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Georges Cain Curator of the Carnavalet Museum, and of the Historic Collections of the City of Paris With One Hundred and Thirty-three Illustrations and Six ancient and modern NMaps and Plans Translated by Louise Seymour Houghton gººd tº *2 bºº. 𠺧 §:tº-A&-ºšJº §§§ §. § §§§§ º - º Šºš. º ſº º tº - º & §§§ New York Duffield and Company 1912 : CopyRIGHT, 1912, By DUFFIELD & Co. THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMI BRIDGE, U. S. A. 2<- 22 7 , C / º ſº, TO MY FRIEND L. P. A U B E Y V E R Y A FFECTION AT E L Y 3726.29 TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Illustrations . . . . . . . . Table of Plans . . . . . . . . . . The “Mansarde” of Bonaparte . - The Old Quarter of the White Mantles e - - Rue Beauregard. The Street of the Moon. The Good Tidings Church Seine Landscapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The City Hall and the Place de Grève, July 31, 1830 e w w w a s s a tº e º 'º º The “Museum of the Arts.” In the Sorbonne . The Street of the Ladies’ Tower. The New Athens. – The House of Talma . Paris seen from a Balloon The Vaudeville Theatre s e s a e s tº - Paris at Night. Around Saint-Merri. The Hôtel of the Upper Loire. At Emile’s. The Cellars of the Markets . . . . . . . . . e The Gardens of the Carrousel “Frascati” . . . . . . . . . . . . The Faubourg Poissonnière e - ~ * * * * The Rue Raynouard. One of M. de Balzac's Dwellings . . . . . . . . . . . . PAGE ix xiv. I I 5 93 109 125 141 155 175 191 207 viii · TABLE OE CONTENTS · PAGE The Passage of the Panoramas . . . . . . . . 221 La Rue de la Harpe . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 The True " Butte '' Montmartre . . . . . . . 249 The Fourth of September, 1870. The Place of the Château d'Eau. — The Grand Boulevards. —The Hôtel de Ville. —The Quays . . . . 267 The Dancing Classes of the Opera . . . . . . . 281 A Week of Inundation . . . . . . . . . . . 297 TABLE OF ILLUSTRATIONS No. 5 Quai Conti about 1860 . Mme. d'Abrantès . Bonaparte . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mme. de Permon's Drawing-room, now Salon of M. Pigoreau, Place Conti No. 2 Passage Saint-Roch . . . . . . . . . . . . Allegorical Engraving Published about 1800 The Corner of the rue des Moineaux and the rue des Moulins . * * * * * * Rue Vieille-du-Temple about 1860 tº tº The Barbette Turret, rue Veille-du-Temple, about 1865 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Church of the White Mantles in 1790 Rue Pavée au Marais . & The Procession of the League . The Poisoner La Voisin * & s e º e a g Grating formerly Opening upon the Gardens of La Voisin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Entry of Louis XVIII into Paris, May 3, 1814 Boulevard Bonne–Nouvelle . s º Pont-Neuf seen from the Yacht . A Nook in the Seine e The Bridge from the Yacht . . The Slope of the Goldsmiths' Quay Pont-Neuf . ę & e º e º e º e s is tº s e The Smaller Arm of the Seine, January 3, 1880 . View of the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) of Paris (Eighteenth Century) . . . . . . . . . . . IX PAGE 3 I0 II. 12 17 I9 2I 23 31 35 37 39 40 44 45 46 48 51. 53 Nj X TABLE OF ILLUSTRATIONS Reception of Louis Philippe at the Hôtel de Ville. Relief Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Quai de la Grève and Part of the Hôtel de Ville about 1830 * * * * * * * Lithograph by Raffet (Album of 1831) . . . Arcade Saint-Jean, rue Monceau-Saint-Gervais . The Hôtel de Ville during the Revolution of 1830. Popular Picture of 1789 . . . . . . . . . . . Attack upon the Common House of Paris . . . The Court of the Sorbonne about 1845. Mlle. Constance Mayer François J. Talma . . . . . . . . . . . . . Talma as Sylla (Act IV, Scene VIII), 1823 . . . Talma as Pyrrhus . . * * * g e º º e Talma as Cinna . s tº e º a e º 'º º sº tº Talma's Study, 4, rue Saint-Georges . . . . . . Painted Frieze in Talma's Study, rue de la Tour- des-Dames & s & s sº º e º e e s & Painted Door of Talma's Study, rue de la Tour- des-Dames * * g g g g º e º 'º & a The Louvre and the Halles seen from 700 Metres of Altitude se . . . . . . . . . . The Day’s Folly (1783) The Balloon of 1783 First Aerial Journey . . . . . . . . . . . . Aerostatic Globe of MM. Charles and Robert . . Mme. de Montgolfier . . . . . . . . . . The Vaudeville Theatre, Place de la Bourse. Theatre of the Comic Opera, later The Vaude- ville Theatre * * * * * * * * * * * Henri Monnier in “The Improvised Family” . . Henri Monnier (after Gavarni) Arnal in “A Burning Fever” . Playbill of “La Dame aux Camélias 5 3 PAGE 61 62 65 67 68 70 73 79 89 95 98 99 I01 I03 105 106 I 11 II 2 115 117 119 IQI 127 I 30 I3] 132 I 33 134 TABLE OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi PAGE Playbill of “The Parisians '' . . . . . . . . . 135 Mlle. Blanche Pierson . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Mlle. Bartet in “The Arlésienne” . . . . . . . 139 Mme. Réjane in “Mme. Sans-Gêne” . . . . . . 140 The Church of Saint-Merri . . . . . . . . . . 143 Saint-Merri Quarter, former Hôtel de la Reynie, 24 rue Quincampoix . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 The Church of Saint-Merri . . . . . . . . . . 145 The Linen Drapers’ Bureau of the rue Courtalon 147 In the Cellar of the Halles . . . . . . . . . . 150 Market and Fountain of the Innocents . . . . 151 E. Rostand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Ruins of the Chapel of the Deanery and the Hôtel de Longueville . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 The Hôtel de Longueville, Place du Carrousel . 159 Place du Carrousel under Louis Philippe . . . . 161 Review of the Décadi before the First Consul in the Court of the Carrousel . . . . . . . . 165 Hôtel de Nantes, Place du Carrousel, 1849 . . . 167 Place du Carrousel . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 Frascati . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 The Little Marionettes . . . . . . . . . . . 178 Parisian Costume of the Year VIII, Seen at Frascati . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Frascati . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 The Trimmings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 A Picture of “Good Style” . . . . . . . . . . 185 Costume of an Elegant Woman . . . . . . . . 187 The Grange-Batelière about 1810 . . . . . 192 Entrance of the Temporary Galleries built for - the Exposition at the Menus-Plaisirs Theatre 193 Under the Entrance to the Menus-Plaisirs . . . 194 Longitudinal Section of the Theatre of the Con- Servatory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 xii TABLE OF ILLUSTRATIONS Interior of the Hall of the Conservatoire . Entrance to the Conservatoire . Thérésa in 1867 . * = g g º e º ſº º Consulting Room, dating from the Directory . A Salou, Time of Lhe Directory . & An Old Mansion, Faubourg Poissonnière View of Passy Balzac . e Balzac's Garden Balzac's House . * * g º º Another View of the Boulevards g * * Chinese Pavilion belonging to the House of the Duke of Montmorency, boulevard Mont- martre s sº e g g g g g g g º e º is The Passage of the Panoramas about 1808 . “Letter-head '' of the House of Susse about 1835 Tomb of the Cardinal de Richelieu tº s º Death Mask (after Nature) of Cardinal Richelieu Funeral Crypt of Cardinal Richelieu at the Sor- bonne * g g º sº e º e º is e º º tº e The Mortuary Mask of the Cardinal-Minister Richelieu on his Deathbed . A. Bruant, by Steinlen . Aristide Bruant . Montmartre in 1850 . • * * * * * * * * Construction of the Church of the Sacred Heart The Post Office of the rue des Rosiers (June, 1871) A Farm in Montmartre s & e s a tº º The Rue Saint-Vincent, in Montmartre (1908) The Windmills of Montmartre about 1845 Street of the Willows. – Wine Shop of the Assassins is g g g º ºs & © e º ºs e º 4 The Fourth of September, 1870 . . Gambetta PAGE I96 I99 20I 202 203 204 209 213 214 215 223 225 229 231 237 241 TABLE OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii The Government of the National Defence The Deputies of the Left Bank (4th September) Henri Rochefort (4 September, 1870) The Entrance to the Classrooms The Presence Sheet The “Little Girls” The Second Quadrille At the Bar . & © tº $ $ tº $ $ tº e s & # e. Mlle. Mauri’s Ensemble Class in the Grand Foyer of the Opera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mlle. Rosita Mauri & & g º ºs At the Second Quadrille . . . . . . . . . . . A Lesson with Mlle. Mauri in the Great Foyer of Dancing. Mlles. Barbier, Zambelli, D. Lobstein * & © e º e a e s ∈ a e e Mlle. Mauri’s Class . e = * * * * * * e ºr The Seine and the Pont-Royal, January 25, 1910 The Wharf of the “Touriste” opposite the Orsay Station, January 26, 1910 . . . . . . . . . Quay Saint-Michel, January 26, 1910 . . . . . Quay Voltaire and the Pumping Engine of the “Official Journal '' . . . . . . . . . . . . Quay Saint-Michel, January 26, 1910 . . . . . The Footbridge of the rue de Baune, January 27, I910 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The Seine and the Pont des Saints-Pères, Janu- ary 28, 1910 . . . . . . . . . . . . Rue Visconti, January 28, 1910 . . . . . . . . The Palace of the Legion of Honor, January 28, I910 º º tº ſº tº € 8 & 3 - e º º º The Court of the School of Fine Arts, January 28, 1910 * * * * * * * * * * * * * PAGE 273 275 277 282 283 284 285 287 289 290 291 293 295 298 299 303 304 305 307 309 3II 3.13 314 TABLE OF PLANS Part of a Plan of the City of Paris, by Bullet and Blondell, 1670 to 1676 . . . . . . . . Part of a Plan of the Place de Grève and the Hôtel de Ville in 1830 . . . . . . . . . . Extract from the Road Plan of the City of Paris in 1839 . * & Place du Carrousel . . . . . . . . . . . . . Extract from the Plan of the sixteenth arrondisse- ment of the City of Paris, 1860. . . . Map of the Butte Montmartre . . . . . . xiv PAGE 29 69 97 173 2II 253 THE BY WAYS OF PARIS Byways of Paris THE “MANSARDE” OF BONAPARTE A" the end of the Pont-Neuf, at the corner of the narrow rue de Nevers," No. 5 quai Conti, during more than half a century Parisians proudly pointed out to respectfully impressed strangers an ancient four-story tenement crowned by a succession of gar- rets contrived in the high-pitched roof. The build- ing was to the last degree ugly, but a black marble tablet affixed to the wall in accordance with an im- perial mandate of October, 1850, bore in letters of gold the interesting inscription: “The Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, artillery officer, after leaving the School of Brienne, lived on the fifth floor of this house.” The legend was charming, the place peculiarly picturesque and suggestive: at the outlet of the old Pont-Neuf, on one of those quays of the Seine * The rue de Nevers was, in the thirteenth century, a mere lane serving as a channel for the sewerage of the house of the Sachet Friars and the garden of the Collège Saint-Denys. It was closed by a gate at each end and was for this reason known in 1636 as the rue des Deux-Portes. It received the name Nevers because it ran along the walls of the Hôtel de Nevers. — JAILLOT, Recherches sur Paris, t. V, p. 60. - 2 BY WAYS OF PARIS which are the finest in the world, but a stone’s throw from the Institute, the Mint, and the Poultry Market, the squat pillars of which then uprose — not very high — at the corner of the rue des Grands-Augus- tins, not more than fifty yards from the statue of good King Henry, on the platform of the Pont-Neuf, near the historic buildings of the Place Dauphine, dominated by the pointed towers of the Conciergerie and the spire of the Sainte-Chapelle — what a set- ting for a great memory ! Add to all this that one may embrace with a single glance the garret of the poor Corsican lieutenant, “the Eagle’s Nest,” and the gorgeous palace of the Louvre, whence Napoleon the Great, all-powerful Caesar, dictated his laws to the world. A living antithesis “Admirable matter for Latin verse!” It was therefore a shock when an unlucky study of texts robbed this mansard of its air-built glory ! But the inexorable facts were there: naught re- mained but to take down the mendacious tablet ! Now — poor jetsam — it finds harbor in the pas- sage of the building in which the worthy bookseller Gougy hoards his precious collections. A few en- thusiasts protested, insisting that it was “a put up job of the government,” and the popular tradition still has its faithful, - witness the old driver who lately came within an ace of immolating us beneath an auto on the very spot where the eminent Pro- fessor Curie was stupidly crushed in 1906, - in- tent as he was upon pointing with his whip to a high-perched dormer window: “There, gentlemen, Yº: ſº Hºnº MS NOLLE 3. º-ºº: º No. 5 QUAI CoxTI ABOUT 1860 4. BY WAYS OF PARIS that 's where Napoleon lived — right up there — that 's where he learned how to beat them all, - that 's interesting, hey?” Before this heroic affirma- tion we more than ever deplored the sad mania which possesses historians — those spoil-sports of dreamers in a ring ! — to do away with legends ! The first blow was given in 1884 by the erudite Auguste Witu, who demonstrated that Bonaparte had never lodged at 5 quai Conti. Basing his conclu- sions on the statements of the Duchesse d’Abrantès, M. Witu found the true “mansarde ’’ at 13 quai Conti, in the hotel of Mme. de Permon, mother of the Duchesse d’Abrantès, the wife of General Junot. This charming little hotel still exists intact, or nearly so. The entrance is now at No. 2 impasse Conti, and the fine apartments of the first floor are occu- pied by the Pigoreau (formerly Nyon) bookstore. Certain citations from the Mémoires of Mme. d'Abrantès amply justify M. Witu’s conclusion. “Whenever in these days,” she wrote about 1840, “I pass along the quai Conti, I cannot refrain from looking up at a dormer window at the left angle of the house, on the third floor. That was Napoleon’s room whenever he visited my parents. It was a very pretty little room next my brother’s.” ". Five lines above, Mme. d’Abrantès says categorically: “Under the pretext of a sprain, Napoleon passed a whole week at our house.” Conclusive, one would say! Credulous and confident, therefore, we used to gaze 6 with emotion upon the “mansarde at the left angle.” M. Pigoreau, with exquisite courtesy, had many a 1 Mémoires de la Duchesse d'Abrantès, t. I, p. 59. THE “ MANSARDE” of BONAPARTE 5 time permitted us to visit not only those noble sculp- tured salons on the ground floor which were Mme. de Permon’s drawing-rooms, but also the picturesque nooks and corners of her young men’s apartments. MME. D'ABRANTÉs We had respectfully climbed the ancient staircase with its fine balustrade of wrought iron, leading to the famous “mansarde ‘’ – a charming room, its dormer window commanding an admirable view of the Seine. It now forms a part of the abode of M. Desjardins, the perfect comedian who – O coinci- 6 BY WAYS OF PARIS denceſ — greatly resembles Bonaparte, whose im- perial person he has so ably reproduced at the Porte- Saint-Martin Theatre. We too accepted the legend of the “mansarde ‘’’ Nothing, indeed, could be more credible than the statements of Mme. d’Abrantès. The Bonaparte and Permon families, both of them of Corsican origin, were well acquainted. Mme. de Permon had watched over the last moments of Charles Bonaparte, the father of the future emperor," who died at Montpellier the 12th of February, 1785. She had received into her own house at Montpellier, “where the Permons enjoyed the advantages of a prosper- ous fortune,” the young Joseph Bonaparte, upon whom she lavished “all the care which he might have expected from the most devoted mother.” O disillusionment! All these stories of the youth of Bonaparte, the pupil of the military school,” the inmate of Mme. de Permon’s home, are without foun- dation, concocted for advertising purposes “It is all false,” asserts M. Fr. Masson, one of the most trustworthy historians of the Emperor Napoleon. “In the first place the pupils of the École Militaire 1 Mémoires de la Duchesse d’Abrantès, t. I, p. 70. * Napoleon, who was destined for the navy, passed at the School of Brienne an excellent examination, the notes of which we possess, thanks to the Chevalier de Kéralio, Inspector of Military Schools: “M. de Bonaparte (Napoleon): born August 15, 1769, four feet ten inches, – has passed his Fourth. Constitution and health excellent, character submissive, gentle, kindly, grateful. Conduct very regular; has always been distinguished for application to mathematics. Is fairly good in history and geography; very weak in military accomplishments. He would make an excellent sailor; worthy to enter the School at Paris. THE “ MANSARDE” OF BONAPARTE 7 never left the school except for military excursions, under the charge of their officers. In the next, a simple comparison of dates suffices to disprove all these legends.” And M. Fr. Masson is right: judge for yourself. It was on November 1, 1784, that Bonaparte – who had reached Paris the evening before by the Bonaparte Burgundian barge, which put him off at the Porte Saint-Paul, with four of his fellow students, under the surveillance of a Mission Friar – was entered as “gentleman-cadet admitted to follow courses * at the École Militaire." There our hero shared the room 1 October 22, 1784. The Marshal de Ségur, Minister of War, signed the brevet of “gentleman-cadet de Bonaparte,” on October 30. “Departs from the Royal School of Brienne under the conduct of a 8 BY WAYS OF PARIS of his “binóme * Desmazis, “the only window of which looked out upon the great court.” A year later, October 28, 1785, Bonaparte, named second lieutenant of La Fère’s regiment (in garrison at Valence) after an examination conducted by Laplace, in which he was classed forty-second among fifty- eight competitors, made “his first free sortie ’’ in Paris “under the surveillance of a subaltern officer of the school. He paid a visit to M. de Marbeuf, bishop of Autun, on the ground floor of the abbatial palace of Saint-Germain-des-Près,” and concluded the day by “a few drives and walks in Paris.” The next day Bonaparte and Desmazis set out for Wa- lence: “ They had supped and slept in the neighbor- hood of the office of the Lyons diligence which was to carry them to their future garrison, and the sub- altern – their mentor – had paid the expenses.” Now, in October, 1785, the Permons, quitting Montpellier, had come to Paris and taken up their abode (from 1785 to 1792) in the Hôtel de Sillery, quai Conti. Is it not probable that on the eve of departure Bonaparte would go to pay his grateful respects to Mme. de Permon, who had been so kind to his father and younger brother, and may we not accept as veracious the following page of the Mémoires 2 “I remember the day when he put on his uniform. He was as delighted as all young men are at such a time. One item of his dress, however (a blue uni- Mission Friar in company with MM. de Montarby de Dampierre, Castres de Vaux, Laugier de Bellecour, and de Comminges, all admitted to the Ecole Militaire at Paris. |UT L–2– = MME. DE PERMON's DRAwiNG-Room, now Salon of M. Pigoreau, Place Conti No. 2 10 BY WAYS OF PARIS form, blue jacket with red facings and white buttons, three-cornered hat, and sword), gave him a very PAss AGE SAINT-Roch ridiculous appearance – his boots. They were of such singularly great dimensions that his little legs, at that time very thin, disappeared in their amplitude. My sister and I could not refrain from shouting with laughter. This ruffled him. “It is easy to see,” he said to my sister dis- dainfully, “that you are only a little boarding-school miss.” “And you,” she replied, are nothing but Puss in Boots!’ Everybody burst out laugh- ing.”" Let us, like “everybody,” amuse ourselves with imagin- ing the great drawing-room with its gray woulwºrk, its plendant view of the Seine and the Louvre, and the un- expected figure of the im– perial Puss in Boots, whose prodigious strides were to overpass by a great deal the “seven leagues º' parsi- moniously allotted to them by the worthy Charles Perrault. 1 Mémoires de Madame d'Abrantès, pp. 83 and 86, passim. THE “ MANSARDE * or BONAPARTE II It is not, however, till 1792 that we have indis- putable proof of a visit of the “Artillery Captain * Bonaparte to the hotel of the quai Conti. He dined there on Thursday, June 14. “Yesterday I dined with M. de Permon,” he writes to his brother. “Madame is extremely agreeable, loves her country much, and likes to have Corsicans at her house.” Did he visit the house little or much? It is a matter º * º º - -ºN ALLEGoRICAL ENGRAVING PUBLISHED ABout 1800 of secondary importance. He went there; that is enough to permit us to call up his Caesar-like profile, his eagle eyes, his olive complexion, his long hair “in dog’s ears ” reflected in mirrors now dimmed by years, but still hanging upon the walls of the salon and the “little salon.” We see him, slender in his threadbare uniform, leaning against the great marble chimney-piece, embittered, indignant, mur- muring against his lot, anxiously awaiting a better future. The year 1792 was indeed peculiarly painful to 12 BY WAYS OF PARIS Bonaparte, miserably vegetating in Paris. He had been obliged to return from Corsica to defend him- THE CORNER OF THE RUE DEs Moi NEAUx AND THE RUE DEs MoULINs self, before War Min- ister Lajard, against a grave accusation of “in- subordination and lack of discipline.” The 28th of May he had installed himself in the rue Ro- yale-Saint-Roch (later rue des Moulins) at the Hôtel of the Dutch Pa- triots (formerly Hôtel Royal, table d'hôte 3 livres); but his poverty was so great that the same day he wrote, “I find it too expensive, and shall change to-day or to-morrow.” The next day, in fact, he took up his abode in the rue du Mail, in the Hôtel de Metz, where he occupied room 14 on the third floor. “It was known that at this time he had a debt of 15 francs at a wine mer- chant’s in the rue Sainte-Avoye," and he was reduced to pawning his 1 CHATEAUBRIAND, Mémoires d’Outre-Tombe, t. III, p. 24. THE “ MANSARDE * 2 OF BONAPARTE 13 who watch at Fauvelet’s — a brother of Bourrienne kept an “enterprise of national auction * at the Hôtel Longueville, place du Carrousel." One might see Napoleon eating at the wineshop of “Justat, rue des Petits-Pères, where a portion cost six sous !” ” It would appear perfectly natural that in his distress Bonaparte should sometimes have sought refuge among the few persons whom he knew in Paris — he must therefore have gone often to the Hôtel Permon, where he dined on the fourteenth of June. Therefore the souvenir of the god of War remains unalterably connected with this house by the tenacious bonds of a tradition dear to the people of Paris. We recall to mind that some fifteen years ago M. Pigoreau did us the honor of presenting us to Mlle. Nyon, a more than octogenarian, whose family had occupied the house ever since the Consulate. Mlle. Nyon received us with that charming grace which aged persons sometimes deign to reserve for those whom they feel to be lovers of a past which to themselves is dear. With deep emotion she related to us the famous legend which she had loved from childhood | Poor Mlle. Nyon, how distressed she would be to see how these terrible modern historians have treated her illusions ! After all, as she appears to have been a Voltairean in a small way, she would probably content herself with denying their infalli- bility, and sending them all to the devil! 1 BourFIENNE, Mémoires, t, I, p. 50. * SAINT-HILAIRE, Habitations napoléoniemmes, p. 65. THE OLD QUIARTER OF THE WHITE NAANTLES Tes o'clock in the evening. The police station of the rue Vieille-du-Temple is crowded; guardians of the peace, cyclists, a dozen plain-clothes men, resolute-eyed and stout-fisted. The police captain, calmly finishing his cigarette, is giving orders, making clear his instructions, anticipating any possible sur- prise. “You, brigadier, will guard the court and prevent any escape. . . Eight officers will bar the street, the others will follow me into the wineshop. . . Let no one leave it until after my interrogatory. Act promptly and resolutely. . . No noise; make your way there by twos and threes. . . Keep your eyes open ; they are sharp fellows. . .” A search is to be made in a wine merchant’s shop, in the neighborhood of the Hôtel de Ville, hidden away in a tangle of crowded streets in the Marais, – Street of the Rosebushes, Street of the King of Sicily, Street of the Jews, - dirty alleys almost en- tirely inhabited by Jews, Poles, Russians, Germans, most of them furriers or capmakers. It is an as- tonishing region, a sort of forgotten Ghetto. One seldom hears French spoken there, and many of the shops, from the butcher’s to the barber’s, display, beside the usual sign, another in Hebrew or Russian characters. 16 BY WAYS OF PARIS Our wine merchant dwells in the rue des Écouffes; 1. his shop is the meeting place for bands of cosmopoli- tan thieves: specialists in stealing jewels, cutting through walls, receivers of stolen goods, plotters of crimes; nearly all are utterly reckless, ready to “unload ' a belated pedestrian, to crack a safe, to break into a room with two strokes of a jimmy: one prise below, one above, the bolt flies and the thing is done. Complaints come pouring in ; something is in the wind... We set out, creeping silently along the gloomy, sinuous streets in the neighborhood of the national printing office. The night is dark; at times the moon casts a bluish light upon the roofs, on the angle of a wall, upon a projecting sign; here and there a gas-burner throws ruddy, tremulous reflec- tions upon the greasy pavement. One by one our groups arrive: their passage has attracted atten- tion; suspicious persons plunge into dark alleys, bareheaded girls rush into hospitable wineshops like so many gusts of wind, strident whistles resound — but precautions had been well taken, no one has succeeded in slipping away. The police captain of the quarter, M. Lespine, throws away his cigarette, settles his eyeglasses, opens the glass door suddenly, and leads the way in. The officers rush in after him. They find seventy cus- tomers, crowded into a long dark hall, shut off by a low partition. All rise, as if moved by a spring. 1 In this Street of the Kites dwelt our great painter Philippe de Champaigne. A tablet affixed to No. 20 states that he died there in 1674. Auſºn. | º: º | RUE VIEILLE-DU-TEMPLE ABout 1860 I8 BY WAYS OF PARIS The “patron,” a stout man with crisp black hair, remains transfixed with raised arm, still holding in his large hand the bottle of “Pernod * from which he had been pouring. “Let no one move till every one has been searched ” commanded M. Lespine. An agonizing silence, then sudden cries, a very pale man with a glass in his hand has struck an officer in the face. In the turn of a hand the officer has doubled him up on a table, knocking off a num- ber of bottles in the act. The other customers in- tercede: “He must be excused, he is crazy, he is ‘ half-cracked,” he is marteau.” Incomprehensible phrases are being tossed to right and left; four fifths of the drinkers speak only a sort of slang made up of words from the Hebrew, Polish, Russian, German. “Silence!” commands the captain; “let that man go and hand me the papers!” In a hand’s turn an open space is arranged, with four tables, three dirty benches, and six chairs. Here are arraigned, one by one, the cosmopolitan clients of the fat landlord, who looks on in silence, his arms crossed upon the tin counter; behind him is the waiter smoking his cigarette. This is n’t their first police-raid! The narrow room is filled with smoke and smells — sour wine, bitters, absinthe. On the walls are several sticky chromolithographs, three calls from the General Confederation of Labor in as many languages, and at a corner at the left the symbolic circle, “the two clasped hands.” One after another some sixty extraordinary types THE BARBETTE TURRET, RUE VIEILLE-DU-TEMPLE, ABOUT 1865 20 BY WAYS OF PARIS pass before the polyglot police captain and his of ficers. Many are well known; some one whispers their various characteristics in our ears: “profes- sional thief, housebreaker, Russian terrorist, receiver, dealer in human flesh and blood.” Each has in his hand his “City of Paris,” as in this low community of thieves they call the permission of residence given to foreigners by the Prefect of police, — the docu- ment being headed by the words “City of Paris.” What curious samples of every human race! Here are flat-nosed, curly-haired Kalmucks, rough-hewn angular Anglo-Saxon heads, crafty Levantine faces, heavy-bearded, bullet-headed Russians of the Crimea, mutton-faced Polish Jews. But how wonderfully alike are the eyes | Oh, those restless eyes, those sharp eyes, those burning eyes as of hunted beasts, those eyes determinately veiled, those eyes which seek to conceal their agony of terror, those eyes of hatred and revolt! Quietly, deliberately, M. Lespine puts his questions, hesitatingly answered by men who hope to ward off a more formal examination; he inspects dirty papers, worn thin by use, cut in the folds; he glances over post cards, letters stamped at Odessa, Tobolsk, Riga, Nijni-Novgorod, London, Ceylon, addressed now to the inn in the rue des Écouffes, now to one of those vague “five-cent lodging houses" which abound in the near-by alleys. One sent to the “prison of the Santé'' is the only certificate one of them can pro- duce. Here are yellowed photographs, handbills of the races, all written over with notes, a blue pro- gram of the Jewish Theatre, 10 rue de Lancry, CHURCH OF THE WHITE MANTLES IN 1790 22 BY WAYS OF PARIS printed in Hebrew characters and adorned with por- traits of seven artists; here are “peddlers’ note books,” and a package of bonbons ! Every time that the door is half opened, either to let some one go free or to send some one to the police station (where the identity of the vagabonds will be more narrowly examined, many of them being already subject to summons), the murmurs of the crowd, with difficulty kept outside the scene of interest, penetrate to us with the whiffs of fresh air. The interrogatory goes on ; a man raises his arms and is rapidly searched; the inspectors announce the result in half a dozen words: “Griskow, of Odessa, three francs, candle ends, matches, tobacco, a razor, a soiled serviette ’’ (the usual portmanteau of the dweller under the bridges, the “limpers,” the tramps, the flotsam and jetsam of the “refuges *). “Schwartz- berg, of Riga, no domicile, journeyman furrier, two francs, a razor, speaks no French.” “Dickson, one sou, brush, razor, candle ends, no domicile nor papers, arrived yesterday from London, boxer by profes- sion.” The interrogatory goes on ; now and again the officers lay down before the captain jimmies, knives, mutton bones, American false knuckles, bunches of false keys which the owners had flung away in hot haste, under benches, tables, almost anywhere. We go out — at first merely to breathe, for the atmosphere has become stifling and the stench is terrible in this small over-heated