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diff --git a/41914.txt b/41914.txt deleted file mode 100644 index cd895b8..0000000 --- a/41914.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,6819 +0,0 @@ -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 - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: The Stones of Paris in History and Letters, Volume I (of 2) - -Author: Benjamin Ellis Martin - Charlotte M. Martin - -Release Date: January 25, 2013 [EBook #41914] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STONES OF PARIS, VOL I *** - - - - -Produced by Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - - -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: Moliere] - - - - - 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 - - Moliere 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, Clement et Cie._ - - - Moliere (from the portrait by Mignard in the Musee Conde, at - Chantilly) Frontispiece - - PAGE - The so-called Hotel de la Reine Blanche (from a photograph - of the Commission du Vieux Paris) facing 28 - - Balcony of the Hotel de Lauzun-Pimodan, on Ile 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-Severin 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 - - Clement Marot (from the portrait by Porbus le Jeune, in a - private collection) facing 94 - - Rene Descartes (from the portrait by Franz Hals, in the - Musee du Louvre) facing 100 - - The Stage Door of Moliere's Second Theatre in Paris 114 - - The Stamp of the Comedie Francaise 121 - - The Moliere 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 Hotel de Ranes, and - in the distance is No. 13 facing 160 - - La Fontaine (from the portrait by Rigaud-y-Ros) - facing 176 - - Boileau-Despreaux (from the portrait by Largilliere) - facing 184 - - Voltaire (from the statue by Houdon in the foyer of the - Comedie Francaise) facing 192 - - The Hotel 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 Carre 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 Francois 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 mediaeval 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 Sevigne. 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 -_chateaux_ 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 _chateau_ -of the Louvre to our _chateau_ 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: "_A cette epoque, la grande ville du roi Henri -n'etait 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 "Proces -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 _hotel_ 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 _hotellerie_ for the traveller of better class. During the absences -of the owners of grand city mansions, their _maitres-d'hotel_ 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 _hotel-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 -_hotels-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 Chateaubriand'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 Hotel 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 -Hotel de Ville, in the bureau of the Conservation du Plan de Paris, to -M. Charles Sellier of the Musee Carnavalet, to M. Monval, Librarian of -the Comedie Francaise, to M. G. Lenotre, 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 _flaner_, 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 Francois -Coppee 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 Despreaux, 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 archaeologist, 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 Ile de la Cite. 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 Cloitre-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 _depot_ 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 facade 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 mediaeval 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 Brantome -concerning certain local traditions of the Tour de Nesle: "_Je ne puis -dire si cela 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 cyclopaedias 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 Hotel des Ursins. And all -about us, below, lies the little that is left of _la Cite_, 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 mediaeval 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, Francois, 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--Ile Notre-Dame and Ile aux Vaches--have united their shores to -make Ile Saint-Louis. The third island, most easterly of all--Ile des -Javiaux of earliest times, known later as Ile 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 Bievre, away -off on the southern outskirts. This aqueduct started at the point -where later was built the village of Arceuil--named from the mediaeval, -or late, Latin _Arculi_--where was quarried the best stone that -builded old Paris; and curved with the valley of the Bievre like a -huge railway viaduct, leaving that stream when it bent in its course -to the Seine near the Salpetriere, 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 Genevieve--one tower of her abbey still shows -gray above the garden-walls of Lycee 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 Greve, 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 mediaeval 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 _sebile_--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 Hotel-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 dite de Saint Louis_," commonly called the "_Hotel 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 Bievre; 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-Genevieve, 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 Bievre 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 mediaeval 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 -facades 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 mediaeval 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 Hotel 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 -Hotel-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 _Cite_. To meet this last outlay, he was lavish with the money of -the citizens, notably of Gerard 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 Chateau-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 Chatelet 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'Orleans, and now as Rue Saint-Jacques. This _chatelet_ -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 Chatelet 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 -Chatelet 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 _Cite_ 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 Fosses-Saint-Jacques, -it safeguarded the tomb and the abbey of Sainte Genevieve, and so bent -sharply around toward the northeast, within the line of present Rues -Thouin, du Cardinal-Lemoine, and des Fosses-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 Hotel 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-Andre-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'Ecole-de-Medecine 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 Pantheon. 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 Guenegaud 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 Hotel de Navarre, -the property of Louis of Orleans before he became Louis XII. In style -it was closely akin to the Hotel 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-Andre-des-Arts, and the very ancient walls in the rear court of -the latter house may have belonged to the Hotel 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 Cite_ on the island, under the jurisdiction of the bishop; the -northern suburb, _outre-Grand-Pont_ or _la Ville_, governed by the -_Prevot des Marchands_; the southern suburb, _outre-Petit-Pont_ or -_l'Universite_, appertaining to the "_Recteur_"; all ruled by the -_Prevot_ 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 mediaeval -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 Pare, 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 -mediaeval 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 Hotel 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 mediaeval 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-a-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 -generale des Hopitaux 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 "_ecuyer 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 facade, 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 facade 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-Pelagie, 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 _hotel_ 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 facade, 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, _protege_ 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 -Francois 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 Bievre with his splendid scarlet, says Rabelais; so -that it took the name of _la Riviere 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, Moliere'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, -Orleans, Anjou. A great royal minister, Maximilien de Bethune, 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 _benitier_, 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 ile enchantee, - Je la laissai deserte et la trouve habitee; - Quelque Amphion nouveau, sans l'aide des macons, - En superbes palais a change 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 etranger dans l'Ile_." - - [Illustration: Balcony of Hotel de Lauzan-Pimodan on Ile de - Saint-Louis.] - -Pont Louis-Philippe--an absurdly modern issue from this ancient -quarter--carries us to the quay of the Hotel 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 Etienne Marcel, staring at the river that was his -grave, we cross Place de l'Hotel-de-Ville, once Place de Greve, 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 Hotel 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-Honore, 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 a 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 -delicatesse_"! - -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 Abbe 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 Etienne 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 Hotel -de Bourgogne; which, under its earlier name in older annals as the -Hotel 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 Hotel 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-Piete, 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 -Celestins, 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 Poterne des Barres. 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 Celestins. The black -robes, striped white, of these six monks, made them known popularly as -"_les Barres_." 