +young Racine, and the two men were much together during the years 1660 +and 1661. La Fontaine made his home permanently in the capital after +1664, when he arrived there in the train of the Duchesse de Bouillon, +born Anne Mancini, youngest and liveliest of Mazarin's many dashing +nieces. Her marriage with the Duc de Bouillon had made her the feudal +lady of Château-Thierry, and if she were not compelled to claim, in +this case, her privilege as _châtelaine_ over her appanage, it was +because there was ampler mandate for the impressionable poet in the +caprice of a wilful woman. Incidentally, in this flitting, he left +behind his provincial wife. He had taken her to wife in 1647, mainly +to please his father, and soon, to please her and himself, they had +agreed on a separation. They met scarcely any more after his definite +departure. There is a tradition that he chatted, once in a _salon_ +somewhere, with a bright young man by whom he found himself attracted, +and concerning whom he made inquiry of the bystanders, who informed +him that it was his son. Tradition does not record any attempt on his +part to improve his acquaintance with the young stranger, or to show +further interest in his welfare. + +He did not entirely desert his country home, for the duchess carried +him along on her autumnal visits to Château-Thierry. He took advantage +of each chance thus given him to realize something upon his patrimony, +that he might meet the always pressing claims on his always overspent +income. + +He writes to Racine during one of these visits, in 1686: "My affairs +occupy me as much as they're worth it, and that's not at all; and the +leisure I thus get is given to laziness." He almost anticipated in +regard to himself the racy saying of the Oxford don of our day of +another professor: "Such time as he can save from the adornment of +his person he devotes to the neglect of his duties." But La Fontaine +neglected not only his duties all through life, but, more than all +else, did he neglect the care of his dress. A portion of the income he +was always anticipating came from his salary at one time, as gentleman +in the _suite_ of the dowager Duchesse d'Orléans, that post giving him +quarters in the Luxembourg. These quarters and his salary went from +him with her death. For several years after coming to town with the +Duchesse de Bouillon he had a home in the duke's town-house on Quai +Malaquais. + +This quay had been built upon the river-front soon after the death, in +1615, of Marguerite de Valois, Henri IV.'s divorced wife. The streets +leading from Quais Malaquais and Voltaire, and those behind, parallel +with the quays, were cut through her grounds and through the fields +farther west. This was the beginning of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. To +save the long detour, to and from the new suburb, around by way of +Pont-Neuf, a wooden bridge was built in 1632 along the line of the +ferry, that had hitherto served for traffic between the shore in front +of the Louvre and the southern shore, at the end of the road that is +now Rue du Bac. The Pont Royal has replaced that wooden bridge. One of +the buildings that began this river-front remains unmutilated at the +corner of Quai Malaquais and Rue de Seine, and is characteristic of +the architecture of that period in its walls and roofs and windows +clustering about the court. It was the many years' dwelling of the +elder Visconti, and his death-place in 1818. The house at No. 3 was +erected early in the nineteenth century, on the site of Buzot's +residence, as shall be told in a later chapter. In it Humboldt lived +from 1815 to 1818. The associations of No. 5 have already been +suggested. The largest builder on the quay was Cardinal Mazarin, whose +college, to which he gave his own name, and to which the public gave +the name Collége des Quatre-Nations, is now the Palais de l'Institut. +He paid for it with money wrung from wretched France, as he so paid +for the grand _hôtel_ he erected for another niece, Anne Marie +Martinozzi, widow of that Prince de Conti who was Molière's school +friend. On the ground that it covered was built, in 1860-62, the wing +of the Beaux-Arts at Nos. 11 and 13 Quai Malaquais. That school has +also taken possession of the Hôtel de Bouillon of the cardinal's other +niece, almost alongside. It had been the property of the rich and +vulgar money-king Bazinière, whom we shall meet again, and he had sold +it to the Duc de Bouillon. The pretty wife of this very near-sighted +husband had the house re-decorated, and filled it with a marvellous +collection of furniture, paintings, _bric-à-brac_. She filled it, +also, by her open table twice a day, with thick-coming guests, some of +whom were worth knowing. The _hôtel_ came by inheritance in 1823 to M. +de Chimay, who stipulated, in making it over to the Beaux-Arts, in +1885, that its seventeenth-century façade should be preserved, and by +this agreement we have here, at No. 17 Quai Malaquais, an admirable +specimen of the competence of the elder, the great Mansart. It is +higher than he left it, by reason of the wide, sloping roof, with many +skylights toward the north, placed there for the studios within, but +its two well-proportioned wings remain unchanged, and between them the +court, where La Fontaine was wont to sit or stroll, has been laid out +as a garden. While living here he brought out the first collection of +his "Contes" in 1665, and of his "Fables" in 1668. His "Les Amours de +Psyché," written in 1669, begins with a charming description of the +meetings in Boileau's rooms of the famous group of comrades. + +From this home he went to the home of Madame de la Sablière, with +whom, about 1672, he had formed a friendship which lasted unbroken +until her death. This tender and steadfast companionship made the +truest happiness of La Fontaine's life. For twenty years an inmate of +her household, a member of her family, he was petted and cared for as +he craved. In her declining years she had to be away from home +attending to her charitable work--for she followed the fashion of +turning _dévote_ as age advanced--and then he suffered in unaccustomed +loneliness. His tongue spoke of her with the same constant admiration +and gratitude that is left on record by his pen, and at her death he +was completely crushed. + +When he was invited by Madame de la Sablière and her poet-husband to +share their home, they were living at their country-place, "_La Folie +Rambouillet_," not to be mistaken for the Hôtel de Rambouillet. +Sablière's _hôtel_, built by his father, a wealthy banker, was in the +suburb of Reuilly, on the Bercy road, north of the Seine, not far from +Picpus. The Reuilly station and the freight-houses of the Vincennes +railway now cover the site of this splendid mansion and its extensive +grounds. Here Monsieur de la Sablière died in 1680, and his widow, +taking La Fontaine along, removed to her town-house. This stood on the +ground now occupied by the buildings in Rue Saint-Honoré, nearly +opposite Rue de la Sourdière. In the court of No. 203 are bits of +carving that may have come down from the original mansion. Here they +dwelt untroubled until death took her away in 1693. It is related that +La Fontaine, leaving this house after the funeral, benumbed and +bewildered by the blow, met Monsieur d'Hervart. "I was going," said +that gentleman, "to offer you a home with me." "I was going to ask +it," was the reply. And in this new abode he dwelt until his death, +two years later. + +Berthélemy d'Hervart, a man of great wealth, had purchased, in 1657, +the Hôtel de l'Éperon, a mansion erected on the site of Burgundy's +Hôtel de Flandre. M. d'Hervart had enlarged and decorated his new +abode, employing for the interior frescoes the painter Mignard, +Molière's friend. The actor and his troupe had played here, by +invitation, nearly fifty years before La Fontaine's coming. It stood +in old Rue Plâtrière, now widened out, entirely rebuilt, and renamed +Rue Jean-Jacques-Rousseau; and on the wall of the Central Post-office +that faces that street, you will find a tablet stating that on this +site died Jean de la Fontaine on April 13, 1695. + +Madame d'Hervart was a young and lovely woman, and as devoted to the +old poet as had been Madame de la Sablière. She went so far as to try +to regulate his dress, his expenditure, and his morals. Congratulated +one day on the splendor of his coat, La Fontaine found to his surprise +and delight that his hostess had substituted it--when, he had not +noticed--for the shabby old garment that he had been wearing for +years. She and her husband held sacred, always, the room in which La +Fontaine died, showing it to their friends as a place worthy of +reverence. + +He was buried in the Cemetery of Saints-Innocents, now all built over +except its very centre, which is kept as a small park about the +attractive fountain of Saints-Innocents. The Patriots of the +Revolution, slaying so briskly their men of birth, paused awhile to +bring from their graves what was left of their men of brains. Misled +by inaccurate rumor, they left La Fontaine's remains in their own +burial-ground, and removed what they believed to be his bones from the +graveyard of Saint-Joseph, where he had not been buried, along with +the bones they believed to be those of Molière, who _had_ been buried +there. These casual and dubious remains were kept in safety in the +convent of Petits-Augustins in present Rue Bonaparte, until, in the +early years of the nineteenth century, they were removed for final +sepulture to Père-Lachaise. + +No literary man of his time--perhaps of any time--was so widely known +and so well beloved as La Fontaine. He attracted men, not only the +best in his own guild, but the highest in the State and in affairs. +Men various in character, pursuits, station, were equally attached to +him; the great Condé was glad to receive him as a frequent guest at +Chantilly; the superfine sensualist, Saint-Évremond, in exile in +England, urged him to come to visit him and to meet Waller. He nearly +undertook the journey, less to see Saint-Évremond and to know Waller, +than to follow his Duchesse de Bouillon, visiting her sister, the +Duchess of Mazarin, in her Chelsea home. It was at this time that +Ninon de Lenclos wrote to Saint-Évremond: "You wish La Fontaine in +England. We have little of his company in Paris. His understanding is +much impaired." + +Racine, eighteen years his junior, looked up to La Fontaine as a +critic, a counsellor, and a friend, from their early days together in +1660, through long years of intimacy, until he stood beside La +Fontaine's bed in his last illness. He even took an odd pleasure in +finding that he and La Fontaine's deserted country wife had sprung +from the same provincial stock. Molière first met La Fontaine at Vaux, +the more than royal residence of Fouquet, at the time of the royal +visit in 1661. La Fontaine wrote a graceful bit of verse in praise of +the author of "Les Fâcheux," played for the first time before King and +court during these festivities, and the two men, absolutely opposed in +essential qualities, were fast friends from that time on. "They make +fun of the _bonhomme_," said the ungrudging player once, "and our +clever fellows think they can efface him; but he'll efface us all +yet." + +It is needless to say that La Fontaine was beloved by Boileau, the +all-loving. That kindly ascetic was moved to attempt the amendment of +his friend's laxity of life, and to this blameless end dragged him to +prayers sometimes, where La Fontaine was bored and would take up any +book at hand to beguile the time. In this way he made acquaintance +with the Apocrypha, and became intensely interested in Baruch, and +asked Boileau if he knew Baruch, and urged him to read Baruch, as a +hitherto undiscovered genius. During his last illness, he told the +attendant priest that he had been reading the New Testament, and that +he regarded it as a good, a very good book. + +In truth, his soul was the soul of a child, and, childlike, he lived +in a world of his own--a world peopled with the animals and the plants +and the inanimate objects, made alive by him and almost human. He +loved them all, and painted them with swift, telling strokes of his +facile pen. The acute Taine points out that the brute creations of +this poet are prototypes of every class and every profession of his +country and his time. His dumb favorites attracted him especially by +their unspoiled simplicity, for he loathed the artificial existence of +his fellow-creatures. With "a sullen irony and a desperate +resignation" he let himself be led into society, and he was bored +beyond bearing by its high-heeled decorum. It is said that he +cherished, all his life long, a speechless exasperation with the +King, that incarnation of pomposity and pretence to his untamed Gallic +spirit. Yet this malcontent had to put on the livery of his +fellow-flunkies, and his dedication, to the Dauphin, of his "Fables," +is as fulsome and servile as any specimen of sycophancy of that +toad-eating age. + +Yet, able to make trees and stones talk, he himself could not talk, La +Bruyère tells us; coloring his portraiture strongly, as was his way, +and rendering La Fontaine much too heavy and dull, with none of the +skill in description with his tongue that he had with his pen. He may +be likened to Goldsmith, who "wrote like an angel and talked like poor +Poll." Madame de Sablière said to him: "_Mon bon ami, que vous seriez +bête, si vous n'aviez pas tant d'esprit!_" Louis Racine, owning to the +lovable nature of the man, has to own, too, that he gave poor account +of himself in society, and adds that his sisters, who in their youth +had seen the poet frequently at their father's table in Rue Visconti, +recalled him only as a man untidy in dress and stupid in talk. He gave +this impression mainly because he was forever dreaming, even in +company, and so seemed distant and dull; but, when drawn out of his +dreams, no man could be more animated and more delightful. + + [Illustration: La Fontaine. + (From the portrait by Rigaud-y-Ros.)] + +So he was found by congenial men, and so especially by approving +women. These took to him on the spot, women of beauty and of wit, and +women commonplace enough. To them all his prattle was captivating, +devoid as it was of the grossness so conspicuous in his poems. He +depended on women in every way all through his life; they catered to +his daily needs, and they provided for his higher wants; they helped +him in his money troubles, they helped him in all his troubles. And he +requited each one's care with a genuine affection, not only at the +time, but for all time, in the record he has left of his gratitude and +his devotion to these ministering women. His verse is an unconscious +chronicle of his loves, his caprices, his inconstancies, and his +loyalties. Nor did a woman need to be clever and cultivated to be +bewitched by his inborn, simple sweetness. A matter-of-fact nurse, +hired to attend him during an illness which came near being fatal, +said to the attending priest: "Surely, God could not have the courage +to damn a man like that." + +This memory he has left is brought pleasantly home to the passer-by in +Rue de Grenelle by the sign of a hotel, a quiet clerical house, +frequented by churchmen and church-loving provincials visiting Paris. +The sign bears the name "_Au bon La Fontaine_," in striking proof of +the permanent place in the common heart won by this lovable man. + +He was content to drift through life, his days spent, as he put it in +his epitaph on "Jean," one-half in doing nothing, the other half in +sleeping. He had no library or study or workroom, like other +pen-workers; he lived out of doors in the open air, and wandered +vaguely, tasting blameless epicurean delights. Some of us seem to see, +always in going along Cours la Reine, that quaint figure, comical and +pathetic, as he was seen by the Duchesse de Bouillon on a rainy +morning, when she drove to Versailles. He was standing under a tree on +this wooded water-side, and on her return on that rainy evening he was +standing under the same tree. He had dreamed away the long day there, +not knowing or not caring that he was wet. He explained, once when he +came late--inexcusably late--to a dinner, that he had been watching a +procession of ants in a field, and had found that it was a funeral; he +had accompanied the _cortége_ to the grave in the garden, and had then +escorted the bereaved family back to its home, as bound by courtesy. + +This genuine poet, of dry, sly humor and of unequalled suppleness of +phrase, was by nature a gentle, wild creature, and by habit a docile, +domesticated pet, attaching himself to any amiable woman who was +willing to give him a warm corner in her heart and her house. And how +such women looked on him was prettily and wittily put by one of them: +"He isn't a man, he is a _fablier_"--a natural product of her own +sudden inspiration--"who blossoms out into fables as a tree blossoms +out with leaves." + + * * * * * + +NICOLAS BOILEAU began his acquaintance with Molière by his tribute of +four dainty verses to the author of "L'École des Femmes," and the +friendship thus formed was broken only by the death of Molière, to +whose memory Boileau inserted his magnificent lines in the "Epître à +Monsieur Racine." It was Boileau who criticised the early verse of +young Racine, so justly and so gently, that the two men were drawn +together in an amity that was never marred. It was Boileau who, after +nearly forty years of finding him out by the distrustful Racine, was +acknowledged to be "noble and full of friendship." It was Boileau who +sang without cessation praises of Racine to Louis XIV., and who +startled the nimble mediocrity of his majesty's mind by the assertion +that Molière was the rarest genius of the Grand Monarch's reign and +realm. It was Boileau who made, in his fondness for La Fontaine, the +unhappy and hopeless attempt to reform his friend's loose living, and +in so doing nearly led to the undoing of La Fontaine's goodwill for +him. It was Boileau, prompted by compassion for Corneille's +impoverished old age, who offered to surrender his own pension in +favor of the distressed veteran of letters. It was Boileau who found +Patru forced to sell his cherished books that he might get food, and +it was Boileau who bought them, on condition that Patru should keep +them and look after them for their new owner. It was Boileau who tried +to work a miracle in his comrade Chapelle by weaning him from his +wine-bibbing; and when Chapelle found the lecture dry, and would +listen to it only over a bottle or two, it was Boileau who came out of +the _cabaret_ the tipsier of the pair. It was Boileau who was known to +every man who knew him at all--and he was known to many men of merit +and demerit--as a loyal, sincere, helpful, unselfish friend. It was of +Boileau that a perplexed woman in the great throng at his burial said, +in the hearing of young Louis Racine: "He seems to have lots of +friends, and yet somebody told me that he wrote bad things about +everybody." + +Those friends could have explained the puzzle. They mourned the +indulgent comrade who was doubled with the stern satirist. The man, so +rigid in morals and austere of life, was tolerant to the foibles of +his friends, tender in their troubles, open-handed for their needs. +The writer, so exacting in his standard and severe in his judgment, +was cruel only with his pen. Trained critic in verse, rather than +inspired poet, Boileau had an enthusiasm for good work in others equal +to his intolerance of bad. He loathed the powdered and perfumed +_minauderies_ of the drawing-room poetasters, and he loved the swift +and sure stroke of Molière's "_rare et fameux esprit_." It was in +frank admiration that he demanded of his friend: "_Enseigne-moi où tu +trouves la rime!