room, where so many are breathing and smoking; afterward to see — for the sight is worth the trouble. OLD QUARTER OF THE WHITE MANTLES 23 A double line of guardians of the peace and cycle policemen have formed a barrier, setting free th door of the inn where the interrogatory is going on. Behind the barrier are massed hundreds of curi- ous folk. There is a crowd in the street, at the win- dows of the neighboring buildings and lodging- houses. They stare si- lently at those who are taken off to the police station, applaud those who go free, stuffing into their inside pockets with an “Ouf!” of satisfaction their papers, their cer- tificates, their “City of Paris.” Names are shout- ed; there is an indescrib- able babel of sounds. From the distant darkness arise entreaties, the sound of blows, cries of wrath, in- vectives, threats. Pushing our way through the howling, swarming crowd of starers who encir- cle the wineshop where the RUE PAváE AU MARAIs inquiry is still going on, we leave the rue des Écouffes, and behold us perambulating this old quarter of the 24 BY WAYS OF PARIS market gardens, the dark outlines of which seem like the cast-off scenery of some tragedy of the past. These narrow houses, high, bulging, ramshackle, forlorn of aspect, with their lanterns dimly reveal- ing the legend “Lodging for the Night,” strangely recall the “cutthroat º alleys of the Middle Ages, so marvellously evoked by Gustave Doré in Balzac's Contes drólatiques. One might spend hours in ex- ploring this ancient quarter, so little known to Pa- risians, and yet so interesting. It grows late. Into the cold night the twelve strokes of midnight have long ago fallen one by one from the low tower of the Church of the White Mantles. Darkness hides the blotches, the cracks, the suppurations of the old buildings, and only the strange outlines, the queer doubly distorted roofs are visible, outlined against the pale sky across which low clouds are scudding. Yet we are not weary of threading these sinuous alleys, rue Vieille-du-Temple, rue Pavée, rue du Marché-des-Blancs-Manteaux, rue Cloche-Perce, rue du Bourg-Tibourg, with their old Rabelaisian names, their uncouth, dilapidated build- ings, capped with antique pigeon-houses set sidewise and all out of plumb. ſ Now and again a couple emerge from the still half-open door of a wineshop, search the street with suspicious eye, and hasten away. These doubt- ful shades are those of the ruffians who haunt such resorts as that of the rue des Écouffes which we had that evening raided. In general they are the noc- turnal masters of these slimy streets, these corners in whose dark shadows lurk such dangers; they seem OLD QUARTER OF THE WHITE MANTLES 25 to find them particularly threatening to-night. There are too many “curious ” persons around to please these merry men, who, simply as a matter of pro- fessional discretion, prefer to keep their little stories to themselves. They steal away, therefore, on nim- ble feet, their “companions * under their arms, to “shool ’’ in the direction of the Markets. There, moored in some truly hospitable harbor, − the Night Beauty, the Cave, the Smoking Dog, the Angel Gabriel, or the Big Bar, – they will patiently await the coming of the rosy-fingered Dawn. How snugly, in places like these, one may light the brûlot (burn brandy), munch almonds, laugh, drink, and plan — the future, while the nasal accents of the phono- graph or the plaintive melodies of the accordion and the harmonica soothe them to forgetfulness of danger. RUIE BEAUIREGARD THE STREET of THE Moon The Good Tidings Church E”. true Parisian lounger knows the high and very narrow house opposite the Porte Saint-Denis which separates rue Beauregard from the rue de la Lune. This building, perfumed with the odor of brioches at a sou each, which are sold there (and have been since 1849, as the sign asserts), forms the tapering point of a triangle of which the rue Pois- sonnière is the base. Wonderful to relate, in this point the 1908 plan of Paris and that of 1713, by Bernard Jaillot, precisely agree Nearly two hun- dred years have not modified the ground plan of this ancient quarter, where the very alleys remain what they always were. Under Louis XIV it was called “The New Town ''; to-day it is nothing other than an antique corner of Paris, interesting to walk through, and the history of which appears to be peculiarly qualified to evoke the spirits of the past. In the fourteenth century a wealthy religious com- munity — the immense domains of the Filles-Dieu, the “Daughters of God’” — lay between the rue Saint-Denis and the market gardens of la Grange- Batelière. At the time of the captivity of King John the Good, made prisoner by the English after the battle of Poitiers (1356), the fortifications hastily 28 IBY WAYS OE' PARIS erected for the defence of the city cut across these lands of the Filles-Dieu. One part was enclosed in Paris — the ramparts extended as far as the present rue d’Aboukir – the rest remained a Parisian suburb: a part of this suburb, coilverled in Lo a dumping ground for the street-cleaning administration, be- came known as the “Butte aux Gravois '' (Rubbish Hill). Under Charles IX numerous mills turned merrily on this height, vines flourished here, wine- shops, bowling greens; there was dancing under the filbert trees, and the pleasant name Beauregard, given to one of these streets, is a memory of that far-off bucolic time when “Rubbish Hill ‘’ became “Mill Hill.” ". Then broke forth the Wars of Re- ligion which overturned our country, and with it, Mill Hill. The facts are well known: Henry of Navarre, hailed King of France after the assassination of Henri III at Saint-Cloud, the Civil War, the League, — that “hydra with two heads, one Spanish, the other Guisarde,” — the victory of Ivry, opening to the Béarnais the road to Paris still in possession of the League, the siege of Paris (1590). Henry of Navarre surrounds the city, cuts the communica- tions, confiscates provision trains, takes possession of the suburbs and set up his artillery on the Butte aux Moulins,” transformed into a place of war. Paris 1 This butte auc Moulins must not be confounded with the Hill of the Mills (butte des Moulins), which was levelled only some thirty years ago, and across which now runs the Avenue de l'Opéra. 2 The heights of the Ville-Neuve and its neighbor Notre-Dame- de-Bonne-Nouvelle had also their windmills; they are shown in plans of the sixteenth century. When the four cornerstones of _____ ………！！！ :::::::--~~~~…**** ………****** […！---****ſ..……--~~~~ ſz::：::::--~~~~::::::::：::--~~~~ Ťae TOE：，Ź№…ae ±·№**ſ！ ---- ！！！！！ ± .…--~~~~！） |-Ź№*--------- № -*r…--~ ！！！！！！！！！ .…---**** |||||| ！=）= | ||||№Ē | || || || ſĒ > b y Bullet and Blondell y of Paris, f C; P art of a Plan of the 30 RYWAYS OF PARIS loses its head, - no provisions, no bread, no ammu- nition, no forage, anarchy in the government, dis- order in the street; monks of the League preaching battle, holding reviews with hood thrown back, morion on head, sword at side, halbert on shoulder; militia firing arquebus salvos to honor the Pope’s legate and unluckily killing their own chaplain. The scant provisions being exhausted, the rich convent stores pillaged, notwithstanding the efforts of the Jesuits to close their doors," horses, dogs, cats all devoured, L’Estoile asserts that the Parisians were reduced to eating young children, and bread made of ground bones stolen from the cemeteries During this time the Spanish ambassador caused liards (half-farthing coins) to be struck, and thrown among the famishing crowds from the windows of his hotel, “thus solacing by alms those whom he was starving to death.” From the top of their walls, ramparts, and towers, the famishing Parisians could see only a few yards from their city waving harvests, ripening apples, growing vegetables. Wretched creatures daily risked life in the effort to cut a cabbage or steal a few car- rots. Henri IV showed himself very humane; he toler- ated the entrance of provision trains, permitted women, children, and the sick to leave the city. “ Ventre-Saint-Gris! I have no desire to reign over the dead,” he would say. The arrival of the Duke of Parma broke the blockade and delivered Paris. Every one knows the rest — the battles of Lagny, of the church were laid, August 28, 1551, the place was already known as the Mount of the Mill (la Montagne du Moulin). + MICHELET, Histoire de France, p. 316. №ae， - straere！saevaequae Aºirºssrºw x c. EA ſurr, scritºs º saecursae sago, ！-× -！ ---- ſaeº siſſaer， ſaeſae propaeae THE PRÒCESSION OF THE LEAGUE 32 BY WAYS OF PARIS Corbeil, the abjuration of Henri IV, his letter to the Beautiful Gabrielle, “On Sunday I shall make the perilous leap *; the crowning of the king at Saint- Denis, his triumphal entry into Paris (March 22, 1594), his farewell to the Spanish troops from one of the windows of the Porte Saint-Denis : “Pleasant journey, gentlemen, and return no more | * * At once Paris recovers from its wounds; a “New City’” (Wille Neuve) is built on the “rubbish * of Mill Hill (butte aua Moulins). Louis XIII, desiring to attract population thither, grants patents of com- plete franchise to artisans who will open shops there.” The call was heard by a great number of workers in furniture; under Louis XIV cabinet makers flocked thither; even in our own day a cer- tain number may be found there whose original establishment dates from this remote epoch.” * This Porte Saint-Denis was one of the gates of the rampart. The existing Porte Saint-Denis dates from Louis XIV. * Letters patent of the year 1623 accord full franchise to all per- sons who will settle there to carry on arts and trades, that is to say, “the privilege of laboring freely and publicly, and of keeping shops after the manner of those of the Temple.” Cabinet makers, whom a similar franchise had generally attracted to the privileged ground of the Abbey Saint-Antoine, but who only asked liberty to occupy other points in the suburbs on the same conditions, were the first to hasten to the quarter designated by these letters patent. Under Louis XIV, the entire place had been occupied: “There are in the Ville Neuve,” we read in the “Handy Book of Addresses * (Livre commode des adresses), a great number of joiners who make all sorts of furniture not turned. * LA WILLE-NEUVE. – The fortifications which had necessarily been made during King Jean's captivity had cut the property of the Filles-Dieu into two parts. The nuns took refuge in the city, and built a new enclosure around their monastery, of which a part was later taken for new fortifications. This place eventually was taken for a dumping ground; under Charles IX some trenches were dug there, called by the people and by historians “yellow trenches,” RUE BEAUTEGARD 33 The (Bonne-Nouvelle) Good Tidings Church was built, and Queen Anne of Austria " deigned to come in person to lay the cornerstone of the choir. The population of Ville-Neuve increased, but side by side with a goodly number of working people a deplor- able population slipped in. Those who were so im- prudent as to venture into its sparsely settled streets were unmercifully fleeced and even held to ransom. Women of evil life, coureuses de rempart, — and the ramparts were close at hand, occupying the site of the present Boulevards, – flocked hither in such numbers that the surrounding parts of Ville-Neuve, the rue de la Lune, the Porte Poissonnière, the rue from the color of the soil. Houses were here built about the begin- ning of the sixteenth century, and even a chapel, and this suburb, which was daily becoming more important, received the name of the New City. - The misfortunes which the League brought upon France, and especially upon the city of Paris, rendered necessary the destruc- tion of this suburb and the demolition of its houses. The surface of the ground being raised by the ruins, when peace had dissipated all fears, and the faubourg was rebuilt, it received the name of Villeneuve- sur-Gravois (the new City-upon-Rubbish). — JAILLOT, Recherches sur Paris, t. II, Quartier Saint-Denis, p. 10. - 1 Tradition says that while passing along the boulevard, near the old Chapel of Saint-Louis and Sainte-Barbe, razed during the siege of Paris, the queen received some good news, and that in consequence she felt impelled to rebuild the new temple of the Virgin, under the title Our-Lady-of-Good-Tidings (Notre-Dame-de-Bonne— Nouvelle). The church, sold during the Revolution, was rebuilt in 1823 to 1830; nothing of the ancient edifice remains except the seventeenth century bell-tower. After the sack of Saint-Germain- l'Auxerrois, the Bonne-Nouvelle Church was assailed in February, 1871, by a band of 400 men, whose work of devastation was for- tunately arrested in time by a battalion of the National Guard. But in 1871, during the Commune, it was completely devastated, and its priest, M. Bécourt, was imprisoned and at the close of the insur- rection massacred by the insurgents, May 27, 1871. – DUPLESSY, Paris-Religieuw, pp. 45, 46. 34 EY WAYS OF PARIS Merderet, gained the appellation “The Women’s Field.” Farther away, however, near the Porte Saint-Denis, vast gardens, fine hotels surrounded with verdure, made this distant quarter a choice place of residence, half town, half country, a favorite resort of quiet folk, lovers, “magicians, card sharpers, dealers in secrets * for “ sorcerers and exorcisers,” whom it was wise to visit incognito. Houses for seclusion were there and also houses of rendezvous; on the rue Beauregard was the “ dwell- ing surrounded with grass plots’ of the redoubtable poisoner, la Voisin, who, after having set up as diviner, “to restore order and comfort in her house- hold,” expended in feasting the hundred thousand francs which she annually gained by the exercise of her infamous trade. - Let us take a stroll in this ancient quarter. Set- ting out from the Porte Saint-Denis, let us climb the rue Beauregard, where amidst modern horrors it is not difficult to discover here and there some traces of a glorious past, — sculptured pediments, wrought iron balconies, foliage, window casings dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. When we reach No. 17, opposite the more than modest hotel which mistakenly passes for the one-while abode of André Chénier, — let us turn and admire a delicious Parisian landscape: the Porte Saint-Denis with its noble decorative sculptures, – inspiring reminder of the victories of Louis XIV on the Rhine, – framed in, golden with light, between two lines of gray old houses which close the Butte Bonne-Nouvelle. Pursuing our road, we pause again at No. 23, º º - - -- - fºortºir"pe ºf Jørºyry, .ſº sº º - º ºº º/. …, º -º- **º-º-º: º º º º º º º THE PoisonER LA VoisiN 36 BY WAYS OF PARIS opposite the alley of the Staircase. It might well be here that La Voisin had her “poison shop ‘’; at her first interrogatory she declared that she lodged in the “Wille-Neuve, rue Beauregard.” We have no more explicit indication, but if it is not precisely here it is surely not very far from here. The place was judiciously chosen: between two sparsely occu- pied streets, a mysterious house with an exit also upon the rue de la Lune, within a few steps of the ramparts; nothing beyond but fields and vineyards. Very probably it was to this house that, carefully wrapped in their hoods, their faces hid behind velvet masks, furtively came Mazarin’s two nieces, the Countess of Soissons and the Duchess of Bouillon — all the tragic actors in the infamous drama of the Poisons. May not “Proud Vashti " herself, the beautiful Montespan, have sometimes slipped in, ac- companied by La Desoeillets, to attend some obscene “black mass ‘’P Documents in the Arsenal and the National Library, Mme. de Sévigné’s letters, the remarkable studies of Father Ravaisson and Father Funck–Brentano, Maître Sardou's fine drama, have thrown light upon this outrageous and terrible cause célèbre, the most shameful evidences of which Louis XIV was careful to burn with his own hand, after having, however, had the grace to restore to a few imprudent personages certain compromising notes, which had been seized in the rue Beauregard. One of these notes, signed with the great name of the Duchesse de Foix, bore these words: “The more I rub them, the less they grow.” The puzzled “Sun- King ” asked the meaning of this enigma, and the RUE BEAUREGARD 37 Duchess was fain to avow that “she had asked for a recipe for a plump neck (se faire venir de la gorge).” Evidently La Voisin not only sold “powders for GRATING ForMERLY OPENING UPON THE GARDENs of LA VoISIN inheritance ’’ (poudre à succession) but also kept a “beauty parlor.” At present the house, which, as formerly, has an exit upon the rue de la Lune (at No. 25), is entirely occupied by a bedding manufactory, and the courte- 38 BYWAYS OF PARIS ous manager, Mme. Gruhier, is kindly willing to show us the remains of what was apparently the dwelling of the “artist in poisons.” Here, enclosed in the wall and long ago filled up, is an old well, the pulley still turning at the end of a rope; here are traces of wooden stairways, worn flagstones, a rusty grat- ing which once opened upon the gardens. We go up to the first floor: here it was that some workmen discovered the original ceiling under in- numerable layers of wall paper. It is somewhat startling to hear from Mme. Gruhier that this ceil- ing was completely painted black Is it possible that this room, now so decently correct, could have been that secret chamber in which, in 1679, the abominable rites of the “black mass * were performed? Have these fragments of sculptured cornice reflected the flame of black wax candles, lighting the travesty of an altar, where ribald wretches –? Plunged in thought, we leave this house, interesting by so many titles | Pursuing our walk, we reach the Église Bonne— Nouvelle, rebuilt in 1824 after having been the temple of the Goddess of Reason under the Revolu- tion. Its tower alone dates from the seventeenth century." In this high-perched rue Beauregard, where 1 THE COMPOSITION OF THE BUTTE BONNE-NOUVELLE. — Ex- cavations made in 1824 for the foundations of the new Church of Notre-Dame-de-Bonne-Nouvelle, have afforded me a precious opportunity to ascertain the composition of this hill, from its base to its summit — a depth of more than fifty feet. It is evident from its numerous stratifications that it once served as a place of deposit not only of old plaster work, the rubbish and ruins of houses, but also for the filth and refuse of the city streets. I have found dis- tributed through this mass a multitude of utensils and broken pieces of furniture perfectly indicating the customs and the state of certain H3. i3*; º º º ſº - -- - - - -- - - --- - - -- wº- - - 40 BY WAYS OF PARIS carriages are few, lovely curly-headed babies are playing in the gutters; a cobbler is singing gayly as - ºn º * Aſsººr cº-º-º-º-º-º-º-º-º-, º - t Boulevard Box NE-Nouvelle he re-soles old shoes; a flower merchant pushes her basket-cart before her, laden with chrysanthemums, arts at these remote periods. I have been especially struck by the brilliancy, the beauty, and the fine quality of certain tissues of silk, as well as the perfect preservation of the colors of woollen stuffs. A prodigious quantity of bits and fragments of leather, worked up and not worked, were found. I also discovered certain plants which expert botanists recognize as originally from Africa. Finally, on reaching the natural soil, we found a field planted with vines, from which several portions of branches and roots were brought out in a state of perfect preservation. If all the different objects found in this mass were to be brought together, they would form an interesting museum, of an entirely new sort. -PARENT-DUCHATELET, Hygiène publique, t. I, pp. 180, 181. RUE BEAUREGARD 4l violets, asters, marigolds. Women’s heads appear, peeping from behind narrow windows hung with little curtains; other ladies, their carefully pomaded hair in puffs, perambulate with philosophic air. It is just the same in all the dusty and malodorous slums which lie between the rue Beauregard and the Boulevards. The region is more familiar than family-like. We return to our point of departure by the rue de la Lune; here again are antique houses, sculp- tured pediments, old gratings, wrought iron-work. We approach the Porte Saint-Denis. There is still a smell of fried cakes (brioches), but a smell of absinthe, too. The ancient houses have been modern- ized; here are bars reeking with liquor; here is the “saloon of the Black Cat, kept by Mme. Yvette’’; here are cinema theatres, and our ears are assailed with the refrain of Viens, Poupoule, discharged from a redoubtable phonograph. How, in such an uproar, shall we think of the beautiful Montespan? SEINE LANDSCAPES Fº some time past the idlers of the Pont-Neuf (they date from Henri III and are the most an- cient loungers of Paris), as they lean over the para- pet, have been gazing with charmed and delighted eyes at a jaunty white yacht moored alongside the quai des Orfèvres, opposite the Place Dauphine. It is an unfamiliar sight for Parisian eyes, and the before- mentioned loungers never weary of curiously watch- ing the coming and going of the sailors, as they un- coil cables and polish brasses; nor especially do they weary of staring at the pretty women who read, con- verse, or pace the matted deck of the great white vessel. - While other owners of yachts are making their headquarters at Mentone, Nice, or Monaco, an art- loving Parisian woman has been pleased to fly her colors nowhere else than in Paris. And what part of Paris has it pleased her to select? The oldest, the most venerable, the most picturesque ! Beside the steep bank of the Cité, at the very place where our first ancestors used to moor their light barks to the wooden posts of Lutetia, lies to-day the elegant yacht aboard of which we breakfasted the other morning with an inspiring company of artists, writers, law- yers, journalists — all of us rapturously contemplat- 44 BY WAYS OF PARIS ing the scenery of the Seine – so familiar to us all – which on that day seemed to us quite new. One thinks he knows Paris. Profound mistake! Merely by the influence of the season, the day, the hour, the weather, even this Protean Paris becomes Post-NEUF see N FROM THE YACHT changed, transformed to such a point that it is always an unexpected, unsuspected, almost an un- known Paris which suddenly reveals herself to her lovers, and lavishes upon them all the enchantment of visions as yet undreamed of Such is our case to-day, when each great arch of the Pont-Neuf making blue circles in the green Seine strangely frames in a part of the view. The magic SEINE LANDSCAPES 45 of the picture lends vividness to the magic of memory. Our view begins in the violet distances of the trees of the Tuileries, follows the palace of the Louvre, the leafy point of the Cité, the historic mansions of the Place Dauphine; it pauses at the Pont-Neuf, A Nook IN THE SEINE skirts the Palais de Justice and Notre Dame, and fades away beyond the Pont Saint-Michel, behind rue Galande, upon which looks down the venerable spire of Saint-Séverin, the old Parisian church where Dante prayed, they say. Spirits long departed mingle with the noble scene, as the reflections of bridges, towers, and roofs mingle, quivering, with the water of the 46 BY WAYS OF PARIS river softly plashing under the keel of the yacht from which we gaze upon this fairy-like picture. Every stone eloquently narrates some fine human adventure, a page of the history of France or of Paris. The pictures of Raguenet which hang on --- THE BRIDGE FROM THE YACHT the walls of the Carnavalet Museum show, toward the close of the eighteenth century, this slope of the quai des Orfèvres, where our boat is moored, covered with little houses built upon piles; the bridges of Notre-Dame and Saint-Michel, the Pont au Change, were all built over with small wooden houses, similar to those which are still found on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. These slight buildings, many times de- SEINE LANDSCAPES 47 stroyed by fire, did not finally disappear till about 1788. At the time of the Revolution the banks of the Seine had been monopolized by rope-makers, who spun their long cordages there; but at all times and under every government the real familiars of the banks have been the fishermen. In Hubert Robert’s pictures, in those of Raguenet, Noël, Demachy, Can- ella, in the drawings of Saint-Aubin, of Bacler d’Albe, Carle Wernet, Duplessis-Bertaut, Daumier, or of Ber- tall, one finds the inevitable fisherman with his line. He fished during the Terror, during the days of June, during the siege; he was still fishing during the red week of May, 1871 ! In the last hours of the dying Commune, while the Tuileries, the Louvre, the Cour des Comptes, the rue de Lille, and the palace of the Legion of Honor were flaming like torches, while Paris was burning, while men were slaughtering, shooting one another, not for a single day — it is an ascertained fact — were the banks of the Seine without their familiar visitors, fishermen with their lines. What do I say? Enthusiasts were all the less likely to be absent because, thanks to so many cataclysms, they might fish during the closed season After the shores, the quays; this quai des Or- fèvres which now overhangs us evokes the splendid memory of that Goldsmiths’ Guild which during so long a time here displayed its wealth and luxury. 48 BY WAYS OF PARIS Hither Paris was in the habit of coming to ad- mire the magnificences of the Laliques, the Bouche- THE SLOPE of THE GoldsMITHs' QUAY rons, the Cartiers of these days." In 1700 thirty- six goldsmiths’ shops might be counted on this * Their display was hardly inferior to that of our shops of the Palais-Royal, which, indeed, are simply their successors. Add to these the dainty splendor of the jewellers' shops which sparkled along the same row, and the varied brilliancy of the shops of the dealers in high-grade second-hand goods, of which those of Fagnani, Malafer, and Granchez were the most magnificent, and you may gain an idea of the glittering glories of the region near Pont-Neuf. These second-hand dealers were at first somewhat contemptuously called mired merchants; “that will be,” says Etienne Pasquier, “a mingled commodity, such as those hardware merchants have, who provide their shops with all sorts of merchandise in order to make the more rapid sales.” – Edouard FourNIER, Histoire du Pont-Neuf, t. I, p. 282. SEINE LANDSCAPES 49 quay; in the windows sparkled gold chains, sword hilts, clasps, baldricks, silver platters, pyxes, reli- quaries, monstrances; on the day of the Fête-Dieu procession the goldsmiths used to erect on the Place Dauphine gigantic resting places on which they lav- ished their treasures; the neighboring picture dealers would put at their disposal “the canvases which they did not fear to have spoiled and the subjects of which were the least profane.” ". A week later this same Place Dauphine — that monumental triangle of which King Henri IV himself had traced the plan — would belong to the young “independent painters,” — those who belonged neither to the Royal Academy nor to the Academy of Saint-Luc ; on that morning (the Thursday of the little Féte-Dieu from six o'clock till noon) they had the right to hang their works upon the shutters of the shops surrounding the place. All Paris would crowd to this triple fête of youth, art, and springtime; beautiful women, pretty-faced models came in flocks; lovers of art and lovers of beauty alike found here what they wanted. It was on the blinds of a shop of the Place Dauphine — a fragment of it is there still — torn down to make room for the ugly and incommodious staircase of the Palais de Justice, that in 1717 Lan- cret hung the two paintings which laid the founda– tion of his reputation, and which the critics of the day, almost as infallible as those of our own time, felt no hesitation in according to Watteau. Upon some other such place in 1720 a young man of twenty, J. B. Chardin, “ son of the master cabinet-maker 1 Le Panthéon littéraire, 1789, p. 187. 