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 Poterne 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 Hotel 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 Poterne 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 Ile 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 Platriere 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 Coquilliere and Jean-Jacques-Rousseau. Nearly opposite -the end of this latter street, where Rue Saint-Honore 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 Ile -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 Ile Notre-Dame and Ile 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 Ile Saint-Louis. - -And now, we have seen _la Cite_, _la Ville_, _l'Universite_, 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 Hotel 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'Orleans. 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 role on his stage, played with transient -success by Philippe-Egalite, 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 Fremiet'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 Hotel Saint-Paul, and carried her unclean court to -Hotel 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'Orleans 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 Hotel 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 -Temeraire_"--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 Hotel des Tournelles, almost deserted within, and -altogether without. For the populace crowded about this Hotel 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 Francois 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 Hotel 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 -Francois, 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 _hotel_ 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 Hotel d'Artois" -to the monks of Sainte-Catherine du Val-des-Ecoliers, 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 "Pere 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 Confrerie de la -Passion de Notre Seigneur, Jesus-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, Francois 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 _Confrerie_, 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 mediaeval 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 -Greneta, and the buildings numbered 28 in the latter and 142 in the -former street. There, in 1402, the _confreres_ 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 -Hotel de Flandres, not yet cut up by its purchaser at the royal sale, -and settled finally, in 1548, in the Theatre de l'Hotel de Bourgogne. -By then an edict of Francois 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 mediaeval 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 "_tres belle moralite, 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 Gerard, 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 role of "_le Pere 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 Theodore 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 Francois 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 Hotel de Bourgogne became La Comedie 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 Greve; 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 -Comediens 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 Moliere. 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 Moliere. - -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 Francois, since feminized into Rue Francaise. 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 Etienne 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 Hotel 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 Orleans, 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 -_chateau_, 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 Etienne 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-Severin.] - - - - -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 Heloise 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-Despreaux has -mounted this staircase, for he certainly visited this abode of the -Abbe Menage, 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 _cite_ inside the City of the -Island. The two gates at the western ends of present Rues du -Cloitre-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-Genevieve, 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 Chalons, whose prior sent -the body, at her request, to Heloise, 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 Pere-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 Hotel-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-Genevieve. 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 -Pantheon. 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 Lycee 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 -Cite_ 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-Chatelet, 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 Hotel-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'Hotel-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 facade 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 mediaeval staircase, its wooden rail -admirably carved, as is left in Paris. And the street of the Mountain -of Sainte-Genevieve 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-Severin 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 Hotel-Dieu, now an exquisite relic of -simple twelfth-century Gothic. Still older had been Saint-Severin, 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-Severin 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-Severin--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 -College de France on all the noise and the newness of modern Rue des -Ecoles. 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-Despreaux, 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 Bievre, 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-Benoit-le-Betourne, 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-Benoit-le-Betourne. The entrance to -its cloisters and gardens was opposite Rue du Cimetiere-Saint-Benoit, -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 Francois 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-Benoit, 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 Francois 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, Francois 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 Francois 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 Bordee. 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 College de Navarre, the college at that -period of Henri III. and of the Duke of Guise, _le Balafre_--its site -and its prestige since taken by the Ecole 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 Baif, -the leaders of the school of "learned poets." They lived in Rue des -Fosses-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-Genevieve 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 Clement 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 Francois 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 Conde. 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 Geneve_," said d'Aubigne, 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 Androuet, 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-Honore, 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 Geneve_." 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 opiniatre_," 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 Clement 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-Pres, 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 College -du Cardinal-Lemoine, in Rue Saint-Victor, and this is his only -residence in Paris known to us. Appointed Cure of Pont l'Eveque, 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 Renee, 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," Etienne 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: Clement 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 Francois I. to make him -the head of the great College Royal, planned--and no more than -planned--by the King on the site of the Hotel 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 -College Montaigu. It had earned the nickname of "_College 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 Bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve. - -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 Greve, and -thence by Rues Francois-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 -Chimaera, 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 mediaeval 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-Genevieve, and was -removed, on the destruction of that edifice in 1807, to its successor -in tradition and sentiment, Saint-Etienne-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-Etienne, 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-Etienne, 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 naive, 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-Genevieve, 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 Rene 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-Genevieve. In 1793, the Convention decreed its -removal to the recently completed and secularized Pantheon, 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-Pres, 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: Rene Descartes. - (From the portrait by Franz Hals, in the Musee 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 _chateaux_, 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 Athenes_." 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, -archaeology, 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." - - - - -MOLIERE AND HIS FRIENDS - - - - -MOLIERE 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-Honore and des -Vieilles-Etuves. 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-Etuves. The modern building on that corner, numbered -92 Rue Saint-Honore, 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 Moliere_." 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 -Moliere. This is a veracious record. The exact date of the birth of -the eldest son of Jacques Poquelin and Marie Cresse, 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 Moliere 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 Reale, 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. - -Francois Coppee, 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 Cresse, 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 Theatre du Marais. No doubt he -saw, too, the tragedies of the theatre of the Hotel de Bourgogne, and -this observant boy may well have anticipated the younger Crebillon'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, "Moliere the Contemplator." - -He was sent, in 1636, being then fourteen years old, to the College de -Clermont, named a little later, and still named, Lycee Louis-le-Grand. -Rebuilt during the Second Empire, it stands on its old site behind -the College 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 Conde. 