_" For this impeccable artist in words, who has left +his profession of faith in the power of a word in its right place, had +to reset and recast, file and polish, to get the perfection he craved. +And so this bountiful admirer was easily an unsparing censor. Sincere +in letters as in life, he insisted on equal sincerity from his +fellow-workers, and would not let them spare their toil or scamp their +stint. He watched and warned them; his reproof and his approval +brought out better work from them; and he may well be entitled the +Police President of Parnassus of his country and his day. + +Boileau's sturdy uprightness of spine stood him in good stead in that +great court where all men grew sleek and servile, and where no +pen-worker seemed able to escape becoming a courtier. His caustic +audacity salted his sycophancy and made him a man apart from the herd +of flatterers. His thrust was so suave, as well as sharp, that the +spoiled monarch himself accepted admonition from that courageous +cleverness. "I am having search made in every direction for Monsieur +Arnauld," said Louis, when eager in his pursuit of the Jansenists. +"Your Majesty is always fortunate; you will not find him," was +Boileau's quick retort, received with a smile by the King. When money +was needed for Dr. Perrault's new eastern façade of the Louvre and for +its other alterations, the King naturally economized in the incomes of +other men. The pensions of literary men--in many instances the sole +source of their livelihood--were allowed to lapse; that of Boileau was +continued by an order that his name should be entered on the Louvre +pay-roll as "an architect paid for mason's work." His mordant reply to +the questioning pay-clerk was: "Yes, I am a mason." His masonry in the +stately fabric of French literature stands unmarred to-day; coldly +correct, it may be, yet elegant, faultless, consummate. + +Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux was long believed to have been born in the +country and to have played in the fields as a child, and so to have +got his added name _des préaux_; but it is now made certain that the +house of his birth, in 1636, was in Rue de Jérusalem, a street that +led to the Sainte-Chapelle, from about the middle of the present Quai +des Orfèvres. The only field he knew lay at the foot of his father's +garden at Crosne, where the lad was sometimes taken. Fields and +gardens had never anything to say to this born cockney, and there is +not a sniff of real country air in all his verse. The street of his +birth was one of the narrow, dark streets of oldest Paris, on Île de +la Cité; and the house, tall and thin, had its gable end on the court +of the old Palais de Justice. The earliest air breathed by this baby +was charged with satire, it would seem. For the room of his birth had +been occupied, nearly half a century earlier, by Jacques Gillot, the +brilliant canon of Sainte-Chapelle. In this room assembled in secret +that clever band of talkers and writers, who planned and wrote "La +Ménippée"; the first really telling piece of French political satire, +so telling, in its unbridled buffoonery, that it gave spirit to the +arms that shattered the League, and helped to put Henry of Navarre on +the throne of France. + +After his father's death, young Nicolas kept his home with his elder +brother Jérôme, who had succeeded to the paternal mansion, and who +gave the boy a sort of watch-tower, built above the garrets, in which +he could hardly stand upright. The house, the court, the old palace, +were long since swept away, and with them went all the melodramatic +stage-setting of Hugo's "Notre-Dame de Paris" and Sue's "Mystères de +Paris." Only the Sainte-Chapelle is left of the scenes of Boileau's +early years. + +He was sent for a while to Collége d'Harcourt, where young Racine +came a little later, and was then put to the study of law, the family +trade; passing by way of Beauvais College to the Sorbonne. He is known +to have pleaded in but one case, and then with credit to himself. +Still the law did not please him, any more than did the dry theology +and the pedantic philosophy that he listened to on the benches of the +Sorbonne. He was enamoured early of poetry and romance, and soon +affianced himself to the Muse. This was his only betrothal, and he +made no other marriage. He was born an old bachelor, and he soon +sought bachelor quarters, driven by the children's racket from his +nephew's house--also in the Cour du Palais--where he had found a home. +This nephew and this house were well known to Voltaire when a boy, as +he tells us in his "Épître à Boileau": + + "_Chez ton neveu Dongois je passai mon enfance, + Bon bourgeois, qui se crut un homme d'importance._" + +It is first in the year 1664 that we can place with certainty +Boileau's residence in Rue du Vieux-Colombier, in that small apartment +which fills a larger place in the annals of literary life than any +domicile of that day, perhaps of any day. It was the gathering-place +of that illustrious quartette-- + + "The goodliest fellowship of famous knights + Whereof this world holds record." + +Molière comes from his rooms in Rue Saint-Honoré, or from his theatre; +crossing the Seine by the Pont-Neuf, and passing along Rues Dauphine +and de Bucy, and through the Marché Saint-Germain; moody from domestic +dissensions, heavy-hearted with the recent loss of his first-born. +Once among his friends, he listens, as he always listened, talking but +little. La Fontaine saunters from the Hôtel de Bouillon, by way of Rue +des Petits-Augustins--now Rue Bonaparte--and of tortuous courts now +straightened into streets. Sitting at table, he is yet in his own land +of dreams, until, stirred from his musing, his fine eyes brighten, and +he chatters with a curious blending of simplicity and _finesse_. +Racine steps in from his lodging in Rue de Grenelle, hard by; the +youngest of the four, he, unlike those other two, is seldom silent, +and gives full play to his ironical raillery. Next above him in age is +the host; shrewd, brusque, incisive of speech and manner. So he shows +in Girardon's admirable bust in the Louvre. The enormous wig then worn +cannot becloud the bright alertness of his expression, or over-weigh +the full lips that could sneer and the square chin, so resolute. These +comrades talked of all sorts of things, and read to one another what +each had written since they last met; read it for the sake of honest +criticism from the rest, and with no other thought. For never were +four men so absolutely without pose, without any pretence of +earnestness, while immensely in earnest all the time. In "Les Amours +de Psyché," La Fontaine assures us that they did not absolutely banish +all serious discourse, but that they took care not to have too much of +it, and preferred the darts of fun and nonsense that were feathered +with friendly counsel. Best of all, his fable makes plain that there +were no cliques nor cabals, no envy nor malice, among the men that +made this worshipful band. + + [Illustration: Boileau-Despréaux. + (From the portrait by Largillière.)] + +Their table served rather to sit around than to eat from, for their +suppers were simple, and the flowing bowl was passed only when +boisterous Chapelle or other _bon-vivant_ dropped in. For others were +invited at times, men of the world, the court, and the camp. And +Boileau was the common centre of these excentric stars, and when each, +in his own special atmosphere of coolness, swayed from the others' +vicinage, Boileau alone let no alienation come between him and any one +of them. For each, he was what Racine had found him, "the best friend +and the best man in the world." + +The house was near a noted _cabaret_, to which they sometimes +resorted, at the Saint-Sulpice end of the street. The _cabaretier_ was +the illustrious Cresnet, made immortal in Boileau's verse. For the +poet was no prude, and enjoyed the pleasures of the table so far as +his health permitted; and, a trained gastronomic artist, he knew how +to order a choicely harmonized repast. His street is widened, his +house is gone, and no one can fix the spot. Yet the turmoil of that +crowded thoroughfare of to-day is deadened for us by the mute voices +of these men. + +We have noted Boileau's camp-following with Racine, in their rôles of +royal historiographers--in 1678 and later--but he was not strong +enough for these excursions, even though they were made a picnic for +the court. He was never at home on a horse, and yet out of place in +the mud, and he could not enjoy the laughter he caused in either +attitude, before or after he was thrown; laughter that is recorded in +the letters of Madame de Sévigné. + +It was probably because of Molière's taking a country place at Auteuil +that Boileau began to make frequent excursions to that quiet suburb +about 1667, and went to live in his tiny cottage there in 1685. "He +had acquired it," to use his biographer's words, "partly by his +Majesty's munificence, and partly by his own careful economy," so that +he was opulent, for a poet. His purchase papers were made out by the +notary Arouet--Voltaire's father--who drew up Boileau's pension papers +in 1692, and who did much notarial work for the Boileau family. The +cottage stood exactly on the ground now covered by the rear wing of +the Hydropathic Establishment, at No. 12 Rue Boileau, Auteuil. Here he +spent the spring and summer months of many a year, always alone, but +with a hand-shake and a smile for his many visitors, men of birth as +well as men of brains. Hither Voltaire certainly came, when a lad +living with Dongois, for he says, in his pleasant rhymed epistle to +Boileau: + + "_Je vis le jardinier de ta maison d'Auteuil._" + +To this same "_laborieux valet_," to this same + + "_Antoine, gouverneur de mon jardin d'Auteuil_," + +Boileau wrote his letter in verse in 1695. The widow Racine came, +too, for frequent outings with her children, who loved the garden and +adored Boileau, for the peaches he picked for them and the ninepins he +played with them. Louis Racine, a sort of pupil of his, says that the +old poet was nearly as skilful at this game as in versifying, and +usually knocked over the entire nine with one ball. And when he went +to town, no warmer welcome met the crusty old bachelor than in Rue des +Marais-Saint-Germain, still the dwelling-place of Racine's family. + +In great mansions, too, he had long been cordially received. He was a +visitor at that of Madame de Guénégaud, which has given its site to +the Hôtel de la Monnaie, and its name to the street alongside. He was +fond of meeting kindred spirits and kindly hosts in the _hôtel_ of the +great Condé and his younger brother Conti. He was one of the select +set that sat about the table of Lamoignon, every Monday, at his home +in the Marais, to be visited by us later. And whenever old Cardinal +Retz came to town, Boileau hastened to the Hôtel de Lesdiguières, of +which no stone stands in the street of its name. Here the +white-headed, worn-out old fighter, compelled to live in retirement, +after the storms and scandals of his active life, was made at home by +his admirable niece, Madame de Lesdiguières, and here he was encircled +by admiring men and women. Here, writes Madame de Sévigné, his other +niece, who came often to sit with him, Boileau presented to Retz early +copies of "Le Lutrin," and of "L'Ars Poétique." + +Boileau could not live in the country in winter, and even in summer he +had to go often into town to get the care of his trusted physician. +For he was an invalid from boyhood, and all his life an uncomplaining +sufferer. But he hurried back, whenever permitted, to the pure air and +the congenial solitude of his small cottage, where three faithful +servants cared for him; not as would have cared the wife, whom he +ought to have had, all his friends said, and so, too, he thought +sometimes. He grew lonely as life lengthened, and as he saw his +cronies passing away, fast and faster, old Corneille being the last of +them to go. + +His winters in the great city were spent in lodgings on the island, in +the cloisters of Notre-Dame. Their quiet had always attracted him, as +he avows in the verse that quivers with his nervous irritability, +caused by the noises of the noisiest of towns. He cries, "Does one go +to bed to be kept awake?" Indeed, he had rooms in the cloisters as +early as 1683, keeping them for town quarters, in the official +residence of l'Abbé de Dreux, his old friend, a canon of Notre-Dame. +To this address Racine sent him a letter as late as 1687. The +ecclesiastical settlement within the cathedral cloisters, and its only +remaining cottage, have been spoken of in an earlier chapter. The +cloisters themselves survive only in the name of the street that has +been cut through their former site. + +In 1699 we find Boileau living with his confessor, the Abbé Lenoir, +also a canon of the cathedral, who had the privilege of residing +within the cloisters. This house stood exactly where now is the +southern edge of the fountain behind Notre-Dame, above Le Terrain and +the Seine. His rooms were on the first floor, his bed in an alcove, +and his windows looked out on the terrace over the river, as we learn +by the amiable accuracy of the lawyer who drew up his will. Here +Boileau lived through painful years of breaking bodily health, but +with unbroken faculties. He yearned for his old home at Auteuil, and +yet he was too feeble to go so far. He had sold his cottage to a +friend, under the condition that a room should be reserved always for +his use. That use never came. One day toward the end, he summoned up +strength to drive to the beloved place; but all was changed, he +changed most of all, and he hurried home to his lonely quarters, where +death found him at ten o'clock in the morning of March 2, 1711. + +His devoted servants were requited for years of faithful service by +handsome legacies, then the relatives were provided for, and no friend +was forgotten. The remainder of his fortune went to the "_pauvres +honteux_" of six small parishes in the City. A vast and reverent +concourse of mourners of every rank followed his coffin to its first +resting-place. This was in the lower chapel of the Sainte-Chapelle, as +he had ordered; the church of his baptism, and of the burial of his +mother and father. By a strange chance, his grave had been dug under +that very reading-desk which had suggested to him the subject of his +most striking production, the heroic-comic poem "Le Lutrin." Early in +the Revolution his remains were removed, to save them from fortuitous +profanation by the "Patriots," to the Museum of French Monuments +established in the convent of the Petits-Augustins, in the street of +that name, now Rue Bonaparte. In 1819 his bones were finally placed in +Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where, in the chapel of Saint-Peter and +Saint-Paul, they are at rest behind a black marble tablet carved with +a ponderous Latin inscription. + + + + +FROM VOLTAIRE TO BEAUMARCHAIS + + + + + [Illustration: Voltaire. + (From the statue by Houdon in the foyer of the Comédie Française.)] + + + + +FROM VOLTAIRE TO BEAUMARCHAIS + + +"_Dans la cour du Palais, je naquis ton voisin_," wrote Voltaire to +Boileau, in one of those familiar rhymed letters that soften the +austere rhetoric of the French verse of that day. The place of +Voltaire's birth, nearly sixty years after that of Boileau, was in the +same Street of Jerusalem, at its corner with the Street of Nazareth, +and it was only thus as a baby that he came ever in touch with the +Holy Land. On November 22, 1694, the day after his birth, he was +carried across the river to Saint-André-des-Arts--no one knows why his +baptism was not in the island church of the parish--and there +christened François-Marie Arouet. His earlier years were passed in the +house of Boileau's nephew Dongois, whose airs of importance did not +escape the keen infant eyes, as we have seen in the same letter in +verse in our preceding chapter. Then he was sent to Lycée +Louis-le-Grand, whither we have gone with young Poquelin, seventy +years earlier. The college stands in its new stone on its old site in +widened Rue Saint-Jacques. + +We hear of no break in the tranquil course of young Arouet's studies, +beyond the historic scene of his presentation to Mlle. Ninon de +Lenclos at her home in the Marais, to which we shall go in a later +chapter. This was in 1706, when she owned to ninety years of age at +least, and she was flattered by the visit of the youth