50 BY WAYS OF PARIS who made the king’s billiard tables,” hung a canvas, so perfect an “imitation of an ancient bas-relief ‘’ that J. B. Wanloo bought it immediately, “at a higher price than Chardin had dared to hope for.” It was his first exhibit. Eight years later, this same Chardin exhibited, on the same Place Dauphine and on the same conditions already mentioned, La Raie, that chef-d'oeuvre which we may admire to-day in the Museum of the Louvre." - At our left, in the direction of the quai des Grands- Augustins, the oldest of Parisian quays, those new houses which are separated only by a narrow street from the Lapérouse restaurant, with its admirable wrought-iron balconies, its admirably sculptured gro- tesques, were built upon the site of the Poultry Market, constructed in 1809 upon the ruins of a convent of the Grands-Augustins, demolished in 1791 by the Revolution. Here, in the times of the Valois, the grotesque processions of the “Favor- ites " (Mignons) used to pass, going to do penance * Desiring to foresee the opinions of the principal officers of this body, Chardin indulged himself in an innocent artifice. He placed his pictures in the first salle, as if by chance, and himself remained in the second. Arrives M. de Largillière, an excellent painter, one of the best colorists and most learned theorists upon the effects of light; struck by these pictures, he stops to consider them before entering the second hall of the Academy, where the candidate was waiting; on entering he said, “You have some very fine pictures there; they are assuredly by some good Flemish painter; the Flemish is an excellent school for color. Now let us see your works.” “Monsieur, you have just seen them.” “What! those are your pic- tures which — ?” “Yes, sir.” “Oh,” said M. de Largillière, “present yourself, my friend, present yourself!” The reception of Chardin, accepted and approved as painter of flowers, fruits, and character subjects, took place September 25, 1728. – E. and J. DE GON- COURT (Chardin), L’Art au XVIII° siècle. $ 52 BY WAYS OF PARIS in the Church of the Grands-Augustins, where the Knights of the Holy Spirit had met when this order was founded by Henri III in 1579. After the Revolution, the quays from Pont-Neuf to Pont-Royal were converted into an immense bric- à-brac shop. g There, in the shops along the walls leaning against the trees which border the Seine, were heaped up the relics, the spoils torn from dismantled châteaux, con- vents, churches, the great hotels. There lay heaped, pell-mell, family portraits and odd pieces of furni– ture, pictures of saints and Olympian divinities, armorial tapestries and music-boxes, Sèvres porce- lains and untuned harpsichords. On these quays, too, the Terror set up those “revolutionary meals '' where poverty-stricken folk snatched at “ plates of toasted red herrings, sprinkled with young onions, alternat- ing with earthen pans full of prunes and salads.” It was to the quai des Orfèvres that, about half- past eight in the evening of the 9th Thermidor, Robespierre was brought, outlawed by the Conven- tion, and refused as a prisoner by the concierge of the house of detention of the Luxembourg. His friends accompanied him, with acclamations, to the Police Administration in the old buildings which until 1871 were occupied by the Prefecture of police. These buildings included not only the ancient hotel of the President de Harlay, whose gardens reached as far as to the Seine, but also a group of tottering, dislocated houses in which, according to the needs, had been installed “the services.” Robespierre had quitted the police department only upon the reiter- 54 BY WAYS OF. PARIS ated entreaties of his partisans, who demanded his presence at the Hôtel de Ville — where he was to experience the pistol shot of Méda, downfall, arrest, and death. A narrow lane, Jerusalem Alley, used to open upon the quay: at the left was an ancient bell-turret, then the tops of trees (the garden of the prefect); at the right a house with a pigeon-cote dating from the eighteenth century ; at the end a vaulted door (recently rebuilt in the garden of the Carnavalet Museum) served as the principal entrance to the Prefecture. All this is now covered by the rue de Harlay. Without counting the Ministers of Police, — Fouché, Rovigo, Beugnot, Pasquier, etc., who lodged in the quai Voltaire and in the rue des Saints-Pères, — how many prefects have succeeded one another in the rue de Jerusalem! In 1848 it was the amazing Caussidière, who, after having promoted himself, surrounded himself with a Pretorian guard, “the Mountaineers of Caussidière * (infantry and cav- alry), who during nearly three months terrified Paris. Impromptu Prefect of police, Caussidière, after breaking off all relations with the government, issued a proclamation, recommending “the people expressly to lay down neither their arms nor their revolutionary attitude.” " * The Prefecture of police, subjected to the orders of Caussidière and Sobrier, became filled with former members of secret societies, organized into closed companies like the Pretorian guard for a future dictator. Caussidière had no communication with the Hôtel de Ville; he had, of his own initiation, published the list of the Réforme as the official list of the government. This proclamation con- SEINE I, ANDSCAPES 55 MM. de Maupas, Boitelle, Pietri, under the second Empire, MM. Edmond Adam and Cresson, under the third Republic, were the last prefects to inhabit the quai des Orfèvres. In 1871 the Commune of Paris gave them as successor a disciple of Hébert and Marat, a young fellow who called Couthon an “old crutch,” and found Saint-Just “without energy “ — Raoul Rigault. - After having for a time occupied the fine dwelling of the “ex-Prefect of police,” this singular “pro- cureur * installed himself in the Palais de Justice, whence, on May 23, he sent out the order “to call out and shoot the gendarmes detained in the House of Justice.”" The next morning the old Prefecture tained the following: “The people are expressly recommended not to lay down their arms, nor to leave their positions or their revolu- tionary attitude. They have been treacherously betrayed too often; it is important never again to permit the possibility of attempts so terrible and so criminal.” Conformably with the advice of this friend of the people, the city became a great bivouac, yet added nothing either to public safety or to confidence. * On the 23d, at noon, an officer of the federates, followed by a squad which halted on the quay, made his way into the record office; sent by Raoul Rigault, he bore the order to call out and shoot the gendarmes detained in the House of Justice; by a happy chance it was a general order without indication of names or number. M. Durlin — at that time director — proved his coolness. He took the order from the hands of Raoul Rigault’s emissary, saying carelessly, “We have no gendarmes here at present. There is some error: the gendarmes have been transferred. Look in the offices of the Prefecture.” The federate departed, but returned at the end of half an hour. “We found no one, the gendarmes must be here.” “No,” replied the recorder; then, addressing himself to Génin, the overseer, “Open all the cells, that the citizen delegate may convince himself that there is not a gendarme in them.” The delegate did his duty faithfully, but found no gendarme. He 56 BY WAYS OF PARIS of police, having first been drenched with petroleum, was flaming like a match, and with it the most precious records of the secret life of Paris. “We’ll toast the curiosity box!'” said the scoundrel in charge of the auto-da-fé. He kept his word. Were we not right in saying that every stone in these old Seine quays has its story? Strange story, where laughter is close to tears, where virtue walks hand in hand with crime, and everything seems topsy- turvy, incoherent, grotesque, odious, or sublime, like the dead leaves that fall from the plane trees into the trays of old books along the quay and are mingled with the loveliest legends of love and glory. had been carefully not conducted to the “coachmen’s quarter,” of the existence of which he was ignorant. He retired with a salute, “Sorry to have disturbed you.” The hostages were saved. — MAXIME DU CAMP, Les Convulsions de Paris, t. I, p. 169. THE CITY HALL AND THE PLACE DE GREVE JUILY 31, 1830 S” years ago, strolling in the neighborhood, some impulse led me to climb the six interminable staircases of the Hôtel des Invalides, the attics of which shelter a precious collection of “relief plans of fortified places,” to be seen only at certain widely distanced times. These plans in relief, some of which date from the sixteenth century, occupy a long series of mansard rooms, and form a small museum, too little known but most interesting. The oldest were made by order of Louvois, anxious to place before the eyes of Louis XIV a view of his conquests; the most recent, the plan of the harbor of Cherbourg, was completed in 1872. At the time of the invasion, in 1815, the allies “borrowed ‘’ from the Invalides some of these beautiful topographic toys, which still adorn German and Austrian museums. Nothing can be more astonishing, at a first glance, than these tiny but accurate reproductions of cities, not only calling up heroic memories, but also offer- ing a perfect picture of a lilliputian strong city, as it would appear from a balloon. Moats, counter- scarps, bastions, redans, market gardens, winding streets, small mansard-roofed dwellings, mansions with sculptured fronts, cathedrals bristling with little 58 BY WAYS OF PARIS bell towers, – nothing is left out. Here are linden- bordered promenades, malls, shrubberies, bowling greens — dear to our ancestors. Here we see Maestricht, Berg-op-Zoom, Bouillon, surrounded with dense forests, Namur, Laon, high-perched upon its rock, Arras, Saint-Omer, Ypres. Here is Avesnes, with its fortifications and its fields. Here, even, in a corner on the right of the great public place, cowering under the church with its Spanish tower, is a hospitable house very dear to our hearts, and we can almost see our friend G. Lenôtre emerging at early dawn, gaitered like a Mohican, an arsenal of fishing rods on his shoulder, on his way to “hobble * with a firm hand the carp in some neigh- boring pool. Pursuing our picturesque journey, we contemplate Constantinople, Sebastopol, Antwerp, Gibraltar — and suddenly, a great surprise! A marvellous vision rises before us; the Place de Grève on July 31, 1830, at the moment when Louis Philippe, lieutenant- general of the nation, is crossing it amid the ac- clamations of the populace, on his way to the Hôtel de Ville, where he will complete his conquest of the throne of Charles X, overturned by the three “glori- ous days * of street fighting. Before this astounding apparition, which carries us back seventy-eight years, we seem to be present (as our grandfather actually was) at the apotheosis of the Revolution of 1830. As from a window opened upon the public square we perceive all the upheavals of an effervescing people. Thousands of tiny per- sonages are running hither and thither around the ‘JIEw of THE HôTEI DE VILLE (CITY HALL) or PARIs (EIGHTEENTH CENTURE) 60 EY WAYS OF PARIS “City House,” grouping themselves around the most celebrated actors in this political comedy. Here is Louis Philippe on horseback; near him a sedan chair holds the banker Laffitte, helpless with an untimely attack of gout ; a second chair is occupied by Ben- jamin Constant, — two of the principal leaders in the movement. The national guard appears, drums beat, the sovereign people acclaim the hero whom to-morrow they will hiss; at the windows, on the sidewalks, on the terraces, are thousands of wonder- ing folk. This “relief plan,” some two yards square, nearly three in depth, is certainly the first of “in- stantaneous ” pictures, and it dates from 1833. Its author, Foulley, was a retired soldier, who devoted his unoccupied hours to the marvellous reproduction of the most salient events of his time. >}: >k >k The photographic reproduction of this plan gives the sensation of a document taken from the very life. The plan itself is still more impressive, since to the sensation of a crowd is added the magic of color. Here are the painted houses, the ancient stones, the antique windows, the tiled roofs, the carrottes of tobacco peddlers; here are the uniforms, the shakos, the uplifted muskets; the ladies in shawls and hooped skirts; the cocoa sellers threading their way among the loungers; the very dust which sprinkles the soil of the Place de Grève is the “dust of an epoch ” Imagination lending her aid, the illusion is com- plete; before us rises the glorious and imposing mass RECEPTION OF LOUIS PHILIPPE AT THE HÔTEL DE VILLE. Belief Pan 62 BY WAYS OF PARIS of the old Hôtel de Ville, that City Hall of Paris where some of the most celebrated dramas in French history were played. We have tested the accuracy of this surprising reproduction, and can bear witness that never was nature reproduced with more scrupu lous fidelity. The building with gothic turrets, the QUAI DE LA GREve, AND PART of THE HOTEL DE VILLE ABOUT 1830 historic lanterns at the entrance of the rue du Mouton, the rue de la Mortellerie, the arcade Saint- Jean, the wineshop “To the Image of Our Lady *; the multi-colored shops, red, green, blue; the scaf- foldings surrounding the campanile of the Hôtel de Ville, the yellow tint of M. Laffitte’s sedan chair," “borne by Savoyards,” the greenish color of that of M. Benjamin Constant, Louis Philippe’s white horse: Histoire de dir ans, par Louis BLANC, p. 349, passim. CITY HALL AND THE PLACE DE GRiève 63 the students of the Polytechnic, sword in hand, form- ing a hedge; before the door the scattered straw which had served for the bivouac of the previous night; the wineshop of the quai Pelletier riddled with bullets, the window-panes broken by the hail of balls, — all is rigorously true to facts, and affords a most precious document concerning this extraordinary revolution, which in three days laid low the throne of Charles X, and replaced the white flag of the fleur de lis by the tricolor. Nothing can be more interesting, more brilliant than this popular movement which brought together nearly every social class. The best writers of that day signed the call to arms, – MM. Thiers, Mignet, Armand Carrel, Chambolle, Rolle, de Rémusat, Baude, Alexis de Jussieu, Cauchois-Lemaire, Évariste Du- moulin, Léon Pillet, Bohain, Roqueplan. Forty-five men of letters, in the name of the freedom of the mind, risked their heads by inscribing their names at the foot of a protest against royal ordinances drawn up by M. de Polignac and signed by the aged King Charles X. The explosion of wrath which convulsed Paris was sudden and terrible. In a few hours barricades arose as it were from the earth, hosts of armed protesters gathered, drums beat the call to arms of the na- tional guard, working men and students rushed into the streets, the students of the Polytechnic, “ after having sharpenca on the flagstones of the corridors of the school the foils from which they had removed the buttons,” forced the doors, and in dress uniform took command of bands of insurgents; every Parisian 64 BY WAYS OF PARIS transformed himself into a soldier, and the unlucky soldiers of the royal guards fell under the discharge of muskets loaded with printers’ type in default of balls. - Side by side with the veterans of the first Empire, heroes of Jena, Eylau, Austerlitz, and Waterloo, still wearing their glorious uniforms, “Those blue coats worn by victory,” 1 were combatants in hunting jackets, in frock coats, in blouse, in overalls; others wearing uniforms from the Vaudeville, where a military piece (“Sergeant Matthew ") was being played. Alfred Arago, the director of the theatre, had put arms and costumes at the disposition of the rioters! The Museum of Ar- tillery had been forced; the admirable lithographs of Raffet which form the “Album of 1831 * show us the gutter-snipes of Paris, their heads enveloped in the morion of a Leaguer or a pikeman’s helmet —improvised commissariat — carrying to the “bar- ricarders ” “balls of zinc for the cuirassiers.” ” 1 Le viewa: soldat, Béranger. * The soldiers who occupied the Place de Grève defended them- selves with great courage and seriousness. Every house became a castle, and every window a porthole. Three men posted behind a chimney had long kept up a murderous fire upon the troop when they were at last discovered. A cannon was pointed against the fatal chimney; but before firing upon it the cannoneer signed to those behind it to get away. A detachment of the Fiftieth preceded by cuirassiers came by way of the quays to the Place de Grève. They were driven into the court of the Hôtel de Ville, and their cartridges, which they had refused to use, were distributed among the soldiers of the guard. — A detachment of Swiss had been sent from the Tuileries to the succor of the Hôtel de Ville; they entered the Place de Grève on the double quick. A barricade was occupied by the populace. The Swiss sustained the attack with vigor, the guard #º r : - - 4. º & s --\s N i ~ ~ * N. \, - ~l ls § § w * § f*§ § * - ; 66 BY WAYS OF PARIS The “grognards '' (veterans of the Empire) were directing the conflict, the cross of the Legion of Honor fastened to a leather apron. “Fire upon the leaders and the horses, young fellows, the devil take the others | * Cries arose from the thick of the fight, “Down with Charles X!” “ Down with Po- lignac l’” “Down with the ordinances !” “Long live the Charter | * For that matter nearly all the combatants were absolutely ignorant of the meaning of the Charter and what the ordinances were about ! Every one knows the rest, — the barricades, the wounded, the dead carried on biers by torchlight by insurgents crying “Vengeance ’’ the royal postmen disarmed, three hundred men camped in the court of the Tuileries, the city bristling with barricades, the smell of powder everywhere, a war-fever taking pos- session of the whole population, the discharge of cannon, the call of the tocsin La Fayette, the old hero of 1789, - he whom the irreverent nicknamed “Gilles-César,” sitting at the Hôtel de Ville, adored like an idol; the emotion of Paris on seeing — at last! — the tricolor floating above the towers of Notre-Dame; unknown and well-dressed “mes- sieurs ?? distributing pistols and charges of powder in the streets; the “old men of yesterday ” dream- ing of the advent of Napoleon II, the Eaglet! the Dauphin, flustered and furious, cutting his fingers by snatching Marshal Marmont’s sword from him, the arrived to support them, and already the Parisians were giving way, when a young man advanced to encourage them, waving a tricolored flag at the end of a lance, and crying, “Let me show you how to die!” He fell, pierced with balls, not more than ten paces from the guard. – Histoire de dia: ans, 1830–1840, by Louis BLANC, t. I, p. 217. RUE MoncLAU-SAINT-GERVAIs NT-JEAN, SAI ARCADE 68 BY WAYS OF PARIS Hôtel Laffitte become “the hostelry of the Revolution — people hastening thither from all parts of Paris. Not a man of intrigue but came there to relate his services * – the departure of Charles X, of the Duchess of Berri and the children of France escorted by the body-guard, the general lieutenancy of the THE HôTEL DE VILLE DURING THE REvolution of 1830 realm offered to the Duke of Orleans, the prince's hesitations, the entreaties of the deputies, the popu- lace crying, “Long live the Duke of Orleans !”.' The * The deputies who came from the Palais-Royal to bring their homage to the Duke of Orleans with the proclamation which they addressed to the French people are as much moved as the prince himself; he draws them after him, they form his guard and escort him to the Grève. They conduct him through the crowd, who, seeing him pass through their midst, put aside the barricades to let him pass, and begin to cry, “Long live the Duke of Orleans!” and to grasp the hand of the citizen prince. The acclamations of the crowd announce the arrival of the pro- - -- ----- º - º A ºzººezzzzzez B. Zºzºzeża ºžº C &/ozone decº/eºs ººzºº. D -frºzzezzº&º E 4ºzyze aesºzzº F Zºrozze zea cºzze º G 22eszºoz &es Zºzzesz. * H zºosºvºyzz ºverazzº zºosºon. - * 2°ºezzzzz's gº zºzºza- zºr cºzzezzº. ** Nº. 2 ºzºzºwaa zesz can. - - - - - º ºzzº *A*** Part of a Plan of the Place de Grève and the Hôtel de Ville in 1830 Collections of the Carnavalet Museum. (Portfolios of topography) 70 BY WAYS OF PARIS Duke, amid plaudits and cries of joy, finally consent- ing to take his way to the Place de Grève, – that Place de Grève where for three days past each house has been a fortress, - going thither to ask the sanc- tion of the Hôtel de Ville upon the new dynasty; and - - - -- - Zºze=º-EEEE-ZEEEEE-A-TEEsº º- - - º Fº gº §ººs. - º º | º º - º Hº sº - º º º ſ r º º ſ º º º up tº La Fiate in E. caevº Le Jour, Dr. LA FRISE LE Er -- | ********Nº ºngºs. A sºrous neia Linerºr: a º - -, - -Hºſeº PopULAR PICTURE OF 1789 La Fayette, in the name of the people, publicly giving the accolade to the new “Citizen-King.” cession: the municipal commission, La Fayette and his staff, go out to meet him on the portico of the Hôtel de Ville and open the doors to him. The prince ascends the grand staircase leaning on the arm of the general-in-chief. In the hall of Henri IV they come to a stand. The proclamation of the deputies who are founding a nation and promising new guaranties of the old liberties of the country is solemnly read again. Louis Philippe, his hand on his heart, confirms the promises of this declaration. – DULAURE, Histoire de la Révolution de 1830. —CH. SIMOND, Paris de 1800 & 1900, t. II, p. 21. CITY HALL AND THE PLACE DE GREVE 71 It is the final episode of the triumphant revolution represented by our relief plan. Louis Philippe takes possession of the crown of France in the ancient Communal House, the Hôtel de Ville of Paris, still spotted with the balls of the 10th Thermidor, and where the tragic room is still almost intact, the “green cabinet,” in which Robespierre’s jaw was fractured by the ball of Méda, where Saint-Just was arrested, where Lebas killed himself. Outside of this “green cabinet ’’ passed the projecting cornice upon which, on the night of the 9th Thermidor, Augustin Robespierre, brother of the Incorruptible, ventured himself, shoes in hand, in the endeavor to flee, while the troops of the Convention were invading the square. Here is the cornice, — it runs all along the first story; here is where the wretched man dragged himself along, hesitating and trembling. Beneath his naked feet the victors with fixed bayonets were crowding, shouting victory; the Place de Grève was still lighted by the expiring flames of the grease-cups which the concierge Bochard had lighted by order of the Commune." 1 Positive Declaration of Michel Bochard, concierge of the Com- munal House, from the 9th to the 10th Thermidor. Toward seven o’clock in the evening the mayor ordered me to ring the tocsin at once. I refused point blank to ring it. Then Charlemagne and almost the whole Council called me a rascal, passed an order and openly forced me to do it. I gave up the key and the tocsin was rung. At ten o’clock I was ordered to put grease-cups in place to light the square. Finally, about two o'clock in the morning, a gendarme called me and said he had just heard a pistol shot in the Hall of Equality. I went in, and saw Lebas lying on the floor. Immediately the elder Robespierre fired a pistol; the ball missing its aim, came within three lines of me; I came near being killed, since Robespierre fell upon me in the passage when quitting the Hall of Equality. Legrand, substitute National Agent, confided his portfolio and his watch to 72 BY WAYS OF PARIS The younger Robespierre then understood that all was lost for his brother and himself. He desired to die, and threw himself, head first, upon the entrance steps of the Hôtel de Ville. He succeeded only in mutilating himself horribly, wounding in his fall Lwo of the invaders, of whom one, “the before-named Chabru,” was nearly crushed * me to carry to his wife, but I carried them to the Committee of oversight of the section of the Communal House. This 17 Thermidor, year II of the Republic. Certified as true. Signed: BochARD. Report upon the events of the 9th Thermidor, Year II, by CourTors, Justificative documents, No. XXXVI. * Dulac, employee of the Committee of Public Safety, to the people’s representative Courtois, member of the Committee of General Safety. Without calculating number nor observing order, after having called to me those who do not fear these and who desired to attack, I flew to the door, which we forced without difficulty, and I may here say, by reason of the vivacity with which I had mounted the staircase, I entered the hall of meetings alone, and found there thirty-six municipals in their sashes. He who performed the func- tions of president, named Charlemagne, held the bell rope — it fell from his hands when I ran upon him with drawn sword, swear- ing, and saying that he was outside the law. No one tried to defend himself, and, strangely enough, we were so few in number that nearly all of us held two apiece. For that reason I called out to cut down the first one who should take off his scarf. No one dared to do so — they were paralyzed with fear, and so were the tribunes, whom I put under arrest, with two men at each staircase. Reinforcements now came, and as soon as I was informed by a cer- tain Delacour, who was performing the functions of a national agent, of the probable whereabouts of the elder Robespierre (for I already knew that the other had thrown himself from the window), I flew thither at once. In fact I found him stretched out near a table, having received a pistol shot which entered about an inch and a half below the lower lip, and went out under the left cheek bone. You must observe, for the honor of truth, that it was I who saw him first, and that it is therefore not true that the gendarme who had been presented to the Convention by Léonard Bourdon blew out his brains, as he has come to boast, and those of Couthon also, who was not even touched: it is necessary to make a point of this. Near to Robespierre under the table was hidden the too famous ATTAQUE DE LA MAisoN CoMx UNE DE PARIs, le 29 Juiº et 1794 ou 9 Thermidor * n 2 de l l erutique ATTACK UPON THE CoMMoN HoUsE DE PARIs July 29, 1794. or 9 Thermidor, Year II of the Republic 74 BY WAYS OF PARIS :}: :: *k All these stories and many more beside are evoked ‘ relief plan.” Therefore the Com- mission of Old Paris, as soon as it became aware of 6 by this precious the existence of this treasure – until then almost un- known — hastened to take steps to have the relic included in the historic collections of the Carnavalet Museum. A resolution asking for the gift, the ac- quisition, or the exchange, of this admirable document was presented in the name of MM. Sardou, Lenôtre, Detaille, Quentin-Bauchard, H. Lavedan, Guillemet, Labusquière, Charles Normand, A. Hallays, Augé de Lassus, Bruman, etc., and the Commission, of which the chairman was M. de Selves, Prefect of the Seine, unanimously ratified this justifiable desire. The ques- tion now was to secure the consent of the Museum of the Invalides to the transfer to Carnavalet of this precious Place de Grève, – which in no sense belongs 9 in the series of “relief plans of places of war,” and which in some sort belongs by right to the Museum of the City of Paris, as an essentially Parisian document. The thing appeared perfectly natural, but the event Dumas, the homicide revolutionary president; I arrested him, and so terrified him that I forced him to tell me where were Saint-Just and Lebas. I went in there and found Lebas on the floor, already dead. Saint-Just made not the least resistance, and gave up his knife with the same obedience with which Dumas had handed me his bottle of eau de mélisse des Carmes (balm essence) which I had taken from him, fearing it might be poison. Health and fraternity. Long live the National Convention! Signed: DULAC. Report upon the events of the 9th Thermidor, year II, by CourTors. Justificative documents, No. XXXIX. CITY HALL AND THE PLACE DE GREVE 75 gave the lie to our hopes. Years of negotiations, dis- cussions, efforts proved to be necessary, even to the nomination of the eminent and conciliating General Mix to the direction of the Army Museum, before this affair which had seemed so simple could be brought to a conclusion satisfactory to all parties. At present, by means of exchanges, the relief plan of the Place de Grève and the Hôtel de Ville as they were on July 31, 1830, belongs to the Carnavalet |Museum, and as good fortunes seldom come singly, our Museum has also obtained that of the “Boulevard du Temple at the time of the Fieschi outrage * (July 28, 1835) and the “Death of the Duke of Orleans ?” (July 13, 1842), two other precious Parisian docu- ments, also due to the talent of Foulley. These three fine works are reckoned among the most interesting attractions of halls which are soon to be opened to the public. These halls, including the Annex, which is being completed by M. Foucault, the very remarkable archi- tect of the Museums of the City of Paris, will be completed, it is hoped, in a few months. Then we shall at last have the pleasure of bringing to the light certain riches which lack of space has for years constrained us to keep shut away in our reserves. Then, we believe, we shall have fine surprises to offer to those Parisians who are devotedly attached to the relics of their Paris; but among these relics none will be more impressive than this evocation of the Place de Grève and the “City House * – the place perhaps where in all ages the heart of our beloved City has beat the strongest THE “NAUISEUINA OF THE ARTS’’ IN THE SORBONNE ()s the fifth of April, 1802, the First Consul, Bona- parte, having decided upon the completion of the Louvre, the greater number of those persons who for so many years had taken possession of the old palace of the Kings of France, painters, engravers, sculptors, writers, geographers, armorers, etc., were obliged to seek elsewhere shelter for themselves and their fami- lies. Some found asylum in the Collège des Grassins, in the Hôtel Vaucanson, at the Jacobins; the greater number took refuge in the Collège Mazarin and at the Sorbonne, which had been put at the disposal of the Minister of the Interior, that he might “there lodge men of letters and those artists who had not been replaced in the Collège Mazarin.” A credit of 10,000 francs was opened for the architect Moreau, who was charged to supervise the work of reparation and restoration; nine months later “fifty-three lodgings, of which twenty for scholars, twenty-one for painters, and twelve for sculptors, with four great studios for painting and six for sculpture,” had been arranged Architect Moreau deserves all praise, for the business ap- * O. GREARD, La Nouvelle Sorbonne, p. 203. 78 - FY WAYS OF PARIS pears to have been peculiarly difficult. Judge for yourselves: * Closed by the Revolution on October 17, 1791, the Sorbonne, that ancient and illustrious home of “Hereditary Discipline,” ” of which Cardinal Riche- 1 National Archives, F18, 1247: Report presented to the Minister of the Interior concerning the former Church of the Sorbonne and the plan adopted by the Minister to make the remains of the edifice into a hall for the distribution of prizes to the Prytaneans of the Central Schools and of all scien- tific and literary Schools. (27 Ventose, year VIII of the French Republic.) - Ministry of the Interior. Of the 19th Brumaire, year X. The Minister of the Interior, in view of the decrees of the Consuls of the Republic, ordaining that the buildings of the Sorbonne shall be converted into lodgings for artists and men of letters displaced from the Louvre, charges Citizen Moreau, architect, with the direc- tion of the works to be done on this account, according to the plans which have been or will be adopted. The Minister of the Interior. Citizen Moreau is authorized to use to the amount of 10,000 francs for the reconstruction of the buildings of the former Sorbonne. (25 Vendémiaire, year X.) “. . Moreau to the Minister: “After long effort, I have succeeded in forming 53 lodgings, of which 20 for scholars, 21 for painters, and 12 for sculptors, with 4 large studios for painting and 6 for statuary sculpture.” MoREAU. (15 Nivöse, year X.) - The number of artists to be lodged in the Sorbonne being fewer than those which had been asked for, Moreau proposes to the Min- ister an estimate of 5,644 fr. 33, which is adopted. (8 Germinal, year X.) * * Robert de Sorbonne, chaplain of Saint Louis, had about 1252 acquired, or exchanged with the king, certain houses in the rue de Coupe-gueule (Cut-throat) and the neighboring street. Saint Louis permitted Robert to close both ends of the street; upon this land the latter built a college and a chapel; later he ac- quired the remainder of the land as far as the rue des Poirées, and in 1271 built upon it the Calvi College, or the Little Sorbonne. Cardinal Richelieu, who had studied theology there, rebuilt the college in 1627, and himself laid the cornerstone of the church, May 15, 1635. – JAILLOT, Recherches sur Paris, t. V, p. 141. THE “ MUSEUM or THE ARTs " 79 lieu had made the sumptuous Palace of Theology, was summarily suppressed on April 5, 1792, the new régime not being able to forgive either its “in- tolerance ’’ or its “aloofness from the national life.” Occupants and associates, having refused to take the THE Court of THE SorbonNE ABOUT 1845 “civic oath,” were served with notice to quit, and the vast buildings remained empty. - In 1792 the Sorbonne, put up at auction, was leased, “ part to Citizen Bachelart, who cut it up into some sixty small lodgings, part to Citizen Chalier, who held Section meetings there.” The furniture, the books, the busts, the “armorial bearings,” had 80 BY WAYS OF PARIS of course been dispersed “in storehouses wherever room could be found.” " “enough to The ruin was soon complete; grass cut " grew between the paving stones of the great court and in the enclosed walk. One night there was a great crash — a part of the dome had fallen in. The street urchins of the neighborhood came in through the broken windows to work mischief in the deserted amphitheatres; sneak thieves found their way in, stealing the leads from the roofs and the marbles from the chapels. An architect who was consulted proffered the admirable advice, “Demolish all that remains standing !” and this truly profes- sional crime would have been committed if “the bad condition of the columns supporting the dome had not made such an operation dangerous for the workingmen.” ” How could these ruins be utilized? In 1796 it 66 was proposed to establish a “chalcographie ’’ there; the plan was soon abandoned because of the heavy expense. The insane idea was brought forward of converting the Sorbonne into a “ depository in favor of the dead of the Commune of Paris.” ” Finally, on March 18, 1800, the architect Peyre offered to divide the church transversely into two great halls — “the lower hall would serve for lec- tures and distributions of prizes *; the upper one, “already decorated with fine frescoes by Philippe de Champaigne, should be used as a museum for 1 National Archives, F 7, 7223. * National Archives, F 18, 1248, No. 58. 