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 Hotel de Rambouillet. His mansion, with its grounds, -occupied the whole of that triangular space bounded now by Rues de -Vaugirard, de Conde, and Monsieur-le-Prince. At the northern point of -that triangle, nearly on the ground now covered by the Second Theatre -Francais, the Odeon, stood the prince's private theatre; wherein -Moliere, by invitation, played the roles of author, actor, manager. -Moliere's customary role 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 Bejart, his -two sisters Madeleine and Genevieve, 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 _debut_ 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 Theatre." - -To trace, from his first step on Paris boards, the successive sites of -Moliere'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 Fosse-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 Bejart troupe and named "l'Illustre Theatre." -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 Moliere'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 Moliere 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 Celestins 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 Barres for its patrons coming by coach. -Moliere 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 Barres, 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. Moliere 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 Moliere'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'Eperon, at his splendid mansion in Rue de -la Platriere--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. Moliere, 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 Chatelet, once -the fortress of Louis "le Gros," torn down only in 1802, on whose site -now sparkles the fountain of Place du Chatelet. From this lock-up, -having petitioned for release to M. d'Aubray, Civil Lieutenant of the -town and father of the Marquise de Brinvilliers, Moliere was released -by the quickly tendered purse of Leonard Aubry, "Royal Paver and -Street Sweeper," who, when filling in the Fosse-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 Gregoire-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 Bejart -_aine_ and of his brother Louis, of their sisters Madeleine and -Genevieve. 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. - -Moliere, 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 "Nicomede" 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 Moliere'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 Moliere lived just around the corner on Quai de -l'Ecole, 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, -Moliere 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-Honore and de -Valois, as a tablet there tells us. During the repairs Moliere took -his troupe to various _chateaux_ 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 Moliere, 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 Theatre Guenegaud, -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 Moliere, 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 Guerin 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: COMEDIE FRANCAISE 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 "_Comedies en Musique, avec machines a 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 Theatre Guenegaud was united to that of the Hotel de -Bourgogne, and to the combined companies was granted the name of -Comedie Francaise, the first assumption of that now time-honored -title. The theatre became so successful that the Jansenists in the -College 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 Comedie Francaise found new quarters in the _Jeu de Paume de -l'Etoile_, built along the outer edge of the street made over the -ditch of the wall, named Rue des Fosses-Saint-Germain, now Rue de -l'Ancienne-Comedie. 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 Gericault; 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 Comedie Francaise opened this house -on the night of April 18, 1689, for it was made up of two -masterpieces, Racine's "Phedre" and Moliere's "Le Medecin Malgre Lui." -A vast and enthusiastic audience thronged, with joyous clatter, -through narrow Rues Mazarine and Dauphine, coming from the river. The -Cafe Procope, recently opened just opposite the theatre, was crowded -after the performance, the drinkers of coffee not quite sure that they -liked the new beverage. And so, at the top of their triumphs, we leave -the players with whom we have vagabondized so long and so -sympathetically. - -Moliere, at the height of his career, had married Armande Bejart, he -being forty years of age, she "aged twenty years or thereabout," in -the words of the marriage contract, signed January 23, 1662. No one -knows now, very few knew then, whether the bride was the sister or the -daughter of Madeleine Bejart, Moliere's friend and comrade for many -years, who doubled her role of versatile actress with that of -provident cashier of the company. She was devoted to Armande, whom she -had taken to her home from the girl's early schooling in Languedoc, -and over whom she watched in the _coulisses_. She fought against the -marriage, which she saw was a mistake, finally accepted it, and at -her own death in 1672 left all her handsome savings to the wife of -Moliere. - -In the cast of the "Ecole des Maris," first produced in 1661, appears -the name of Armande Bejart, and, three months after the marriage, -"Mlle. Moliere"--so were known the wives of the _bourgeoisie_, -"Madame" being reserved for _grandes-dames_--played the small part of -Elise put for her by the author into his "Critique de l'Ecole des -Femmes." Henceforward she was registered as one of the troupe, the -manager receiving two portions of the receipts for his and her united -shares. She was a pleasing actress, never more than mediocre, except -in those parts, in his own plays, fitted to her and drilled into her -by her husband. She had an attractive presence on the boards, without -much beauty, without any brains. Her voice was exquisite, opulent in -tones that seemed to suggest the heart she did not own. For she was -born with an endowment of adroit coquetry, and she developed her gift. -She was flighty and frivolous, evasive and obstinate, fond of -pleasures not always innocent. Her spendthrift ways hurt Moliere's -thrifty spirit, her coquetry hurt his love, her caprices hurt his -honor. His infatuation, a madness closely allied to his genius, -brought to him a fleeting happiness, followed by almost unbroken -torments of love, jealousy, forgiveness. In his home he found none of -the rest nor comfort nor sympathy so much needed, after his prodigious -work in composing, drill-work in rehearsing, and public work in -performing at his theatre, and at Versailles and Fontainebleau. He -got no consolation from his wife for the sneers of venomous rivals, -enraged by his supremacy, and for the stabs of the great world, eager -to avenge his keen puncturing of its pretence and its priggishness. -And while he writhed in private, he made fun in public of his -immitigable grief, and portrayed on the stage the betrayed and -bamboozled husband--at once tragic and absurd--that he believed -himself to be. These eleven years of home-sorrows shortened his life. -On the very day of his fatal attack, he said to the flippant minx, -Armande: "I could believe myself happy when pleasure and pain equally -filled my life; but, to-day, broken with grief, unable to count on one -moment of brightness or of ease, I must give up the game. I can hold -out no longer against the distress and despair that leave me not one -instant of respite." - -The church ceremony of their marriage had taken place on February 20, -1662, at Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, as its register testifies. He had -already left his bachelor quarters on Quai de l'Ecole, and had taken -an apartment in a large house situated on the small open 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-Honore. The first-named street, near its end on Quai du -Louvre, held the Hotel de Rambouillet, which was a reconstruction of -the old Hotel de Pisani, made in 1618, after the plan and under the -eye of the Marquise de Rambouillet. She is known in history, as she -was known in the _salons_ of her day, by her sobriquet of -"Arthenice"--an anagram coined by Malherbe from her name Catherine. -Hither came all that was brilliant in Paris, and much that pretended -to be brilliant; and from here went out the grotesque affectations of -the _Precieuses Ridicules_. The mansion--one of the grandest of that -period--having 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 Moliere's residence, in the middle of the -present Place du Palais-Royal, is trodden, almost every day of the -year, by the feet of American women, hurrying to and from the Museum -of the Louvre or the great shop of the same name. - -After a short stay in their first home, Moliere and his wife set up -housekeeping in Rue de Richelieu. It is not known if it was in the -house of his later domicile and death. Their cook here was the famous -La Foret, to whom, it is said, Moliere read his new plays, trying -their effect on the ordinary auditor, such as made up the bulk of the -audiences of that time. Servants were commonly called La Foret then, -and the real name of this cook was Renee Vannier. Within a year, -domestic dissensions came to abide in the household, and it was moved -back to its first home, where Madeleine had remained, and now made one -of the _menage_. To it came a new inmate in February, 1664, a boy, -baptized at Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, having the great monarch for a -godfather, and for a godmother Henrietta of England, wife of the -King's brother, Philippe d'Orleans, and poisoned by him or his -creatures a few years later, it is believed. These royal sponsors were -represented at the christening by distinguished State servants, the -whole affair giving ample proof of this player's position at the time. - -A little later, we have hints that the small family was living farther -east in Rue Saint-Honore, at the corner of Rue d'Orleans, still near -his theatre, in a house swept away when that street was widened into -Rue du Louvre. From this house was buried, in November, 1664, the -child Louis, the burial-service being held