of twelve, and +by the verse he wrote for her birthday. Dying in that year, she left a +handsome sum to her juvenile admirer, to be spent for books. So, +"_secondé de Ninon, dont je fus légataire_," the lad was strengthened +in his inclination for the career of literature he had already planned +for himself, and in his disinclination for the legal career planned +for him by his father. The elder Arouet was a flourishing +notary--among his clients was the Boileau family--who considered his +own the only profession really respectable. He placed his boy, the +college days being done, with one Maître Alain, whose office was near +Place Maubert, between Rues de la Bucherie and Galande, a quarter +crowded then with notaries and advocates, now all swept into limbo. +But young Arouet spent too many of his days and nights with the +congenial comrades that met in the Temple; "an advanced and dangerous" +troop of swells and wits and pen-workers, light-heartedly bent on fun, +amid the general gloom brought by Marlborough's victories, and by +Madame de Maintenon's persistence in making Paris pious. Father Arouet +sent his son away to The Hague; the first of his many journeys, +enforced and voluntary. When allowed to return in 1715, he lost no +time in hunting up his old associates; and soon, stronger hands than +those of his father settled him in the Bastille, in punishment for +verse, not written by him, satirizing the Regent and his daughter, +Duchesse de Berri. There he spent his twenty-third year, utilizing his +leisure to plan his "Henriade," and to finish his "Oedipe." When set +free, he came out as Voltaire. Whether he took this new name from a +small estate of his mother, or whether it was an anagram of _Arouet +fils_, is not worth the search; enough for us that it is the name of +him, who was to become, as John Morley rightly says, "the very eye of +eighteenth-century illumination," and to whom we may apply his own +words, used magnanimously of his famous contemporary, Montesquieu; +that humanity had lost its title-deeds, and he had recovered them. + +Once again in the world, he produced his "Oedipe" in 1718, with an +immediate and resounding success, which was not won by his succeeding +plays between 1720 and 1724. It was during this period that he +spasmodically disappeared from Paris, reappearing at Brussels, +Utrecht, The Hague; "_jouant à l'envoyé secret_," as was his mania +then and in later years. During one of these flittings as an +ambassador's ghost, he met Rousseau, and they were close friends until +the day when Rousseau, showing to Voltaire his "Letter to Posterity," +was told that it would never reach its address! That gibe made them +sworn enemies. In Paris, during these years, Voltaire had no settled +home. We have seen him in the _salon_ of Mlle. Lecouvreur, in Rue +Visconti, and we have seen him there, a sincere mourner at her +death-bed. It has been told in an earlier chapter, how that fine +creature had sat by Voltaire's sick-bed, careless of her own danger +from the small-pox, with which he was stricken in November, 1723. He +frequented many haunts of the witty and the wicked during these years, +and a historic scene in one of these has been put on canvas by Mr. +Orchardson. One evening in the year 1725, Voltaire was a saucy guest +at the table of the Duc de Sully, descendant of Henri IV.'s great +minister, in the noble mansion in Rue Saint-Antoine, to be visited by +us later. On going out, he was waylaid and beaten by the lackeys of +the Chevalier de Rohan-Chabot, who desired to impress by cudgels the +warning that, while princes are willing to be amused at the table +where sit "only princes and poets," the poets must not presume on the +privilege. In the painting, Voltaire reappears in the room to the +remaining guests, dishevelled and outraged. Later he challenged Rohan, +whose reply came in an order of committal to the Bastille. After two +weeks in a cell, Voltaire's request to go to England in exile was +gladly accorded by the government. + +We all know well the Voltaire of an older day, in his statues beside +the Institute and within that building, beside the Panthéon, in Square +Monge, and in the _foyer_ of the Théâtre Français. To see him at this +younger day, we must turn into the court-yard of the Mairie of the +Ninth Arrondissement at No. 6 Rue Drouot--an ancient and attractive +family mansion. In the centre of the court is a modern bronze, showing +"the ape of genius" at the age of twenty-five, a dapper creature with +head perked up and that complacent smile so marked in all his +portraits. This smirk may be due less to self-satisfaction than to +that physical peculiarity, claimed by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes in his +own case, which is caused by the congenital shortening of the levator +muscles of the mouth. The statue's right hand rests jauntily on the +hip, in the left hand is a book, and the left skirt of the long coat +is blown back, showing the sword that was worn by young philosophers +who would be young bloods. The pedestal holds two bas-reliefs; the +youth in Ninon's _salon_, the patriarch at Ferney, and cut in it are +his words: "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent +him." + +During his years in England, Voltaire made acquaintance with all the +notable men of letters then living, and with William Shakespeare in +his works. In them he tolerantly found much merit, but always styled +their author a barbarian. Those barbarisms and savageries he civilized +and smoothed to his pattern, for his "Brutus" is an unconscious echo +of "Julius Cæsar," his "Zaïre" a shadow of "Othello." He refused to +call on Wycherly "the gentleman," as Wycherly insisted, but was glad +to meet Wycherly the playwright. Nor did Voltaire turn his back on men +and women of fashion, but used them so cleverly as to enable him to +carry home to France a small fortune, from the subscriptions to his +English edition of the "Henriade." He was shrewd in money matters, and +a successful speculator for many years. We first hear of him again in +Paris in 1729, getting army contracts and making money in queer ways. +Yet all through life his pen was always busy, and in this same year +it is at work in a grand apartment of the Hôtel Lambert. This was the +mansion of M. du Châtelet, husband--officially only--of "_la sublime +Émilie_," with whom Voltaire had taken up his abode. The Hôtel Lambert +remains unchanged at the eastern end of Île Saint-Louis, looking, from +behind its high wall and its well-shaded garden, at its incomparable +prospect. Its entrance at No. 2 Rue Saint-Louis-en-l'Île opens on a +grand court and an imposing façade. "This is a house made for a king, +who would be a philosopher," wrote Voltaire to his august +correspondent Frederick the Great. He himself was neither king of this +realm nor proved himself a philosopher in its grotesque squabbles. +Madame du Châtelet was as frankly unfaithful to him as to her husband, +who was frequently called in to reconcile the infuriated lovers. She +was a woman of unusual abilities as well as of unusual indelicacies, +with an itch for reading, research, and writing, her specialties being +Newton and mathematics. + + [Illustration: The Hôtel Lambert.] + +In 1733 this queer couple found it to their comfort to quit Paris, where +Voltaire was ceaselessly beset by the suspicions of the powers that +regulated thought in France. They moved about much, to Voltaire's +discomfort, living sometimes at Cirey, on the borders of Champagne and +Lorraine, with or without the complaisant du Châtelet; sometimes in a +mansion taken by Voltaire in Paris. This stood on the corner of two +streets no longer existing, Rues du Clos-Georgeau and Traversière-Saint- +Honoré, at No. 25 of the latter; and its site now lies under the +roadway of new Avenue de l'Opéra. The cutting of this avenue has left +unchanged only the northern end of Rue Traversière, and this has been +renamed in honor of Molière. To place Voltaire's residence in the old +mansion at the new number 25 in this street, as a recent topographer +has done, is an ingenuous flight of fancy. + +Here Voltaire went back to live after death had taken "_la sublime +Émilie_" from him, from her other lover, and from her husband. This +legal husband was less inconsolable than Voltaire, whose almost +incredible reproach to the third man in the case makes Morality hold +her hand before her face--peeping between the fingers, naturally--while +Immorality shakes with frank laughter. On the second floor of this +house, Voltaire remained, "_de moitié avec le Marquis du Châtelet_;" +the first floor, which had been her own, being thenceforward closed to +them both. Here he tried to find companionship with his selfish and +stolid niece, Madame Denis, and with his _protégé_ Lekain. He +transformed the garret into a private theatre, for the production of +his plays, free from the royal or the popular censor; and for the +training of Lekain in the part of Titus, in "Brutus." That promising, +and soon accepted, actor made his _début_ at the Théâtre Français in +September, 1750, and his patron was not among the audience. From this +house, Voltaire went frequently across the river to visit Mlle. +Clairon in her apartment in Rue Visconti, so well known to him when +tenanted by Mlle. Lecouvreur, twenty years earlier. And from this +house, wherein he came to be too desolate and lonely, Voltaire went +forth from France in 1751, to find a still more uncongenial home at +Potsdam. With his queer life there, and his absurd quarrels with +Frederick the Great, this chronicle cannot concern itself. + +"_Café à la Voltaire_" is the legend you may read to-day on a pillar +of the Café Procope, in Rue de l'Ancienne-Comédie, directly opposite +the old Comédie Française. We have seen the mixed delight and doubt +with which coffee was first sipped by the Parisians of the end of the +seventeenth century, but it won its way, and in 1720 the Sicilian +Procope opened this second Paris _café_. It soon became the favorite +resort by night of the playwrights and play-actors, and the swells +among the audience, of the playhouse across the street. Gradually the +men of letters, living in and visiting the capital, made this _café_ +their gathering-place of an afternoon; so that, on any day in the +middle years of the eighteenth century, all the men best worth knowing +might be found here. Their names are lettered and their atrocious +portraits painted on its inner walls. In the little room on the left, +as you walk in on the ground floor, they treasure still, while these +lines are written, Voltaire's table. He sat here, near the stage that +produced his plays, sipping his own special and abominable blend of +coffee and chocolate. With him sat, among the many not so notable, +Diderot, d'Alembert, Marmontel, Rousseau, with his young friend +Grimm--hardly yet at home in Paris, not at all at home with its +language--and Piron, Voltaire's pet enemy, who wrote his own epitaph: + + "_Ci-gît Piron, + Que ne fut rien, + Pas même Académicien._" + +Here, on an evening in 1709, sat Alain-René Le Sage, awaiting in +suspense the verdict on his "Turcaret," brought out in the theatre +opposite, after many heart-breaking delays; for the misguided author +had convinced himself that his title to fame would be founded on this +now-forgotten play, rather than on his never-to-be-neglected "Gil +Blas"! + +During the Revolution, while the Café de la Régence, which faces the +present Comédie Française, was the pet resort of the royalist writers, +this Café Procope was the gathering-place of the Republican penmen; +and they draped its walls in black, and wore mourning for three days, +when word came across the water in 1790 of the death of Benjamin +Franklin, the complete incarnation to them of true republicanism. +Toward the unlamented end of the Second Empire, a small group of young +American students was to be found, of an evening, in the Café Procope, +harmlessly mirthful over their beer. After a while, they were content +to sit night after night in silence, all ears for the monologue at a +neighboring table; a copious and resistless outburst of argument and +invective, sprinkled with Gallic anecdote and with _gros mots_, and +broken by Rabelaisian laughter, from a magnificent voice and an ample +virility. They were told that the speaker was one Léon Gambetta, an +obscure barrister, already under the suspicion of the police of the +"lurking jail-bird," whom he helped drive from France, within a few +years. + +The old house is to-day only a pallid spectre of its aforetime +red-blooded self, and is nourished by nothing more solid than these +uncompact memories. Loving them and all his Paris, its kindly +proprietor tries to revitalize its inanimate atmosphere by his +"_Soirées littéraires et musicales_." In a room upstairs "ancient +poems, ancient music, old-time song," are listened to by unprinted +poets, unplayed dramatists, unhung painters. Some of them read their +still unpublished works. The _patron_ enjoys it all, and the waiters +are the most depressed in all Paris. + +Denis Diderot gives the effect in his work, as Gambetta did in the +flesh, of a living force of nature. When, at that same table, Diderot +opened the long-locked gate, the full and impetuous outflow swept all +before it, submerged and breathless. In his personality, as vivid as +that of Mirabeau, we see a fiery soul, a stormy nature, a daring +thinker, a prodigious worker. His head seemed encyclopædic to Grimm, +his life-long friend; and Rousseau, first friend and later enemy, +asserted that in centuries to come that head would be regarded with +the reverence given to the heads of Plato and of Aristotle. Voltaire +could imagine no one subject beyond the reach of Diderot's activity. +Arsène Houssaye names him "the last man of the day of dreaming in +religion and royalty, the first man of the day of the Revolution." And +John Morley, looking at him from a greater distance than any of these, +and with keener eyes, ranks him higher as a thinker than either +Rousseau or Voltaire. As thinker, essayist, critic, cyclopædist, +Diderot is indeed the most striking figure of the eighteenth century. +Rugged, uncouth, headlong, we see him, "_en redingote de peluche grise +éreintée_," in the philosophers' alley of the Luxembourg garden, +strolling with more energy than others give to striding. Striking and +strong he is in the exquisite bust by Houdon in the Louvre, yet with a +refinement of expression and a delicacy of poise of the head that are +very winning. This effect might have been gained by a Fragonard +working in the solid. + +Here, under the trees where meet Boulevard Saint-Germain and Rues de +Rennes and Bonaparte, it is the student whom we see in bronze, leaning +forward in his chair, a quill pen in hand, his worn face bent and +intent. This spot was selected for the statue because just there +Diderot resided for many years. His house was at No. 12 Rue Taranne, +on the corner of Rue Saint-Benoît, and it was torn down when the +former street was widened into the new boulevard. Here, young Diderot, +refusing to return to the paternal home at Lancres, when he left the +Collége d'Harcourt--the school of Boileau and Racine--lived in a +squalid room, during his early days of uncongenial toil in a lawyer's +office and of all sorts of penwork that paid poorly--translations, +sermons, catalogues, advertisements. Here he was hungry and cold and +unhappy; here, in 1743, he married the pretty sewing-girl who lived in +this same house with her mother, and who became a devoted and faithful +wife to a trying husband. For her he had the only clean love of his +not-too-clean life. From this garret he poured forth prose, his chosen +form of expression, when poetry was the only vogue, and it is by his +persistence, perhaps, that prose has come to the throne in France. And +it was while living here that he originated the art-criticism of his +country; clear and thorough, discriminating and enthusiastic. Earlier +notices of pictures had been as casual as the shows themselves; begun +in 1673, under Colbert's protection and the younger Mansart's +direction, in a small pavilion on the site of the present Théâtre +Français, having one entrance in Rue de Richelieu, another in the +garden, into which the pictures often overflowed. When Diderot wrote +his notices for Grimm, the exhibitions had permanent shelter in the +halls of the Louvre. In 1746, still in this house, he published his +"Philosophic Thoughts" and other essays that were at first attributed +to Voltaire, and that at last sent the real author to Vincennes. There +he was kept for three maddening months by an outraged "Strumpetocracy" +and a spiteful Sorbonne, on its last legs of persecution for opinion. +You may go to this prison by the same road his escort took, now named +Boulevard Diderot, with unconscious topographic humor. + +To visit "great Diderot in durance," Grimm and Rousseau came by this +road; stopping, before taking the Avenue de Vincennes, at a farm-house +on the edge of Place du Trône--now, Place de la Nation--where the +sentimentalist quenched his thirst with milk. That was the day when +Rousseau picked up the paradox, from Diderot, which he elaborated into +his famous essay, showing the superiority of the savage man over the +civilized man. There is as slight trace to be found of Jean-Jacques +Rousseau in the Paris of to-day as in the minds of the men of to-day. +We see him first, in 1745, at the Hôtel Saint-Quentin of our Balzac +chapter, carrying from there the uncomely servant, Thérèse le Vasseur. +After this he appears fitfully in Paris through many years. In 1772 he +is in Rue Plâtrière--a street now widened and named for him--on the +fourth floor of a wretched house opposite the present Post-office. +There he was found by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre--as thin-skinned and +touchy as Rousseau, yet somehow the two kept friendly--with his +repulsive Thérèse, whom he had made his wife in 1768. This preacher of +the holiness of the domestic affections had sent their five children +to the foundling hospital, according to his own statement, which is +our only reason for doubting that he did it. Bernardin found him, clad +in an overcoat and a white _bonnet_, copying music; of which Rousseau +knew nothing, except by the intuition of genius. For those who wish, +there are the pilgrimages to the Hermitage at Montmorenci, occupied by +him in 1756, and nearly forty years later by a man equally attractive, +Maximilien Robespierre; and to Ermenonville, the spot of Rousseau's +death in 1778. It is easier to stroll to the Panthéon, where, on one +side, is a statue of the author of "Le Contrat Social" and "Émile," +which gives him a dignity that was not his in life. This tribute from +the French nation was decreed by the National Convention of _15 +Brumaire, An II_, and erected by the National Assembly in 1791. +Durable as its bronze this tribute was meant to be, at the time when +he was deified by the nation; since then, his body and his memory have +been "cast to the dogs; a deep-minded, even noble, yet wofully +misarranged mortal." While acknowledging his impress on his generation +as an interpreter of moral and religious sentiment, and without +denying the claim of his admirers, that he is the father of modern +democracy, we may own, too, to a plentiful lack of liking for the man. + +Released and returned to his wife in Rue Taranne, Diderot lost no time +in beginning again that toil which was his life. With all his other +work--"Letters on the Blind, for the use of those who can see," dramas +now forgotten, an obscene novel that paid the debts of his +mistress--he began and carried out his Encyclopædia. "No sinecure is +it!" says Carlyle: "penetrating into all subjects and sciences, +waiting and rummaging in all libraries, laboratories; nay, for many +years fearlessly diving into all manner of workshops, unscrewing +stocking-looms, and even working thereon (that the department of 'Arts +and Trades' might be perfect); then seeking out contributors, and +flattering them, quickening their laziness, getting payment for them, +quarrelling with bookseller and printer, bearing all miscalculations, +misfortunes, misdoings of so many fallible men on his single back." On +top of all, he had to bear the spasmodic persecution of the Government +instigated by the Church. The patient, gentle d'Alembert, with his +serenity, his clearness, and his method, helped Diderot more than all +the others. And so grew, in John Morley's words, "that mountain of +volumes, reared by the endeavor of stout hands and faithful," which, +having done its work for truth and humanity, is now a deserted ruin. + +As he brought it to an end after thirty years of labor, Diderot found +himself grown old and worn, and the busiest brain and hand in France +began to flag. By now, he stood next in succession to the King, +Voltaire. Yet, for all the countless good pages he has written, it has +been truly said that he did not write one great book. Other urgent +creditors, besides old age, harassed him, and he had to sell his +collection of books. They were bought by the Empress Catharine of +Russia, at a handsome value, and she handsomely allowed him to retain +them for her, and furthermore paid him a salary for their care. Grimm +urged on her, in one of his gossiping _feuilles_, that have given +material for so much personal history, the propriety of housing her +library and its librarian properly, and this was done in the grand +mansion now No. 39 Rue de Richelieu. We have come to this street with +Molière and with Mignard, and there are other memories along this +lower length, to which a chapter could be given. We can awaken only +those that now belong to No. 50. Here lived a couple named Poisson, +and on March 19, 1741, they gave in marriage to Charles Guillaume le +Normand their daughter Jeanne-Antoinette, a girl of fifteen. That +blossom ripened and rottened into La Pompadour. The house is quite +unchanged since that day. In a large rear room on its first floor, in +the year 1899, future chroniclers will be glad to note that Moncure +D. Conway made an abbreviation of his noble life of Thomas Paine for +its French translation. His working-room was in the midst of the +scenes of Paine's Paris stay, but not one of them can be fixed with +certainty. + +The house numbered 39 of this street is occupied by the "_Maison +Sterlin_," a factory of artistic metal-work in locks and bolts and +fastenings for doors and windows. It is an attractive museum of fine +iron and steel workmanship, ancient and modern. There, in a case, is +preserved the superbly elaborate key of Corneille's birth-house in +Rouen. The brothers Bricard have had the reverent good taste to retain +the late seventeenth-century interior of their establishment, and you +may mount by the easy stairs, with their fine wrought-iron rail, to +Diderot's dining-room on the first floor, its panelling unaltered +since his death there, on July 31, 1784. He had enjoyed, for only +twelve days, the grandest residence and the greatest ease his life had +known. They had been made busy days, of course, spent in arranging his +books and pictures. Sitting here, eating hastily, he died suddenly and +quietly, his elbows on the table. On August 1st his body was buried in +the parish church of Saint-Roch, and the tablet marking the spot is +near that commemorating Corneille, who had been brought there exactly +one hundred years before. + +This church is eloquent with the presence of these two, with the voice +of Bossuet--"the Bible transfused into a man," in Lamartine's +phrase--and with the ping of Bonaparte's bullets on its porch; yet +there is a presence within, less clamorous but not less impressive +than any of these. In the fourth chapel, on your left as you enter, is +a bronze bust of a man, up to which a boy and a girl look from the two +corners of the pedestal. This is the monument of Charles Michel, Abbé +de l'Épée, placed above his grave in the chapel where he held services +at times, and the boy and girl stand for the countless deaf-and-dumb +children to whom he gave speech and hearing. The son of a royal +architect, with every prospect of preferment in the Church, with some +success as a winning preacher, his liberal views turned him from this +career. His interest in two deaf-mute sisters led him to his +life-work. There were others in England, and there was the good +Pereira in Spain, who had studied and invented before him, but it is +to this gentle-hearted Frenchman that the world of the deaf and dumb +owes most for its rescue from its inborn bondage. He gave to them all +he had, and all he was; for their sake he went ill-clad always, cold +in winter, hungry often. He had but little private aid, and no +official aid at all. He alone, with his modest income, and with the +little house left him by his father, started his school of instruction +for deaf-mutes in 1760. + +The house was at No. 14 Rue des Moulins, a retired street leading +north from Rue Saint-Honoré, and so named because near its line were +the mills of the Butte de Saint-Roch--where we are to find the +head-quarters of Joan the Maid. One of these mills may be seen to-day, +re-erected and in perfect preservation, at Crony-sur-Ourcq, near +Meaux, and above its doorway is the image of the patron-saint, to whom +the mill was dedicated in the fifteenth century. This quarter of the +town had become, during the reign of Louis XIV., the centre of a +select suburb of small, elegant mansions, tenanted by many illustrious +men. On the rear of his lot the good _abbé_ built a small chapel, and +in it and in the house he passed nearly thirty years of +self-sacrifice, ended only by his death on December 23, 1789. When the +Avenue de l'Opéra was cut in 1877-8, his street was shortened and his +establishment was razed. At the nearest available spot, on the wall of +No. 23 Rue Thérèse, two tablets have been placed, the one that fixes +the site, the other recording the decree of the Constituent Assembly +of July, 1789, by which the Abbé de l'Épée was placed on the roll of +those French citizens who merit well the recognition of humanity and +of his country. And, in 1791, amid all its troubled labors, the +Assembly founded the Institution National des Sourds-Muets of Paris, +on the base of his humble school. The big and beneficent institution +is in Rue Saint-Jacques, at its intersection with the street named in +his honor. And it is an honor to the Parisians that they thus keep +alive the memory of their great men, so that, in a walk through their +streets, we run down a catalogue of all who are memorable in French +history. In the vast court-yard, at that corner, under a glorious +elm-tree, is a colossal statue of the _abbé_, standing with a youth to +whom he talks with his fingers. It is the work of a deaf-mute, Félix +Martin, well named, for he is most happy in this work. + +Like the Abbé de l'Épée, and for as many years--almost thirty of his +half-voluntary, half-enforced exile--Voltaire had devoted himself in +his own way to the bettering of humanity, crippled mentally and +spiritually. He had given vision to the blind, hearing to the deaf, +voice to the speechless. He took in the outcast, and cherished the +orphan. With his inherent pity for the oppressed, and his deep-rooted +indignation with all cruelty, he had made himself the advocate of the +unjustly condemned; and none among his brilliant pages will live +longer than his impassioned pleadings for the rehabilitation of the +illegally executed Jean Calas. And now he comes back from Ferney, +through all the length of France, in a triumphal progress without +parallel, welcomed everywhere by exultant worshippers. At four in the +afternoon of February 10, 1778, his coach appears just where his +statue now stands at the end of Quai Malaquais, then Quai des +Théatins. He wears a large, loose cloak of crimson velvet, edged with +a small gold cord, and a cap of sable and velvet, and he is "smothered +in roses." His driver makes his way slowly along the quay, through the +acclaiming crowd, to the home of "_la Bonne et Belle_," the girl he +had rescued from a convent and adopted, now the happy wife of the +Marquis de Villette. Their eighteenth-century mansion stands on the +corner of Rue de Beaune and present Quai Voltaire, unaltered in its +simple stateliness. Here Voltaire is visited by all Paris that was +allowed to get to him. Mlle. Clairon is one of the first, on her knees +at the bedside of her old friend, exhausted by his triumph. She is no +longer young, and shows that she owns to fifty-five years, by her +retired life at the present numbers 34 and 36 Rue du Bac. There she +has her books and her sewing and her spendthrift Comte Valbelle +d'Oraison, who lives on her. + + [Illustration: The Seventeenth-century Buildings on Quai Malaquais, + with the Institute and the Statue of Voltaire.] + +D'Alembert and Benjamin Franklin are among his visitors, and the +dethroned Du Barry, and thirty _chefs_, each set on the appointment of +cook for the master. He goes to the Academy, then installed in the +Louvre, and to the Comédie Française, temporarily housed in the +Tuileries, the Odéon not being ready. There his "Irène," finished just +before leaving Switzerland, is produced, and at the performance on the +evening of March 30th he is crowned in his box, his bust is crowned on +the beflowered stage, and the palms and laurels and plaudits leave him +breath only to murmur: "My friends, do you really want to kill me with +joy?" That was the last seen of him by the public. He had come to +Paris, he said, "to drink Seine water"; and either that beverage +poisoned him, or the cup of flattery he emptied so often. One month +after that supreme night, on May 30, 1778, at a little after eleven at +night, he died in that corner apartment on the first floor. For thirty +years after it was unoccupied and its windows were kept closed. + +Almost his last words, as he remembered what the Church had meant to +him, and what it might mean for him, were: "I don't want to be thrown +into the roadway like that poor Lecouvreur." That fate was spared his +wasted frame by the quickness of his nephew, the Abbé Mignot. Here, at +the entrance-gate in Rue de Beaune, this honest man placed his uncle's +body, hardly cold, in his travelling carriage, and with it drove +hastily, and with no needless stops, to Scellières in Champagne. There +he gave out the laudable lie of a death on the journey, and procured +immediate interment in the nave of his church, under all due rites. +The grave was hardly covered before orders from the Bishop of Troyes +arrived, forbidding the burial. The trick would have tickled the +adroit old man. His body was allowed to rest for thirteen years, and +then it was brought back in honor to Paris. A great concourse had +assembled, only two weeks earlier, at the place where the Bastille had +been, hoping to hoot at the royal family haled back from Varennes. +Now, on July 11, 1791, a greater concourse was stationed here, to look +with silent reverence on this _cortége_, headed by Beaumarchais, all +the famous men of France carrying the pall or joining in the +procession. They entered by the Vincennes road, passed along the +boulevards, crossed Pont Royal to stop before this mansion, and went +thence to the Panthéon. There his remains lay once more in peace, +until the Bourbons "de-Panthéonized" both Voltaire and Rousseau. + +Benjamin Franklin had come to visit Voltaire here on the quay, by way +of the Seine from Passy, in which retired suburb he was then living. +The traces he has left in the capital are to be found in two +inscriptions and a tradition. We know that he had rooms, during a part +of the year 1776, in Rue de Penthièvre, and his name, carved in the +pediment of the stately façade of the house numbered 26 in that +street, is a record of his residence in it or on its site. There is +another claimant to his tenancy for a portion of this same year. The +American who happens to go to or through Passy, on a Fourth of July, +will have opportune greeting from the Stars and Stripes, draped over +the doorway of the old-fashioned building, more a cottage than a +mansion, now numbered 21 Rue Franklin. Its owners do this each year, +they tell you, in honor of the great American who occupied the cottage +in 1776. Their claim is the more credible, inasmuch as the street has +been given his name since his day there, when it was Rue Basse. In the +following year he went farther afield, and for nine years he remained +in a villa in the large garden, now covered by the ugly École des +Frères de la Doctrine Chrétienne, at the corner of Rues Raynouard and +Singer. The Historical Society of Passy and Auteuil has placed a +tablet in this corner wall, recording Franklin's residence at this +spot from 1777 to 1785. His friend, M. Ray de Chaumont, occupied only +a portion of his Hôtel de Valentinois, and gave up the remaining +portion to Franklin for his residence and his office, eager to show +his sympathy for the colonies and his fondness for their envoy. Only +John Adams, when he came, was shocked in all his scrupulosity to find +an American agent living rent-free! In this garden he put up the +first lightning-conductor in France, and in this house he negotiated +the treaty that gave the crown's aid to the colonies and made possible +their independence. To this spot came the crowd to catch a glimpse of +the homely-clad figure, and men of science and letters to learn from +him, and ladies from the court to caress him. And it may have been +here that he made answer to the enamoured _marquise_, in words that +have never been topped for the ready wit of a gallant old gentleman. + +The _cortége_ that accompanied Voltaire's remains to the Panthéon was +headed, it has been said, by Beaumarchais; fittingly so, for +Beaumarchais was then heir-presumptive to the dramatic crown, and his +"Figaro" had already begun to laugh the nobility from out of France. +Louis XVI. saw clearly, for once, when he said: "If I consent to the +production of the 'Marriage of Figaro,' the Bastille will go." He did +consent, and it was played to an immense house on April 27, 1784, in +the Comédie Française, now the Odéon. That night the old order had its +last laugh, and it rang strangely and sadly. Yet in this comedy, that +killed by ridicule--the most potent weapon in France--once played a +queen that was, and once a queen that was to be. On August 19, 1785, +on the stage of the Little Trianon at Versailles, the Comte +d'Artois--brother to Louis XIV., later to be Charles X.