8 National Archives, F *, 871. 4 National Archives, F 18, 871. THE “ Ç MUSEUM OF THE ARTs '' 81 expositions of painting and engraving.” Bonaparte, Minister of the Interior, accepted the proposition; funds were voted, but being insufficient for the purpose merely served to arrest the progress of destruction. It was then that artists invaded the “ Museum of Arts * (the new name given to the Sorbonne), where the architect Moreau, as has already been said, made arrangements for them as well as he could, but rather ill than well. From 1802 to 1821 this Museum of Arts sheltered successively more than a hundred families of sculp- tors, painters, engravers, – most of them former “ prix de Rome.” The lodgings were capable of accommodating some half hundred tenants at a time. Here in turn lived Pajou, the elder Ramey, Meynier, Lordon, Demarne, Lesueur, Hittorf, Ro- land, Vandael, the sculptor Marin, the good Boilly, Cartellier, the great Prudhon. As a rule three chambres de maître and three “service rooms ” were allotted to each occupant, but many were forced to content themselves with a modest shed, a garret “lighted by an aeil de baºuf,” a dark studio “where one cannot work more than two hours be- cause of the shadow cast by the opposite houses.” In 1813 Petit, a landscapist of reputation, befriended by General Canclaux, had, by way of lodging and studio both, only a small panelled chamber, “where it was impossible to stretch a canvas.” " The “good “ lodgings were either at the farther end of the court opposite the chapel, or else opened upon the rue de la Sorbonne. Nine studios had been * Lucien 1 National Archives, F 18, 1248. 82 BY WAYS OF PARIS taken from a part of the church, divided transversely by a flooring; there was one in each chapel, two in the upper halves of the central chapels, one under the dome. MM. Cartelier, Esparcieux, Roland, Lordat, statuaries, occupied these studios, and also M. Vandael, a flower painter, who in addition pos- sessed behind the apse of the chapel “a garden laid out in the Dutch manner, into which he might go on the level to paint from nature flowers and foliage on their stems in the broad sunlight or after the refreshment of the rain.” And the lucky Vandael was obliged to protect by a thorn hedge his “ Dutch ” against the covetousness of his neighbors garden and the maraudings of the street urchins of the neighborhood. The statuary Roland had taken up his quarters in the lateral chapel called Richelieu’s, where the minister had been buried, and where his funeral monument, chef-d'oeuvre of Girardon, was erected. In this studio Roland was surprised by death in 1816, just when he was beginning the execution of his statue of the great Condé. David d’Angers, a pupil of Roland, had just returned from Rome, in the heyday of youth and dreaming of glory. He occupied mean lodgings in the neighborhood of the Sorbonne, and his fever for work was such that he used to sleep “upon a sculptured door, in order not to sleep too long.”.” It was he who had the honor 1 O. GREARD, La Nouvelle Sorbonne, p. 267. 2 “In 1815 or 1816 my father, returning from Rome, had a studio in the neighborhood of the Sorbonne. He used to sleep on a carved door in order not to sleep too long.” Extract from a letter of M. Robert David d'Angers, February 17, 1909 (George Cain collection). THE “ MUSEUM OF THE ARTs “ 83 of completing, in this chapel of the Sorbonne, the statue which had been blocked out by his dying former master, and this first attempt was successful. It was at the Sorbonne that David d’Angers was born to celebrity. It is needless to add that falsehood, jealousy, gossip, flourished in this artistic beehive. There were bitter quarrels over choked gutters, over gar- bage thrown out of window, oter rugs too vigor- ously shaken, envyings over an unused “lumber room.” " Nevertheless, between storms these worthy artists were wont to arrange little festivals, family hops, 5 representations of “Proverbs,” concerts.” In winter 1 August 3, 1815. Petition drawn up and signed by some thirty artists lodging at the “Museum of Artists,” asking the Minister of the Interior to forbid the inhabitants of the rues de Cluni, des Cor- diers, and des Poirées to open and enlarge in the party wall giving upon the interior court of the Sorbonne, windows which formerly were merely simple apertures for light furnished with bars and iron network, which now form straight and direct windows, open every day, and out of which the inhabitants throw their garbage, often letting fire fall out when lighting their stoves on the sills, hanging out their linen to dry either on ropes or on frames extending out upon the Sorbonne and communicating by the attic stairs to the mansards occupied by the artists. Signed: DU TERTRE, BOYE, ROLLAND, BEAU- vALLET, KNIP, RAMEY, STOUF, MILBEffT, CARTELLIER, PAJOU, DUMONT, MEYNIER, etc., etc. F18, 1248 (National Archives). * I have discovered a few programs of these concerts written by hand on thick drawing paper, in finished calligraphy. Here is one of these documents: FIRST PART. — 1. Concerto for the piario, Dussek, executed by Mlle. L. Dumont. * 2. Air from Jean de Paris, Boieldieu, sung by M. C. 3. Air with variations for the violin, M. Baillot, executed by M. N. 84 BY WAYS OF PARIS there were dances in Lordon's studio, at Dumont’s or Pajou’s; Jacques Edmé would play on his vio- lin the fashionable quadrille, “The Little Milk- maid.” The ladies “would dress in white muslin or gray gowns drawn up by a small green cord, their necks bare, à la vierge, and upon their hair they would wear a little wreath of flowers, ā l'antique.” " The illumination was modest, and the refreshments consisted of glasses of currant wine and orgeat gallantly offered by the cavaliers . . . but the ladies, young, pretty, graceful, and attractive, had the honor of bearing the names of artists justly re- vered; the young men were intelligent and light- hearted. These delightful young people illuminated for a moment with their effervescent gayety the gray old stones of the “Museum of Arts.” At midnight all lights were extinguished, and the antique build- ing returned to silence and shadow. 4. Air from Semiramis, Catel, sung by Mlle. Dubois. 5. Concerto for flute, Berbiguier, executed by M. Farrenc. SECOND PART. — 1. Variations on the guitar by Mlle. Camus. 2. Air from the Day of Adventures, Méhul, sung by M. C. 3. Potpourri for piano and flute, M. Bazé and Berbiguier, executed by Mlle. L. D. and M. Farrenc. 4. Romance of Jeannot and Colin, Nicolo, sung by Mlle. Dubois. 5. Fragment of a concerto for the violin, M. Crémoni, executed by M. Maussan. 6. Duet from Francoise de Foia, sung by Mlle. Dubois and M. C. G. VATTIER, Augustin Dumont, p. 34. * * The dancers were Mlles. Dumont, Bourgeois, Roland, who became Mme. Lucas de Montigny; Lordon, the Misses Castelier, the elder afterward married to the statuary Petitot, the younger to the painter Heim; Mlle. Lesueur; Mlle. Trézel, married to Milne Ed- wards; Mlle. Stouf, who "became Mme. Couderc, and the four Misses Bosse, of whom the eldest was proud of being named Victory and of being born in the month of March. – G. VATTIER, Augustin Dumont, passwºm. THE “ MUSEUM OF THE ARTs '' 85 In 1802 the sublime artist Prudhon lived “at the end of the court, on the left of the entrance, on the second floor, beneath the clock.” His studio, lighted by one large window, overlooked the gardens on the side of the rue Saint-Jacques, but did not communi- cate with his apartment." The immense talent of Prudhon was no longer a matter of discussion, he was at last realizing his youthful ambitions; yet never had the great artist been so unhappy. Prud- hon was tortured by being the husband of a wife unworthy of him. The poverty of her mind, her low tastes, her violent temper, her vulgarities were ago- nizing to the gentle Prudhon. His household shrew was always exposing herself in the most violent and ridiculous manner; she would run through the cor- ridors, invade the studios of her husband’s fellow artists uttering complaints and invectives. Even before this, when Prudhon had lodgings in the Louvre, two of his neighbors, Girodet and Meynier, had moved to the Capucines (near the Place Wen- - 1 Report presented to the Minister of the Interior (18 Messidor, year X): Citizen Prudhon, painter, represents that to accommodate his family in the lodging given him in the Musée des Artistes it is in- dispensable to remove and carry back for two feet a partition which now forms an unnecessary closet. This operation will give to Citizen Prudhon facilities for making a sleeping room for the children whom he cannot keep at home if he is deprived of the advantage which he solicits. He asks that this work may be done at the ex- pense of government. Citizen Moreau, consulted as to this request, asserts that the expense of these alterations will not exceed 150 francs. He adds that the Minister might well undertake it, especially for a head of a family so commendable by his talents as Citizen Prudhon. It is proposed at the Ministry to authorize Citizen Moreau to make the desired changes in the lodging of Prudhon. The head of division 3 of the Beaux-Arts. (Signature illegible.) 86 g BY WAYS OF PARIS dôme), put to rout by the incessant clamor of this vixen Prudhon was even reduced to the necessity of flee- ing from his studio. Escaping like a criminal, he would go to draw a long breath among his friends. Reaching at last the limit of his powers, he resolved upon a legal separation; nevertheless the scenes con- tinued, and in desperation Prudhon was driven to ask help and assistance from Denon, Director of Museums. “It is torture to my delicacy,” wrote the unhappy artist on September 30, 1803, “to bring before you things so revolting that they make me blush ; I am both outraged and humiliated when I speak of a woman who, having neither pride nor self-respect, has no fear of revealing the baseness of her soul by atrocious, disgusting, and scandalous scenes which she unceasingly brings upon me by infamous remarks about all the people around us and by her insupportable manners toward every one. But for the unusual consideration which my fellow artists feel for me, they would have brought com- plaint against her to the Ministry of the Interior, as the only means of ridding themselves of one whose inveterate ill temper daily inflicts upon them all sorts of discomfort and distress. . . In view of this, you must feel how insupportable and scandalous is the presence of such a woman in a place like the Sorbonne. “The government which values the Arts lodges the Talents. In the abode which it accords them it is essential to order and tranquillity that there shall be a police service having power to exclude any one THE “ MUSEUM OF THE ARTs ' 87 who may dare to disturb them. My wife is such an one.” Nothing was done; this frightful torture lasted several years longer, and ceased only on the day when Madame Prudhon, who had been admitted to the audience of the Empress, made so scandalous a scene in her Majesty’s presence that it became necessary to confine her in a sanatorium which was under police surveillance. It was at this moment of moral distress that the gentle hand of a woman was reached out to soothe the bleeding wounds in Prudhon's broken heart. The unhappy artist went on living in the Sor- bonne, sad and lonely, until the day when, upon the reiterated entreaties of a friend, he consented to give lessons to Mlle. C. Mayer, a pupil of Greuze, whom that painter’s death had left without a master. During sixteen years Mlle. Mayer brightened the life of Prudhon. A study of this adored friend now makes a part of the Groult collection, where we were admiring her only yesterday. How seductive she is, this lovely, plain woman The nose is too large, the mouth too wide, the cheek bones appear to be too far apart — but what in- telligence in this expressive head A quantity of brown curls lightly shade the bulging forehead, and give their full value to the voluptuous, ardent, tender eyes. How easily one can understand, before this touching sketch, rapturously caught in an hour of loving inspiration, the profound affection which the sad-hearted old master must have felt for this gentle, 88 BY WAYS OF PARIS smiling woman, whose long pale hands had soothed his wounds, whose softened glance spoke silent, ad- miring love. The tender heart of the gentle Prudhon yielded itself without reserve; for nearly twenly years the great artist was happy. The connection seemed to bring him good fortune. In 1808 the Emperor Napoleon decorates him in the presence of his pic- ture, “ Divine Wengeance pursuing Crime ’’; he has the honor of painting the Empress Josephine in the cool gardens of Malmaison; his works are greatly sought after. M. de Talleyrand poses to him in his studio in the Sorbonne; the Institute opens its doors to him, - it is too beautiful to last ! The years had not spared Mlle. Mayer; she began to feel herself aging; she became “melancholy ’” — so neurasthenia was called under Louis XVIII; her state of health became justly disquieting, her little fortune had disappeared. The morning of May 26, 1821, feeling even more ill than usual, Mlle. Mayer sent for Dr. Brale, her physician, who found her with “haggard eyes and frightfully drawn brow.” The doctor gone, Mlle. Mayer, notwithstanding her weakness, went up to Prudhon's studio, and sat down in her usual place before her easel, a few steps be- hind the master. A letter was brought bearing the postmark Toul, where Mme. Prudhon was wasting away in the house of her son Epaminondas. The letter contained the gravest news, foreboding her approaching end. There was a long agonized silence, then Mlle. Mayer put the question, “Prudhon, would you marry again if you became a widower?” -- №rrrrrrr! |---- ！！！！！！！！ |- |-|- [−] ſae №. •■ ■ ſae ſ. №ae， |- |- |- ſ. ſae |× №. |× · |× §. + ſae № ********** CoNSTANCE MAYER (A Study by Prudhon) MLLE. 90 BY WAYS OF PARIS Without considering how much his answer con- tained of sorrow, injustice, and pain for the tender heart of his friend, Prudhon, absorbed in the memory of the conjugal road to the cross which he had trav- ersed, could not refrain from replying with a gesture of horror, “Oh, that — never!” Silent, dejected, bewildered, Mlle. Mayer passed into the adjoining closet, where Prudhon was in the habit of dressing; opened a drawer, took out a razor, crossed the court of the Sorbonne, went up to her own apartment, sat down before the glass in her little parlor, and cut her throat with two strokes of the razor, “the second of which,” said the report of Police commissary Monyer, “penetrated to the cervical vertebra.” " Prudhon, suspecting nothing of the swift and hor- rible drama, dressed himself to go to the Institute. ! E:etract from the act of death of Mlle. Mayer: “In the year 1821, the 27th day of the month of May, at half past ten in the morning, appeared before us M. Pierre-Felix Trézel, historical painter, aged 38 years, living in Paris, street and house of the Sorbonne No. 11, and M. Pierre-Gérôme Lordon, historical painter, aged 41 years, living in the same street and house, neighbors of the defunct, who declared to us that on the 26th of this month, at two o'clock in the afternoon, Mlle. Marie-Françoise-Constance Mayer La Martinière, historical painter, aged 46 years, native of Paris and living in the above-named street and house and quarter of the Sorbonne, deceased unmarried in the said dwelling. - Signed: F. TREZEL, LORDON.” An official report drawn up by Jean-François Monyer, police commissary, in presence of M. Cloquet, physician, states: “The demoiselle Mayer (Constance) was in the apartment of M. Prudhon, artist painter, where she had some of her effects. Mlle. Sophie Duprat, pupil in painting of the defunct, had quitted her about 11 o'clock, leaving her alone in the apartment ... dealt herself two strokes of the razor, the last of which penetrated to the cervical verte- bra. She must have died instantly. She had placed herself before a mirror before giving herself the second stroke, and fell upon her back, her feet toward the door of communication.” THE “ MUSEUM OF THE ARTS ’’ 9I He went down, saw frightened faces, heard cries, sobs. Rushing in, he fell upon the blood-stained body of Mlle. Mayer. It was necessary to use force to part him from the corpse, which he clasped convulsively. Determinedly solitary, morose, calling for death as for deliverance, having “neither the patience to live nor the strength to suffer,” Prudhon withdrew to the solitude of No. 34 rue du Rocher. It was at that time an absolutely uninhabited quarter. There the unhappy master lived two years a recluse in his studio, completing the pictures which Mlle. Mayer had begun, wandering along the exterior boulevards, avoiding Paris, going out only to carry flowers to “his” dead, on the upper heights of Père-Lachaise. The 16th of February, 1823, this great artist ceased to suffer. THE STREET OF THE LADIES' TOWER THE NEW ATHENS. — THE HOUISE OF TALNWA Twº rue de la Tour-des-Dames is not what is con- ventionally called a thoroughfare; it begins at rue Blanche opposite the Church of the Trinity, and by a rapid descent enters the rue de La Roche- foucauld. No shops, not an autobus, few carriages; a discreet, silent, aging street. A tablet affixed to the wall of an attractive private house, No. 9, in- forms the few passers-by that the illustrious tragedian Talma died there on October 19, 1826. At the first blush this seems surprising, this almost provincial- looking street seeming destined rather to shelter re- ligious communities than to afford abodes for actors; but reflection brings to mind that in the last century a great number of artists — writers, painters, actors, musicians, sculptors — chose this quiet, cheerful, ver- dant corner of Paris for their abode, enlivened as it was with gardens parcelled out from ancient gardens of religious communities dissolved by the Revolution, from the lawns and gardens around the “follies '' of the eighteenth century, or from the fields and market gardens which had been sold as national property. In former days the major portion of the quarter formed a part of the enormous abbatial domain of Montmartre, which for this region alone included 94 BY WAYS OF PARIS all that lies between the faubourg Poissonnière, the rue de Clichy, and the rue Saint-Lazare. In 1775 Jaillot wrote: “In the direction of the château des Porcherons (now the square of la Trinité, the church standing upon the site of the ancient château of Le Coq, bishop of Laon, friend of Étienne Marcel; the impasse du Coq is a reminder of that long-past epoch) may be seen the ruins of the mill of la Tour- des-Dames transformed into a pigeon-cote, and mark- ing the boundary of the properties of the Abbey of Montmartre.” The street begins at the site of this pigeon-cöte, the terror and torment of the neighbor- ing market-gardeners who had to witness the destruc- tion of their green peas and string beans by the thieving pigeons of the Abbesses of Montmartre; this explains why the destruction of “privileged ‘’ pigeon-cotes was one of the first achievements of the triumphant Revolution. This mill of la Tour-des-Dames figures upon the plans of the censive (rent-rolls) of 1383; it then brought in “6 livres of income *; by 1594 the rent had increased ; it had reached “48 livres, with the obligation to grind all the wheat required for the sustenance of the nuns and their domestics.” ". In * . . . The mill was very ancient, for we find it figuring upon a list of properties of the abbey drawn up on February 11, 1883, where it is mentioned as situated behind a small hotel named on the rent-rolls of Saint-Opportune, in the place called the “Marais under Montmartre,” and bringing in 6 livres of rent (Cartulary of Mont- martre, published by M. E. de Barthélemy, p. 200); furthermore it is indicated in a register of the distrainers (for rent) of Saint-Germain- l'Auxerrois in 1494. — JAILLOT, Recherches sur Paris, t. II, p. 19. This was assuredly the mill included in the lease which Cath- erine Havart, abbess of Montmartre from 1594 to 1598, executed with Martin Levignard, miller, living in the parish of Saint-Laurent, THE STREET OF THE LADIES TOWER 95 1717 the mill was no longer in use, the site had been confirmed to a dealer in horses, and in 1763 the property “ called la Tour-des-Dames * was leased for 150 livres a year to a M. de Saint-Germain. In 1822 V tº Nº. 01 S. wº J. T.A. L. M. A. tº Lº º * . . . . FRANÇois J. TALMA > the last remnants of “ the Ladies’ Tower " were de- molished: in the thickness of the walls was discovered the terms being that he should keep the said mill in good repair, pay to the abbey 48 livres each year, and grind all the wheat neces- sary for the sustenance of the nuns and their domestics. The act was witnessed by Jean Chappelain and Pierre Leroux, notaries at the Châtelet of Paris. (CHERONNET, Histoire de Montmartre, p. 123.) 96 IBY WAYS OF PARIS a small store of wine which had been bottled in the time of Henri IV. Oh, disappointment! The wine was no longer drinkable." The street follows the ancient boundary of the abbatial domain of the nuns of Montmartre. The situation could not but attract such artists as were lovers of light, verdure, quiet; the “New Athens º' – such became the pleasant surname of the quarter — was rapidly peopled, and thus in a few years (1820–1870) the rue de la Tour-des-Dames came to shelter more than one illustrious tenant. Mlle. Mars (of the Théâtre-Français) occupied No. 1, Mlle. Duchesnois No. 3, the studios of Horace Wernet and his son-in-law Paul Delaroche were Nos. 7 and 5, whither Charles Vernet came in 1835 to die; the great Talma lodged at No. 9,” Grisier, the fencing- master who so ably staged the epic combats imagined by the worthy Alexander Dumas, the duels of d’Ar- tagnan, of Bussy d'Amboise, of Chicot, drilled his pupils in No. 12. In the neighboring streets, rue La Rochefoucauld, rue Blanche, rue de Douai, rue Pigalle, cité Frochot, lived, at one time or another during this period, Ber- lioz, Charles Gounod, Victor Massé, Félicien David, Gustave Moreau, Gavarni, Degas, J. L. Brown, Isa- bey, Philippe Rousseau, Charles Jacques, Cabanel, Eranceschi, Gérôme, Reyer, Bizet, Manet, Auber, Eugène Scribe. Beautiful women, friends, pupils, or models of all these artists, besprinkled the “New * LEFEUVE, t. II, pp. 501, 502. * Talma was born in the rue des Ménétriers, Paris, January 15, 1766. Nº. |- - - º: - º ºr. Road Plan of the Ci 1839, y of Paris in f et Extract from the wequ es. P Charl by 98 BY WAYS OF PARIS Athens,” which long retained its charming character of intimacy. Every one knew every one else, if only by the gossip of the concierges – they interchanged remarks, greetings, smiles; it was as it were a small city within a large city, and this lasted until 1870. Artists of all ages have felt the imperious need of 1823 - TALMA, As SYLLA (Act IV, Scene VIII) light and of quiet: painters, writers professional by necessity, comedians requiring to be thus recompensed for their artificial existence behind the scenes, mal- odorous and insufficiently lighted by smoky lamps. In our days multiplied means of transportation have simplified things; passages are lighted by electricity; in a few minutes one may easily reach Neuilly, Au- teuil, Asnières, Colombes, la Varenne-Saint-Hilaire, Joinville-le-Pont. This was not the case formerly. THE STREET OF THE LADIES TOWER 99 Therefore most actors lived in the outskirts of Paris, – Belleville, the Prés-Saint-Gervais, Batignolles: those more fortunate found their abode in the “New Athens.” &zz ZººZºº º ſe * , TALMA As PYRRHUs When in 1821 Talma went to live in the rue de la Tour-des-Dames, he was at the apogee of his glory. The times were no longer as when, about 1790, the great tragedian betook himself on foot Ériº, the I’lle I00 BY WAYS OF PARIS de Seine, where he lived, to the Comédie-Française, “his wife on his arm, and his nightcap over his ears to preserve him from suppressed perspiration * : * at this time Talma held, and justly held, the highest place among actors.” He was the “French Roscius,” a personage in the state; women wore his portrait in cameo. Napoleon, who admired him, had not forgotten the promise made to the friend of his evil days, “I will have you play before a galaxy of kings ’’; and the 6th of October, 1808, at Erfurt, Talma had interpreted the Death of Caesar before two emperors, three kings, a queen, twenty princes, six grand dukes, and the illustrious Goethe. In 1822 the King of the Low Countries accorded him an income of 10,000 francs, on the sole condition that “ for six years during the vacations accorded him by the Comédie-Française, he would play his principal characters in the Theatre Royal of Brussels.” There were conflicts at the theatre doors on the days when Talma was to appear. Often, in our childhood, have my brother and I heard old friends of our family, the elder Dumas, Dr. Firmin, the Marquis of Saint-Georges, talk of the unfor- gettable Talma whom they had known. - The intelligent Henry Monnier has many a time most movingly imitated him for us, in Orestes, in Brutus; has sketched for us the head of Talma as Cinna, with the lock of hair lying across his fore- head. “The Emperor... it was the Emperorſ ’’ he 1 CHARLES MAURICE, Anecdotic History of the Theatre, t. I, p. 24. * Who then was Talma” – Himself, his century and ancient times. – CHATHAUBRIAND, Mémoires d'outre-lombe, t. II, p. 274, Biré editiº.; tº & º gº THE STREET OF THE LADIES TOWER 101 would cry with emotion. He would tell us what audacity and tenacity had been shown by the great tragedian in overthrowing the antique traditions of *---- --- --- ...º iſe rººf, ºr ***, *. ******* *** abºv - a rºw zºº (Jºe Aome -re dºc/re on /www. ote towe *…*.*.*. Aſowranz/ow oozar rezov: (ow/ nº rºw///w ºr ºf a y Jºe ſº." TALMA As CINNA former days, which had costumed the heroes of Cor- neille, Racine, and Shakespeare like dancers, in plumed headdresses, like the supernumeraries in the ballets of the Roi—Soleil, or had dressed them like the I02 BY WAYS OF PARIS gilt-bronze troubadours of the clocks of the Restora- tion, in a “Polish tunic bordered with fur, close- fitting, apricot-colored small clothes, plumed cap and tasselled boots.” Despising these absurd traditions, Talma had ap- peared upon the stage wearing the antique toga and peplum, or a tunic with an iron girdle, bared arms, hair à la Titus, “ rebuilding an epoch,” electrifying the multitude, gentle and simple.” “He looks like a Roman statue,” cried Mlle. Contat, on seeing him appear as Brutus. “It is Garrick arisen from the dead,” murmured an aged dilettante. A single ob- stinate conservative, Vanhove, had protested, heart- broken, at having to give up the crimson silk small clothes of his costume as Agamemnon. “Fine sort of progress They don’t so much as leave a single pocket at the side for the door key !” All these memories were haunting us as we crossed the threshold of the historic building whose owners, MM. Jouet-Pastré, were kindly doing the honors with their usual good grace. The general features of the building have been preserved, but the necessities of the tenants who have succeeded one another since 1826 have modi- fied the interior arrangements without altering its former aspect. We found here—as in all buildings dating from the Directory or the Consulate — small rooms, staircases in the walls, innumerable recesses, tiny salons recalling that feeling of intimacy so dear 1 The tunic held in by the iron girdle, a soldier's mantle over his shoulder, the arms bare, rebuilding an epoch. — A. DUMAs, Mé- moires, t. IV, p. 73. THE STREET OF THE LADIES TOWER 103 to our grandparents; on the other hand, the draw- ing-room and the dining-room are large and gor- geous. Nothing was too fine or too large to receive and do honor to friends. Our ancestors properly appreciated the caustic aphorism of Brillat-Savarin: | TALMA's STUDY, 4, RUE SAINT-GEORGEs “To invite any one is to become responsible for his happiness during all the time he spends under one’s roof.” Here the drawing-room is superb, opening broadly upon the fine garden; beyond, between the trees, appears the dome of the Church of the Trinity blurred by the blue mists of October. What a pic- ture this salon must have been, when Talma was lav- I04 BY WAYS OF PARIS ishing upon those masters of art, those aristocrats of intellect who were his guests, all the treasures of his welcome, his charm, his luxury. The heroes of the Empire, the survivors of the Revolution, have conversed together within these four walls; and noth ing, absolutely nothing, remains of that heroic time: but, on the other hand, in the little room close at hand, it is easy to recover living traces of the past. This little cabinet with its many mirrors was certainly the study in which Talma worked, not only learning his lines, but also studying his attitudes, the play of his features. Of this we cannot have the slightest doubt, for in another lodging of the great artist we have met a similar cabinet and similar mirrors. Before occupying this vast hotel of la Tour-des- Dames, Talma occupied (No. 4, rue Saint-Georges) a lodging of the Directory epoch, now the home of the Phoenix Insurance Company. The obliging cour- tesy of the manager gave us an opportunity to visit these charming rooms, almost intact, with their deli- cate friezes and entablatures, their sculptured pedi- ments, – a feast for the eyes; here again in a small room we found the eight mirrors the height of the walls, permitting the tragedian to observe each of his own gestures, to modify the slightest fold in his costume. A frieze runs around the walls of the study-closet of the rue de la Tour-des-Dames, framing in a series of medallions reproducing portraits of the favorite authors of the great actor: Corneille, Voltaire, Racine — Népomucene, Lemercier, Arnault, Luce de Lancival — striking group ! THE STREET or THE LADIES TOWER 105 Here, done over and modified, is the room in which Talma died. The Comédie-Française possesses – the gift of its author, Robert Fleury – a reproduction of the celebrated picture The Death of Talma, ex- hibited in the Salon of 1827. Here Robert Fleury painted from nature. Dr. Biet – all whose science was inadequate to save Talma from a horrible death – sent in haste for Robert Fleury, who painted the PAINTED FRIEZE IN TALMA's STUDY; RUE DE LA Tour-DEs-DAMEs dying artist’s portrait, while Jouy, the author of Sylla, Arnault, the author of Marius, in deep afflic- tion, watched by the bed of their sublime interpreter expiring in a little room crowded with eleven persons. At the far end of the room, upon the wall hung with green, was Napoleon’s silhouette framed in gold' All Paris attended Talma’s funeral; the Théâtre- Français was closed: it was truly a national grief. 