at Saint-Eustache, their -parish church, Moliere's baptismal church, his mother's burial church. -Here, too, in the following year, August, 1665, he brought to the font -his newly born daughter, Esprit-Madeleine. In October of this same -year he took a long lease of an apartment in their former house on the -corner of Rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre, and there they stayed for seven -years, removing once more, and for the last time, in October, 1672, to -Rue de Richelieu. - -Where now stands No. 40 of that street, Rene Baudelet, Tailor to the -Queen by title, had taken a house only recently builded, and from him -Moliere rented nearly every floor. His lease was for a term of six -years, and he lived only four and a half months after coming here. The -first floor was set apart for his wife, whose ostentatious furnishing, -including a bed fit for a queen, is itemized in the inventory made -after her husband's death. He took for his apartment the whole second -floor, 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 Moliere, their private -doors in the garden wall, with access by stone steps. One of these -staircases is still left, and may be seen in Rue de Valois, descending -from the rear of the Hotel de la Chancellerie d'Orleans, whose Doric -entrance-court is at No. 19 Rue des Bons-Enfants. - -The house now numbered 40 Rue de Richelieu and 37 Rue Montpensier was -erected soon after 1767, when the walls that had harbored Moliere were -torn down to prevent them from tumbling down. The present building has -an admirable circular staircase climbing to an open lantern in the -roof. The houses on either side, numbered 37 _bis_ and 35 Rue -Montpensier, retain their original features of a central body with -projecting wings, and so serve to show us a likeness of Moliere's -dwelling. Their front windows look out now on the grand fountain of -the younger Visconti's design, erected to Moliere's memory in 1844, at -the junction of Rue de Richelieu and old Rue Traversiere, now named -Rue Moliere. This fountain, flowing full and free always, as flowed -the inspiration of his Muse, is surmounted by an admirable seated -statue of the player-poet by Seurre, the figures of Serious and of -Light Comedy, standing at his feet on either side, being of Pradier's -design. And in Rue de Richelieu, a little farther south, at the -present Nos. 23 and 23 _bis_--once one grand mansion, still intact, -though divided--lived his friend Mignard, and here he died in 1795. -The painter and the player had met at Avignon in 1657-8, and grew to -be life-long friends, with equal admiration of the other's art. -Indeed, Moliere considered that he honored Raphael and Michael Angelo, -when he named them "_ces Mignards de leur age_." Certainly no such -vivid portrait of Moliere has come down to us as that on the canvas of -this artist, now in the gallery at Chantilly. It shows us not the -comedian, but the man in the maturity of his strength and beauty. -His blond _perruque_, such as was worn then by all gallants, such as -made his Alceste sneer, softens the features marked strongly even so -early in life, but having none of the hard lines cut deeper by worry -and weariness. The mouth is large and frank, the eyes glow with a -humorous melancholy, the expression is eloquent of his wistful -tenderness. - - [Illustration: The Moliere Fountain.] - -Early in 1667 we find Moliere leasing a little cottage, or part of a -cottage, at Auteuil, for a retreat at times. He needed its pure air -for his failing health, its quiet for his work, and its distance from -the disquiet of his home with Armande and Madeleine. He had laid by -money; and his earnings, with his pension from the King--who had -permitted to the troupe the 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 -Moliere's cottage and grounds is covered by a block of commonplace -modern dwellings on the corner of Rue Theophile Gautier and Rue -d'Auteuil, and is marked by a tablet in the front wall of No. 2 of -the latter street. It has been claimed that this is a mistaken -localization, and that it is nearly opposite this spot that we must -look for his garden and a fragment of his villa, still saved. The -conscientious pilgrim may not fail to take that look, and will ring at -the iron gate of No. 57 Rue Theophile Gautier. It is the gate of the -ancient _hotel_ of Choiseul-Praslin, a name of unhappy memory in the -annals of swell 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 Elysees, and poisoned himself in his cell to save his -condemnation by his fellow-peers of France. The ancient family mansion -has been taken by "_Les Dominicaines_," who have devoted themselves -for centuries to the education of young girls, and have placed here -the 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 Remusat, -and that once spread away down the slope to the Seine. Here, amid the -magnificent cedar trees, centuries old, stands a mutilated pavilion of -red brick and white stone or stucco, showing only its unbroken porch -with pillars and a fragment of the fabric, cut raggedly away a few -feet behind, to make room for a new structure. Over the central door -are small figures in bas-relief, and in the pediment above one reads, -"_Ici fut la Maison de Moliere._" It would be a comfort to be able to -accept this legend; the fact that prevents is that the pavilion was -erected only in 1855 by the owner of the garden, to keep alive the -associations of Moliere with this quarter! - -It is in his garden, behind the wall that holds the tablet, that we -may see the player-poet as he rests in the frequent free hours, and -days withal, that came in the actor's busy life then. Here he walks, -alone or with his chosen cronies: Rohault, his sympathetic physician; -Boileau, a frequent visitor; Chapelle, who had a room in the cottage, -the quondam schoolfellow and the man of rare gifts; a pleasing -minor-poet, fond of fun, fonder of wine, friendly even to rudeness, -but beloved by all the others, whom he teased and ridiculed, and yet -counselled shrewdly. He sympathized with, albeit his sceptic spirit -could not quite fraternize with, the sensitive vibrating nature of -Moliere, that brought, along with acutest enjoyment, the keenest -suffering. In this day-and-night companionship, craving consolation -for his betossed soul, Moliere gave voice to his sorrows, bewailing -his wife's frailties and the torments they brought to him--to him, -"born to tenderness," as he truly put it, but unable to plant any root -of tenderness in her shallow nature--loving her in spite of reason, -living with her, but not as her husband, suffering ceaselessly. - -This garden often saw gayer scenes of good-fellowship and feasting, -and once a historic frolic, when the _convives_, flushed with wine, -ran down the slope to the river, bent on plunging in to cool their -blood, and were kept dry and undrowned by Moliere's steadier head and -hand. His _menage_ was modest, and his wife seldom came out from their -town apartment, but his daughter was brought often for a visit from -her boarding-school near by in Auteuil. He was beloved by all his -neighbors, to whom he was known less by his public repute than by his -constant kindly acts among them. It was not the actor-manager, but the -"_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 Hotel de Ville, were burned by the Commune. - -On the night of Friday, February 16, 1673, while personating his -_Malade Imaginaire_--its fourth performance--Moliere was struck down -by a genuine malady. He pulled through the play, and, as the curtain -went down at last, he was nearly strangled by a spasm of coughing that -broke a blood-vessel. Careful hands carried him around to his bedroom -on the second floor of No. 40, where in a few days--too few, his years -being a little more than fifty--death set him free from suffering. - -This fatal crisis was the culmination of a long series of recurrent -paroxysms, coming from his fevered life and his fiery soul, that "o'er -informed the tenement of clay," in Dryden's phrase. And his heart had -been crushed by the death of his second boy, Pierre-Jean-Baptiste-Armand, -in October of the previous year. Then, on the physical side, he had -been subjected throughout long years to constant exposure to draughts -on the stage, and to sudden changes within and without the theatre, -most trying to so delicate a frame. His watchful friend, Boileau, had -often urged him to leave the stage before he should break down. -Moreover, it distressed Boileau that the greatest genius of his time, -as he considered Moliere, should have to paint his face, put on a -false mustache, get into a bag and be beaten with sticks, in his -ludicrous role of comic valet. But all pleading was thrown away. The -invalid maintained that nothing but his own management, his own plays, -and his own playing, kept his theatre alive and his company from -starvation; and so he held on to the end, dying literally in harness. -His wife appeared too late on the last scene, the priest who was -summoned could not come in time, and the dying eyes were closed by two -stranger nuns, lodging for the time in the house. - -The arm-chair, in which sat the _Malade Imaginaire_ on the last night -of his professional life, is treasured among the relics of the Theatre -Francais. It is a 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 Theatre -Francais in the performances of "Le Malade Imaginaire." And, with -equal reverence, they kept for many years in the ancient village of -Pezenas, in Languedoc--where the strolling troupe wintered in 1655-6, -playing in the adjacent hamlets and in the _chateaux_ of the -_seigneurie_ about--the big wooden arm-chair belonging to the barber -Gely, and almost daily through that winter occupied by Moliere. Upon -it he was wont to sit, in a corner, contemplating all who came and -went, making secret notes on the tablets he carried always for -constant records of the human document. It has descended to a -gentleman in Paris, by whom it is cherished. - -The _cure_ of Saint-Eustache, the parish church, refused its sacrament -for the burial of the author of "Tartufe." "To get by prayer a little -earth," in Boileau's words, the widow had to plead with the King; and -it was only his order that wrung permission from the Archbishop of -Paris for those "maimed rites" that we all know. They were accorded, -not to the player, but, as the burial register reads, to the -"_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, Moliere did not lie. -Tradition lies, doubtless, and Armande's belated grief and posthumous -devotion probably displayed themselves