--appeared as +the Barber, to the Rosina of Marie Antoinette. And, in the summer of +1803, during the Consulate, when Malmaison was the scene of gayeties, +a theatre was constructed in the garden, and on its boards, Hortense +(soon after Queen of Holland) made a success as Rosina. + +Playwriting was merely a digression in the diversified career of this +man of various aptitudes, whose ups and downs we have no excuse for +dwelling on, as we trace him through Paris streets. There is no tablet +to mark his birth, on January 24, 1732, in the house of his father, +Caron, the watchmaker of Rue Saint-Denis, opposite the old Cemetery of +the Innocents, nearly at Rue de la Ferronerie. Pierre-Augustin Caron +he was christened, and it was in his soaring years that he added "de +Beaumarchais." This quarter is notable in that it was the scene of the +birth and boyhood of four famous dramatists--of Molière, as we have +seen, and of Regnard, as we shall see; of Beaumarchais and of Eugène +Scribe. To record this latest birth, on December 24, 1791, a tablet is +set in the wall of No. 32 Rue Saint-Denis, at the corner of Rue de la +Reynie, only a few steps south of the Caron house. It is a plain, +old-style house of four stories and a garret, and has become a shop +for chocolates and sweets. It has on its sign, "_Au Chat Noir_"; black +cats are carved wherever they will cling on its front and side, and a +huge, wooden, black cat rides on the cart that carries the chocolate. + +Beaumarchais had a residence at No. 6 Rue de Condé in 1773, and at the +Hôtel de Hollande, Rue Vielle-du-Temple 47, in 1776. We shall go there +later. On the wall of the house, No. 2 Boulevard Beaumarchais, a +tablet marks the site of his great mansion and its spacious gardens. +These covered the entire triangle enclosed by Rues Amelot, Daval, and +Roquette. He had found the money for this colossal outlay, not in his +plays, but in all sorts of mercantile transactions, some of them +seemingly shabby. It is claimed that he lost large sums in supplying, +as the unavowed agent of the crown, war equipment to the struggling +American colonies. His palace went up in sight of the Bastille, then +going down. The Parisians came in crowds to see his grounds, with +their grottoes, statues, and lake; and he entertained all the swelldom +of France. There, one day in 1792, the mob from the too-near Faubourg +Saint-Antoine came uninvited, and raided house and grounds for hidden +arms and ammunition, not to be found. The owner went to the Abbaye +prison and thence into exile and poverty. Returning in 1796, he spent +his last years in a hopeless attempt to gather up remnants of his +broken fortunes, a big remnant being the debt neglected and rejected +by the American Congress. The romance of this "Lost Million" cannot be +told here. Beaumarchais died in this house in 1799, and was buried in +the garden. When the ground was taken for the Saint-Martin Canal in +1818, his remains were removed to Père-Lachaise. The grave is as near +that of Scribe as were their birthplaces. His name was given to the +old Boulevard Saint-Antoine in 1831, and in 1897 his statue was placed +in that wide space in Rue Saint-Antoine that faces Rue des Tournelles. +The pedestal is good, and worthy of a more convincing statue of this +man of strong character and of contrasting qualities. And at the +Washington Head-quarters at Newburgh-on-Hudson, and at the various +collections of Revolutionary relics in the United States, you will +find cannon that came from French arsenals, and that, it was hinted, +left commissions in the hands of Caron de Beaumarchais. + + + + +THE PARIS OF THE REVOLUTION + + + + + [Illustration: Charlotte Corday. + (From the copy by Baudry of the only authentic portrait, painted in + her prison.)] + + + + +THE PARIS OF THE REVOLUTION + + +It is no part of the province of this book to reconstruct the Paris of +the Revolution, nor is there room for such reconstruction, now that M. +G. Lenôtre has given us his exhaustive and admirable "Paris +Révolutionnaire." Despite the destruction of so much that was worth +saving of that period, there yet remain many spots for our seeing. The +cyclone of those years had two centres, and one of them is fairly well +preserved. It is the Cour du Commerce, to which we have already come +in search of the tower and wall of Philippe-Auguste. Outside that +wall, close to the Porte de Buci, there had been a tennis-court, which +was extended, in 1776, into a narrow passage, with small dwellings on +each side. The old entrance of the tennis-court was kept for the +northern entrance of the new passage, and it still remains under the +large house, No. 61 Rue Saint-André-des-Arts. The southern entrance of +the passage was in the western end of Rue des Cordeliers, now Rue de +l'École-de-Médecine. In 1876, exactly one hundred years after the +construction of this Cour du Commerce, its southern half and its +southern entrance were cut away by modern Boulevard Saint-Germain, on +the northern side of which a new entrance to the court was made. At +the same time the houses on the northern side of Rue de +l'École-de-Médecine were demolished, and replaced by the triangular +space that holds the statues of Danton and Paul Broca among its trees. +Those houses faced, across the street, whose narrowness is marked by +the two curbstones, the houses, of the same age and the same style, +that are left on the southern side of this section of the modern +boulevard. One of the houses then destroyed had been inhabited by +Georges-Jacques Danton. It stood over the entrance of the court, and +his statue--a bronze of his own vigor and audacity--has been placed +exactly on the spot of that entrance, exactly under his +dwelling-place. The pediment of this entrance-door is now in the +grounds of M. Victorien Sardou, at Marly-le-Roi. Danton's apartment, +on the first floor above the _entresol_, had two _salons_ and a +bedroom looking out on Rue des Cordeliers, while the dining-room and +working-room had windows on the Cour du Commerce. Here in 1792 he had +his wholesome, peaceful home, with his wife and their son; and to them +there sometimes came his mother, or one of his sisters, for a visit. + +In the _entresol_ below lived Camille Desmoulins and his wife in 1792. +The two young women were close friends, and M. Jules Claretie has +given us a pretty picture of them together, in terrified suspense on +that raging August 10th. Lucile Desmoulins knew, on the next day, that +the mob had at least broken the windows of the Tuileries, for someone +had brought her the sponges and brushes of the Queen! And on the +12th, Danton carried his wife from here to the grand _hôtel_ in Place +Vendôme, the official residence of the new Minister of Justice. His +short life in office being ended by his election to the Convention in +the autumn of that year, he returned to this apartment; to which, +three months after the death of his first wife in that same year, he +brought a youthful bride. And here, on March 30, 1794, he was +arrested. Before his own terrible tribunal his reply, to the customary +formal questions as to his abode, was: "My dwelling-place will soon be +in annihilation, and my name will live in the Panthéon of history." He +spoke prophetically. The clouds of a century of calumny have only +lately been blown away, and we can, at last, see clearly the heroic +figure of this truest son of France; a "Mirabeau of the +_sans-culottes_," a primitive man, unspoiled and strong, joyous in his +strength, ardent yet steadfast, keen-eyed for shams, doing when others +were talking, scornful of phrasemongers, and so genuine beside the +petty schemers about him that they could not afford to let him live. + +Lucie-Simplice-Camille-Benoist Desmoulins had, in his queer and not +unlovable composition, a craving for a hero and a clinging to a strong +nature. His first idol was Mirabeau. That colossus had died on April +2, 1791, and Desmoulins had been one of the leaders in the historic +funeral procession that filled the street and filed out from it four +miles in length. Mont-Blanc was then the street's name, and for a few +days it was called Rue Mirabeau, but soon took its present name, +Chaussée-d'Antin, from the gardens of the Hôtel d'Antin, through which +it was cut. The present No. 42, with a new front, but otherwise +unchanged, is the house of Mirabeau's death, in the front room of its +second floor. Mirabeau's worthy successor in Camille's worship was +Danton, near whom he lived, as we have seen, and with whom he went as +secretary to the Ministry of Justice. After leaving office, Camille +and his wife are found in his former bachelor home in Place du +Théâtre-Français, now Place de l'Odéon. The corner house there, that +proclaims itself by a tablet to have been his residence, is in the +wrong; and that tablet belongs by right to the house on the opposite +corner, No. 2 Place de l'Odéon and No. 7 Rue Crébillon. From his end +windows in this latter street, when he had lived there as a bachelor, +Camille could look slantwise to the windows of an apartment at No. 22 +Rue de Condé, and he looked often, attracted by a young girl at home +there with her parents. There is still the balcony on the front, on +which Lucile Duplessis ventured forth, a little later, to blow kisses +across the street. At the religious portion of their marriage, in +Saint-Sulpice on December 29, 1790, the _témoins_ of the groom were +Brisson, Pétion, Robespierre. The last-named had been Camille's +schoolfellow and crony at Lycée Louis-le-Grand, and remained his +friend as long as it seemed worth while. The wedding party went back +to this apartment--on the second floor above the _entresol_--for the +_dîner de noces_. Everything on and about the table--it is still +shown at Vervins, a village just beyond Laon--was in good taste, we +may be sure, for Desmoulins was a dainty person, for all his tears +over Marat; his desk, at which he wrote the fiery denunciations of "Le +Vieux Cordelier," had room always for flowers. It was here that he was +arrested, to go--not so bravely as he might--to prison, and then to +execution with Danton, on April 5, 1794. His Lucile went to the +scaffold on the 12th of the same month, convicted of having conspired +against the Republic by wandering about the gardens of the Luxembourg, +trying to get a glimpse of her husband's face behind his prison +window. To us he is not more visible in this garden than he was to +her, but in the garden of the Palais-Royal he leaps up, "a flame of +fire," on July 12, 1789, showing the Parisians the way they went to +the Bastille on the 14th. + +In the same section with Danton and Desmoulins, and equally vivid with +them in his individuality, we find Jean-Paul Marat. His apartment, +where lived with him and his mistress, Simonne Evrard, his two +sisters, Albertine and Catherine--all three at one in their devotion +to his loathsome body--was in a house a little easterly from Danton's, +on the same northern side of Rue de l'École-de-Médecine. It was at +this house that Marie-Anne-Charlotte Corday d'Armans, on July 13, +1793, presented herself as "_l'ange de l'assassination_," in +Lamartine's swelling phrase. She had driven across the river, from the +Hôtel de la Providence. In our Dumas chapter we shall try to find her +unpretending inn, and shall find only its site. In the Musée Grévin, +in Paris, you may see the _baignoire_ in which Marat sat when he +received Charlotte Corday and her knife--a common kitchen-knife, +bought by her on the day before at a shop in the Palais-Royal. The +bath is shaped like a great copper shoe, and on its narrow top, +through which his head came, was a shelf for his papers. + +The printing-office of Marat's "L'Ami du Peuple," succeeded in 1792 by +his "Journal de la République Française," was in that noisiest corner +of Paris, the Cour du Commerce. It was in that end of the long +building of two low stories and attic, numbered 6 and 8, now occupied +by a lithographer. After Marat's death, and that of his journal, the +widow Brissot opened a modest stationer's shop and reading-room in the +former printing-office, we are told by M. Sardou. It is an error that +places the printing-office at the present No. 1 of the court, in the +building which extended then through to No. 7 Rue de l'Ancienne-Comédie. +These two lots do, indeed, join in their rear, but Marat has no +association with either. In Rue de l'Ancienne-Comédie, certainly, the +"Friend of the People" had storage room in the cellar and an office on +an upper floor, but it was in one of the tall houses on the western +side of the street, just north of the old theatre. + +The only claim to our attention of No. 1 Cour du Commerce--a squalid +tavern which aspires to the title of "_La Maison Boileau_"--comes from +the presence of Sainte-Beuve. The great critic is said to have rented +a room, under his pen-name of "Joseph Delorme," for a long time in +this then cleanly _hôtel-garni_, for the ostensible purpose of working +in quiet, free from the importunate solicitors of all sorts who +intruded on his home in Rue du Mont-Parnasse, No. 11. + +Marat's death was frantically lamented by the rabble, that was quite +unable to recognize the man's undeniable abilities and attainments, +and that had made him its idolized leader because of his atrocious +taste in saying in print exactly what he meant. They carried his body +to the nave of the church, and later to its temporary tomb in the +garden, of the Cordeliers, a step from his house. In the intervals of +smiling hours spent in watching heads fall into the basket, in new +Place de la Révolution, they crowded here to weep about his bedraped +and beflowered bier. The remains were then placed, with due honors, in +the Panthéon. Then, within two years, the same voices that had +glorified him shrieked that his body and his memory should be swept +into the sewer. It was the voice of the people--the voice of Deity, in +all ages and in all lands, it is noisily asserted. + +When the Franciscan monks, who were called Cordeliers because of their +knotted cord about the waist, came to Paris early in the thirteenth +century, they were given a goodly tract of ground just within the +Saint-Germain gate, stretching, in rough outlines, from Rues +Antoine-Dubois and Monsieur-le-Prince nearly to Boulevards +Saint-Germain and Saint-Michel. The church they built there was +consecrated by the sainted Louis IX. in 1262, and when burned, in +1580, was rebuilt mainly by the accursed Henri III. New chapels and +cloisters were added in 1672, and there were many other structures +pertaining to the order within these boundaries. Of all these, only +the Refectory remains to our day. The site of the church, once the +largest in Paris, is covered by Place de l'École-de-Médecine and by a +portion of the school; something of the shape and some of the stones +of the old cloisters are preserved in the arched court of the +Clinique; bits of the old walls separate the new laboratories, and +another bit, with its strong, bull-nosed moulding, may be seen in the +grounds of the water-works behind No. 11 Rue Racine, this street +having been cut through the monks' precincts, so separating the +Infirmary, to which this wall belonged, and that stretched nearly to +the rear walls of Lycée Saint-Louis, from the greater portion of "_Le +Grand Couvent de l'Observance de Saint François_." + +Turn in at the gateway in the corner of Place de l'École-de-Médecine, +and the Refectory stands before you, a venerable fabric of Anne of +Brittany's building, with sixteenth and seventeenth century +adornments, all in admirable preservation. The great hall, filled with +the valuable collection of the Musée Dupuytren, attracts us as a relic +of ancient architecture, and as the last existing witness of the +Revolutionary nights of the Cordeliers Club. That club had its hall +just across the garden alongside the Refectory, in one of the +buildings of the cloisters, which, with the church, had been given +over to various uses and industries. Hence the name of the club, +enrolled under the leadership of Danton, on whom the men of his +section looked as the incarnation of the Revolution. To him +Robespierre and his republic were shams, and to his club the club of +the Jacobins was at first distinctly reactionary. It took but little +time, in those fast-moving days, for the Cordeliers, in their turn, to +be suspected for their unpatriotic moderation! + + [Illustration: The Refectory of the Cordeliers.] + +We must not leave our Cour du Commerce, without a glance at the small +building on the northern corner of its entrance from Rue de +l'Ancienne-Comédie. It was here that the first guillotine was set up +for experiments on sheep, by Dr. Antoine Louis, Secretary of the +Academy of Surgeons, and the head of a committee appointed by the +National Assembly on October 6, 1791. On that day a clause in the new +penal code made death by decapitation the only method of execution, +and the committee had powers to construct the apparatus, which was to +supersede Sanson's sword. It was not a new invention, for the mediæval +executioners of Germany and Scotland had toyed with "the Maiden," but +for centuries she had lost her vogue. On December 1, 1789, Dr. +Joseph-Ignace Guillotin had tried to impress on the Assembly the need +of humane modes of execution, and had dwelt on the comfort of +decapitation by his apparatus until he was laughed down. That grim +body could find mirth only in a really funny subject like the cutting +off of heads! After two years and more, the machine, perfected by Dr. +Louis, and popularly known as "_La Louisette_," was tried on a +malefactor in the Place de Grève on April 25, 1792. Three days later +the little lady received her official title, "_La Guillotine_." + +Dr. Guillotin had made his model and his experiments at his residence, +still standing, with no external changes, at No. 21 Rue +Croix-des-Petits-Champs. It was already a most ancient mansion when he +came here to live, and perhaps to remain until his death--in bed--in +1814. It had been known as the Hôtel de Bretagne, and it is rich in +personal history. To its shelter came Catherine de Lorraine, the young +widow of the Duc de Montpensier, the "lame little devil" whom Henri +III. longed to burn alive, for her abuse of him after the murder of +her brother Guise. Within its walls, Anne of Austria's treasurer, the +rich and vulgar Bertrand de la Bazinière--whom we have met on Quai +Malaquais--hoarded the plunder which he would not, or dared not, +spend. Louis XIV. gave him, later, lodgings in the Bastille, in that +tower named Bazinière always after. In this same Hôtel de Bretagne, +Henrietta of France, widowed queen of England, made her temporary home +in the winter of 1661, near her daughter, lately installed as +"Madame," wife of the King's brother, in the Palais-Royal. Returning +from England in 1665, this unhappy queen went to the last refuge of +her troubled life in the convent she had founded on the heights of +Chaillot. From that farther window of the first story on the right of +the court, the Comte de Maulevrier, Colbert's nephew, threw himself +down to his death on the pavement on Good Friday, 1706. In time the +stately mansion became a _hôtel-garni_, was appropriated as National +Domain in the Revolution, and sold in a lottery. + +"_La Guillotine_," having proved the sharpness of her tooth, was +speedily promoted from Place de Grève to a larger stage in Place de la +Réunion, now Place du Carrousel, and thence in May, 1793--that she +might not be under the windows of the Convention--to Place de la +Révolution, formerly Place de Louis XV., at present Place de la +Concorde. This wide space, just beyond the moat of the Tuileries +gardens, had in its centre, where now is the obelisk of Luxor, a +statue of the late "well-beloved," then altogether-detested, King for +whom the place had been named; and a little to the east of that point +the scaffold was set up. Lamartine puts it on the site of the southern +fountain, for the effect he gets of the flowing of