1. After the 9th Thermidor, the actor Fusil, who had been accused of revolutionary excesses, received from the spectators orders to sing the Réveil du Peuple (Awakening of the People). His trembling voice prevented his doing so. Talma was called, and charged to read the hymn. He did so, Fusil standing beside him and holding the torch which the tragedian's weak sight rendered necessary. — CH. MAURICE, Théâtre-Français, p. 155. 106 BY WAYS OF PARIS The four horses which drew the funeral car could hardly make their way through the dense crowd. PAINTED Door of TALMA’s STUDY; RUE DE LA Tour-DEs-DAMEs The coffin, borne by pu- pils of the Royal School of Declama- tion, was more than an hour in passing over the short space between the gates of Père-Lachaise and the grave in which it was to rest. Upon the coffin lay a laurel wreath and the scar- let mantle in which 'I'alma had played one of his fa- vorite rôles. The common people greatly admired the immense funeral processions, but were much surprised that “there were no gendarmes to open the march. ** 1 1 DELEscLUZE, Revue rétrospective (Unpublished Souvenirs), t. X, p. 262. THE STREET OF THE LADIES TOWER I07 A single incident may be noted: at the moment when the funeral procession crossed the threshold of the cemetery, a strident whistle was heard. Surprise, displeasure were expressed — it was the head keeper, who, according to custom, thus apprised his subordi- nates of the arrival of the funeral Pursuing our visit, we reach by an inner stairway the “very fine dining-room,” noted in the leases, “decorated with stucco, with paintings, and with a pavement of mottled white marble of Italy.” " Thence we pass – on the same floor — into the melancholy and charming garden where box, holly, spindlewood, and ivy lavish their sombre metallic greenery. We call up all these old memories while treading under foot the golden leaves which the first frosts of autumn have detached from the trees like wounded butterflies, and which rustle like crinkled silk under our feet. The antique statues which stand around like white phantoms against the purplish background seem to listen to our conversation. They knew these dead of whom we are talking, and we would fain question this mute marble company with their enigmatical smiles which still keep guard over “The infinite sweetness of broken things.”” 1 The building was sold April 10, 1827, by Talma's widow, “from whom he had been judicially separated as to property.” Papers consulted by the kind authority of MM. Jouet-Pastré, in the rooms of M* Leclerc, notary, Place de la Mairie, Charenton. * A. SAMAIN, Le Chariot d'or (The Roses in the Cup), p. 17. PARIS SEEN FRONA A BALLOON We had a charming surprise yesterday; two well- known aeronauts, MM. André Schelcher and A. Omer–Decugis, did us the favor of bringing to the Carnavalet Museum a remarkable series of photo- graphic documents: Paris seen from a balloon. It is a disconcerting Paris, a Paris unsuspected by simple mortals, such as can only be seen by the pigeons of the Tuileries, the sparrows of our man- sards, the crows of the towers of Notre-Dame — and by aeronauts Each in its turn, Montmartre and the Sacred Heart, the Louvre and the Luxembourg, the Cité, -- immense ship of stone moored in the midst of the Seine, – the Place Vendôme, looking like a relief plan stolen from the collections of the Army Museum, the Place de la Concorde, the Champs-Élysées, the Pan- theon and the old Mount Sainte-Geneviève, the Marais furrowed with twice-contorted streets, defiled before our interested eyes; and while these unex– pected aspects of our beautiful Paris amazed us by their strangeness, we could not help thinking, “But where in the world have we seen all this?” It was in the famous plan, called Turgot's, which dates from 1789 | The vision is the same, and, wonderful to relate, certain pictures seem precisely the same in outline, – II.0 BY WAYS OF PARIS the Marais, the surroundings of the Pantheon, the Place Vendôme, the Place des Vosges, – we passed a delightful hour seeking for these relics of Old Paris enshrined in the Paris of to-day. They become ever fewer, alas! The bouquet of green leaves in the centre of which blossomed, even into the nineteenth century, “the most beautiful city in the world,” grows thinner day by day ! Surely the vision is always admirable, but how much less interesting and picturesque than formerly Here is the explanation of the aerostatic craze of our worthy ancestors Perhaps it was to contemplate Paris under this new aspect that the eccentric Marquis de Bacqueville announced, in 1783, that on such a day at such an hour he would rise into the air from the roof of his hotel, situated on the quai Malaquais, at the corner of the rue des Saints-Pères. The whole city was in commotion: the quays, the banks of the Seine, the neighboring houses, the bridges, were gorged with curious folk. At the hour appointed the Marquis appears, wings on his back, followed by his servant equally befeathered. But a controversy arises, the Marquis has decided that his servant shall fly at the same time with himself. The lackey, correct and quite according to rule, refuses; he will be satisfied to follow his master at a respectful distance. M. de Bacqueville throws himself into the air; his first spring carries him as far as the middle of the Seine: there he is seen to “beat the wing,” he falls upon a washerwoman’s barge and breaks his leg. The ser– vant then goes down by the stairs, and with the aid of a bark gathers in his master in very bad case. The Louvre and the Halles seen from 700 metres of altitude (Extract from Paris seen from a balloon by André Schelcher and A. Omer-Decugis.) II 2 13Y WAYS OF PARIS The dream of the “flying men,” for Bacqueville had many predecessors, was realized by the aero- nauts. Every one remembers the first experiment of aerostation attempted by the Montgolfier brothers THE DAY's Folly (drawn and engraved by A. Y. Sergent, 1783) on June 5, 1783, before the Estates of the Vivarais. * A “celestial globe,” inflated with gas obtained with the help of a mixture of damp straw and carded wool, rose magnificently. The conquest of the air seemed to have been realized, and all France, from king to - PARIS SEEN EROM A BALLOON 113 longshoreman, thought of nothing but aerostation. Then it was that “sublime maniacs º asked them- selves if it would not be possible to confide oneself to the Montgolfiers and “bathe in the ether.” The people of Paris demanded a balloon; a subscription of eight hundred tickets at a crown each was at once taken ; the police had to post squads of sentinels, on foot and horseback, to guard the workshops on the Place des Victoires, where the aerostat was being made. At last, on August 27, 1783, before daybreak, the inflated balloon was solemnly carried, by torchlight, to the Champ-de-Mars. What a sensation - The banks of the Seine, the immense plain of the Champ-de-Mars, courts, windows, the roofs of the École Militaire, are black with people. At five o’clock a cannon shot gives the signal, the ropes are let go, the balloon rises and is lost in the clouds. A terrific thunderstorm fails to cool the zeal of the curious, and “one saw most elegant ladies follow the “ as- tounding miracle with their eyes, without appearing to perceive the dew with which they were saturated.” An hour later the “Montgolfière’’ came down at Gonesse, in the midst of a crowd of peasants who thought their last hour had arrived; “some thought it an appearance of the Beast of the Apocalypse, others beheld in it the fall of the Moon.” They fired guns, from afar, at the monster which “spit smoke ’’ and finished by collapsing it with blows of pitchforks, flails, and sticks. In the faubourg Saint-Antoine, in the doubly his– toric garden of Reveillon, the first series of experi- II.4. RY WAYS OF PARIS ments with the captive balloon was attempted, finally, on the 21st of November, 1783. Pilâtre de Rozier, “a man of projects,” in company with the Marquis d’Arlandes, made the first ascension in an unattached balloon in the Park of la Muette, Bois de Boulogne. These two men of valor made use of Reveillon’s bal- loon. Already worn by numerous experiments, it burst at the moment when the intrepid innovators were about to take their places in it; it was neces- sary to discharge the gas and mend it. Then might be seen the most distinguished ladies of the court, hurrying, needle in hand, to repair damages. All was done in an hour. The audacious ‘ ‘navigators of the air ‘’ majestically quitted the earth before an enthusiastic and excited crowd, the first rows of which had been forced to kneel to permit more distant spec- tators also to contemplate the “Gods of the Atmos- phere carried upon the clouds.” The balloon rose to a height of 340 toises (more than 400 metres), crossed Paris, and after having risked overturning on the windmills at Gentilly, came down upon the Butte-aux-Cailles, beyond the Barrier of Italy. These experiments drove Paris wild; on December 1, 1784, four hundred thousand persons were crowded into the Tuileries Gardens, on quays and roofs, to see the departure of the aeronauts Charles and Robert, in “a balloon inflated with hydrogen gas.” The academic bodies and subscribers who had paid four louis took places in the reserved circle, and upon the amphitheatre around the basin. The rest of the garden was filled in a twinkling by spectators at three livres the ticket. Pieces of artillery had been sta- PARIS SEEN FROM A BALLOON II.5 tioned on the terrace of the palace, and a great flag flying from the cupola served for the signals. The vast globe of 27 feet in diameter slowly rises, carry- - * -- - Experience ſhire au chat, de la Muette, par M. Pilatre de Rozier, ºn- **** … ºur *** *** ***** * -- * *** *** ****A***** *'' ſº, tºrº, - - - º: * - - * - - THE BALLOON of 1783 ing with it an elegant blue and gold car and the two audacious travellers." After a journey of nine 1 MM. Charles and Robert made a machine costing more than 15,000 francs, and announced that they would set out in liberty with it. The great day took place December 1, 1784... The machine was placed over the great basin of the parterre of the Tuileries. Imagine the noble façade, the roofs, and the beautiful garden, filled with the very finest class of people, the two banks of the river, the Place Louis XV, the Cours, and beyond, the environs filled with so fine a crowd that my son, who sent me the best picture of it and II6 - BY WAYS OF PARIS · leagues, the balloon, having come to earth in the prairie of Nesles, was joined by the Duc de Chartres, who, “mounted on an excellent horse, had followed it from Paris without losing sight of it for a single instant.” + Up to the time of the Revolution there was a fever of aerostatics.” Not a festivity, not a joyful meet- ing, without balloon ascensions and aerostatic figures in bladders. In the Ruggieri Gardens in Paris the able artificer sent up an “equestrian statue 8% feet high and a nymph of 8 feet, which arose very high, maintaining their equilibrium, and came down again in the outskirts of Paris without being injured.” " The Republican generals in their turn made use of the ingenious invention. At the battle of Fleurus for the first time use was made of a balloon “tiré à bras d’homme,” from which Guyton de Morveau and an the best details from his own hand, pointed out to me that for once it might be said that all Paris was there. Happily the weather was fine. MM. Charles and Robert entered the car (8 feet in length) at forty minutes past one, and went up into the air, to the enthusiasm of all Paris. Passing above the multitude in the Place Louis XV, they threw down their flag, by way of honor to the bystanders; this, zig-zagging in the air, made every one tremble, believing that it was themselves who were falling. — Journal inédit du Duc de Croy, published by the Vicomte de Grouchy and Paul Cottin, t. IV, p. 318. * Mémoires secrets, t. XXIV, pp. 53–57, 62, passim. * Have you seen M. Montgolfier of Lyons pass your house in the air? He must have left that city for Paris or Marseilles, according as the wind blew at the time. I shiver when I recall the globe of the Tuileries passing within two leagues of Saint-Denis at the height of 1400 toises perpendicular. And there were two men! This sort of carriage is not made for me, and a thousand experiments, each more successful than the other, would never bring me to prefer it to the hardest and most rickety of fiacres (Jan. 9, 1784). — Auto- graph letter from the Abbé Mai, Canon of Saint-Denis. * Mémoires secrets, t. XXIX, p. 259. |- - - E= = - º º. º "Zºº º º º º - Jø 4 dº * Zºº * *- ºr º * -ſan. 4./r/n 4 & ſº º ººz. º º sºarº - - FIRST AERIAL Journ BY II.8 BY WAYS OF PARIS officer named Lomet observed and unmasked the enemy’s movements. Lazare Carnot ordered from Lyons the ells of taffeta required for making military air-balloons; and in the year II the little château of Meudon was especially affected to aerostatic ex- periments by the Committee of Public Safety. Under the Directory it was the craze of the day: at Rug- gieri's, in the Tivoli and Frascati gardens ballons montés were sent up, — not always without danger, in an epoch when emigration was punishable with death. Thus the aeronaut Garnerin, in the 26th Thermidor, year VI, was careful to send to the ad- ministrators of the Department of the Seine the following amusing letter: “I have the honor to inform you that I have the intention to undertake to-morrow an extensive aerial journey. As it is possible that the winds, getting the best of me, may force me to cross the frontiers of the Republic, I now declare to you that I have no intention of emigrating or of forsaking my country. I pray you kindly to give me an act of this declara- tion to serve me as passport. Health and Brotherhood. — GARNERIN, rue Dominique, New House of the ci-devant Jacobins in Paris." All these stories seem legendary now. They are the ancient history of aerostation.* Parisians who * Autograph letter, G. Cain Collection. * “The ascension was made with majesty. A young person of eighteen years and Citizen Garnerin entered the aerial carriage, which came down much more promptly than was expected. Garnerin did his best to reach the Luxembourg, but could get no farther than the rue de Tournon, which, happily for him and his travelling com- panion, was sufficiently wide to admit the Montgolfière, the contour of which was enormous, and from which sparks were continually falling in quantities. Two police commissaries and the firemen started on the run, and reached the rue de Tournon at the moment of the Montgolfière’s descent. The young woman appears to have S. Sºg (º, O ,\ - ºrs *: § 9 f : § 2, §§ ~ tº - I 20 BY WAYS OF PARIS were children in 1870 still remember how they gazed from the Place Saint-Pierre, at the foot of the butte Montmartre, upon the “siege balloons * carrying not only Gambetta and Spuller over the heads of the investing lines, but other heroic aeronauts, many of whom, alas ! have disappeared, killed, drowned, lost — no one knows how — and also our letters to maintained the greatest presence of mind in the midst of the dangers encountered by the travellers.” — Journal des Débats of the 17th Thermidor, year VIII (AULARD, Paris sous le Consulat, t. I, p. 578). 1 Departure of M. Gambetta for Tours, October 7, 1870. “For the last three days the Armand-Barbès and,the George-Sand, inflated with hydrogen gas and detained by their ropes, have been hanging motionless above the Place Saint-Pierre. Not the slightest breath of air. An implacable calm. At last, on Saturday, October 8, a breeze came up, and the departure of the balloons was determined upon. - -- “At eleven o’clock in the morning the two air-balloons arose simultaneously. Gambetta and M. Spuller, his secretary, took their places beside M. Trichet the aeronaut in the first car. The second balloon carried two Americans, Messrs. Raynold and May, with M. Cuzon, recently called to a subprefecture in Brittany. “The crowd was considerable. Grouped upon the southern slope of the hill, which at the height of the telegraph and the new marine batteries forms an amphitheatre around the Place, they saluted the brave travellers who offered their lives for the country with cries of ‘Long live France! Long live the Republic!’. “As the Armand-Barbès slowly rose, the aeronaut Trichet floated from the car a long pennant of the national colors, upon which were inscribed the words “Long live the Republic!’ “The Armand-Barbès carried some carrier pigeons, who, immedi- ately upon the grounding of the balloons, were to be set free to return to Paris with the announcement that Gambetta had made a safe port. “It was not until Sunday evening, thirty-six hours after the as- cension, that M. Janody, the owner of the famous pigeon-cote of Batignolles, beheld the return of Great-Red and Gray-Miller, which had gone with the George-Sand. - “On Monday at five o’clock a pigeon announced the safe arrival of the Armand-Barbès at Montqidier. The balloon had grounded with some difficulty but without accident in the night of Saturday. The carrier pigeon, in addition to this news, brought a long despatch in cipher which gave the government the best news of the province.” — Le Monde Illustré, October 13, 1870. PARIS SEEN FROM A BALLOON 121 distant friends, our appeals to the provincial armies – something of our hopes and much of our hearts. In 1879 we saw the “captive balloon " moored in the Court of the Carrousel, projecting its light - Lull- ºllº. MADAME DE Montgolfi ER shadow upon the charred walls of the Tuileries Palace. Since then we have witnessed the trium- phant aerostatic exposition, we have heard – with what proudly patriotic emotion' – the screws of the Patrie and the Ville-de-Paris humming above our dear city; and at the present day people go up in I22 BYWAYS OF PARIS balloons with more unconcern than they once risked themselves in a diligenceſ However, the investiture, the “proper caper,” is “ ascensioned ’’ oneself. How can one talk to have of aerostation without having received the sacred baptism? Therefore, ashamed of my ignorance, I was about to abandon my present task when my brother Henry came to my aid. “Why, certainly, I can tell you all about it; I have made an ascen– sion — it was indeed an adventure which I shall never forget. Some ten years ago the accidents of military duty took me to Annecy. I was alone and bored. Strolling about one day I chanced upon a local festival, a sort of open-air fair, which had taken possession of a suburb of the little town. “An aeronaut, wearing a heavily braided jacket, had just finished inflating a balloon, the gilded cover- ing of which shimmered in the sunlight. This ‘com- mandant' was calling upon some well-disposed per- son to consent to the joy of accompanying him in his aerial voyage — for fifty francs How the notion took me to acquiesce in his request is some- thing that I cannot explain to this day. But once in the gear it was impossible to withdraw; I was the long-desired “amateur'ſ “Every one applauded; I took my place in the car, -— a sort of washerwoman’s basket, which, I regret to say, left much to be desired. The ‘com- mandant’ was a light weight. I could not say as much of myself, and the open-work bottom creaked terribly under our united avoirdupois! “I ventured a timid observation which was lost PARIS SEEN FROM A BALLOON I23 in the strident harmonies of the Sambre-et-Meuse March. ‘Let go all!”. My companion showered kisses and ballast upon the enthusiastic crowd. We were off! At that very moment the ‘commandant,’ with feverish haste, stripped off his braided jacket and his uniform trousers. I thought him mad. Not at all. Suddenly he appeared in a gymnast's tights. Placing a tricolored flag in my hand, he gave the brief and authoritative command, “Wave that!” and stepping over the edge of the pannier, by a slack rope he slipped to a trapeze suspended below the car. Upon this he performed a number of graceful capers, while from second to second the shouting crowd dwindled before my staring eyes. I conclude my Odyssey by acknowledging that the grounding was difficult and that my internal economy had much to suffer from a too impulsive descent!” Thus it is that I have “ascensioned ” — by fra- ternal procuration. But, as Figaro says, it is not necessary to have money in order to talk about it. How many men find reason enough in the third page of their morning paper for swearing undying affec- tion for our “national aeronauts * ! What emo- tion when we learned that Wright, solving the eternal problem, had flown like a bird, and that Farman, overleaping with one prodigious bound houses, for- ests, telegraph poles, and poplar screens, had gone by aviation from one city to another This, indeed, is the period when swarms of gilded balloons daily hover, glittering in the sunlight, above Paris; and “humble earth-folk' admire and envy the Olympian aeronauts' Their passion is not, 124 BY WAYS OF PARIS however, “all repose ’’; it bristles with dangers, surprises, betrayals. Therefore it becomes us to acclaim with loud voice those daring Frenchmen who so gayly, so light-heartedly, risk their lives to pre- serve to our country the palm of the “air record ” We have all applauded the glorious and popular name of Santos-Dumont, who first of all had the honor of rising from earth in an aeroplane; the names of Blériot, Esnault-Pelleterie, Deutsch de la Meurthe, Castillon de Saint-Victor, Lebaudy, Jacques Balsan, Farman, Alfred Leblanc, Tissandier, Clé- ment. And how shall I close my honor-roll more suitably than by sending, in the name of all Parisians — who, I am sure, will not disavow me — salutations and hopes for a prompt recovery to Messrs. La Vaulx ' and Léon Barthou, still bleeding from their recent heroic struggle against a fearful tempest.” What visions are evoked by these photographs of Paris seen from a balloon, spread out upon the table of the Carnavalet Museum ! * The longest aerial journey as yet accomplished is that of Count La Vaulx, who set out from Vincennes with Count Castillon de Saint- Victor, on October 9, 1909, and came down on October 11 at Karosty- chew, in the government of Kief, Russia. * Messrs. de La Vaulx and Léon Barthou, assailed by a frightful “tornado,” were carried for leagues at a mad velocity. They at- tempted a descent within sight of the Mediterranean. Their balloon was wrecked in the mountains of the Baux, near Arles. M. Léon Barthou, stunned and bleeding, lay in the bottom of the shattered car, while M. de La Vaulx, with one leg broken, succeeded by a miracle of determined heroism in bringing the balloon to earth, THE VAuDEVILLE THEATRE “ Tur Frenchman, born clever, created the vaude- ville,” as a celebrated verse assures us, but he did not just at first erect that temple at the corner of the Chaussée d’Antin where. vaudeville displays itself to-day. . It was originally in the rue de Chartres,--a tortuous little street connecting the Place du Carrousel with the Place du Palais-Royal, — upon the very site of the present Ministry of Finance, that two dramatic authors, Piis and Barré, profiting by the decree of the National Assembly proclaiming the freedom of theatres, , founded, the Vaudeville upon the ruins of a popular Ball, the Petit-Panthéon. The opening took place on January 12, 1792, and success crowned the enterprise. During the Revolution, even during the Terror, the Vaudeville made money. Naturally, its pleasant repertory must needs have undergone serious modi- fications. “The theatres are the primary schools of enlightened men, and a supplement to public education,” declared the Conventionnel Barère; therefore the Parisian theatres — the Vaudeville with the others — became abundantly sans-culottized! “The Last Judgment of Kings,” “Another Priest | * “The Death of Marat,” “The Potentates Over- thrown by the Mountain,” “The Tomb of Impos- I26 BY WAYS OF PARIS tors,” “Down with the Skull-cap !” — such were the enticing titles of the most popular plays. Then, upon the Vaudeville stage might be studied Mutius Scaevola, Potemkin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. “The Republican Nurse, or the Pleasures of Adop- tion,” was played there, and the theatre prospered. There was but one shadow over the picture, — it sometimes occurred that crossing the Place Royale on the way to the theatre about half-past five, one met carts loaded with condemned persons going by way of the faubourg Saint-Honoré to the Place de la Révolution, where stood the terrible “Silence- Mill.” But one finally learned to lend no more than a discreet attention to such accidental re- minders, and the receipts suffered none too much in consequence. It was inconceivable that, at the very time when the scaffold daily ran with blood, Parisians should continue to frequent the theatres, even though they reflected the “jubilee spirit.” From time to time the curtain, painted like the boxes, in tricolor, would rise upon some unexpected interlude: a Jacobin harpsichord player executing a “national pot-pourri upon the 10th of August, dedicated to the manes of William Tell,” or perhaps a barytone of the mountain tuning his voice to a lament upon the death of Marat; and the public, all a-thrill, taking up the refrain: “Pleurez, pleurez, patriotes, Pleure2 cet homme divin. . . /* For that matter, they wept for Marat and mag- nified his virtues in every theatre of Paris; at that | | - - | | | | | -- - | # 4 5 - - | # # . | ，- º | - ， # - ，- - | · Cºº ， | | E * - | | E - | | | | iºi ! # oULAGES SsiiE ES. | # +#ssAe - | s，. | - #s - #-# | | | - | #| | # " # ſi! | | # |! | | - - | | | # | bºricE iiiiivERsEi.N © . # - | - - - | | = - # | | | #t | | - | - | THE VAUDEvILLE THEATRE, FLACE DE LA BoURsE (site of the rue du 4 Septembre) I 28 IBYWTAYS OF PARIS time his polychrome effigy was affixed, after the manner of an idol, at street corners and on public squares. At the period when his bust occupied the place formerly that of the Virgin of the rue aux Ours, the picture of the People’s Friend," framed in imitated lictor’s fasces, was hung up in concert halls where the too aristocratic proscenium boxes had been replaced by statues of Liberty and Equality.” The reaction of Thermidor changed all this: civic pieces succeeded those of revolutionary import; “mothers ” uttered on the boards of the Vaudeville the language of the women of Sparta and Rome– of course all the theatres harmonized upon the same key. “The Apotheosis of Bara,” “The Taking of Toulon,” “The Republican Saltpétriers,” “The Battle of Thermopylae º were the pieces in vogue in 1794, and the thirteen-year-old apprentice “La Bra- voure” is overwhelmed with applause when he sings “No Quarter ’’ (Sans-Quartier) to his father, the * During the period of the Revolution, when the “Chaste Susan- nah” of Barré, Radet, and Desfontaines was being played, some one saw in the drama an allusion to the future trial of Marie Antoinette, when the judge says to the two old men who have accused Susannah, “You are my accusers, you cannot be my judges,” applause and hisses arose, and soon the tumult became such that it was necessary to clear the hall, and the three authors were shortly after arrested. Radet and Desfontaines expiated their courageous words by six months of prison. — Chronique des Petits Théâtres de Paris, by BRAZIER, 1837, p. 94. * Titles of some of the pieces played at the Vaudeville in 1794: Volunteers on the Way, or the Rape of the Church Bells. The Festival of Equality. The Noble Plebeian, in one-act. The Re- publican Nurse, or the Pleasures of Adoption. The Chouans of Vitré, opera vaudeville in one act. The ill-observed Recantation, vaudeville in one act. — Almanack of the Muses for the Year III of the French Republic. TEIE VAUDEVILLE THEATRE 129 blacksmith, while pulling the bellows-rope of the forge : " Papa, quand je te vois forgeant L'arme qui doit, heureux présage, Détruire le dernier tyran, Comme je souffle avec courage! ''! Papa, when I see thee forging Weapons which by happy fortune Will lay low the last oppressor, How I swell with fortitude ! In 1799, dexterously modifying its repertory to accord with events and political régimes, the Vaude- ville became Bonapartist : " Malgré leurs sinistres complots Je ne crains rien pour le héros Que la France renomme. . Mais un fait bien sûr en ce jour, C'est que de l'Égypte un retour Ramène un sauveur à la France.'' Let them plot to heart's desire, I fear nothing for the hero Whom all France acclaims. But one thing to-day is certain, That from Egypt he is coming Who will savior be of France. Therefore, in 1806, the grateful Bonaparte sum- moned the company of the rue de Chartres to his camp at Boulogne, where it presented various sen- sational dramas. He did even more for it ; he extended the privileges of this theatre, the reper- tory of which thenceforth became comico-historical. Corneille, Turenne, Duguesclin, Joan of Arc, even Young, the lugubrious poet of the night and the graveyard, were currently evoked upon the boards 1 Le Théâtre révolutionnaire, by JoUFFRET, p. 318. I 30 BY WAYS OF PARIS of the Vaudeville, where impromptu couplets were sung to refrains borrowed from the repertory of “The Cellar Key.” Most of these great men were indeed represented “in travesty” by very pretty girls, and the chroniclers of the time never ran dry THEATRE of THE CoMICOPERA, LATER THE WAUDEvil LE THEATRE of eulogies of “Mlle. Rivière, who with equal success played the great lady and the cavalry officer.” The sun of July, 1830, shone upon the triumph of the Vaudeville: Etienne Arago,' its manager, who 1 M. Arago had scarcely attained this position when the Rev- olution of 1830 burst out. With the help of M. Duvert the young manager hastily put together an “occasional” piece entitled The 27th, 28th and 29th of July. This vaudeville, a genuine political manifesto, was distinguished by much wit and gayety, and also by a very high THE WAUDEVILLE THEATRE 131 was Mayor of Paris in 1870, was, in fact, one of the heroes of the “ Three Glorious (days),” having put at the disposition of the revolutionary soldiers all the costumes, arms, and accessories which were used in the military piece, “Sergeant Mathieu,” then in course of representation. The comedian Arnal, dear to our grandfathers, made a great suc- HENRI MONNIER IN “THE IMPROVISED FAMILY” cess of the abracadabrant repertory of Duvert and Lauzanne, and the ingenious Henri Monnier tri- umphed in La Famille Improvisée, a transformation burlesque in which he took all the parts, or nearly so The theatre was in the height of its popularity when a fire broke out (July 16, 1838) and reduced it to ashes. The company found temporary refuge tone of feeling: born of the barricades, it was destined to encounter gunpowder. The Vaudeville then took the name Théâtre National — Chronique des Petits Théâtres de Paris, BRAZIER, p. 120. 