on the right spot. The stone -was cracked--going to bits soon after--by a fire built on it during -the terrible winter a few years later, when the poor of Paris were -warmed by great out-of-door fires. The exact spot of sepulture could -not be fixed in 1792, when the more sober revolutionary sections were -anxious to save the remains of their really great men from the -desecrations of the Patriots, to whom no ground was consecrate, nor -any memories sacred. Then, in the words of the official document, "the -bones which seemed to be those of Moliere" were exhumed, and carried -for safe keeping to the Museum of French Monuments begun by Alexandre -Lenoir in 1791, in the Convent of the Petits-Augustins. Its site is -now mostly covered by the court of the Beaux-Arts in Rue Bonaparte. -Those same supposed bones of Moliere were transferred, early in the -present century, to the Cemetery of Pere-Lachaise, where they now lie -in a stone sarcophagus. By their side rest the supposed bones of La -Fontaine, removed from the same ground to the same museum at the same -time; La Fontaine having really been buried, twenty-two years after -Moliere's burial, in the Cemetery of the Innocents, a half-mile from -that of Saint-Joseph! - -Our ignorance as to whether these be Moliere's bones, under the -monument in Pere-Lachaise, is matched by our unacquaintance with the -facts of his life. And we know almost as little of Moliere the man, as -we know of the man called Shakespeare--the only names in the modern -drama which can be coupled. We have no specimens of the actual -manuscript, and few specimens of the handwriting, of either. The -Comedie Francaise has a priceless signature of Moliere given by Dumas -_fils_, and there are others, it is believed, on legal 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 -Moliere." This Madame Poisson was the daughter of Du Croissy, whose -name appears in the troupe's early play-bills; and the wife of Paul -Poisson, also an actor with Moliere, and with his widow. Madame -Poisson died in 1756, aged ninety-eight, so that she was an observant -and intelligent girl of fifteen at the time of Moliere's death. In her -recollections, written in 1740, she says that he was neither stout nor -thin; in stature he was rather tall than short, his carriage 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. Moliere's sadness -was mitigated by a humor of equal depth, a conjunction rare in the -Latin races, and found at its best only in him and in Cervantes. This -set him to writing and acting farces; and into them he put sentiment -for the first time on the French stage. There is a gravity behind his -buffoonery, and a secret sympathy with his 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 Comedie Francaise, made by Houdon from other portraits -and from descriptions. Under the projecting brow of the observer are -the eyes of the contemplator, shrewd and speculative, and withal -infinitely sorrowful, with the sadness of the man who knew how to -suffer acutely, mostly in silence and in patience; and this is the -face of the man who made all France laugh! - - * * * * * - -PIERRE CORNEILLE stands in bronze on the bridge of his natal town, -Rouen, where he stood in the flesh of his twenty-eight years, among -other citizens who went to welcome Louis XIII. and his ruler, -Richelieu, on their visit in 1634. The young advocate by profession -and poet by predilection presented his verses in greeting and in honor -of the King, and was soon after enrolled one of the small and select -band of the Cardinal's poets. With the Cardinal's commission and a -play or two, already written when only twenty-three, he made his way -to Paris. For nearly thirty years, the years of his dramatic triumphs, -Corneille lived alternately in Paris and in Rouen, until his mother's -death, in 1662, left him free to make his home in the capital. In that -year he settled in rooms in the Hotel de Guise, now the Musee des -Archives, whose ducal owner was a patron of the Theatre du Marais, -close at hand. At his death, in or about 1664, Corneille sent in a -rhymed 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 Clery during that same year. It was a workman's -quarter, and none of its houses were very grand, but that of Corneille -is spoken of as one of the better sort, with its own _porte-cochere_. -Pierre's younger brother, Thomas, came to live in the same house. And -from this time on, the two brothers were never parted in their lives. -They had married sisters, and the two families dwelt in quiet -happiness under the common roof. This house in Rue de Clery cannot be -fixed. It may be one of the poor dwellings still standing in that old -street, or it may no longer exist. It is the house famous in anecdotal -history for owning the trap-door in the floor between the -working-rooms of the brothers, which Pierre--at loss for an adequate -rhyme--would lift up, and call to Thomas, writing in his room below, -to give him the wished-for word. - -This dull street formed the background of a touching picture, when, in -1667, Corneille's son was brought home, wounded, from the siege of -Douai. The straw from the litter was scattered about the street as the -father helped them lift his boy to carry him into the house, and -Corneille was summoned to the Chatelet, for breaking police -regulations with regard to the care of thoroughfares; he appeared, -pleaded his own cause, and was cast in damages! - -Here in 1671, Corneille and Moliere, in collaboration, wrote the -"tragedy-ballet 'Psyche'"; this work in common cementing a friendship -already begun between the two men, and now made firmer for the two -years of Moliere's life on from this date. The play was begun and -finished in a fortnight, to meet the usual urgency of the King in his -amusements. Moliere planned the piece and its spectacular effects, and -wrote the prologue, the first act, and the first scenes of the second -and third acts; Corneille's share being the rest of the rhymed -dialogue and the songs. It was set to music by Lulli--"the -incomparable Monsieur Lulli," as he was called by Moliere--whose -generous laudation of the musician was not lessened by his estimate of -the man. For Lulli was not an honest man, and he prospered at the -expense of his fellows. His magnificent home was built by money -borrowed from Moliere, whose widow was repaid as we have seen. Lulli's -_hotel_ is still in perfect condition as to its exterior, at the -corner of Rues des 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. Gerome has put it on canvas--as they sit side by side, planning and -plotting their play: Moliere at the top of his career, busy, -prosperous, applauded; Corneille past his prime and his popularity, -beginning to bend with age and to break in spirit. He had, by now, -fallen on evil days, which saw him "satiated with glory, and famished -for money," in his words to Boileau. Richelieu may not have done much -for him, but he had been at least a power in his patronage, and his -death, in 1642, had left the old poet with no friend at court, albeit -the new minister, Mazarin, had put him on the pension list. His -triumphs with "Le Cid" and "Les Horaces" had not saved him from--nor -helped him bear--the dire failures of "Attila" and of "Agesilas." -Poetry had proved a poor trade, royalty had forgotten him, Colbert's -economies had left his pension in arrears along with many others, and -finally, after Colbert's death, the new minister, Louvois, had -suppressed it entirely. Against the earlier default he had made -patient and whimsical protest in verse; each official year of delay -had been officially lengthened to fifteen months; and Corneille's Muse -was made to hope that each of the King's remaining years of reign -might be lengthened to an equal limit! - -The contrast between the two figures--the King of French Tragedy -shabby in Paris streets, the King of French people resplendent at -Versailles--is sharply drawn by Theophile Gautier in his superb -verses, read at Corneille's birthday fete at the Comedie Francaise, on -June 6, 1851. Gautier had not been able to find any motive for the -lines, which he had promised to prepare for Arsene 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 Clery, and we find them first in Rue -d'Argenteuil in November, 1683, the year of Colbert's death. That old -road from the village of Argenteuil had become, and still remains, a -city street absolutely without character or temperament of its own; it -has not the merit even of being 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'Eveque. That street was wiped out of existence -by the cutting of Avenue de l'Opera in 1877-8, which necessitated the -demolition of this dreary old house. Its most attractive relic is now -in the possession of M. Victorien Sardou, at his country house, at -Marly-le-Roi, in the _porte-cochere_, with its knocker. Every guest -there is proud to put his hand on the veritable knocker lifted so -often by Corneille's hand. - -That hand had lost its fire and force by this time, and the poet's -last months were wretched enough in these vast and desolate rooms on -the second floor, so vast and desolate that he was unable to keep his -poor septuagenarian bones warm within them. Here came death to him on -Sunday, October 1, 1684. They buried him in his parish church, -Saint-Roch, a short step from his home; and on the western pillar -within the entrance a tablet to his memory was placed in 1821. The -church was so short a step, that, feeble and forlorn as he was, he had -found his way there early of mornings during these last years. And in -his earlier years, when living in Rue de Clery, he had often hurried -there, drawn by the strong and splendid Bossuet, whose abode was -either in Rue Sainte-Anne hard by, or in the then new mansion still -standing in Place des Victoires. Here in the church, as we stand -between Corneille's tablet and Bossuet's pulpit, the contrast is -brought home to us of the two forms of eloquence that most touch men: -that of this preacher burning with ancient Hebraic fire, and that of -this dramatist glowing with the white-heat of 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-Honore, and -become a short commonplace street, named Saint-Hyacinthe. Twenty years -the younger of the two, Thomas was, during his life, and has been in -his after-renown, unduly overshadowed by his imperishable brother. He -had a rare gift of versification, and a certain skill in the putting -together of plays. Of them he constructed a goodly lot, some few of -them in collaboration. His "Timocrate," played for eighty consecutive -nights at the