water and of blood; +this is one of his magniloquent phrases, which scorn exactness. On +January 21, 1793, for the execution of Louis XVI., the guillotine was +removed to a spot just westward of the centre, that it might be well +protected by the troops deploying about the western side of the +_place_, and into the Champs Élysées and Cours la Reine. For a while +in 1794, the guillotine was transferred to the present Place de la +Nation--where we shall find it in a later chapter--to come back to +Place de la Révolution in time to greet Robespierre and his friends. + +Standing here, we are near the other centre of Revolutionary Paris, +made so by the Club of the Jacobins, that met first in the refectory, +later in the church of the monastery from which it took its name. The +site of these buildings is covered by the little Marché Saint-Honoré +and by the space about. The club of the more moderate men, headed by +Bailly and Lafayette, had its quarters in the monastery of the +Feuillants, which gave its name to the club, and which extended along +the south side of Rue Saint-Honoré, eastwardly from Rue de +Castiglione; this street being then the narrow Passage des Feuillants, +leading from Rue Saint-Honoré to the royal gardens, and to the +much-trodden Terrasse on the northern side of those gardens facing the +Manège. This building had been erected for the equestrian education of +the youth who afterward became Louis XV., and was converted into a +hall for the sitting of the Assembly, after that body had been crowded +for about three weeks, on coming to Paris from Versailles, into the +inadequate hall of the Archbishop's palace, on the southern shore of +the City Island, alongside Notre-Dame. The Convention took over the +Manège from the Assembly, and there remained until May, 1793, when it +removed to the more commodious quarters, and more befitting +surroundings, of the Tuileries. The old riding-school, whose site is +marked by a tablet on the railing of the garden opposite No. 230 Rue +de Rivoli, was swept away by the cutting of the western end of that +street, under the Consulate in 1802. + +When Maximilien Robespierre came up from Arras--where he had resigned +his functions in the Criminal Court, because of his conscientious +objections to capital punishment--he found squalid quarters, suiting +his purse--which remained empty all through life--in Rue Saintonge. +That street, named for a province of old France, remains almost as he +saw it, one of the few Paris streets that retain their original +buildings and ancient atmosphere. The high and sombre house, wherein +he lodged from October, 1789, to July, 1791, is quite unaltered, save +for its number, which was then 8 and is now 64. From here, Robespierre +was snatched away, suddenly and without premeditation on his part, and +planted in the bosom of the Duplay family. They had worshipped him +from afar, and when, from their windows, they saw him surrounded by +the acclaiming crowd, on the day after the so-called massacres of the +Champ-de-Mars of July 17, 1791, the peaceful carpenter ran out and +dragged the shrinking great man into his court-yard for temporary +shelter. The house was then No. 366 Rue Saint-Honoré. If any reader +wishes to decide for himself whether the modern No. 398 is built on +the site of the Duplay house, of which no stone is left, as M. Ernest +Hamel asserts; or whether the present tall structure there is an +elevation on the walls of the old house, every stone of which is left, +as M. Sardou insists; he must study the pamphlets issued by these +earnest and erudite controversialists. There is nothing more +delightful in topographical sparring. The authors of this book can +give no aid to the solicitous student; for they have read all that has +been written concerning the subject, they have explored the house, +and they have settled in silence in the opposing camps! + +In the Duplay household, to which he brought misery then and +afterward, Robespierre was worshipped during life and deified after +death. To that misguided family, "this cat's head, with the prominent +cheekbones, seamed by small-pox; his bilious complexion; his green +eyes rimmed with red, behind blue spectacles; his harsh voice; his +dry, pedantic, snappish, imperious language; his disdainful carriage; +his convulsive gestures--all this was effaced, recast, and transformed +into the gentle figure of an apostle and a martyr to his faith for the +salvation of men." From their house, it was but a step to the sittings +of the Assembly. It was but a few steps farther to the garden of the +Tuileries and to the "_fête de l'Être Suprême_," planned by him, when +he had induced the Convention to decree the existence of God and of an +immortal soul in man. He cast himself for the rôle of High Priest of +Heaven, and headed the procession on June 8, 1794, clad in a blue +velvet coat, a white waistcoat, yellow breeches and top-boots; +carrying in his hand flowers and wheat-ears. He addressed the crowd, +in "the scraggiest prophetic discourse ever uttered by man," and they +had games, and burned in effigy Atheism and Selfishness and Vice! Such +of the stage-setting of this farce as was constructed in stone remains +intact to-day, for our wonder at such childishness, and our admiration +of the architectural perfection of the out-of-door arena. + +From this Duplay house, Robespierre used to go on his solitary +strolls, accompanied only by his dogs, in the woods of Monceaux and +Montmorenci, where he picked wild-flowers. From this house he went to +his last appearance in the Convention on the _9 Thermidor_, and past +it he was carted to the scaffold, on the following day, July 28, 1794. +He had followed Danton within a few months, as Danton had predicted. +They were of the same age at the time of their death, each having +thirty-five years; the younger Robespierre was thirty-two, Saint-Just +was twenty-six, Desmoulins thirty-four, when their heads fell. +Mirabeau died at the age of forty-two, Marat was forty-nine when +stabbed. Not one of the conspicuous leaders of the Revolution and of +the Terror had come to fifty years! + + [Illustration: The Carré d'Atalante in the Tuileries Gardens.] + +When the tumbrils and their burdens did not go along the quays to +Place de la Révolution, they went through Rue Saint-Honoré, that being +the only thoroughfare on that side of the river. From the +Conciergerie they crossed Pont au Change, and made their way by narrow +and devious turnings to the eastern end of Rue Saint-Honoré, and +through its length to Rue du Chemin-du-Rempart--now Rue Royale--and so +to the scaffold. Short Rue Saint-Florentin was then Rue de +l'Orangerie, and was crowded by sightseers hurrying to the _place_. +Those of the victims not already confined in the Conciergerie were +sent to the condemned cells there, for the night between sentence and +execution. The trustworthy history of the prisons of Paris during the +Revolution remains to be written, and there is wealth of material for +it. There were many smaller prisons not commonly known, and of the +larger ones that we do know, there are several, quite unchanged +to-day, well worth unofficial inspection. The Salpêtrière, filling a +vast space south of the Jardin des Plantes, was built for the +manufacture of saltpetre, by Louis XIII.; and, by his son, was +converted into a branch, for women, of the General Hospital. A portion +of its buildings was set apart for young women of bad character, and +here Manon Lescaut was imprisoned. The great establishment is now +known as the Hôpital de la Salpêtrière, and is famous for its +treatment of women afflicted with nervous maladies, and with insanity. +The present Hospice de la Maternité was also perverted to prison +usages during the Revolution. Its formal cloisters and steep tiled +roofs cluster about its old-time square, but its ancient gardens, and +their great trees, are almost all buried beneath new masonry. The +façade of the chapel, the work of Lepautre, is no longer used as the +entrance, and may be seen over the wall on Boulevard de Port-Royal. +Another prison was that of Saint-Lazare, first a lazar-house and then +a convent, whose weather-worn roofs and dormers show above the wall on +Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis. On the dingy yellow plaster of the arched +entrance-gate one may read, in thick black letters: "_Maison d'Arrêt +et de Correction._" Unaltered, too, is the prison in the grounds of +the Carmelites, to be visited later in company with Dumas; and the +Luxembourg, that was reserved for choice captives. The prison of the +Abbey of Saint-Germain was swept away by the boulevard of that name. +Its main entrance for wheeled vehicles was through Rue Sainte-Marguerite, +the short section left of that street being now named Gozlin. Of the +other buildings of the abbey, there remain only the church itself, the +bishop's palace behind in Rue de l'Abbaye, and the presbytery glued to +the southern side of the church-porch. Its windows saw the massacres +of the priests and the prisoners, which took place on the steps of the +church and in its front court. When you walk from those steps across +the open _place_, to take the tram for Fontenay-aux-Roses, you step +above soil that was soaked with blood in the early days of September, +1792. Some few of the abbey prisoners were slaughtered in the garden, +of which a portion remains on the south side of the church, where the +statue of Bernard Palissy, by Barrias, stands now. In other chapters, +the destruction of the Grand-and the Petit-Châtelet has been noted. +La Force has gone, and Sainte-Pélagie is soon to go. And the +Conciergerie has been altered, almost beyond recognition, as to its +entrances and its courts and its cells. Only the Cour des Femmes +remains at all as it was in those days. + +There are three victims of the Terror who have had the unstinted pity +of later generations, and who have happily left traces of their +presence on Paris brick and mortar. The last of these three to die was +André-Marie de Chénier, and we will go first to his dwelling. It is an +oddly shaped house, No. 97 Rue de Cléry--Corneille's street for many +years--at its junction with Rue Beauregard; and a tablet in its wall +tells of de Chénier's residence there. Born in Constantinople in 1762, +of a French father--a man of genius in mercantile affairs--and a Greek +mother, the boy was brought to Paris with his younger brother, +Joseph-Marie, in 1767. They lived with their mother in various streets +in the Marais, before settling in this final home. Here Madame de +Chénier, a poet and artist in spirit, filled the rooms with the poets +and artists and _savants_ of the time, the friends of her gifted sons. +Hither came David, gross of body, his active mind busied with schemes +for his annual exhibitions of paintings, the continuation of those +begun by Colbert, and the progenitor of the present _Salons_; Alfieri, +the poet and splendid adventurer; Lavoisier, absorbed in chemical +discovery. Here in his earlier years, and later, when he hurried home +from the French Embassy in London on the outbreak of the Revolution, +André de Chénier produced the verse that revived the love of nature, +dead in France since Ronsard, and brought a lyric freshness to poetry +that shamed the dry artificialities so long in vogue. That poetry was +the forerunner of the Romantic movement. In his tranquil soul, he +hoped for the pacific triumph of liberty and equality, and his +delicate spirit abhorred the excesses of the party with whose +principles he sympathized. He was taken into custody at Passy, early +in 1794, while visiting a lady, against whose arrest he had struggled, +locked up in Saint-Lazare for months, convicted, and sent to the +Conciergerie. He was guillotined in Place de la Nation on July 26, +1794, only the day before Robespierre's fall, and was one of the last +and noblest sacrifices to the Terror. We shall look on his +burial-place in our later rambles. Müller has made André de Chénier +the central figure of his "Roll-Call," now in the Louvre. He sits +looking toward us with eyes that see visions, and his expression seems +full of the thought to which he gave utterance when led out to +execution: "I have done nothing for posterity, and yet," tapping his +forehead, "I had something here!" + +In 1795 this little house was surrounded by a great crowd of citizens +come to bury Louis de Chénier, the father. The Section of Brutus +guarded the bier, draped with blue set with silver stars, to suggest +the immortality of the soul! And they gave every honor they could +invent to the "_Pompe funèbre d'un Citoyen Vertueux_," whose worthy +son they had beheaded. + +Joseph-Marie de Chénier lived for many years under suspicion of having +given his assent if not his aid to his brother's death, albeit the +mother always asserted that he had tried to save André. Joseph was a +fiery patriot, and a man of genius withal. He wrote the words of the +"Chant du Départ" which, set to music by Méhul, proved almost as +stirring as the "Marseillaise" to the pulses of the Patriots. Music +was one of the potent intoxicants of the time, and the Revolution was +played and sung along to the strains of these two airs, and of "Ça +ira" and the "Carmagnole." The classic style, which had hitherto +prevailed, gave way before the paltry sentimentality and the tinkling +bombast of the music adored by the mob. David planned processions +marching to patriotic airs, and shallow operas were performed in the +streets. Yet Rouget-de-l'Isle, the captain of engineers who had given +them the "Marseillaise," was cashiered and put into a cell; being +freed, he was left to starve, and no aid came to him from the Empire +or the Bourbons, naturally enough. Louis-Philippe's government found +him in sad straits, in that poor house No. 21 of the poor Passage +Saulnier, and ordered a small pension to be paid to him during his +life. His death came in 1836. + +Joseph-Marie de Chénier was a playwright, also, and in 1798 he had +created a sensation by his "Charles IX.," produced at the Comédie +Française, now the Odéon. In the part of the King, wonderfully made up +and costumed, Talma won his first notable triumph. "This play," cried +Danton from the pit, "will kill royalty as 'Figaro' killed the +nobility." Joseph-Marie lived, not too reputably, but very busily, +until January 10, 1811; a fussy politician, a member of the +Convention, of the Council of Five Hundred, and of the Institute, +Section of the French Tongue and Literature, always detested by his +associates, by the Emperor, and by the common people. + +When the Place Dauphine of Henri IV. was finished, the new industry of +the spectacle-makers established itself in the same buildings we see +to-day, and gave to the place the name of Quai des Lunettes. Later +came the engravers, who found all the light they needed in these +rooms, open on three sides. Among them was a master-engraver, one +Phlipon, bringing his daughter, Marie-Jeanne--her pet name being +Manon--from the house of her birth, in 1754, in Rue de la Lanterne, +now widened into Rue de la Cité. It is not known whether the site of +that house is under the Hôtel-Dieu or the Marché-aux-Fleurs. Their new +home stood, and still stands, on the corner of the northern quay, and +is now numbered 28 Place Dauphine and 41 Quai de l'Horloge. The small +window of the second floor lights the child's alcove bedroom, where +this "daughter of the Seine"--so Madame Roland dubs herself in her +"Memoirs"--looked out on the river, and up at the sky, from over Pont +au Change to beyond the heights of Chaillot, when she could lift her +eyes from her Plutarch, and her thoughts from the altar she was +planning to raise to Rousseau. It must be owned that this all +too-serious girl was a prig; a creature over-fed for its size, the +word has been happily defined. At the age of eleven, she was sent to +the school of the "_Dames de la Congrégation_," in the Augustinian +convent in Rue Neuve-Saint-Etienne. It has been told how that ancient +street was cut in half by Rue Monge. In its eastern section, now named +Rue de Navarre, was Manon's school, directly above the Roman +amphitheatre, discovered only of late years in the course of +excavations in this quarter. The portion that is left of this +impressive relic is in good preservation and in good keeping. Her +school-days done, the girl spent several years in this house before +us, until her mother's death, and her father's tipsiness, sent her +back to her convent for a few months. Then, having refused the many +suitors who had thronged about her in her own home, she found the +philosopher she wanted for a husband in Jean-Marie Roland de la +Platrière, a man much older than she; lank, angular, yellow, bald, +"rather respectable than seductive," in the words of the girl-friend +who had introduced him. But Manon Phlipon doubtless idealized this +wooden formalist who adored her, as she idealized herself and all her +surroundings, including The People, who turned and rent her at the +last. She gave to her husband duty and loyalty, and it was not until +she counted herself dead to earth and its temptations, in her cell at +Sainte-Pélagie, that she addressed her last farewell to him, whom "I +dare not name, one whom the most terrible of passions has not kept +from respecting the barriers of virtue." This farewell was meant for +François-Léonard-Nicolas Buzot, Girondist member of the Assembly +and later of the Convention. He remained unnamed and unknown, until +his name and their secret were told by a bundle of old letters, found +on a book-stall on Quai Voltaire in 1864. She had met him first when +her husband came from Lyons, with petitions to the Assembly, in +February, 1791, and took rooms at the Hôtel Britannique, in Rue +Guénégaud. Her _salon_ soon became the gathering-place of the +Girondists, where those austere men, who considered themselves the +sole salvation of France, were austerely regaled with a bowl of sugar +and a _carafe_ of water. Their hostess could not bother with +frivolities, she, who in her deadly earnestness, renounced the theatre +and pictures, and all the foolish graces of life! The Hôtel +Britannique was the house now numbered 12 Rue