132 IBY WAYS OF PARIS in the hall of a “spectacle-café,” belonging to the Bonne-Nouvelle bazaar, near the Porte Saint-Denis. For a short time only, however, since, on May 16, 1840, the theatre was able to take up permanent quarters in the abandoned building of the Opéra- Comique on the Place de la Bourse. In this hall – which stood upon the present site of the rue du º º, º ºx Yºs. º *- º ſº HENRI MONNIER (after Gavarni) Quatre-Septembre, in a row of houses opposite the Palace of the Bourse — were carried on for nearly thirty years those brilliant dramatic contests which revolutionized Paris. A group of young playwrights, Th. Barrière, Émile Auger, Octave Feuillet, the younger Alexan- dre Dumas, Victorien Sardou, created a new art, put movement, life, passion upon the stage, modernizing the conventional romanticism of 1830. On February 2, 1852, the Vaudeville Theatre announced the first presentation of La Dame aua, Camélias, of which THE WAUDEVILLE THEATRE 133 Alexandre Dumas fils, its proud author, thus relates its inception: “It was written in barely a week in the summer of 1849, just as it happened, on such scraps of paper, whatever their shape, as chanced to be on my table.” The younger Dumas after- ward told of his emotion on reading the first three ARNAL IN “A BURNING FEVER” acts to that great man his father. “‘Go on, read the rest,” he said, looking at me as he had never looked at me before. It was about two or three o'clock; I had an engagement which it was impos- sible to break. ‘Go,” he said, ‘ and come back soon. I am impatient to hear the end.” The matter which called me away was soon attended to, and I literally ran back to Avenue Frochot. The moment I opened the door of his study my father rose, bathed in 134 13 Y WAYS OF PARIS tears, and clasped me in his arms. ‘ I could not re- sist,” he said: ‘I had to know whether you could keep it up well to the end. It will be an immense success if the Censor permits the piece to be played.’ Prix: ; ; - BARBRE, EDITEUR rix: â, 0 centimes. soulevand saint-want in, 1- MAGASIN TIILATIRA1. rºces an ripsnes ºr nouvelle- — --sº -- --- = −tºr- in mur MV ºutins piece ENCINQ ACTES, MéléE DE CHANT M. ALEXANDRE DUMAS FILS arrats-write roua La raemians fois, a raats, sun is theatas no taunsville, tº a rtraim t ots-ra-nution or La piece. an Marºn ntval, 2M ana. . . . . . . . . . . . M.M. Frºntºn. Manguerite GAUTtlle R. . . . . . . . . . . M-norm. w. nuval, rare d'Art ºria--- Nicar TTE. ------------------ ----- W--- Gaston futux, -8 Renº Lºcº- prudence---------------------- a-ract. saint-Gaudex.s. cut I'ºnes. custavé, amºnt get Lac-d- nanine.... - In-G-xtra Le comte de cinay. --- Auuk. C- M. ºf WARWILLE. . . . . . . . . ........... ºut-tº- Cuomino- i.e. nocteuſ. . . . . . . . Ilire. Wonwa, M-at- rºw commission NAIRE Rogen. C-nol- Gueux, Lena. B-mon. boºst ºues... -------. PLAYBILL or “L.A. DAME AUx CAMéLIAs." We embraced one another again, a long embrace, both of us weeping, and the great success of the piece certainly never gave me one quarter of the pleasure which I experienced at that moment.” THE WAUDEVILLE THEATRE 13.5 Les Filles de marbre, Les Parisiens, Les Faur Bomshommes, Le Mariage d’Olympe, Le Roman d'un Jeune Homme pauvre, in which a delightful girl, Blanche Pierson, made her first appearance, con- ruaque piece, 20 text ºuts. - - tº hel Levy treats, ºut tumº, ----------Livraisons. IHEATRE CONTEMPORAIN ILLUSTRE -º-vi------------ |- || || º Les p \risir NS" Pièce EN TRoſs Actes Para M. THEoDORE BARRIERE azraesenter roux La pae-ene reis, a valus, sun tº theatre ou vaudeville, L* 28 decewens 1854. orsrannurnov or L-º-mecº º DESGENais, an ans-------------------- -M re- PAUL G-NDIN, homme de lettres, 28 ana..... -- spec- M. Mianrin, millionnaire, cousin de Raphael, Jost-PH, dom-sunua de Préval-........ Galaa-at 50 ans------------------ ----------- De--- JUSTIN, domestique de Raoul-------........ a-a-at. M. DE pReval, banquer, aspirant a la hairie Gwawu- Aubºnic, withoutspecuandchamp.soans. Bettevius. tº comte Raoul de Pixtute, 29 ans... .. A- GERMAIN, donestique de Jules de Preval-.... Leox. JULES, his de M. de Prºval, 19 aus. . . . . . . . . . Laºwance. MARIE, pupille de De-genais, 19 ans.......... M-- Satºr-Manc. Maxi-ME DE TREMD-E. secretaire de Prºval. CLOTLDF, femme de Préval, 34 ana-....... Clamisse Minor. ** a sº------------------------------ Paul-L-a- ANNA-leur file, tº ans ------------------ Luthe- En 1839, a parts -- premier art-u tº hºtel de naoui de Patre. prous de representan n de reprºduction et de traduction rºvºs- - -- -----ex-------------------- PLAYBILL of “THE PARISIANs' tinued the triumphant series which was crowned by some of the early works of the master Sardou : Les Femmes fortes, Nos Intimes, and, finally, La Famille Benoîton (November 4, 1865). I 36 BY WAYS OF PARIS The vogue of this last was extraordinary. Paris not only adopted Benoiton costumes, Benoiton hats, Benoîton champagne, and even Benoiton shoes, but Frédéric Febvre and Félix, two of the best inter- preters of the play, were so happy as to behold — acme of popularity —their portraits in lard in the show window of a pork-butcher of the rue de la Mare in Belleville. To crown all, Harmand, the manager, posted in the vestibule of the theatre this amazing announcement, “In view of the rush of for- eigners to the box-office, a polyglot interpreter has been engaged for their aid ’’ But the days of the Vaudeville of the Place de la Bourse were numbered. It was without regret that Paris heard of the suppression of this incon- venient and dangerous hall by Prefect Haussmann. The opening of the rue du Quatre-Septembre (first called rue du Dix-Décembre) entailed the demolition of the theatre, which closed its doors on April 11, 1869, reopening twelve days later at the corner of the boulevard des Capucines and the Chaussée d’Antin. We need not relate the new odyssey of the Vaudeville; the events are too recent. Let us simply recall the early difficulties of this theatre — the war, the siege of Paris, which closed its doors, the hesitations, the gropings for the way; it was not until 1872 that success once more appeared with Rabagas. But what a struggle ! Paris was then in a state of siege; several journals condemned Sar- dou’s play in advance. “Rabagas,” they said, “is Gambetta.” In fact in the author’s mind Rabagas, written before 1870, was aimed at quite another THE WAUDEVILLE THEATRE I37 political personality. Then followed threats, abuse, uproars; General de Ladmirault, the governor of Paris, massing his cavalry in the neighborhood of the theatre on the first night!" — a fine prologue for a political satire! On October 30 of the same year Léon Carvalho – the artist manager, the charming man to whom Gustave Flaubert sent a copy of La Tentation de Saint Antoine with the defiant dedication, “Put this on the stage, my good fellow !” – gave the first representation of Alphonse Daudet’s L’Ar- lésienne. Who will believe it? The piece seemed to be long, dull, utterly with- out interest. Even Bizet's music — that master- MLLE. BLANCHE PIERson piece! – passed unnoticed! And while the orchestra * Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers. DEAR Monsieur SARDou: PARIs, October 27, 1905. I hasten to send you the information which you desire on the subject of Rabagas. The first presentation was given at the Vaudeville Theatre, February 1, 1872, and was followed by a series of 237 repetitions ending September 29, and interrupted between September 30 and October 18 by 19 presentations of L'Arlésienne. Later a second series of representations of Rabagas was given, making a total of 273 representations in the two series. Kindly accept, dear Monsieur Sardou, the expression of my most respectfully devoted sentiments. (Letter from Gangnat, general agent, to Victorien Sardou.) I 38 - EY WAYS OF PARIS was playing the Intermezzo, the despairing Bizet at the loop-hole in the curtain was anxiously study- ing the inattentive audience, spectators standing with their backs to the stage, chatting and joking. And Bizet went back to the coulisses, great tears flowing behind his opera-glass. The success of the piece was due partly to Mlle. Fargueil, who played Rose Mamaï with wonderful bursts of passion, but especially to a young actress, quite unknown, exquisite in all the grace, the charm, the sensibility of the touching part of Vivette. Every one asked about her. The débutante was fresh from the Conservatory; she was the daughter of a worthy artist in sculpture, her name was Julia Regnault, but she had adopted the stage-name of Bartet, which she was destined to illumine with glory. At her first never-to-be-forgotten appear- ance the “ Divine * conquered Paris!" We need not here recount the various fortunes of the Vaudeville, where, through all its history lovers of art have been permitted to enjoy the most eminent comedians. Let us cite but a single name, that of Mme. Réjane, than which there is none more glorious. * Certainly one of the most difficult of authors to satisfy, M. Victorien Sardou, decided to entrust Mlle. Bartet with the creation of a capital rôle in a great work. Still it was not without some reserves, for he first of all made the condition that the final distribu- tion of parts should not be made till after the fifteenth or twentieth repetition. Mlle. Bartet had the good sense not to appear nettled. She accepted the all-powerful author's condition sine qua non, and it was well that she did, for a fortnight had not elapsed before M. Sardou declared to the directory of the Vaudeville that he could not have found in all Paris a woman capable of playing the part better, nor one who more perfectly realized his type. — Foyer et Coulisses. (Vaudeville, p. 102.) MLLE. BARTET IN “L’ARLésiº NNE * 140 BY WAYS OF PARIS On the other hand, to enumerate the authors who have won fame in this fine theatre, would be to recite the bead-roll of prize-winners of fame! - MME. RéJANE IN “MME. SANs-GfèNE It has been a pleasant task to recall these long- past stages in the history of the Vaudeville, so in- timately entwined with the history of our dear Paris. PARIS AT NIGHT AROUIND SAINT-MERRI — THE HOTEL OF THE UUPPER LOIRE — AT ENMILE'S — THE CELLARS OF THE MARKETS Eºves o'clock; great purplish clouds passing across the moon; now and again peals of thunder and flashes of lightning, like jets of electric light, bring out against the sky the sharp outlines of the immense city. Our friends are growing nervous in the great studio where they are finishing their cigars. They are impatient to betake themselves to some weird corner of nocturnal Paris, tragic or comic. Yet they would better have patience; the excursion will be all the more typical the later we-make it. Not before one o’clock in the morning do bohe- mians, the unfortunates, the purotins, the apaches, the blacklegs, reach the shelters which we are plan- ning to visit — sleeping kennels, dens where they may drink, sing, smoke, stupefy themselves — per- haps forget ! Until that time the troop of wretches luck ’’; some of them, sidewalk industrials, hang “ run their around the doors of theatres, cafés, cinemas, hail autos, open carriage doors, gather up cigar stumps, cry evening papers: “ The Press — last edition ’’ Others — disillusioned artists — philosophically di- vest themselves of the cast-off clothes of Louis XV I42 BY WAYS OF PARIS seigneurs or the picturesque trappings of the cow- boys whom they have been “figuring ” at fifteen cents a head at the Chatelet, the Porte-Saint-Martin, or the Ambigu, and take the road to the Markets, the refuges, the lodging-houses, – poor devils van- quished by life, whom one can but pity and help. The others — dangerous vagabonds, game for the House of Correction, candidates for “ the New Prison,” etc. — pace the slimy pavement in search of some evil to do — some belated pedestrian to attack, some drunken man to rob, some woman to fleece. At last we set out; midnight is striking from the tower of Saint-Merri when we plunge into the tangle of muddy lanes and “chalky streets" that hem in the old Parisian church. It is like taking a plunge into a Paris of a former age, the Paris of Rabelais' time, a Paris peopled by vagrants, criminals, pot-guzzlers — creatures with- out pity. The very names of the streets which we follow — black slums, in the depths of which the reflected starlight dances here and there in the dirty puddles – smell of the Court of Miracles — Cut- bread Street, Break-loaf Street, Flitch-of-bacon Street, Devil-fish Alley. On the right and left are wretched hovels, tottering, dropsical, crumbling houses, with “ leads º' clinging like warts to their squalid fronts. Here and there dim lanterns show where furnished rooms may be had for six sous the night. We pass suspicious-looking doorways, doubt- ful corners wrapped in shade, “joints * before which wan-faced customers are taking a last turn at the º % º THE CHURCH of SAINT-MERRI 144 BY WAYS OF PARIS “zanzibar.” Bareheaded girls, very young or of doubtful age, smoking cigarettes, eye us as we pass. One of us is wearing a chauffeur's cap and a great gray mackintosh. A coarse voice cries: | -- “See the grand dukes in disguise! We halt at the “Upper-Loire * Hotel, 24, rue º- - SAINT-MERRI QUARTER, FoRMER HôTEL DE LA REYNIE, 24, RUE QUINCAMPoix Quincampoix, former Hôtel de la Reynie. It was once, it seems, a seignorial mansion, occupied by Gabrielle d’Estrées' Now it is nothing more than a lodging-house for masons and market-porters, – worthy fellows, professionally forced to rise in the middle of the night or the smallest hours of the day. Folk therefore go early to bed in the “Upper- Loire * hotel and sleep thirteen to the dozen. PARIS AT NIGHT 145 We enter and mount the curious carved wood stairway as old as Henry IV. Once, perhaps, it was swept by the silver-embroidered petticoats of the royal favorite; at the first landing we read this notice: “ The pro- prietor of the hotel in- forms his guests that he has towels for the use of the feet at their service.” The succes- sors of Gabrielle d’Es- trées wear “Russian socks '' The hotel is shaken by sonorous snores. We give a rapid glance at the “Senate,” the best room, reserved for the regular boarders, a score of clean, well-made beds, of which the patron is justly proud. “Only think, sirs, we have ‘senators’ who have slept here more than fifteen years! One is a chickweed merchant, who was once worth more than two million THE CHURCH of SAINT-MERRI s! ” By way of the rue de Venise, crowded with drunkards and street-walkers, – that rue de Venise where in 1720, under the Regency, during the mad- I46 BY WAYS OF PARIS · ness which took possession of Paris through banker Law and his Mississippi bubble, the young Count von Horn, a German prince related to the Regent, struck down and robbed a “shareholder ’’ named Lacroix, — we reach the boulevard Sébastopol, the “Sébasto * dear to apaches. Already under the blue night stout porters are unloading turnips, carrots, cabbages, parsnips and celery from the market-wagons; strong-shouldered fellows are carrying at the end of short iron-bound poles quarters of beef and mutton, halves of pork, and from the direction of the fish market arise strong odors of the sea. No. 2, rue Courtalon, the house of Emile, G X- wrestler." The door opens upon the street and at first a frightful stench nearly suffocates us. From the immense dark hall arises a musty malodorous air, compounded of garlic, wine, dirt, the breathings of hundreds of sleepers. £mile has converted into dormitories the ground floor and cellars of this man- Sion, opposite which, in the eighteenth century, stood at No. 6 the sculptured portal of the Linen Drapers’ Bureau (reinstalled in the Square of the Innocents, * The rue Courtalon, according to all historians, du Breuil at their head, ran along outside the choir of the Church Sainte-Oppor- tune, which was originally an oratory dating from the earliest days of Christianity, Our Lady of the Woods, because it stood at the entrance of a wood. The existence of this wood appears to be proved by the presence of a tower, serving as a beacon during the night, in the midst of the Cemetery of the Innocents. This tower still existed in the eighteenth century. The oratory was given by a Carolingian king of the ninth century to Hildebrand, bishop of Séez, fleeing before the Normans, and with it the relics of Saint Opportune. Suppressed in 1790, the Church Sainte-Opportune was sold in 1792 as national property. -º-º-º: mº -----tº- THE LINEN DRAPERs' BUREAU of THE RUE CourTALON 148 BY WAYS OF PARIS by the care of the Old Paris Commission)." Emile had put in a quantity of wooden tables and benches, and entertains the “no-domiciles.” For four sous these wretches buy a “bond ’’ which gives them the right to sleep under a roof after partaking, at their choice, of a glass of wine or a bowl of warm soup. Émile gives out an average of two hundred and fifty “bonds " a night! The refuge is open from six o'clock in the evening to half-past five in the morning ! We enter; at first we can see nothing but a small * The portal of the Linen Drapers’ Bureau, dating from the eigh- teenth century, stood in the recess formed by the angle of the rue Courtalon and the Place Sainte-Opportune. It was in rock-work style, framing in a cartouche of black marble upon which appeared this inscription: MERCHANT LINEN DRAPERs' ExCHANGE 1716 COMMERCE OF LINENS AND LACES (Dictionnaire portatif des Arts et Métiers, 1766, t. II, p. 116.) There were in 1734 eight hundred Mistress linen-drapers in Paris, under the patronage of Saint Louis; the linen drapers were not the only corporation having the right to carry on commerce in the mar- kets. In those days the Halles were not, as now, wholly devoted to the trade in food products; they were a sort of permanent fair where everything was sold. Each corporation here enjoyed special trading privileges, and its exchange, like that of the linen drapers, was situ- ated in this part of Paris. Thus in the eighteenth century the Goldsmiths' Exchange was in the rue des Orfèvres, where their hotel may still be seen, not far from the salt warehouse; the Merchant Tailors had theirs on the quai de la Mégisserie. (The Carnavalet Museum has lately acquired the inscription plate found in the excavations for the Metropolitan.) The Mercers had their exchange in the rue Quincampoix; uhe Furriers theirs in the rue Bertin-Poirée. The Hosiers had their seat in the cloisters of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie; the Arquebusiers in rue Cocatrix; the Cobblers, rue de la Pelleterie; the Drapers, rue des Déchargeurs, – the fine front of their house at the present time forms one of the noblest ornaments of the Carnavalet garden; finally, the Pork: (cochon) Butchers, as if by a sort of intentional play upon words, had their exchange on rue de la Cossonerie. — CHARLEs SELLIER, Rapport à la Commission du Vieuw Paris. PARIS AT NIGHT 149 table, a sort of low, ill-lighted counter. On the table are piles of dirty “bonds,” glasses, a few bottles; on one side a stove upon which a kettle of soup is boiling. Behind the table is Émile, a superb fellow of Herculean build, with turned-up moustache and a jovial air as of a good-natured child. Near him the active Madame Émile is offer- ing to a poor devil who has just come in his choice between the glass of wine and the bowl of soup. He gulps down the soup, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and shambles off into the darkness of the room, or slowly descends the worn cellar stairs, the entrance to which gapes beside the counter. By degrees our eyes become accustomed to the half darkness. The immense ground-floor room is seen to be full of sleeping men. Some are seated on benches, their heads hidden in their arms folded on the greasy table. Others — astute fellows who “know the ropes " — have chosen a corner where they may lean against the wall; they sleep with the mouth open, stiffly upright, their caps drawn down over their eyes. Many are snoring on the floor; there are some even under the table, between the feet of their comrades in misfortune; a few have put old newspapers between their faces and the dirty floor. We go down into the cellars, vaguely lighted by a trembling gas jet. What a sight! Everywhere are wretched creatures stretched out side by side, like corpses, or rolled into a ball in a corner. One can- not walk without stepping over the bodies of sleepers. The earthen floor, the walls, the low ceiling, the clothes, the shoes of these poor creatures, their hands, I 50 BY WAYS OF PARIS their hair, their beards, their faces – everything is of one color, the color of dried mud. What an immense compassion tightens the heart in the face of such misery, apparently so hopeless! And yet these wretches are sleeping in a way to be envied by many a rich insomniac. They scarcely move as we carefully slip “bonds" - to-morrow’s soup and lodging – into callous hands, open pockets, broken-visored caps. Our IN THE CELLAR of THE HALLEs Henri Braillet and Mlle. Nini “bonds" exhausted, we empty our cigarette cases. It would seem that the odor of tobacco alone has the gift to awaken these sleepers; outstretched hands emerge from the shadow, lips murmur thanks, eyes - those pitiful eyes as of a beaten dog – glisten with longing. We go up stairs suffocating! Émile kindly does the honors of the dwelling, showing first a series of his own photographs as a wrestler – proud trophies, recalling his encounters I52 BY WAYS OF PARIS with the most redoubtable “heavy weights * and “feather weights.” He exhibits his enormous biceps, and Mme. Émile, justly proud, gazes tenderly upon the stout fellow who is her good husband. It is two in the morning. We pause a moment to inhale with relief the cool night air, then direct our steps to the Cellar of the Halles, 15, rue des Innocents — one of the most curious burrows of nocturnal Paris. We have already depicted this thieves’ pothouse, where an ingenious landlord has converted the ancient cells of the monks of the League, in centuries past the guardians of the char- nel house of the Holy Innocents," into assignation I’OOIT1S. We descend the narrow stone staircase, the walls of which are covered with inscriptions engraved by the knives of the special patrons of the place. In the cellars, two and a half metres high by four broad, the popular singer, Henri Braillet — an old acquaintance — comes toward us with outstretched hands. It is the best of references; we cease to be suspected by the forty pairs of hard, suspicious eyes which had rapidly examined us. We had be- * Louis XI authorized the construction in the rue de la Ferron- nerie, against the wall of the Charniers, of shops or penthouses which were to be rented to poor artisans on condition that they should not display their wares upon the public street, which was very narrow throughout its length: more attention was paid, however, to the authorization than to the prescription. “Under the Charniers,” says the “Diary of a Journey to Paris in 1657,” “and all along the pillars, may be found certain scriveners who are very well known by those who cannot write.” There certainly were public scriveners in other parts of Paris — at the Palais, for example — but the most dexterous and the most renowned were installed at the Innocents. PARIS AT NIGHT 153 fore this sat at one of these wooden tables in the company of Claretie, Detaille, Henri-Robert, and we had not forgotten the exuberant enthusiasm of one of the regular frequenters of this place for our friend Albert Dussart: - ºr “When I think that he got me off!” His sur- prise was quite - as great as his gratitude. They crowd a little to make room for us ; offer us, as is fit- º ting, the cigar- |- ette and the beer - R. Jaſ can of the fra- h Ø | ternity; we ap- plaud Braillet | and his comrade \@ Mlle. Nini, sing- - | - ing, really very º well, two amus- E. Rost AND ing but anti- Sketch on the Wall of the Cellar of classical duets. - the Markets A young man in a chauffeur's cap approaches, an album under his arm, pencils in his hand. It is the official artist of the house. He offers us his latest creations. We buy grotesque caricatures of Claretie and Barrès and sign them; to-morrow these friends of ours will possess their effigies dated from this I54 BY WAYS OF PARIS singular studio. Rostand is called for. On the in- stant in a few pencil strokes Rostand as Chantecler is before us. We ask for Pierre Loti — the painter does not know him — Yes! Now he remembers the admirable writer has already posed at the Cellar of the Halles. We thank the able artist, who when we depart whispers this request: “Try to bring M. Bonnat here! I worked two months in his studio !” f THE GARDENS OF THE CARROUISEL Oseº upon a time, by some chance, the unfortu- nate people of Paris — accustomed, alas ! to see barbarians sacking their city — had the unexpected joy of a delightful sight. The palisades surround- ing the hideous islet of bitumen which for years had disfigured the Place du Carrousel were thrown down, and they had the joy of discovering that a carpet of flowers would one day take the place of the desolate steppe where they used to freeze in winter and broil in summer. Thanks be given to M. Redon, the architect of the Louvre, whose perfect taste arranged this verdant SCCIlê. Even the barrier of thin boards behind which the mysterious work was being carried on had been greeted with murmured praise. Then it really had been decided to do away with that lozenge of bitu- men, that dusty or muddy stadium around which, under Gambetta’s stony eye, unhappy runners, breathless, panting, lamentable, their bare legs in frayed trunks, their perspiring bodies in faded jer- seys, were painfully trained for the stern ordeal of the “foot races.” It was the training field of the poor devils of the “French Marathon * ! One fine morning it was given us to see, through the inter- 156 EY WAYS OF PARIS stices of the boarding, squads of workmen — on such days as by accident they were not on strike — open- ing trenches, putting up mounds, turning over the earth. To the diggers succeeded the flower-gardeners, beloved of the gods and dear to Parisians. Here at last is a charming French garden, blooming among the gray paving-stones of the Place du Carrousel. Never, since 1794, − blessed epoch when the for- lorn Place might pride herself upon two Liberty trees casting their patriotic shadows upon the tomb of the Pole Lazowski, Citizen Marat’s friend, - has she been vouchsafed the alms of even a scrap of greenery. All this long time nothing has grown here but hideous public buildings and ugly houses — strange opposite neighbors for the palace of the kings of France! First of all, whence came this name, “Place of the Tournament ** It is the far distant memento of a gorgeous festival given in 1662, the magnificence of which, if we may believe Perrault, its official narra- tor, “surpassed that of the most famous tourneys.” In fact, the spectacle must have been fairy-like; the fine engravings of Israel Silvestre give the impres- sion of a marvellous gala – “races in a ring and races de testes made by the king and the princes and seigneurs of his court,” a dazzling tournament with fifteen thousand charmed spectators, occupying three - - º º - --- --- º, - |lºſſ! --- ºn RUINs of THE CHAPEL of THE DEANERY AND THE HôTEL DE LONGUEvil LE I58 BY WAYS OF PARIS sides of the immense square. The fourth side was G reserved for the 9 regynes, princesses, et dames de la cour,” a radiant company grouped upon a dais of purple velvet decorated with great golden fleurs-de- lis. Four quadrilles disputed Lhe palm of elegance: “ the Roman quadrille,” led by the Duke de Gram- mont and commanded by the “Sun-King,” XIV, wearing the golden laurel wreath of Caesar, “ preceded and followed by senators and esquires * : the Persian quadrille, under the orders of Monsieur, the king’s brother, the quadrille of the empire of the Indies, “recognizable by the paroquets surmounting the heads of the kettle drummers,” and that of the “Ameriquains,” distinguished by the “tiger skins, the scales, shells, and fins of fishes which adorned their costumes, as well as by the clubs of the foot- men and the leafy girdles of the grooms.” Incredible coincidence, it was the king who “ led the ring ” after a race of which “the justice, the firmness, and the good grace were even preferable to its skill 22 || 1 Louis 1 The beautiful Gabrielle d’Estrées occupied the Hôtel du Bou- chage, situated on the site of the ancient building of the Grand-Coq, bought in 1584 by Henri de Joyeuse, Count du Bouchage, before she took possession of that house of the Trois-Pas-de-Degré, the site of which is now included in the Square of the Louvre, at the Porte Visconti of the Place du Carrousel. This house was connected with the king's apartment in the Louvre by a garden, kitchens, and offices. The door was guarded by four pages of the king, who were at Gabrielle’s service, night and day. In this house was discovered in a leathern trunk the famous camp bed, ornamented with lace work and fringes of green silk, which the favorite took with her when she accompanied the king in his cam- paigns, for she bore herself bravely before the enemy, as witness the siege of Dreux in 1593 and that of Amiens in 1597. In the same place were also found several two-tined forks with handles of crystal, I60 BY WAYS OF PARIS This brave festival had no successor. Louis XIV and Louis XV cared little for the Tuileries and lived at Versailles, Saint-Germain, Fontainebleau, Marly, Louveciennes. The Revolution brought Louis XVI and his family back to Paris, on the 6th of October, 1789. The Place du Carrousel, like the château itself, had been invaded and democratized. The one-while “Mademoiselle’s parterre,” long since destroyed, had been converted into “courts,” the Royal Court in the centre, the Court of the Princes on the south, the Court of the Swiss on the north. A great num- ber of lanes and alleys crossed the Carrousel, upon which were crowded hotels, stables, barracks, sheds, carriage