Theatre du Marais, was the most popular success on the -boards of the seventeenth century. His knack in pleasing the public -taste was as much his own as was his mastery of managers, by which he -got larger royalties than any playwright of his day. He was a -competent craftsman, too, in more weighty fabrications, and turned -out, from his factory, translations and dictionaries, which have -joined his plays in everlasting limbo. - -All the early theatrical productions of Pierre Corneille were -originally put on the stage of the Theatre du Marais, which had been -started by seceders from the theatre of the Hotel de Bourgogne, as has -been told in our first chapter. After a temporary lodgment in the -quarter of the Hotel de Ville, it was soon permanently housed in the -recast tennis-court of the "_Hotel Sale_." There it remained until -1728, when Le Camus bought the place and turned the theatre into -stables. Where stands modern No. 90 in the widened Rue Vieille-du-Temple -was the public entrance of the theatre. The "_Hotel Sale_," the work -of Lepautre, is still in perfect condition behind the houses of Rue -Vieille-du-Temple. Its principal portal is at Rue Thorigny, 5, with a -side entrance in Rue Saint-Gervais-des-Coutures. Known at first as the -Hotel Juigne, it was popularly renamed, in the seventeenth century, -the "_Hotel Sale_," because its rapacious owner, Aubray de Fontenay, -had 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 facade, its imposing pediment carved -with figures and flowers. Within is a stately hall, made the more -stately by the placing at one end of a 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 facade 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 Theatre du Marais had been established here by the famous -Turlupin, made immortal in Boileau's verse, who, with his two comic -_confreres_--baker's boys, like the brothers Coquelin of our day--kept -his audiences in a roar with his modern French farces _farcied_ with -old Gaulish grossness. It was he who invented the comic -valet--badgered and beaten, always lying and always funny--who was -subsequently elaborated into the immortal Sganerelle by Moliere. He, -while a boy, had sat in this theatre, watching Turlupin; and when he -had grown into a manager, he is said to have bought some of the stage -copies of these farces, when Turlupin's death disbanded his troupe. - -These "_Comediens du Marais_" were regarded with a certain -condescension not unmingled with disdain by their stately _confreres_ -left at the Hotel de Bourgogne, who were shocked when Richelieu, -becoming bored by their dreary traditional proprieties, sent for -Turlupin and his troupe to give a specimen of their acting in his -palace. And the great cardinal actually laughed, a rare indulgence he -allowed himself, and told the King's Comedians that he wished they -might play to as good effect! - -Still, the Theatre du Marais was not entirely given over to farce, for -it alternated with the tragedy of the then famous Hardy; and Mondory, -the best tragedian of the day, was at one time the head of the -troupe. Mondory had brought back from a provincial tour, in 1629, the -manuscript of "Melite," by a young lawyer of Rouen, named Corneille. -This piece was weak, but it was not a failure. And so, when the author -came to town, his tragedies were played at this theatre and drew -crowds to the house. There they first saw the true tragic Muse herself -on the French boards. Those rough, 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 feconde et la bouche sterile, - Et l'on peut rarement m'ecouter sans ennui, - Que quand je me produis par la bouche d'autrui._" - -In truth, we must agree with Guizot, that the grand old Roman was -irrevocably doomed to 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 Scudery -was proclaimed his superior by the popular voice, which is always the -voice of the foolish. And when that shallow charlatan sneered at him -in print, he left to Boileau the castigation that was so thoroughly -given. His friends had to drive him to the defence of his "Cid" in the -Academy, to which he had been elected in 1647. His position with -regard to the "Cid" was peculiar and 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 role, 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 a Chambord la mort du bonhomme -Corneille._" - - * * * * * - -JEAN RACINE came to Paris, from his native La Ferte-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 College -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 Lycee -Saint-Louis. The buildings that give on the playground behind, seem to -belong to the original college, and to have been refaced. - -Like Boileau-Despreaux, 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 Theatre 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 Hotel de Luynes, a grand -mansion that faced Quai des Grands-Augustins, and stretched far back -along Rue Git-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 Moliere, recently come into the management of the -theatre of the Palais-Royal. An original edition of "Les Precieuses -Ridicules," played a while before this time at the Hotel du -Petit-Bourbon, bears on its title-page "_Privilege 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 Hotel de Luynes for the Duchesse de Chevreuse. -This is the lady who plays so prominent a role in Dumas's authentic -history of "The Three Musketeers." The _hotel_ 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 -Uzes, near Nimes, 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 Moliere, who received the verse with scant praise, -but accepted, paid for, and played "La Thebaide"--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 -Comedie Francaise; 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 Hotel 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 Hotel des Ursins. This name had belonged to a grand old mansion on -the north bank of Ile de la Cite, presented by the City of Paris to -Jean Juvenal des Ursins, _Prevot 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 Hotel des Ursins, or a separate -building, erected after the demolition of that _hotel_, 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. -Moliere, 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 Moliere, 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 "Phedre," his greatest and his last play -for the public stage, produced on New Year's Day of 1677, at the Hotel -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 "Phedre," 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 cafe 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 Sevigne, for she, too, took neither to Racine -nor to coffee. And a century later it pleased Madame de Stael 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 _temoins_ present were Boileau-Despreaux 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 Ile 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'Ile--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-Andre-des-Arts. Here his family grew in number, and the names of -three of his daughters, Marie-Catherine, Anne, and Elisabeth--all born -in this house--appeared on the baptismal register of his parish church, -Saint-Andre-des-Arts. This was the church of the christening of -Francois-Marie Arouet, a few years later. The Place Saint-Andre-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 Lycee Fenelon, 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 Macons. 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 Ecoles 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-Severin--a venerable sanctuary, -still in use and quite unaltered, except that it has lost its -cloisters. And in this home in Rue des Macons 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 Macons, 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 Grace" -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 Champmesle, 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 Champmesle 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 Hotel 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 Theatre du Marais. How she made use of this chance -is told by a line in a letter of Madame de Sevigne, 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 -_comedienne_ that I have ever seen." It was on the boards of the Hotel -de Bourgogne that she showed herself to be also the finest -_tragedienne_ of her time. She shone most in "Bajazet," and in others -of Racine's plays, creating her roles 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 Champmesle 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 Moliere at the -Theatre Guenegaud. 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 Comedie Francaise, in Rue de l'Ancienne-Comedie, 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 Laubiniere, 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 roles she loved to dazzle on the boards of the Comedie -Francaise, 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 Macons 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'Orleans--who had liked and -had befriended him, saw the policy of showing him her cold shoulder, -as she had shown it to Fenelon. 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-Etienne-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 Chateau-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 Chateau-Thierry, and if she were not compelled to claim, in -this case, her privilege as _chatelaine_ 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 Chateau-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'Orleans, 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 College 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 _hotel_ he erected for another niece, Anne Marie -Martinozzi, widow of that Prince de Conti who was Moliere'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 Hotel de Bouillon of the cardinal's other -niece, almost alongside. It had been the property of the rich and -vulgar money-king Baziniere, 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-a-brac_. She filled it, -also, by her open table twice a day, with thick-coming guests, some of -whom were worth knowing. The _hotel_ 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 facade 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 -Psyche," 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 Sabliere, 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 _devote_ 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 Sabliere and her poet-husband to -share their home, they were living at their country-place, "_La Folie -Rambouillet_," not to be mistaken for the Hotel de Rambouillet. -Sabliere's _hotel_, 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 Sabliere 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-Honore, nearly -opposite Rue de la Sourdiere. 