Guénégaud, a +wide-fronted, many-windowed mansion of the eighteenth century. Its +stone steps within are well worn, its iron rail is good, its second +floor--the Roland apartment--still shows traces of the ancient +decorations. + + [Illustration: The Girlhood Home of Madame Roland.] + +Buzot lived at No. 3 Quai Malaquais, an ancient mansion now replaced +by the modern structure between the seventeenth-century houses +numbered 1 and 5. For when the Convention outlawed the Girondists, and +Buzot fled, it was decreed that his dwelling should be levelled to the +ground, and on its site should be placed a notice: "_Là fut la maison +du roi Buzot._" So that it would seem that his colleagues of the +Convention had found him an insufferably Superior Person. + +Leaving this apartment on his appointment to office in 1792, Roland +took his wife to the gorgeous _salons_ of the Ministry of the +Interior, in the _hôtel_ built by Leveau for the Comte de Lionne, and +beautified later by Calonne. It occupied the site of the present annex +of the Bank of France just off Rue des Petits-Champs, between Rues +Marsollier and Dalayrac. Here, during his two terms of office in 1792 +and 1793, Roland had the aid of his wife's pen, as well as the +allurements of her personal influence, in the cause to which she had +devoted herself. The masculine strength of her pen was weakened, it is +true, by too sharp a feminine point, and she embittered the Court, the +Cordeliers, the Jacobins, all equally against her and her party. For +"this woman who was a great man," in Louis Blanc's true words, was as +essentially womanly as was Marie Antoinette; and these two most +gracious and pathetic figures of their time were yet unconscious +workers for evil to France. The Queen made impassable the breach +between the throne and the people; Madame Roland hastened on the +Terror. And each of them was doing exactly what she thought it right +to do! + +On January 23, 1793, two days after the King's death, Roland left +office forever and removed to a house in Rue de la Harpe, opposite the +Church of Saint-Cosme. That church stood on the triangle made by the +meeting of Rues de l'École-de-Médecine and Racine with Boulevard +Saint-Germain. On the eastern side of that boulevard, once the eastern +side of Rue de la Harpe, where it meets modern Rue des Écoles, stood +the Roland house. The students and studentesses, who sip their coffee +and beer on the pavement of Vachette's, are on the scene of Madame +Roland's arrest, on the night between May 31st and June 1st. On the +former day, seeing the end so near, Roland had fled. His wife was +taken to the prison of the Abbaye, and given the cell which was to be +tenanted, six weeks later, by Charlotte Corday. Released on June 22d +and returned to her home in Rue de la Harpe, she was re-arrested on +the 24th and locked up in Sainte-Pélagie. It was an old prison, long +kept for the detention of "_femmes et filles, dont la conduite est +onéreuse_," and its character had not been bettered by the character +of the female prisoners sent there by the Terror. This high-minded +woman, subjected to infamous sights and sounds, preserved her serenity +and fortitude in a way to extort the "stupefied admiration" of her +fellow-prisoners, as one of these has testified. It was only in her +cell that the great heart gave way. There she found solace, during her +four months' confinement, with Thomson's "Seasons," "done into choice +French," with Shaftesbury and an English dictionary, with Tacitus, and +her girlhood companion, Plutarch. And here she busied herself with her +"Memoirs," "writing under the axe," in her own phrase. In the solitude +of her cell, indeed, she was sometimes disturbed by the unseemly +laughter of the ladies of the Comédie Française, at supper with the +prison-governor in an adjacent cell. We shall see, later, how these +ladies came to be here. More acceptable sounds might have come almost +to her ears; that of the hymn-singing or of the maiden laughter of +the girls in her old convent, only a few steps away. The +prison-register contains her description, probably as accurate as +matter-of-fact: "Height, five feet; hair and eyebrows, dark chestnut; +brown eyes; medium nose; ordinary mouth; oval face, round chin, high +forehead." From Sainte-Pélagie she went to the Conciergerie on +November 1st, the day after the guillotining of the Girondists, and +thence in eight days to her own death. It has been told, by every +writer, that she could look over at her girlhood home, as her tumbril +crossed Pont au Change. It has not been told, so plainly as it +deserves, that her famous utterance on the platform was made fine for +historic purposes, as was done with Cambronne's magnificent +monosyllable at Waterloo. She really said: "_O Liberté, comme on t'a +jouée!_" With these words, natural and spontaneous and without pose, +she is, indeed, "beautiful, amazonian, graceful to the eye, more so to +the mind." + +Within a few days of her death died her husband and her lover. Roland, +on hearing of her execution, in his hiding-place near Rouen, thrust +his cane-sword into his breast; Buzot, wandering and starving in the +fields, was found half-eaten by wolves. She had confided her daughter +Eudora and her "Memoirs" to the loyal friend Bosc, who hid the +manuscript in the forest of Montmorenci, and in 1795 published it for +the daughter's benefit. The original is said to be in existence, on +coarse gray paper, stained with her tears. Sainte-Beuve speaks of them +as "delicious and indispensable memories," deserving a place "beside +the most sublime and eloquent effusions of a brave yet tender +philosophy." When he praises that style, clearer and more concise than +that of Madame de Staël, "that other daughter of Rousseau," he does +not say all; he might have added that, like Rousseau, she occasionally +speaks of matters not quite convenient to hear. + +It is difficult to refrain from undue admiration and pity, to remain +temperate and modest, when one dwells on the character and qualities, +the blameless life and the ignominious death, of Marie-Jean-Antoine- +Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet. We may look up at his +thoughtful face in bronze on Quai Conti, alongside the Mint, where he +lived in the _entresol_ of the just completed building, when appointed +Director of the Hôtel de la Monnaie by his old friend Turgot, in 1774. +We may look upon the house in Rue Servandoni where he hid, and from +which he escaped to his death. His other Paris homes have no existence +now. His college of Navarre--oldest of all those in the +University--has been made over into the École Polytechnique; and the +house he built for himself in Rue Chantereine, which was afterward +owned by Josephine Beauharnais, has long since disappeared. When only +twenty-two years of age he wrote his famous essay on the Integral +Calculus, when twenty-six he was elected to the Academy of Sciences. +Made Perpetual Secretary of that body in 1777, it came in the course +of his duties to deliver eulogies on Pascal, d'Alembert, Buffon, and +Franklin, and others of the great guild of science. These are more +than perfunctory official utterances, they are of an eloquence that +shows his lovable character as well as his scientific authority. He +contributed largely to Diderot's Encyclopædia, and put forth many +astronomical, mathematical, and theological treatises during his busy +life. He wrote earnestly in favor of the independence of the American +colonies, and was one of the earliest advocates of the people's cause +in France. But he was much more than a man of science and of letters; +he was a man with a great soul, "the Seneca of the modern school," +says Lamartine; the most kindly and tolerant friend of humanity, and +protector of its rights, since Socrates. He believed in the indefinite +perfectibility of the human race, and he wrote his last essay, proving +its progress upward, while hiding in a garret from those not yet quite +perfect fellow-beings, who were howling for his head! He was beloved +by Benjamin Franklin and by Thomas Paine. Members of the Convention +together, he and Paine prepared the new Constitution of 1793, in which +political document they found no place for theological dogma. +Robespierre prevented the adoption of this Constitution, having taken +God under his own protection. Condorcet made uncompromising criticism, +and was put on the list of those to be suspected and got rid of. Too +broad to ally himself with the Girondists, he was yet proscribed with +them, on June 2, 1793. His friends had forced him to go into hiding, +until he might escape. They had asked Madame Vernet--widow of the +painter Claude-Joseph, mother of Carle, grandmother of Horace--to give +shelter to one of the proscribed, and she had asked only if he were +an honest man. This loyal woman concealed him in her garret for nearly +one year, and would have kept him longer, but that he feared for her +safety, and for that of his wife and daughter, who might be tracked in +their visits to him by night. He had finished his "Esquisse d'un +Tableau historique des Progrès de l'Esprit humain," full of hope for +humanity, with no word of reproach or repining, and then he wrote his +last words: "Advice of one proscribed, to his Daughter." This is to be +read to-day for its lofty spirit. He gives her the names of certain +good men who will befriend her, and among them is Benjamin Franklin +Bache, the son of our Franklin's daughter Sally, who had been in Paris +with his grandfather. + +Then, this letter finished, early on the morning of April 5, 1794, he +left it on his table and slipped out, unseen by the good widow Vernet, +from the three-storied plaster-fronted house now No. 15 of Rue +Servandoni, and still unaltered, as is almost the entire street. +Through it he hurried to Rue de Vaugirard, where he stood undecided +for a moment, the prison of the Luxembourg on his left, and the prison +of the Carmelites on his right, both full of his friends. And on the +walls, all about, were placards with big-lettered warning that death +was the penalty for harboring the proscribed. Here at the corner, he +ran against one Sarret, cousin of Madame Vernet, who went with him, +showing the way through narrow streets to the Barrière du Maine, which +was behind the present station of Mont-Parnasse. Safely out of the +town, the two men took the road to Fontenay-aux-Roses, and at night +Sarret turned back. Condorcet lost his way, and wandered about the +fields for two days, sleeping in the quarries of Clamart, until driven +by hunger into a wretched inn. Demanding an omelet, he was asked how +many eggs he would have; the ignorant-learned man ordered a dozen, too +many for the working-man he was personating, and suspicions were +aroused. The villagers bound and dragged him to the nearest guardhouse +at Bourg-la-Reine. He died in his cell that night, April 7, 1794, by +poison, it is believed. For he wore a ring containing poison; the same +sort of poison, it is said, that was carried by Napoleon, with which +he tried--or pretended to try--to kill himself at Fontainebleau. In +the modern village of Bourg-la-Reine, five and a half miles from +Paris, the principal square bears the name of Condorcet, and holds his +bust in marble. + +"_La Veuve Condorcet_" appears in the Paris _Bottin_ every year until +1822, when she died. She had been imprisoned on the identification of +her husband's body, but was released after Robespierre's death. She +passed the Duplay house every day during those years, going to her +little shop at 232 Rue Saint-Honoré. There she had set up a linen +business on the ground floor, and above, she painted portraits in a +small way. She was a woman of rare beauty and of fine mind, with all +womanly graces and all womanly courage. Married in 1786, and much +younger than her husband, timorous before his real age and his +seeming austerity, she had grown up to him, and had learned to love +that "volcano covered with snow," as his friend d'Alembert had said he +was. She had a pretty gift with her pen, and her translation into +French of Adam Smith's "Theory of Moral Sentiments" is still extant. +Her little _salon_ came to be greatly frequented in her beautiful old +age. + +Condorcet's famous fellow-worker in science, Antoine-Laurent +Lavoisier, was guillotined in May, 1794, the two men having the same +number of years, fifty-one. He was condemned, not for being a chemist, +albeit his enlightened judges were of the opinion that "the Republic +has no need of chemists," but because he had filled, with justice and +honesty, his office of Farmer-General under royalty. Their +contemporaries of nearly equal age, Gaspard Monge and Claude-Louis +Berthollet, escaped the guillotine, and were among the _savants_ in +the train of General Bonaparte in his Italian and Egyptian campaigns. +After many years of useful labors, they died peacefully under the +Restoration. + +Pierre-Simon Laplace, of almost equal years with these four, lived to +a greater age, and received higher honors from the Emperor and the +Bourbons. Coming from his birth-place in Calvados in 1767, his first +Paris home to be found is in Rue des Noyers; one side of which ancient +street now forms that southern section of Boulevard Saint-Germain +opposite Rue des Anglais, its battered houses seeming to shrink back +from the publicity thrust upon them. In that one now numbered 57 in +the boulevard, formerly No. 33 Rue des Noyers, Alfred de Musset was +born in 1810; and in the same row lived Laplace in 1777. In 1787 we +find him in Rue Mazarine, and in 1790 in Rue Louis-le-Grand, and this +latter residence represents his only desertion of the University side +of the Seine. He returned to that bank when placed by the Consuls in +the Senate, and made his home in 1801 at No. 24 Rue des +Grands-Augustins, and in the following year at No. 2 Rue Christine. +These stately mansions of that period, only a step apart, remain as he +left them. When Laplace was made Chancellor of the Senate, in 1805, +his official residence was in the Luxembourg, and there it continued +until 1815, the year of the Restoration. His private residence, from +1805 to 1809, was at No. 6 Rue de Tournon, a house still standing in +all its senatorial respectability. He gave this up, and again took up +his quarters in the Luxembourg, when made a Count of the Empire and +Vice-President of the Senate. + +From the Medician palace, which appears in the _Bottin_ of those years +as simple No. 19 Rue de Vaugirard, Laplace removed to No. 51 of that +street, when the returned Bourbons made him a Peer of France. This +house, near Rue d'Assas--named for the Chevalier Nicolas d'Assas, the +heroic captain of the regiment of Auvergne during the Seven Years' +War--is unaltered since his time. His last change of abode was made in +1818, to Rue du Bac, 100, where he died in 1827. It is a mansion of +old-fashioned dignity, with a large court in front and a larger garden +behind, and is now numbered 108. The growing importance of his +successive dwellings, every one of which may be visited to-day, mark +his growth in importance as a man of state. The growth of the man of +science is represented by his colossal "La Mécanique Céleste," which +first appeared in 1799, and was continued by successive volumes until +its completion in 1825. Its title, rather than his titles, should be +inscribed on his monument. + +A little later than these famous _confrères_, Georges Cuvier appears +in Paris--in Hugo's half-truth--"with one eye on the book of Genesis +and the other on nature, endeavoring to please bigoted reaction by +reconciling fossils with texts, and making the mastodons support +Moses." His first home, at the present 40 Rue de Seine, is a fine +old-fashioned mansion. He removed to the opposite side of that street +in 1810, and there remained until 1816, his house being now replaced +by the new and characterless structure at No. 35. Full of character, +however, is his official residence as Professor in the Jardin des +Plantes, which took again its ancient title of Jardin du Roi during +the Restoration. "_La Maison de Cuvier_" is a charming old building +near the garden-entrance in Rue Cuvier, and within is the bust of this +most gifted teacher of his time. His genuine devotion to science and +his tolerance for all policies carried him through the several changes +of government during his life. He completed the Napoleonic conquest of +Italy and Holland by his introduction of the French methods of +education, perfected by him. The Bourbons made him Baron and +Chancellor of the University, and the Orleans king elevated him to +the Peerage of France. He died in 1832. + +Paul-François-Jean-Nicolas, Comte de Barras--soldier, adventurer, a +power in the Convention, the power of the Directory, practically +dictator for a while--has added to the hilarity of the sceptical +student of history by his "Memoirs," kept concealed since his death, +in 1829, until their publication within a few years. Splendidly +mendacious in these pages as he was in life, Barras posed always as +the man on horseback of _his "13 Vendémiaire_." On that day, +unwittingly yet actually, he put into the saddle--where he stayed--his +young friend Buonaparte, whose qualities he had discovered at the +siege of Toulon. This artillery officer, while planting his batteries +to cover every approach to the Tuileries, where cowered the frightened +Convention, took personal command of the guns that faced Saint-Roch. +The front of that church still shows the scars of the bullets that +stopped the rush of the Sections in that direction. This battery was +placed at the Rue Saint-Honoré end of the narrow lane leading from +that street to the gardens of the Tuileries--there being then no Rue +de Rivoli, you will bear in mind. This lane was known as Rue du +Dauphin, because of the royal son who had used it, going between the +Tuileries and the church; after that day, it was popularly called Rue +du 13-Vendémiaire, until it received its official appellation of Rue +Saint-Roch, when widened and aligned in 1807. At this time there were +only two houses in the street, near its southern end, and one of them +was a _hôtel-garni_, in which young Buonaparte caught