houses, houses of evil repute — rue Saint- Nicaise (it crossed the Place and to-day would pass very nearly in front of Gambetta’s monument), rue des Orties (along the gallery of the Louvre, parallel to the Seine), rue and impasse du Doyenné (on the site of the square, behind Gambetta’s monument), rue ivory, or coral. When Gabrielle had guests at her table, these forks were laid at their places. As for Henri IV and the gentlemen of his suite, according to the old French custom they ate with their knives and their fingers. — Courbevoie et ses Environs, H. VUAGNEUx (pp. 29, 30). w 1 When Catherine de Médicis built the Palace of the Tuileries, it stood alone between a street which began at the Stables and ended near the Pont Royal, and a vacant lot between the city wall of Charles V and the Palace. In the seventeenth century the street was known as the rue des Tuileries. On the vacant lot an enclosure was made which in 1600 became a garden, the garden of Mademoiselle; it was laid waste when Louis XIV decided to finish the building of the Tuileries. After the fête of June 5 and 6, 1662, the Place, which also in- cluded the space covered by the houses of the rue Saint-Nicaise, kept the name Place du Carrousel, and later gave it to the street formed by the houses built on the site of the moat of the walls of Charles W. — JAILLOT, Recherches Critiques sur Paris, t. I, p. 8. PLACE EU CARRouser INDER Louis PHILIPPE After a daguerreotype taken about 1847 from the terrace of the Palace of the Tuileries 162 BY WAYS OF PARIS de Chartres (in part upon the site of the present Ministry of Finance), rue du Musée (it began at the Place du Palais-Royal and ended at the rue du Car- rousel where the statue of La Fayette now stands), rue du Carrousel (in the middle of the Place, com- ing out at the Louvre wicket), rue Saint-Thomas- du-Louvre, rue du Chantre, rue Fromenteau. Most of these alleys had been opened upon the sites of the private palaces of those days, – hôtel de Longue- ville, hôtel d’Elbeuf, hotel d’O, hôtel de Rambouillet, hospital of the Quinze-Vingts, etc., etc. They were wretched mews, dark, obscure, malodorous. The do- mestics of the palace and of the sumptuous man- sions near by were lodged there, to such an extent as to bring into the near neighborhood of the palace a suspicious and dangerous population. These alleys were much valued on days of upris– ings, and the “victors of the Tuileries '' failed not to profit by them to draw upon the defenders of the old French monarchy. On June 20, and again on August 10, 1792, it was by these alleys that several columns of insur- gents made their way to the palace. The facts are well known, - the furious irruption, the massacre of the Swiss Guards, the departure of Louis XVI and the royal family, seeking asylum in the riding- school “in the bosom of the National Assembly,” the pillage of the château, the court full of corpses “ robbed by men, stabbed by women, licked by dogs, decomposed by the torrid heat,” the court of the Tuileries, the Place du Carrousel and the neighbor- ing streets sown with broken bits of mirrors, glasses, THE GARDENS OF THE CARROUSEL 163 porcelains, and white with the snow of “down and feathers ” from the mattresses and pillows which the people, after drinking all the wine in the cellars of the tyrants, amused themselves by emptying out of the windows. The place has also been the scene of patriotic manifestations. On August 2, 1793 (almost ex- actly where now begins that parterre of flowers bordering the Seine of which we are to-day so proud), the funeral ceremony in honor of the ” Marat took place. The Jacobins dedi- 9 “divine cated to his “manes " a wooden obelisk, which was placed before the monument of Lazowski, one of the heroes of August 10. An engraving of the time shows the grave plot surrounded by an iron fence guarded by a sans culotte charged to keep away irreverent dogs and drunkards. A Liberty tree adorned with a cockade and a tricolored flag stuck in the ground complete the imposing decoration. Under the obelisk in a sort of crypt are the hero’s bust, lamp, writing-desk and bath, surmounted by the inscription, To the manes of Marat. From the depths of his dark vault he caused traitors to trem- ble. A perfidious hand ravished him from the love of the people. After the 9th Thermidor the column disappeared. On that day the court of the Carrousel saw Robespierre, Saint-Just, Couthon, and the “out- laws " of that terrible tribunal pass by, hooted by those very persons who had but now worshipped them. # * * I64 BY WAYS OF PARIS During several years life seemed to be extinct in the deserted Tuileries. The houses on the Carrousel embraced the opportunity to become dirtier, more evil-smelling, more ill-famed than ever. On February 19, 1800, the First Consul, Bona- parte, took up his residence in the palace of the kings of France. On days of review under the Consulate, as later under the Empire, the windows which looked upon the Place were occupied by ad- miring crowds. Imagine that little by little the houses — and what houses — had so encroached upon the territory beneath the palace windows that they were not more than a few metres distant ' The lately created flower borders mark almost precisely the place they occupied until the middle of the nineteenth century. It is easy, therefore, to understand what fine ob- servation points these sheds and barracks afforded to lovers of military fêtes, and especially to those fanatics whose supreme joy it was to see HIM, wearing the green uniform of a colonel of chasseurs, his breast crossed by the broad red ribbon of the Legion of Honor, his “little hat ” worn military- wise on his Caesarian head, surrounded by marshals and mamelukes, galloping along on his white horse before his regiments of heroes. Even on other than review days the Carrousel had ceased to be simply the dusty pandemonium of noise, disputes, clamors, chaos. Around the Hôtel de Nantes (a hideous six-story cube of stone facing the charming triumphal arch of Percier and Fon- taine) swarmed all the old-fashioned coaches, wagons, ſaeae ===№ſae º - E: - REvi Ew of THE DÉCADI BEFORE THE F ：Rs'ı Coxsı （L IN THE COURT (ºr CHE CARROUSEL I66 - BY WAYS OF PARIS light vans, omnibuses, carriages, cabs, and cabrio- lets of Paris. From morning till night and from night till morning there was an uproar that might have awakened Epimenides himself. As to the narrow streets giving upon the Place, they were mean to such a point that the great Balzac could without exaggeration write in Cousine Bette: “The existence of that block of houses that lie along the old Louvre is one of those protests against good sense which the French like to make. Our grandchildren, who will doubtless see the com- pleted Louvre, will refuse to believe that such bar- barism could exist in the very heart of Paris, op- posite that palace in which three dynasties have entertained the élite of France and of Europe. The street and the blind alley of the Doyenné are the sole thoroughfares in this gloomy and deserted block of buildings whose inhabitants are doubtless phan- toms, for no one ever sees them. Already buried by the grading of the Place, these buildings are enshrouded in the eternal shadow projected by the high galleries of the Louvre, blackened on this side by the north wind. The darkness, the silence, the glacial air, the cavernous depth of the surface con- spire to make these buildings in some sort crypts, tombs for living beings.” - Speaking of the Place du Carrousel in its infancy, Sardou, the master of us all, wrote in the admirable preface" with which he kindly honored our “Nooks of Paris '': “It was all odds and ends of torn-up 1 Coins de Paris, by G. CAIN. — Preface by W. SARDou (Flam- marion). ºld º º I68 BY WAYS OF PARIS streets, isolated, tumble-down houses, shored up by beams. The rough, sunken, unpaved streets were on rainy days not better than a vast bog. . . . The civil list had built some sheds there, which, from the small court of the Sphinx to the wickets opening upon the bridge of the Saints-Pères, surrounded the ruins of the old church of Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre and its dependences, such as the Priory, where Théo- phile Gautier, Gérard de Nerval, Nanteuil, Arsène Houssaye (and later Émile Augier and Jules San- deau) had installed their gay Bohemia. These sheds were rented to dealers in colors, prints, paintings, and curiosities of all sorts. I still see a great curi- osity shop wherein amidst the most curious sort of rubbish, ostrich eggs, stuffed crocodiles and scalps of red-skins, the collector might make marvellous finds. . . . I have passed delightful hours there, rummaging through portfolios of which, alas! I could only admire the contents, not having the means to buy masterpieces of which I realized the future value, but which were then sold for a song, the pedants of the school of David holding in sovereign contempt eighteenth-century French art, which was too pleasing, too intellectual for their taste. ‘Monsieur,” said one of these merchants to me later, “I have wrapped up engravings by Poussin, for which to-day I would not give forty sous, in Debucourts which now I would not part with for a thousand francs.’” The remarkable Sardou sale, over which all Paris was stirred up a few weeks ago, proved that the master was not mistaken in his predictions ! THE GARDENS OF THE CARROUSEL 169 .*. All those hovels are now replaced by the flower borders and squares of the Place du Carrousel. A carpet garden of coleus framed in by box occupies the centre of the beds, just where, on August 22, 1792, Collenot, called d’Aigremont, was beheaded by the guillotine. This unfortunate, “condemned as a conspirator and leader of brigands in the pay of the court,” had the melancholy honor of being the first to test, by torchlight at ten o’clock in the evening, the decapitating machine invented by Dr. Guillotin. A royalist journalist, Durosoy, died three days later in the same place, at the same hour and under the same conditions; it was the beginning of a long series." Every alley of the Place du Carrousel has its own souvenirs ; in the rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre (near the end of the Place and opposite the wicket of the Museum), Mlle. Carmago had her mansion and Piron his mansarde. The poet Crébillon and the painter Lantara lived in the rue du Chantre. Under the Revolution, the Vaudeville gave its representa- tions in the rue de Chartres (on the site of the present Ministry of Finance), and the “infernal machine * prepared in the rue Saint-Nicaise, 30th Nivāse, year IX, to cut short the days of the First Consul, went off almost under the wicket leading to * Gisors, the architect who was charged to fit up in the château of the Tuileries the halls to be used by the National Convention, complained “that the workmen lose precious time going to executions in the Place du Carrousel.” I70 BY WAYS OF PARIS the rue de Rohan, only a few yards from the spot where in 1905 the attempt against the life of the young king of Spain was made. Finally, the notes of a contemporary speak of the Place of the Museum as “the inviolable asylum of books and parrots.” “Here may be seen,” he says, “antiquaries, mowers, taxidermists, stationed like a menace beside bird fanciers, dealers in bric-à-brac, in proofs of Rem- brandts and shell opera glasses, in guitars and Eng- lish pears ” All these at last disappeared; between 1849 and 1852 * the demolisher’s pick did justice to these horrors, and under the Second Empire the Place du Carrousel, its rubbish removed, its excrescences cut off, adorned by squares, appeared in all its beauty. The fires kindled by the Paris Commune having destroyed the Palace of the Tuileries, the Library of the Louvre, and a part of the galleries, it be- came necessary to erect temporary buildings; for long years the Carrousel was again invaded by sheds. Then came the construction of the enormous monument to Gambetta, heavy and ungraceful, the demolition of the calcined remains of the Tuileries, the creation of gardens, and the blossoming out of * Bonaparte, First Consul, had already caused a number of buildings in this maze of the Carrousel to be torn down. The Place du Carrousel was almost entirely unobstructed by the 27 Floréal, year X. Nothing remained, according to the Journal of the Defenders of the Fatherland, but to throw down the old General Safety building, an edifice little to be regretted. The great gate in the iron fence of the palace of the Tuileries, in the Place du Carrousel, had just been painted, the iron parts in olive and the ornaments in copper, the four sides in pale yellow. — AULARD, Paris sous le Consulat, t. III, p. 62. PLACE DU CAP:RouseL From the Entrance to the Museum, 1849 172 RY WAYS OF PARIS those parterres of flowers which we are so happy as to enjoy to-day. It would seem that the avatars of the Place du Carrousel are terminated. Nothing grows there now but flowers, trees, and statues, those fortunate ex- ceptions which, thank God, have nothing to fear from the dangerous summersaults of politics — and yet, I dare assert as much only of mythological statues | $ l,ouvre $ | N - $ Jardin # # + - 77 . ºjº ! $ | | $ " | - • . " - - - - " : - - | ! - . _ · - :: •" •º - | r * = | - - - # : . # - • * - - - - - •! " " #º * - - •º - # # "， •º - - - | | - - - - - - - - º - - | | . $ $ $$ $ - - Place du Vieux Louvre $ $ $ $ - " . 7º ººy - - < - · - | | - º, 2 . * - - - - - - | | ! - - - - º - - - - - º - - - - - - - - - - - . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - º - - º - - PLACE DU CARRoUsEL “FRASCATI’’ Twº fine ladies who come to buy a peasant-cake at Frascati’s, – boulevard Montmartre, — the loafers crowding around the irreverent posters of the “High Life Tailor’’ at the corner of the rue Richelieu, customers who hasten to be photographed at Reutlinger’s or shaved at Lespès the baker’s, are probably ignorant of the metamorphosis of this picturesque corner of Paris. Its history, however, is so interesting that we long to relate it. Our superb boulevards, planted with trees about 1676, were in their early days entirely neglected. They seemed to be dangerous, lugubrious, and — so far away ! Pessimists disdainfully described them as “country,” and the pessimists seemed to be right: the boulevards were neither cheerful nor safe. During the daytime a few bucolic prome- naders would go thither to indulge in revery, others would go to botanize by watching the market gar- deners weed their salads, bush their peas, gather their cabbages; children played there, soldiers came to crack a bottle and enjoy a game of bowls. But at nightfall pickpockets and women of evil life held sabbath there; robberies were committed, and this until the middle of the eighteenth century. From time to time some person of independent mind would set up his penates here, tempted by the low 176 BY WAYS OF PARIS price of land and the facilities for surrounding his “folly ” with gardens planted with vines, roses, jasmins, cherry trees, even ; we all know that from time immemorial a passion for gardening has been one of the joys of the people of Paris. Little by little houses were built, — the entrances, be it understood, always on the street, — people began to go to the boulevards to “take a breath of air.” Carriages began to circulate, cavaliers to caracole; foot passengers became less infrequent. All these things explain why, in 1784, the rich Farmer General Crozat resolved to erect a magnifi- “ of financier’s dimensions ° at the ex- cent mansion fremity of the rue de Richelieu. IIe surrounded it with a garden “ of noble extent, the views from which, extending to the country, are excessively varied. The terrace above the orangery which borders the new drive laid out upon the ramparts of the city furnished by itself alone a most delightful promenade. The fruit garden is beyond the coins, and is reached by an underground passage, pierced at great expense through the platform of the ram- part.” In other words, Crozat, having bought a part of the Grange Batelière, made it his vegetable garden ; a tunnel passing under the boulevard united the two properties, which became at once town house and country house. The country house covered the sites of all the buildings now included between the rue Drouot, the passage Jouffroy, and the rue Grange Batelière. Crozat's terrace soon became celebrated: it was the best place in the world for watching the pass- ·- || | |×----ſſ |：}| （}） ' ， /º/， （， ， ， ， ， , ， ， ）)))）） ---- ſº：º： -- -------！！！！！ ！！ ！！！|- _ ----- № =---------- |--- ：） ----|- ：：=≡ |-----|----- FRASCA-I I78 BY WAYS OF PARIS ing of ever more numerous promenaders. “I find the ‘ Rampart proverb by Carmontelle, “The House on the Boule- charming !” cried le Chevalier in a vard ” : “One can see all Paris without going out: it comes every day to walk under our windows.” In another place the Countess complains of the º, º THE Little MARIONETTEs Engraving of the time trees, which “hinder her from contemplating the promenade' " Paris went on growing and being transformed. Al- ready an entire quarter had been built upon Crozat's cabbage garden; the orangery converted into a garden, the house, pulled down and rebuilt by the famous architect Brongniart, became in 1789 the Hôtel Lecoulteux de Nolay; the fine terrace alone “ FRASCATI’’ I79 was left intact. Then came the Revolution, empty- ing and confiscating the mansions whose owners had emigrated or been guillotined; under the Directory Citizen Garchi bought the Hôtel Lecoulteux, at the corner of the boulevard, for a café! Garchi, an unexpected trophy of Bonaparte's vic- PARISIAN CostumE of THE YEAR VIII, SEEN AT FRASCATI tories, was an Italian imported into France at the same time with the lion of Saint Mark, the horses of Venice, the marbles and pictures of Roman palaces. This subtle concocter of lemonade con- quered Paris by the excellence of his perfumed ices and the sumptuousness of his pyrotechnics. The Hôtel Lecoulteux, converted into a café-ice- cream saloon, under the sign “ Frascati,” harbored 180 IBY WAYS OF PARIS all that homeless society which had been dispersed by the Revolution, a surprising company who “ ceived ’’ one another at balls organized by subscrip- tion. People contended for the tables on the famous Lerrace overlooking the boulevard. Elegant ladies there displayed their graces on three chairs, “one for themselves, one for their feet, one for their dog.” Every evening a crowd would hasten thither to wonder at the fireworks, which scattered over Paris their treasures of diamonds, emeralds, and rubies. It was good style, on leaving the Opera House in the rue Richelieu (on the site now occupied by the square Louvois), to go to Frascati to burn punches or eat Garchi’s ices, to walk with ladies in the alleys “illuminated a giorno,” which extended as far as the passage des Panoramas, and cost only “three 1. Te— livres for entrance.” * “I observed yesterday that the women’s clothes were lengthened at the bottom in proportion as they were shortened at the top. Dresses have trains long enough to furnish material for other dresses.” — Journal de Paris, 14 Fructioor, year VII (August 31, 1799). “The elegant world of Paris usually meets at Frascati about ten o'clock, after the Opera. A staircase leads to a fine vestibule and thence into a hall surrounded with mirrors and adorned with festoons and artificial flowers. At the farther end is a fine statue of the Venus de Médicis. Near this statue opens an arcade which gives access to a suite of six magnificent rooms, superbly gilded, and fur- nished with mirrors and lustres of crystal cut in diamonds. Each room is like a home of light; here ices and coffee are taken. Com- munication between the rooms is by means of arcades, or by double doors ornamented with mirrors. The garden, small but artistic, has three alleys bordered with orange trees, acacias, and vases of roses; at the end is a tower built upon a rock with temples and rustic bridges; on each side are small arbors in a labyrinth. A terrace extends along the boulevard, of which it commands a view; it is bordered by beautiful vases of flowers, and terminates at each extremity in a sort of avenue decorated with mirrors.” — Sir John CARR, The English in France after the Peace of Amiens, ch. IV, p. 181. º I82 BY WAYS OF PARIS Lolling in their chairs, as Debucourt shows us in his delightful Promenade publique, the “incred- ibles,” swallowed in huge cravats, swathed in triple short waistcoats with bell-shaped buttons, trussed up in coats with velvet collars, were exchanging impertinences with the “merveilleuses,” who were sweeping the garden paths with their India mus- lins, lawns, gauzes, and taffetas, to such purpose that the next morning the alleys were as smooth and lustrous as satin. Between two campaigns the officers were most assiduous in showing themselves there, and the victors of Marengo accorded to them- selves the joy of dragging their sabres among so many pretty petticoats, more or less drawn up above colored silk stockings with embroidered clocks. # % ºf What successes must those young heroes have ob- tained whose exploits were already beginning to be legendary, and what glances did not the Frascati god- desses shoot at those heart-breakers, embrowned by the smoke of so many glorious combats! There was a cavalry major, son of the dancer Gardel, who prided himself on bearing in his face “the finest sabre-thrust in the army,” extending from one ear to the other It was to him that Marshal Lannes said later, “Monsieur, you are very fortunate; I have been fighting fifteen years without being able to get as much.” But there were not only festivities at Garchi; in the fine days of the Directory conspiracies were “FRASCATI’’ 183 openly hatched there. The police blotters of the Archives are full of the reports of agents denounc- ing plots. On the 13th Thermidor, year VI, the citizen minister is informed that “the assembly of royalists at Frascati the evening before was large TZTZT Zºº / 'ao. 9 º Ø %///z. - º THE TRIMMINGs and bore a threatening character. It appears that the leaders who were expected have arrived — they have been heard to say to one another that the thing will not be long in coming off. It is almost certain that they are being organized into bodies of troops – that their depositories of arms are I84 BY WAYS OF PARIS principally in the neighborhood of the Chaussée d’Antin. Their costume consists of a blue coat, blue velvet collars, three-cornered boat-shaped hat with a large cockade above the cord; those destined for cavalry have a white cord.” + “The café kept by Garchi, boulevard Montmartre, is denounced (21 Fructidor, year VI) as a meeting-place of royal- ists . . . the most seditious utterances against the government are heard there, and it may be re- marked that the most anti-revolutionary expressions of all came from the lips of those who have made a fortune under the present régime.” ” There are innumerable reports about the play, for a gaming house has been opened in the former Hôtel Lecoul- teux. Trente-et-un, biribi, pharaoh, are all the rage, all the gamesters who were disturbed in the neigh- borhood of the Palais-Royal (a report of the 4th Germinal, year IV, states that more than fifty gam- bling houses had been suppressed there) have fallen back upon Frascati.” Judge of the tumult: conspiracies, gambling, drinking, merrymaking to such a point that a door stood always open between Frascati and the adjoin- ing house, “the Salon of Foreigners,” and the two buildings became a vast disorderly house, where champagne flowed, cards were “passed,” purchased 1 F 7 6209, D. no. 3374. - 2 Archives nationales, F 7 6162, no. 1381. * In September, 1799, the authorities found themselves forced “to paste a slip of paper over that part of Garchi’s program where he announced for the day’s concert a ‘Russian Dance and Turkish Air,’ pointing out to him that it was not to be presumed that he could have the intention of informing the opposers of the Revolution that enemies of the Republic were celebrated in his establishment.” “FRASCATI’’ 185 smiles were exchanged. Terrific fighting went on there. The 28th Nivose, year VI, Citizen Fournier, adjutant of General Augereau, was sabred there: blood flowed, the police tried to seize the combatants, who escaped by the window, and the officer, after having inspected the wounded, simply reported that “while sabre thrusts were being exchanged in the A PICTURE OF “Good STYLE” apartments of Citizen Garchi, fighting was also going on in the street.” ". In 1815 a M. Varin, hatter, 1 PARIs, 28th Nivöse, year VI of the F. R. one and ind. The Commissary of Police of the division of the Buttes des Moulins to the Commissaries-Administrators of the Central Office. CITIZENs: According to orders given by your letter of yesterday concerning the event which occurred yesterday in the house of Citizen Garchi, I forward such details of the affair as I have been able to procure: it was not possible to send them earlier, since I was obliged to procure accurate information from the justice of the peace. The following are the facts: Eight or ten persons, wearing greatcoats to conceal their uni- I 86 BY WAYS OF PARIS who had just left his last crowns upon the green cloth of the Trente-et-un, killed and robbed one of forms, were sitting around a large table, only two of them had no greatcoats over their uniform; two other persons seated themselves at a neighboring table; these last two also wore greatcoats. Citizen Fournier, adjutant of General Augereau, was in the same room with Citizens Fauve, Lamothe, and Rochechouard. As those last four were leaving Garchi’s place, one of the men in greatcoats said: “There is a face which does not please me,” and slapped one of the men who was with Citizen Fournier in the face; the latter at once attempted to stop him, but Sabres were promptly drawn, and the epaulettes of Citizen Fournier were torn. At the same instant a general fray broke out, several citizens who were in Citizen Garchi’s place were wounded, among others citizens Colavière and Falassieux, who were very dangerously wounded, and have not yet been able to make their declarations before the justice of the peace. Citizen Jean-Pierre Faure, merchant, rue des Victoires No. 59, was wounded on the nose; it appears that he was the first to be struck. Citizen Antoine-Pierre-Remy-Alexandre Lierval, Commissioner of War, dwelling rue Pelletier No. 14, received blows, both sword and stick, Citizen François-Xavier Quentin, dwelling rue Vivienne No. 39, received three sabre cuts on the head, another on the cheek, a thrust in the right hand and one in the left arm; he declared that he had also been robbed of ten pieces of gold, twenty-four francs, and a silver watch. Citizen Jacque-Robert Choisy, gentleman, rue Neuve-des-Capucines No. 523, was clubbed, and his frockcoat was cut by a sword-thrust. Citizen Lamotte, dwelling rue Mont-Blanc No. 62, received a sabre blow on the head. Citizens Bassuet, dwelling rue Comartin No. 31, and Dubosq of rue Plätrière received sabre blows in the street, into which they had been pursued. Three citizens whose names are not yet known jumped from the windows into the street and escaped, and Citizen Billard, butcher, rue de la Loi, received a sabre cut in the wrist when trying to help one of those who were attempting to escape by the windows, Citizen Billard being in the Street. A grenadier's hat covered with oiled cloth and a short club with a leaded handle were found and are in the possession of the justice of the peace. Four persons were sent to the Staff office, but their names are not known. This, Citizens, is all that I have found it possible to ascertain about this affair; I shall simply repeat what I said in my former report, that it appears to be certain that while sabre cuts were being exchanged in the rooms of Citizen Garchi, others were also given in the street. The justice of the peace has not yet heard the witnesses, “FRASCATI’’ 187 his fellow citizens in an obscure alley of the garden ... and all these things occurred in this lovely place! A charming engraving by Debucourt shows the white and gold salons of Frascati, “shining with º - - - * * º 2.0 - º who are about twenty in number, nor has he yet learned the names of any of the prisoners. Citizen Garchi was not wounded, as was reported. Health and fraternity. Signed: CoMMINGE Copy conforming to the original deposited. The Chief Secretary: (Illegible) Archives Nationales, F7 6149*, No. 650. I88 BY WAYS OF PARIS a thousand lights.” “Officials '' in short jackets, powdered as under the old régime, brought sherbets and bowls of punch to pretty women seated at table with lively beplumed soldiers, or elegant civilians in high beavers.” " Years pass; business is bad with Garchi. Lecoul- teux buys back the hotel for 501,000 francs, and the receiver of the Perrin playhouse holds the bank.” This lasted all through the time of public play- houses in France. Then two great buildings were erected on the ruins of the hotel and the garden; shops were at a premium ; Buisson, tailor to the fashionable young men of Louis-Philippe’s time, had one of them. Here also is a memory dear to dis- ciples of Balzac. From 1835 to 1844 a little room, * “Play” began at four o’clock in the afternoon. At two in the morning there was a cold supper for the players. By the 15th Thermidor, year XI (August 3, 1803), Frascati had fallen from its ancient splendor. If we are to believe L'Observateur, while the shrubbery, the salons, and the ices of Frascati were making the sad experience of the inconstancy of public favor, the reputation of the Café Foy was daily increasing. – AULARD, Paris sous le Consulat, t. IV, p. 282. On the 15th Frimaire, year XII, the Gazette de France announced that Frascati, renowned for its ices, its summer assemblies, and its fireworks, was to be changed during the winter into an Athenaeum for dancing; men to subscribe, ladies to come by invitation. Strangers would contribute; Russian gentlemen would give a ball to the ladies of France. — Ib., p. 558. r This new organization of Frascati must have succeeded, for the Gazette de France of the 25th Floréal, year XII (May 15, 1804), says that the gay world goes to Frascati every evening, although the weather is not very warm. - * Perrin married his daughter to the nephew of General Desaix, and died insolvent after having been worth sixteen millions! * FRASCATI '' 189 nestled under the roof, neighbor to those appropri- ated to domestics, was reserved by Buisson for his customer the great Honoré de Balzac. Here the master-writer, hunted down by his creditors, hid himself away when things became peculiarly difficult. Theodore Gautier here visited his gifted friend, whom he found “wrapped in his monachal robe and impatiently stamping up and down the blue and white carpet of a dainty mansarde, the walls of which were hung with Carmelite cambric.” s And the newsboys are crying, “The latest news! ask for the latest news | * in this very spot where so many memories dwell. THE FAuBourg POISSONNIERE HE shopkeepers of the faubourg Poissonnière are in mourning; the examinations of the Conser- vatory have emigrated (like mere ci-devants) to the theatre of the Opéra Comique. The time is no more when the famous artistic “ All-Paris " — writers, ac- tors, academicians, journalists, singers, actresses or acteuses, mistresses of piano or pianists, amateurs or professionals — used to crowd into the tiny, suffo- cating hall of the celebrated art-mill of the faubourg Poissonnière. By nine in the morning every one would be at his post, glued — that is the right word — to the moleskin of an armchair. Not one vacant place; attentive and sybilline critics, enigmatic judges, graver than the sworn feua-de-file of Fouquier-Tinville; the crowded, criti- cal hall. Not an examination but brought together its faithful: even the clarinets, the trumpets, the bassoons, the trombones à coulisses have their public. These happy days are no more. Never again shall we see in their beauty the little gray court and the great vestibule with its rabble of “hopefuls,” drown- ing in floods of lemonade the wreck of their illusions, brutally deflowered by an always unjust, always ill- willed, often ungrateful jury. Only the day of the distribution of prizes will bring again to the fau- bourg Poissonnière those picturesque files of sono- 192 BY WAYS OF PARIS rous, smooth-faced actors, those pretty actresses whom in every age Paris has adored. It is, then, not at the time of examinations that we should visit the Conservatoire. We will come back at the reopening of the classes, there are many good hours to pass between this and that. We must be content to-day to spend some idle THE GRANGE-BATELIERE ABOUT 1810 moments in the environs of the establishment of which Master Fauré is the presiding genius; be- lieve us, the picturesque history of this bit of Paris well deserves the telling. Until the second half of the seventeenth century the faubourg Poissonnière was simply pasture lands for cows and sheep, or market gardens of salads, carrots, artichokes, parsnips. C'est là qu’en maints endroits laissant errer ma vue Je vois croitre à plaisir l’oseille et la laitue. . . ：：：-：- ----- ENTRANCE TO THE TEMPORARY GALLERIES BUILT FOR THE ExpositioN AT THE MENUS-PLAISIRS THEATRE I94 BY WAYS OF PARIS says Regnard, describing the view which he sees from his balcony at the end of the rue Richelieu. A brook, the brook of Ménilmontant, once crossed these fields, forming the marshes where the people of Paris used to shoot duck and bustard and catch eels and frogs. This Ménilmontant brook still runs, UNDER THE ENTRANCE to THE MENUs-PLAIsIRs but invisibly, some fifteen metres below the surface, and farther away passes under the Opera House. Beyond the fields and marshes turned the “thirty" windmills of Montmartre. Turgot's plan of 1789 shows this plain as in- habited. A few houses are grouped around an ancient chapel, the Chapel of Sainte-Anne, which by 1791 had disappeared. In the second half of the eighteenth century this desert began to be THE FAUBOURG POISSONNIERE I95 populated. Farmer-general Bouret covered over the brook, put down sewers, drained the marsh, built was created houses; the quarter of “New France' on a site once dangerous, because inhabited only by fugitives from justice. The barracks which were then built there still exist,' and it was there that the battalion from Marseilles, sent to Barbaroux in 1792 notwithstanding the king’s veto, taught the people LoNGITUDINAL SECTION of THE THEATRE of THE CoNservatory of Paris the Marseillaise, composed the month before in Strasburg by an officer of engineers, Rouget de l’Isle.