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. - -Berthelemy d'Hervart, a man of great wealth, had purchased, in 1657, -the Hotel de l'Eperon, a mansion erected on the site of Burgundy's -Hotel de Flandre. M. d'Hervart had enlarged and decorated his new -abode, employing for the interior frescoes the painter Mignard, -Moliere'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 Platriere, 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 Sabliere. 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 Moliere, 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 Pere-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 Conde was glad to receive him as a frequent guest at -Chantilly; the superfine sensualist, Saint-Evremond, in exile in -England, urged him to come to visit him and to meet Waller. He nearly -undertook the journey, less to see Saint-Evremond 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-Evremond: "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. Moliere 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 Facheux," 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 -Bruyere 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 Sabliere said to him: "_Mon bon ami, que vous seriez -bete, 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 _cortege_ 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 Moliere by his tribute of -four dainty verses to the author of "L'Ecole des Femmes," and the -friendship thus formed was broken only by the death of Moliere, to -whose memory Boileau inserted his magnificent lines in the "Epitre a -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 Moliere 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 Moliere's "_rare et fameux esprit_." It was in -frank admiration that he demanded of his friend: "_Enseigne-moi ou 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 facade 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-Despreaux 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 preaux_; but it is now made certain that the -house of his birth, in 1636, was in Rue de Jerusalem, a street that -led to the Sainte-Chapelle, from about the middle of the present Quai -des Orfevres. 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 Ile de -la Cite; 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 -Menippee"; 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 Jerome, 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 "Mysteres de -Paris." Only the Sainte-Chapelle is left of the scenes of Boileau's -early years. - -He was sent for a while to College 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 "Epitre a 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." - -Moliere comes from his rooms in Rue Saint-Honore, or from his theatre; -crossing the Seine by the Pont-Neuf, and passing along Rues Dauphine -and de Bucy, and through the Marche 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 Hotel 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 Psyche," 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-Despreaux. - (From the portrait by Largilliere.)] - -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 roles 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 Sevigne. - -It was probably because of Moliere'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 Guenegaud, which has given its site to -the Hotel de la Monnaie, and its name to the street alongside. He was -fond of meeting kindred spirits and kindly hosts in the _hotel_ of the -great Conde 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 Hotel de Lesdiguieres, 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 Lesdiguieres, and here he was encircled -by admiring men and women. Here, writes Madame de Sevigne, his other -niece, who came often to sit with him, Boileau presented to Retz early -copies of "Le Lutrin," and of "L'Ars Poetique." - -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'Abbe 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 Abbe 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-Pres, 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 Comedie Francaise.)] - - - - -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-Andre-des-Arts--no one knows why his -baptism was not in the island church of the parish--and there -christened Francois-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 Lycee -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, -"_seconde de Ninon, dont je fus legataire_," 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 Maitre 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 a l'envoye 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 Pantheon, in Square -Monge, and in the _foyer_ of the Theatre Francais. 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 Caesar," his "Zaire" 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 Hotel Lambert. This was the -mansion of M. du Chatelet, husband--officially only--of "_la sublime -Emilie_," with whom Voltaire had taken up his abode. The Hotel Lambert -remains unchanged at the eastern end of Ile 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'Ile opens on a -grand court and an imposing facade. "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 Chatelet 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 Hotel 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 Chatelet; 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 Traversiere-Saint- -Honore, at No. 25 of the latter; and its site now lies under the -roadway of new Avenue de l'Opera. The cutting of this avenue has left -unchanged only the northern end of Rue Traversiere, and this has been -renamed in honor of Moliere. 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 -Emilie_" 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 moitie avec le Marquis du Chatelet_;" -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 _protege_ 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 _debut_ at the Theatre Francais 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. - -"_Cafe a la Voltaire_" is the legend you may read to-day on a pillar -of the Cafe Procope, in Rue de l'Ancienne-Comedie, directly opposite -the old Comedie Francaise. 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 _cafe_. 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 _cafe_ -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-git Piron, - Que ne fut rien, - Pas meme Academicien._" - -Here, on an evening in 1709, sat Alain-Rene 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 Cafe de la Regence, which faces the -present Comedie Francaise, was the pet resort of the royalist writers, -this Cafe 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 Cafe 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 Leon 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 -"_Soirees litteraires 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 encyclopaedic 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. -Arsene 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, cyclopaedist, -Diderot is indeed the most striking figure of the eighteenth century. -Rugged, uncouth, headlong, we see him, "_en redingote de peluche grise -ereintee_," 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-Benoit, 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 -College 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 Theatre -Francais, 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 Trone--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 Hotel Saint-Quentin of our Balzac -chapter, carrying from there the uncomely servant, Therese le Vasseur. -After this he appears fitfully in Paris through many years. In 1772 he -is in Rue Platriere--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 Therese, 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 Pantheon, where, on one -side, is a statue of the author of "Le Contrat Social" and "Emile," -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 Encyclopaedia. "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 -Moliere 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, Abbe -de l'Epee, 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-Honore, 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 _abbe_ 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'Opera 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 Therese, 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 Abbe de l'Epee 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 _abbe_, standing with a youth to -whom he talks with his fingers. It is the work of a deaf-mute, Felix -Martin, well named, for he is most happy in this work. - -Like the Abbe de l'Epee, 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 -Theatins. 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 Comedie Francaise, temporarily housed in the -Tuileries, the Odeon not being ready. There his "Irene," 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 Abbe 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 Scellieres 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 _cortege_, 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 Pantheon. There his remains lay once more in peace, -until the Bourbons "de-Pantheonized" 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 Penthievre, and his name, carved in the -pediment of the stately facade 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 Ecole des -Freres de la Doctrine Chretienne, 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 Hotel 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 _cortege_ that accompanied Voltaire's remains to the Pantheon 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 Comedie Francaise, now the Odeon. 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 Moliere, as we have -seen, and of Regnard, as we shall see; of Beaumarchais and of Eugene -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 Conde in 1773, and at the -Hotel 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 Pere-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. Lenotre has given us his exhaustive and admirable "Paris -Revolutionnaire." 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-Andre-des-Arts. The southern entrance of -the passage was in the western end of Rue des Cordeliers, now Rue de -l'Ecole-de-Medecine. 