a short sleep +on that night of October 5, 1795. The oldest structure in Rue +Saint-Roch to-day is that with the two numbers 4 and 6, and it is +known to have been already a _hôtel-garni_ in the first years of the +nineteenth century, when it was refaced. So that it is well within +belief that we have found here Buonaparte's head-quarters for that one +night. + +Let us now, crossing the river, get on the ground of positive proof, +safe from doubts or conjectures. The Duchesse d'Abrantès, wife of that +adorable ruffian, Andoche Junot, made a duke in 1807 by the Emperor, +writes in her "Memoirs": "To this day, whenever I pass along Quai +Conti, I cannot help looking up at the garret windows at the left +angle of the house, on the third floor. That was Napoleon's chamber, +when he paid us a visit; and a neat little room it was. My brother +used to occupy the one next it." Madame Junot had been Mlle. Laure +Permon, whose father, an army contractor, had brought his family to +Paris early in 1785, and leased for his residence the Hôtel Sillery, +formerly the Petit Hôtel Guénégaud. Madame Permon, a Corsican lady, +had been an early friend of Madame Buonaparte, and had rocked young +Buonaparte in his cradle; so that he was called by his first name in +her family, as her daughter shows in this quotation. Finding him at +the École Royale Militaire in Paris, she invited him to her house for +frequent visits, once for a week's stay, whenever permission could be +got from the school authorities. He was a lank, cadaverous, +dishevelled lad, solitary, taciturn, and morose; brooding over the +poverty that had forced him to seek an unpaid-for scholarship, and not +readily making friends with the more fortunate Albert Permon. Yet he +came often, and was nowhere so content as in this house before us. It +stands far back from the front of the quay, half-hidden between the +Institute and the Mint, and is numbered 13 Quai Conti, and its +entrance is on the side at No. 2 Impasse Conti. Its upper portion is +now occupied by a club of American art students. Constructed by +Mansart, its rooms are of admirable loftiness and proportion, and +retain much of their sixteenth-century decoration. Here in this +_salon_ after dinner, young Buonaparte would storm about the "indecent +luxury" of his schoolmates, or sit listening to Madame Permon, soothed +by her reminiscent prattle about Corsica and his mother, to whom he +always referred as Madame Letitia. Here he first showed himself to the +daughters in his new sub-lieutenant's uniform, before joining his +regiment on October 30, 1785, and they laughed at his thin legs in +their big boots. + + [Illustration: No. 13 Quai Conti.] + +The École Supérieure de Guerre, commonly called the "École Militaire," +remains nearly as when constructed under Louis XV., but it is +impossible to fix on the room allotted to this student during his year +there--a small, bare room, with an iron cot, one wooden chair, and a +wash-stand with drawers. The chapel, now unused, remains just as it +was when he received his confirmation in it. He arrived at this +school, from his preparatory school at Brienne, on the evening of +October 19, 1784, one of a troop of five lads in the charge of a +priest. They had disembarked, late that afternoon, at Port Saint-Paul, +from the huge, clumsy boat that brought freight and passengers, twice +a week, from Burgundy and the Aube down the Seine. The priest gave +the lads a simple dinner near their landing-place, and led them across +the river and along the southern quays--where the penniless young +Buonaparte bought a "Gil-Blas" from a stall, and a comrade in funds +paid for it--and, stopping for prayers at Saint-Germain-des-Prés, he +handed them over to the school authorities. + +From that moment every hour of young Buonaparte's year in Paris can be +accounted for. And no foundation can be discovered or invented for the +fable, mendaciously upheld by the tablet, placed by the Second Empire +in the hallway of No. 5 Quai Conti, which claims a garret in that +tall, up-climbing, old house as his lodging at that time or at any +later time. This flimsy legend need no longer be listened to. Not far +away, however, is a garret that did harbor the sub-lieutenant in the +autumn of 1787. It is to M. Lenôtre that we owe this delightful find. +Arriving in Paris from Corsica, after exactly two years of absence, +Buonaparte took room No. 9, on the third floor of the Hôtel de +Cherbourg, Rue du Four-Saint-Honoré. That street is now Rue +Vauvilliers, its eastern side taken up by the Halles, and its present +No. 33, on the western side, is the former _hôtel-garni_, quite +unchanged as to its fabric. Here he was always writing in his room, +going out only for the frugal meals that cost him a few _sous_, and +here he had his first amorous adventure, recited by him in cynical +detail under the date: "_Jeudi 22 Novembre 1787, à Paris, Hôtel de +Cherbourg, Rue du Four-Saint-Honoré._" + +On August 10, 1792, Buonaparte saw the mob carry and sack the +Tuileries. He was in disgrace with the army authorities, having +practically deserted to Corsica, and he had come back for +reinstatement and a job. In his Saint-Helena "Memorial," he says that +he was then lodging at the Hôtel de Metz in Rue du Mail. This is +evidently the same lodging placed by many writers in Rue d'Aboukir, +for many of the large houses that fronted on the first-named street +extended through to the latter, as shall be shown later. The hotel is +gone, and the great mercantile establishment at No. 22 Rue du Mail +covers its site. + +Gone, too, is the shabbily furnished little villa in Rue Chantereine, +where he first called on Josephine de Beauharnais, where he married +that faded coquette--dropping the _u_ from his name then, in March, +1796--and whence he went to his _18 Brumaire_. The court-yard, filled +with resplendent officers on that morning, is now divided between the +two courts numbered 58 and 60 Rue de la Victoire; that name having +been officially granted to the street, on his return from his Italian +campaign in 1797. The villa, kept by the Emperor, and lent at times to +some favorite general, was not entirely torn down until 1860. Its site +is now covered by the houses Nos. 58 and 60. + +Rue Chantereine was, in those days, almost a country road, bordered by +small villas; two of them were associated with Napoleon Bonaparte. In +one of them, Mlle. Eléonora Dennelle gave birth, on December 13, 1806, +to a boy, who grew up into a startling likeness of the Emperor, as to +face and figure, but who inherited from him only the half-madness of +genius. He lived through the Empire, the Restoration, the Second +Republic, the Second Empire, and into the Republic that has come to +stay, dying on April 15, 1881. To another modest dwelling in this same +street, there came the loving and devoted Polish lady, Madame +Walewski, who had thrown herself into the Emperor's arms, when she was +full of faith in his intent to liberate her native land. Their son, +Alexandre Walewski, born in 1810, was a brilliant figure in Paris, +where he came to reside after the fall of Warsaw. A gifted soldier, +diplomat, and writer, he died in 1868. + +So, of the roofs that sheltered the boyhood of Napoleon, three still +remain. Of those loftier roofs that sheltered his manhood, there are +also three still to be seen. In the Paris _Bottin_ of the first year +of the nineteenth century, the name of Napoleon Bonaparte appears as a +member of the Institute, Section of Mechanism, living in the palace of +the Luxembourg. In 1805 his address is changed to the palace of the +Tuileries, and he is qualified "Emperor of the French;" enlarging that +title in 1806 to "Emperor of the French and King." The Tuileries are +swept away, and Saint-Cloud has left only a scar. The Luxembourg +remains, and so, too, the Palais de l'Élysée, where he resided for a +while, and the _château_ of Malmaison has been restored and +refurnished in the style of Josephine, as near as may be, and filled +with souvenirs of her and of her husband. Her body lies, with that of +her daughter Hortense, in the church of the nearest village, Reuil, +and his remains rest under the dome of the Invalides--his last roof. + +There is a curious letter, said to be still in existence, written by +young Buonaparte to Talma, asking for the loan of a few francs, to be +repaid "out of the first kingdom I conquer." He goes on to say that he +has found nothing to do, that Barras promises much and does little, +and that the writer is at the end of his resources and his patience. +This letter was evidently written at that poverty-stricken period +between 1792 and 1795, when he was idly tramping Paris streets with +Junot, the lovable and generous comrade from Toulon; or with +Bourrienne, now met first since their school-days at Brienne, who was +to become the Emperor's patient confidential secretary. At that period +Talma had fought his way to his own throne. Intimate as he had been +with Mirabeau, Danton, Desmoulins, Joseph-Marie de Chénier and David, +he had, also, made friends with the Corsican officer, either during +these years of the letter or probably earlier. He made him free of the +stage of the Théâtre Français, and lent him books. His friendship +passed on to the general, the Consul, and the Emperor, and it was +gossipped that he had taught Bonaparte to dress and walk and play +Napoleon. Talma always denied this, avowing that the other man was, by +nature and training, the greater actor! + +Joseph-François Talma used to say that he first heard of a theatre, +from seeing and asking about the old Théâtre de l'Hôtel de Bourgogne, +whose entrance was in Rue Mauconseil, opposite the place of his birth, +on January 15, 1763. As he grew up he learned a good deal more about +the theatre, for he went early and often. He was only fifteen when he +was one of the audience in the Théâtre Français, on that night of the +crowning of Voltaire, and one of the crowd that tried to unharness the +horses, and drag the old man from the Tuileries to his house on the +quay. By day the lad was learning dentistry, his father's +profession--it was then a trade--and the two went to London to +practice. For a while young Talma got experience in that specialty +from the jaws of the sailor-men at Greenwich, and got gayer and more +congenial experience in amateur theatricals in town. They returned to +Paris, and the father's sign, "_M. Talma, Dentiste_," was hung by the +doorway of No. 3 Rue Jean-Jacques-Rousseau, next to the corner of Rue +Saint-Honoré. From the house that was there before the present modern +structure, young Talma went across the river to the Comédie Française, +on the night of November 21, 1787, and made his _début_ as Seide in +"Mahomet." + +In our chapter on Molière, we left the Comédie Française, on its +opening night in 1689, at the house in Rue de l'Ancienne-Comédie. +There it remained for nearly a century, until forced, by overflowing +houses, to find a larger hall. While this was in course of +construction the company removed, in 1770, to the Salle des Machines +in the Tuileries, already transformed into a theatre by the Regent +for his ballets. Here the troupe played until the completion of the +new theatre in 1782. That new Comédie Française is now the Second +Théâtre Français, the Odéon, the second largest hall in Paris. It was +burned in 1799 and again in 1818. In 1789 it took the title of Théâtre +National; in 1793, Théâtre de l'Égalité was the newest name forced +upon the unwilling comedians, who were, as always with that profession, +fond of swelldom and favorites of princes. The house being in the very +centre of the Cordeliers quarter, in _la Section Marat_, there was +always constant friction between players and audience, and by 1793 +this had so exasperated the ruling powers--the _sans-culottes_--that +nearly the whole troupe was sent to prison, charged with having +insulted the Patriots on the boards, and with having given "proofs of +marked incivism." The ladies of the company, aristocrats by strength +of their sex, occupied cells in Sainte-Pélagie, where we have already +listened to their merriment. They escaped trial through the +destruction of their _dossiers_ by a humane member of the Committee of +Safety, and the _9 Thermidor_ set them free. Talma had already left +the troupe in April, 1791, driven away, with two or three friends, by +dissensions and jealousies. They went over to the new house which had +been constructed, in 1789, at a corner of the Palais-Royal, by +enterprising contractors with influential politicians between them. It +was called at first Théâtre Français de la Rue de Richelieu, and, in +1792, Théâtre de la République. On Talma's desertion of the old +house, there began a legal process against him, exactly like that +instituted by the same Comédie Française against M. Coquelin, a +century later, when the theatre had for its lawyer the grandson of its +advocate of 1792; and the decision of the two tribunals was the same +in effect. Talma stayed at the theatre in the Palais-Royal, to which +he drew the discerning public, and, after ten years of rivalry, the +two troupes joined hands on those boards, and so the Comédie Française +came to the present "House of Molière." + +It would seem that Talma was a shrewd man of business, and drew money +in his private rôle of landlord. He owned the house in which Mirabeau +died, in Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin, and always referred to the great +tribune as "_mon ancien locataire, Mirabeau_." Just beyond, in Rue +Chantereine, Talma was attracted by the small villa built by the +architect Ledoux, for Condorcet, it is said. Perhaps the actor had +seen, in that street, an even more plausible actor, Giuseppe Balsamo +by name, calling himself the Count Cagliostro. He had established +himself in one of the villas in this street, on coming to Paris to ply +his trade, toward 1784. And in 1778 the wonder-working Mesmer had set +up his machinery and masqueraded as a magician in a house in the same +street. Benjamin Franklin went there, one of a government commission +sent to investigate the miracles. + +In his new residence in Rue Chantereine, Talma welcomed his friends +among the Revolutionary leaders, and gave them _bouillon_ in the +kitchen, when he came home from the theatre at night. In 1795 he sold +the villa to Josephine de Beauharnais, and he always said that her +first payment was made to him from moneys sent to her, by her husband, +from Italy. It is not known whether Talma owned, or leased, an +apartment in No. 15 Quai Voltaire, where he lived from 1802 until +1806. The house, now No. 17, one of the ancient stately structures +facing the quay, is somewhat narrower than its neighbors. During the +ten years between 1807 and 1817 he had an apartment at No. 6 Rue de +Seine; possibly in that pavilion in the court which was built by +Marguerite de Valois for her residence, and which has been heightened +by having two new floors slipped between the lower and top stories, +leaving these latter and the façade much as she built them. His home, +from 1818 to 1821, at No. 14 Rue de Rivoli, is replaced by the new +structures at the western end of that street, which is entirely +renumbered. After two more changes on the northern bank, he finally +settled at No. 9 Rue de la Tour-des-Dames. Until 1822 there was still +to be seen the tower of the windmill owned by the "_Dames de +Montmartre_," which gave its name to this street. At its number 3, a +small _hôtel_, circular-fronted and most coquettish, lived Mlle. Mars, +it is believed, and here she was the victim of the earliest recorded +theft of an actress's jewels. The simple and stately house, of a low +curtain between two wings, with two stories and a mansard roof, +bearing the number 9, is the scene of Talma's last years and of his +death, on October 19, 1826. His final appearance had been on June 11th +of that year, in his marvellous personation of Charles VI. At this +house we shall see Dumas visit the old actor, who had seen Voltaire! +Dumas says that Talma spared nothing in his aim at accuracy, historic +and archæologic, when creating a new rôle or mounting a new play. +Indeed, we know that Talma was the first great realist in costume and +scenery, as we know that he first brought the statues of tragedy down +to human proportions and gave them life-blood. Dumas dwells especially +on the voice of the great tragedian--a voice that was glorious and +sincere, and in anguish was a sob. + +There is a glowing portrait of Talma from the pen of Chateaubriand, in +which he makes plain that the tragedian, while he was, himself, his +century and ancient centuries in one, had been profoundly affected by +the terrible scenes of the Terror which he had witnessed; and it was +that baleful inspiration that sent the concentrated passion of +patriotism leaping in torrents from his heart. "His grace--not an +ordinary grace--seized one like fate. Black ambition, remorse, +jealousy, sadness of soul, bodily agony, human grief, the madness sent +by the gods and by adversity--_that_ was what he knew. Just his coming +on the scene, just the sound of his voice, were overpoweringly tragic. +Suffering and contemplation mingled on his brow, breathed in his +postures, his gestures, his walk, his motionlessness." + +Thomas Carlyle seems strangely placed in the stalls of the Théâtre +Français, yet he sat there, at the end of his twelve-days' visit to +Paris in 1825. "On the night before leaving," he writes, "I found that +I ought to visit one theatre, and by happy accident came upon Talma +playing there. A heavy, shortish, numb-footed man, face like a +warming-pan for size, and with a strange, most ponderous, yet delicate +expression in the big, dull-glowing black eyes and it. Incomparably +the best actor I ever saw. Play was 'Oedipe'; place the Théâtre +Français." + + [Illustration: Monogram from former entrance of the Cour du Commerce, + believed to be the initials of the owner, one Girardot.] + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Stones of Paris in History and +Letters, Volume I (of 2), by Benjamin Ellis Martin and Charlotte M. Martin + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41914 *** |