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'Ecole-de-Medecine 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 _hotel_ in Place -Vendome, 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 Pantheon 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, -Chaussee-d'Antin, from the gardens of the Hotel 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 -Theatre-Francais, now Place de l'Odeon. 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'Odeon and No. 7 Rue Crebillon. 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 Conde, 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 _temoins_ of the groom were -Brisson, Petion, Robespierre. The last-named had been Camille's -schoolfellow and crony at Lycee 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 -_diner 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'Ecole-de-Medecine. 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 -Hotel de la Providence. In our Dumas chapter we shall try to find her -unpretending inn, and shall find only its site. In the Musee Grevin, -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 Republique Francaise," 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-Comedie. -These two lots do, indeed, join in their rear, but Marat has no -association with either. In Rue de l'Ancienne-Comedie, 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 _hotel-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 Revolution, they crowded here to weep about his bedraped -and beflowered bier. The remains were then placed, with due honors, in -the Pantheon. 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'Ecole-de-Medecine 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 Lycee Saint-Louis, from the greater portion of "_Le -Grand Couvent de l'Observance de Saint Francois_." - -Turn in at the gateway in the corner of Place de l'Ecole-de-Medecine, -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 Musee 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-Comedie. 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 mediaeval -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 Greve 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 Hotel 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 Baziniere--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 Baziniere always after. In this same Hotel 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 _hotel-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 Greve to a larger stage in Place de la -Reunion, now Place du Carrousel, and thence in May, 1793--that she -might not be under the windows of the Convention--to Place de la -Revolution, 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 Elysees 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 Revolution 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 Marche Saint-Honore -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-Honore, eastwardly from Rue de -Castiglione; this street being then the narrow Passage des Feuillants, -leading from Rue Saint-Honore to the royal gardens, and to the -much-trodden Terrasse on the northern side of those gardens facing the -Manege. 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 -Manege 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-Honore. 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 "_fete de l'Etre Supreme_," 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 role 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 Carre d'Atalante in the Tuileries Gardens.] - -When the tumbrils and their burdens did not go along the quays to -Place de la Revolution, they went through Rue Saint-Honore, 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-Honore, 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 Salpetriere, 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 Hopital de la Salpetriere, and is famous for its -treatment of women afflicted with nervous maladies, and with insanity. -The present Hospice de la Maternite 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 -facade 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'Arret -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-Chatelet has been noted. -La Force has gone, and Sainte-Pelagie 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 -Andre-Marie de Chenier, and we will go first to his dwelling. It is an -oddly shaped house, No. 97 Rue de Clery--Corneille's street for many -years--at its junction with Rue Beauregard; and a tablet in its wall -tells of de Chenier'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 -Chenier, 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, -Andre de Chenier 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. Mueller has made Andre de Chenier -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 Chenier, 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 funebre d'un Citoyen Vertueux_," whose worthy -son they had beheaded. - -Joseph-Marie de Chenier 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 Andre. Joseph was a -fiery patriot, and a man of genius withal. He wrote the words of the -"Chant du Depart" which, set to music by Mehul, 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 "Ca -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 Chenier was a playwright, also, and in 1798 he had -created a sensation by his "Charles IX.," produced at the Comedie -Francaise, now the Odeon. 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 Cite. It is not known whether the site of -that house is under the Hotel-Dieu or the Marche-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 Congregation_," 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 -Platriere, 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-Pelagie, 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 -Francois-Leonard-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 Hotel Britannique, in Rue -Guenegaud. 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 Hotel -Britannique was the house now numbered 12 Rue Guenegaud, 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: "_La 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 _hotel_ 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'Ecole-de-Medecine 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 Ecoles, 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-Pelagie. It was an old prison, long -kept for the detention of "_femmes et filles, dont la conduite est -onereuse_," 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 Comedie Francaise, 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-Pelagie 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 Liberte, comme on t'a -jouee!_" 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 Stael, "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 Hotel 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 Ecole 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 Encyclopaedia, 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 Progres 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 Barriere 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-Honore. 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 Mecanique Celeste," 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 _confreres_, 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-Francois-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 Vendemiaire_." 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-Honore 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-Vendemiaire, 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 _hotel-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 _hotel-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'Abrantes, 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 Hotel Sillery, -formerly the Petit Hotel Guenegaud. 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 Ecole 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 Ecole Superieure de Guerre, commonly called the "Ecole 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-Pres, 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. Lenotre 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 Hotel de -Cherbourg, Rue du Four-Saint-Honore. 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 _hotel-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, a Paris, Hotel de -Cherbourg, Rue du Four-Saint-Honore._" - -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 Hotel 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. Eleonora 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'Elysee, where he resided for a -while, and the _chateau_ 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 Chenier 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 Theatre Francais, 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-Francois Talma used to say that he first heard of a theatre, -from seeing and asking about the old Theatre de l'Hotel 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 Theatre Francais, 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-Honore. From the house that was there before the present modern -structure, young Talma went across the river to the Comedie Francaise, -on the night of November 21, 1787, and made his _debut_ as Seide in -"Mahomet." - -In our chapter on Moliere, we left the Comedie Francaise, on its -opening night in 1689, at the house in Rue de l'Ancienne-Comedie. -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 Comedie Francaise is now the Second -Theatre Francais, the Odeon, the second largest hall in Paris. It was -burned in 1799 and again in 1818. In 1789 it took the title of Theatre -National; in 1793, Theatre de l'Egalite 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-Pelagie, 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 Theatre Francais de la Rue de Richelieu, and, in -1792, Theatre de la Republique. On Talma's desertion of the old -house, there began a legal process against him, exactly like that -instituted by the same Comedie Francaise 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 Comedie Francaise -came to the present "House of Moliere." - -It would seem that Talma was a shrewd man of business, and drew money -in his private role of landlord. He owned the house in which Mirabeau -died, in Rue de la Chaussee-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 facade 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 _hotel_, 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 archaeologic, when creating a new role 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 Theatre -Francais, 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 Theatre -Francais." - - [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. 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