* * Extract from the proceedings of the Bonne-Nouvelle section, January 14, 1793, the year II of the Republic The permanent General Assembly of the Bonne-Nouvelle section orders that two commissioners shall be nominated to betake them- selves to the barracks of the Marseillais, in order to make known to them the sentiments of fraternity which animate it [the General Assembly] and to invite them to make closer the ties which unite them to true patriots in the present difficult circumstances. It has named for this purpose Citizens Marquet, Rousset, Gonchon, and Folatre. Attested copy of the proceedings, Signed: the elder MAsigli ER, secretary. Archives of the Court of Air, revolutionary business, file 498. * Letter from a Federate of Marseilles. PARIs, Saturday, January 19, 1790. CITIZEN PRESIDENT: I have the honor to send this present, to inform you that word has come from Marseilles that certain people in Paris have written to your Assembly that our Marseilles battalion has ill-treated the Pa- I96 IBY WAYS OF PARIS An alley, the alley au Berger (whence the rue de la Bergère), connects the chaussée de la Nouvelle France with the Montmartre Road. The Count de Charolais there built a “folly ” for the beautiful Mlle. de Courchamp; small houses were dotted amid INTERIoR of THE HALL of THE CoNSERVATorre risians in all sorts of ways. . . . Well, do not believe it. . . . The perfect unity which reigns among them all is so true that day before yesterday, Thursday, the day of the judgment of the king (Louis XVI), all the federates, lately arrived in Paris from all depart- ments for the augmentation of the daily guard of the National Convention, all the federates who have long been here, and all good citizens who compose the National Parisian guard invited us all to a sort of civic festival, by a general coming together on the Place du Carrousel, in front of the Tuileries, and from thence to the Jacobins, where we all mutually embraced and most warmly embraced again, repeating our oaths of fidelity to the fatherland. The famous Marseillaise song was sung lustily, with so much unanimity of good comrades as made a touching sight. I would add that every evening we have a public assembly in our THE FAUBOURG POISSONNIERE I97 the grass. One of the Sansons — of the celebrated dynasty of Parisian hangmen — lived where now is No. 69, and his gardens covered the present rue Papillon. His six brothers, the “gentlemen º’ of Tours, Blois, Rheims, etc., used often to visit him and their aged grandmother. Martha Dubut pre- sided at the joyful love-feasts of this family of executioners. Hangman’s attendants waited upon table; the honor of carving the meat was greatly coveted." When the Revolution broke out, this Poisson- nière quarter (the faubourg was successively called Chaussée Sainte-Anne, Chaussée de la Nouvelle France, and after 1789 faubourg Poissonnière, be- cause it led to the fish market at the Halles), half country, half town, seemed to offer asylum to all who were designated as victims of the revolutionary tempest. Rabaut-Saint-Etienne and his brother, de- nounced by Marat on May 31, 1793, took refuge barracks, attended by all our sections, either as deputies or as private persons. JosłPH CREMIE, Volunteer in the 2d battalion of Marseilles in the 9th Company. Monday, January 21, at midday. As I think that all these details will give you pleasure I add this bit of paper to say that our battalion left the barracks at seven o'clock this morning to surround the Place Louis XV. Archives of the Court-house of Aia, revolutionary matters, packet 498. * It is said that this numerous family of “questioners,” hangmen, torturers, lived in great unity; it often occurred that the seven brothers met at the table of the eldest, who lived in a pretty large house in the rue Neuve-Saint-Jean in the faubourg Poissonnière. The aged Martha Dubut, the grandmother (who had married Charles Sanson on April 30, 1707), who lived to a very advanced age, presided at these singular love-feasts, when the aides waited on table. — LENôTRE, La guillotine pendant la Révolution, pp. 117, 118. I98 BY WAYS OF PARIS’ there with their friends the Payssacs. Betrayed, given over, arrested, one of them was guillo- tined with his hosts. Thermidor saved the second brother. A writ of accusation having been issued against the “Conventionnel ” Dulaure, the historiog- rapher of Paris, he took refuge (October 22, 1793) in the faubourg Poissonnière, fleeing from his lodg- ing in Chaillot, where he knew that two gendarmes were watching for him. He passed the night with a terrified friend, and left his precarious shelter only to take refuge in a lodging close by in the rue Montmartre, “an obscure hovel with walls covered by littered paper.” Hidden in this fetid hole, he could hear the news-venders in the street shouting the death of his colleagues. The Terror passed, gayety, mute for so many months, took its revenge; Paris was shaken with a fever of pleasure. Closed religious houses, aristo- cratic mansions confiscated by the Revolution, their owners executed, emigrated, or in prison, were trans- formed into dance halls. Three months after the last tumbril of Thermidor, Paris possessed six hundred and forty-four public halls Worship of Terpsichore succeeded to worship of Marat. Merveilleuses in high buskins “hopped English ’’ and the market-women (dames de la Halle) in their coarse wooden shoes beat the measure of the fricassée. Every street might in 1794 have put out the sign which in 1789 had been stuck between two paving stones upon the demolished ruins of the Bas- tile, “Dancing here * (“Ici l’on danse ’). Dancing in the faubourg Montmartre, at “ Calypso's ball ” THE FAUBOURG POISSONNIERE I99 (decent dress required) ; dancing at Guittet’s on the Place Vendôme; dancing in the old Saint-Sulpice cemetery, where a rose-colored transparency an- nounced the “Zephyrs’ ball ”; dancing in the fau- bourg Saint-Germain at the “Victims’ ball ”; danc- ing for two sous in the popular guinguettes, but ENTRANCE to THE CoNSERVAToIRE every “open-air ball has a room for changing to flesh-colored pantaloons °; dancing in the rue Riche- lieu, in the rue de Bondy, in the rue de l'Échiquier, in the school of the Bibliophiles (rue de Verneuil), in the Jesuit novice-house, in the Saint-Sulpice Semi- nary; dancing at the Palais-Royal, at the Élysée, at Monceau, at Tivoli. At the Hôtel de Longueville 200 BY WAYS OF PARIS there were “twenty-three circles for country-dances, and two quadrilles of negresses frisking incognito in an alcove near the entrance.” And, by a decree of the Central Bureau, bread at that time cost sixty francs a pound in assignats! The faubourg Poissonnière, it will be understood, had its own attractions. A master of amusements had installed on a broad open place shaded by trees, at No. 125 (a little below the present rue Delta), “Egyptian promenades and mountains,” by way of rival to the Russian mountains at that time so very popular. Balloon ascensions and fireworks completed the joyful program. A few yards from this scene of festivity the bodies of the Swiss who had been killed at the taking of the Tuileries lay buried. On August 2, 1815, a dramatic event occurred at No. 5 faubourg Poissonnière. General de Labé- doyère was arrested," the very day of his arrival at the house of a friend, whither Mme. de Labédoyère had come to meet him. The general was travelling under the assumed name of F. Huchet, merchant, bearing a letter of credit upon Philadelphia, signed 1 Labédoyère, of the Army of the Loire, had provided himself with a passport for the United States and a letter of credit for 55,000 francs, signed Ouvrard. But before leaving his native land he de- sired to see for the last time his young wife and his son. He took the diligence from Riom, arrived in Paris at ten o’clock on the evening of August 2, and drove to No. 5 rue du faubourg Poissonnière, the house of Mme. de Fontry, a friend of the Countess de Labédoyère. An hour later he was arrested on the denunciation of two scoundrels, said to have been officers, who had travelled with him. The matter was carried to a close with brutal swiftness. On August 14 Labédoyère appeared before the first council of war, and at a single sitting was unanimously condemned to death. On the 15th, this appeal being rejected by the council of revision, he was shot. — HENRY Houssay E, 1815, La Terreur blanche, p. 508. THE FAUBOURG PoissoRNIRRE 201 Ouvrard. Denounced by certain travelling com- panions, Labédoyère had been followed. The little hôtel bearing the number 5 stood where is now a hairdresser's shop, in a building occupied by Le Matin newspaper. The police surrounded it. Labé- doyère, summoned to yield himself “in the king’s name,” replied that he had retired and could not go out; the police scaled the wall, entered by the windows, seized the General, and brought him before the Council of War. Nothing could save this twenty-nine- year-old hero from the sentence of death, insisted upon by . M. Violti, captain- reporter, a personal enemy of “Monsieur Bonaparte.” THERE's A IN 1867 Labédoyère died heroically, shot on the Plain of Grenelle August 15th. A shop now occupies No. 18, formerly the Alcazar, a café-concert to which in the last year of the Second Empire the great artist Thérésa attracted all Paris. Before 1870 people used to laugh at the eccentricities of Rien n'est sacré pour un sapeur' 202 BY WAYS OF PARIS (Nothing is sacred to an engineer) and C'est dans le mez que ga m'chatouille (It tickles me in the nose); shortly after they were weeping over the melancholy songs, Bon Gite, l’Hôtesse, la Cocarde, which recalled the sufferings of the “Terrible Years.” The remark CoNSULTING Room, DATING FROM THE DIRECTORY of Got, dean of the Comédie-Française, professor in the Conservatoire, is still remembered: “If you want to know with what emotion Rachel used to repeat the Marseillaise, go across the way to the Alcazar and listen to Thérésa’ ” Next door to the Conservatoire, at No. 19, is a THE FAUBOURG PoissoRNIERE 203 modest little house with a golden horseshoe framing in the sign “Blacksmithing.” In the glass-covered court six horses were tethered, at the back was a forge with stout fellows in leather aprons shoeing stallions and mares. At the left, under the arch, is a consulting room, where a skilful veterinary treats A SALON, TIME of THE DIRECTORY small animals, dogs, cats, parrots, even canaries. The picturesque sight! And how much the more surprising when one learns that this hospital for animals has found shelter in an exquisite little hotel dating from the Directory ! The decorations of the consulting room – a spread eagle amidst laurel crowns, fauns upholding a frieze – are sufficiently interesting; the floor above is ravishing. The great drawing-room, empty now, still keeps intact its stamp of art and of antiquity. The coppers which en- 204 BY WAYS OF PARIS frame the mirrors or decorate the mahogany doors with their medallions painted by some pupil of Prud’hon, the delicate mythological entablatures above the doors, the brackets for lights, the green silk panels, the lustre, a crystal cascade falling from the caissoned ceiling, the floor of colored woods, - * all recall the period when eighteenth-century grace still survived, the perfect art of its marvellous carver- gilders, pupils of Gouthières, Clodion, Caffieri – and we pause to dream in this dignified room where long ago men and women loved and were beloved. A glass door opens upon a balcony overhanging the glass court. In the distance is an old mansion of the time of Louis XVI, nearly in ruins. Nor is this all. Another surprise awaits us: the broad flooring of this balcony is made of a sepulchral stone THE FAUBOURG POISSONNIñRE 205 of the fifteenth century. We stand upon the effigy of a mitred bishop, whose hands are joined in priestly pose. The worn inscription may be seen on this side of the stone; the remainder, on the opposite side, is hidden in the wall! The cordial and distinguished owners of this pic- turesque house are kind enough to assure us, with such perfect grace as makes us profoundly grateful, that this precious stone will never leave the house where a fortunate accident has placed it, except to find final rest in the Carnavalet Museum ! Decid- edly, to-day’s walk was a lucky one ! THE RUIE RAYNOUIARD ONE OF NA. DE BALZAC’S DWELLINGS Nºw, zigzag, lined with ancient gray houses enlivened with certain clumps of green trees, rue Raynouard would seem not in the least out of place in Riom or Poitiers. There are few to pass by, still fewer are the carriages. Here and there between the walls is a charming glimpse of the Seine valley, the distant buildings of Grenelle, the slopes of Meudon, and one can easily believe that, however unpleasing the fronts of the houses, the back win- dows must command a splendid panorama. It was indeed the custom of our ancestors to avoid most carefully the rooms nearest the street, malodorous and dusty, muddy and filled with refuse, — the street where trades-people of all sorts were crying their wares, – water-carriers, chimney-sweeps, charcoal men, dealers in vegetables, flowers, fish, hot mussels, baskets of fowls, old-clothes men, menders of cisterns, glaziers, match-venders, and all the rest. Loving comfort, quiet, calm, our grandparents usu- ally occupied the back rooms of their houses look- ing out upon the gardens, so numerous in those days and so beautiful in Paris and its environs. Up to the time of the annexation of the suburbs (1860), rue Raynouard formed a part of the village of Passy; in 1731 it appeared on Roussel’s plan. 208 BY WAYS OF PARIS Successively High Street, Grand Street, Street of the Francs-Bourgeois (Free Commoners; this because of the “Commoners ” who settled there in the second half of the eighteenth century, attracted by the prox- imity of the “mineral waters of Passy,” the estab- lishment of which reached as far as the Seine), the High Street of 1831 became Low Street in 1840, for if it is “high * with regard to the river it is “low” in comparison with the highest parts of Passy. In 1867 it was definitively named rue Ray- nouard, in honor of the poet, author of “The Tem- plars,” who died in No. 38.” Illustrious men at one time or another dwelt in this street of various names. The dukes of Lauzun and of Saint-Simon were established in sumptuous abodes, the foundations of which still exist. Close at hand (at No. 21) lodged La Tour d'Auvergne, first grenadier of France, Desaix, Kléber, Lecourbe; about 1796 Moreau used to visit his “cottage * here. Near at hand lived the Abbé Raynal, and also Abbé Prevost, author of the immortal Manon Lescaut. A delightful psychologist, the Abbé Prévost was a deplorable ecclesiastic, it appears, as witness the dia- logue exchanged in 1735 with the Prince de Conti: Rue Basse (Former and Later Mineral Waters). The Low Street (rue Basse) on the left of M. Husson’s pension leads to the Manor; the houses on the side toward the river enjoy a magnificent view. Two of these houses possessing springs of mineral water are known by the title “Old and New Waters”; their gardens are public. — Guide des Amateurs et des Etrangers voyageurs à Paris, THIERY, 1787, t. I, p. 10. * In 1819 a decree of the municipal council of Passy prohibited carriages “harnessed to more than one horse,” to use the High Street, “the passing of wheeled vehicles being dangerous to those houses which are built above abandoned quarries.” º º | -¿№ſ： =====|- № ~|×|-！|-~~~~---…-- v UE DE PA fºrce ºn tºº ， ºwner vºº， « ſon， ºommar. VIEW OF PASSY Taken from the Isle of Swans cpposite “ The Good Men” (About 1775 210 BY WAYS OF PARIS “What, abbé, you want to be my chaplain? But I never hear masses!”—“Nor do I ever say any, monseigneur !” Benjamin Franklin sojourned for a time (1777 to 1785) at No. 36; it was at No. 62 that he made his first experiments with the lightning-rod. Florian the fabulist and the song-writer Béranger also lived in this venerable street, but it is to the great Balzac that the rue Raynouard (at that time known as Low Street) owes the best part of its celebrity. At No. 47 an old mansion of very simple aspect, where in 1792 dwelt Louise Contat, the lovely ac- tress of the Comédie-Française, bears the following inscription on a marble tablet beside the door: “In this house lived H. de Balzac, 1842–1848.” ". In this house, or more probably back of this house, H. de Balzac shut himself up for six years in a modest pavilion behind the ancient dwelling of Louise Contat. - The janitor, busy with his watchmaking work, bids us go down two flights of stairs. The invitation seems surprising, till we recall to mind certain in- dications handed down by Mme. de Surville, Balzac's sister, Théophile Gautier, Gérard de Nerval, and Léon Gozlan, his friends, and make our way down the slippery stairs, aided by the cast-iron bannister, on which the hand of the master used to rest. We reach a small court. At the farther end, be- hind a clump of spindle trees and lilacs, is a small 1 Mr. Frederic Lawton, a fervent admirer of Balzac, denies this statement. “Balzac went to the Passy house in December, 1840, and left it in the spring of 1847, apparently in April.” Mr. Lawton is probably right. �� ！N §§ S 3 №. D 4% ºreºg Dauphine //z. --- tºº------ réazaz /.4 efºre /lfa ºrey º ºneille //nº Gozz /øe &/ (rotac Aozarzón 36vizºotºrwere Zºrºroc Döme (dº. Jarre Jºe”/ºrane /z. Z) Zhaºzºne ſº Bałºre (Žaniſław:/ſº (*m %; Hº! * : Jºe ： № ::：: ， ， ， ， ！ Tū · ·T·-… ·， … - ----！ ∞ }|-№ ·|-·∞- :··· *…..… Ertract from the Plan of the sixteenth arrondissement of the Cit 5. % ozzº y of Paris, Emile de Labédollière. of E -- published in the “Paris Nouveau 1860 212 BY WAYS OF PARIS house of one story above the ground floor; there are green blinds and a yellow door pierced by two round light-holes – Balzac's house ! It was not always so easy to gain access to this retreat. The great writer used to hide in order to work in peace, and escape the creditors who for so long a time were the bane of his existence; it used to require a stiff assault to carry this refuge. Most complicated passwords were exchanged. After hav- ing assured the porter, “suspicious as a bolt ’’ (verrow), that “the season of plums had come,” one was permitted to descend the first flight. There, a portress, summoned by a bell, checked the audacious visitor, not unmasking the lower stairway until 6 thoroughly assured that 5 ‘one was bringing the Bruges laces.” Once beyond the second staircase, it became necessary to impart to a trusty Cerberus “The best news of Mme. Bertrand’s health *; and then at last one was admitted to the presence of Mme. de Brignols, the master’s housekeeper, “a lady of some forty years, stout, quiet, nun-like, a convent- portress, the last word of the domiciliary enigma.” Mme. de Brignols alone was empowered to open to the initiated the door of M. de Balzac's study. Moved with deep respect, we enter this humble abode, of 600 francs’ annual rent, where for six years the supreme analyst of the human heart la- bored night and day. Messrs. de Royaumont and Léon Maillard, receiving us with their usual graceful courtesy, did the honors of this place of which they are the pious guardians. In the salon, adorned with a fine bust of Balzac by Marquet de Vasselot, their THE RUE RAYNOUARD 213 devoted care has brought together some most rare souvenirs. Two frames enclose the heroes of the Comédie Humaine: Father Grandet, Bixiou, Camu- sot, Rastignac, the curé of Tours and the Country Doctor, Beatrix, Mme. Marneffe, Honorine, Pierrette, BALzAc Tullie, Esther Gobsek, Mme. de Maufrigneuse, and Mamma Vauquer. And here are photographs of several of Balzac's abodes, the hotel of the rue For- tunée (now rue Balzac), where he died, an insurance policy signed with his glorious name, several carica- tures, a sketch by David d’Angers, a fragment of marble (the gift of M. Paul Bourget), a hideous inkstand in the form of a padlock, - and that is 214 BY WAYS OF PARIS all! Insufficient collection, which disciples of Balzac will assuredly set their hearts upon enriching. We visited the four little low-ceilinged rooms where lived and worked the gifted scene-painter of the “ Human Comedy.” BALZAc's GARDEN From this corner cupboard, narrow, cheerless as a convent cell, “its walls covered with pictures with- out frames and frames without pictures,” came all those masterpieces: “The Muse of the Department,” “Eve and David,” “The Splendors and the Mis- eries of Courtesans’’ (1843), “Beatrix,” “Modest BALZAc's House Exit by the rue Berton 216 IBY WAYS OF PARIS Mignon * (1844), “The Peasants,” “The Village Priest '' (1845), “The Last Incarnation of Wau- trin '' (1846), and finally in 1847 “Cousin Pons,” “Cousin Betty " — and we forget the rest Yet these empty rooms have not the gift to touch our hearts; they have been too recently “ done over,” they are too ripoliné; the mystery of dark corridors and complicated staircases affects us quite differently. That scenery is not artificially gotten up ; those are the true accessories of the drama of which poor Balzac himself was the suffering hero. This little house of two entrances, these secret exits, these traps still hidden under the tiling, the jealous “guard ” kept by faithful friends around his “ cache,” enabled him to make his escape from bailiffs, tipstaves, creditors who at any moment might be in upon him. Poor great man, turn- ing night into day and day into night, going to bed at six in the evening, rising at midnight and writing till morning ! reduced to concealment and flight to avoid Clichy and arrest It is all infinitely sad — and yet this little garden, thirty metres long by fifteen wide, upon which open two doors and all the windows, is charming. Im- agine a modest priest’s garden, shaded by lilacs, a plum tree, a tamarisk, a mountain ash, a few acacias, bordered by a vine-shaded terrace, overhanging the amazing rue Berton, — forest alley confined between two gray walls. - Balzac loved his little garden. Mme. de Surville tells us that he “sowed morning glories all along the wall, - he would watch them open in the morning, THE RUE RAYN OU ARD 217 admiring their colors, going into ecstasies over the colors of certain insects.” This is the familiar bucolic farmer Balzac whose figure we evoke, in his long white monkish gown, confined at the waist by a rope, pacing these narrow box-bordered alleys, between chrysanthemums and yellow dahlias, and these purple flowers around which the bees are flying in swarms. A few flourishing grapevines have survived, and M. de Royaumont kindly invites us to return when they are ripe. To think of harvesting Balzac's grapes It seems as if we could see him, that great Balzac, leaning over his terrace, gazing with “those large eyes, brown flecked with gold, like those of a lynx * * upon this familiar view, the old country lane, the clumps of trees in Mme. de Lamballe’s park, their tops rising above his head, the valley of the Seine, the chimneys of far-away Grenelle standing out against the golden sky. . . . From this ruinous arbor, overrun with clematis and viburnum, the sublime visionary introduced his friends into that imaginary world which he had created. Every-day events had no power to move him — he preferred his dreams. “Do you know,” he cried one day, “whom Felix de Vandenesse is going to marry P A Miss de Grandville. It is an excellent marriage. The Grandvilles are rich, not- withstanding all that Mlle. de Bellefeuille has cost 22 2 that family. One of his intimates says that on 1 MME. DE SURVILLE, Honoré de Balzac, p. 201. * Id. p. 97. - - - - - - 218 BY WAYS OF PARIS certain days Balzac would have “disconcerted a thunderbolt.” " We descend the two flights which lead from the pavilion to rue Berton, and find ourselves in a sort of farmyard, where carts repose with upturned shafts, three cats are curled up asleep in the sun, fowls are pecking about a manure heap. Two women ambushed behind some fuchsias stare at us, and a stout motherly woman in a white cap smiles upon us. She knew M. de Balzac ; the great man had trotted her on his knee some sixty years ago. “He was so kind, so generous ! My husband, who was in his service, wore for a long time a worn fur coat that the master brought from Russia. And how original | Sometimes, very early in the morning, M. de Balzac would come home by the wagon that comes to the Bonshommes barrier, bareheaded, in slippers and dressing-gown — he had been walking all night, hap-hazard, across plains and woods. If he did n’t find himself at daybreak in the Place du Carrousel ! So he climbed into the coucou that comes to Passy. And as he had gone out without money, the conductor was forced to give him credit! “Mme. de Brignols, who was his housekeeper, lodged in that room the window of which you see at the right. She watched over him with delicate and pious care. She had to, indeed, for M. de Balzac took no care of anything. All his thoughts were in his work. Yet his coffee did give him some thought; * LÉON GOZLAN, Balzac en Pantouffles, p. 24. (He drank only water, ate little meat, but, on the other hand, consumed quantities of fruit. Id. p. 32.) THE RUE RAYNOUARD 219 he gave my grandmother the addresses of three mer- chants who sold such coffee as he liked. He himself mixed the three sorts, with extreme and minute care. My grandmother wrote the three addresses in her kitchen book, and we should have given great pleas- ure to M. de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul if we could have found that little book.” " We take leave of the good woman who as scout made one of the faithful phalanx who had taken upon themselves to circumvent “insolent creditors and doubtful visitors.” Passing through the door- way which opens aslant upon the rue Berton, we return to Paris, dreaming of that little garden so full of great memories. Was it haunted? What a ballroom for a quadrille of spirits under the moon- light — the elegant phantoms of Maxime de Trailles, Lucien de Rubempré, Philippe Bridau, and Eugène de Rastignac, their partners the love-lorn shades of Tullie, Florine, Mme. du Val-Noble, and the Baroness Delphine de Nucingen (née Goriot) ' 1 Story told to M. Jean Lefranc by the granddaughter of Mme. Barbier, Balzac's landlord. (Le Temps, May 18, 1908.) THE PASSAGE OF THE PANORAN/\AS 5 |s the last century “passages,” and especially the Passage of the Panoramas, had considerable vogue. One needs but to run through the newspapers, an– nuals, memoirs of those days, to recognize their prodigious success. “Elegances * met there by ap- pointment, fashion held its court there; it was “the Eldorado of the idle, the indifferent.” This infatu- ation arose from many easily explicable causes. In the eighteenth century Paris had been struck with amazement by the galleries of the Palais-Royal, but base intrigues, gaming houses, a hundred ambiguous industries flourishing around the gambling houses had at last driven away peaceful folk and honest women. The opening in 1800 of the Passage of the Pano- ramas came in the nick of time to shelter the fashion- ables who had been disgusted with the Palais-Royal. Carriages being extremely rare, pretty Parisian women did not shrink from walking in the streets. This long, single gallery (its annexes came later), en- closed with glass, light, bordered with luxurious shops, seemed made for their walks, and moreover offered them a sheltered passage to the boulevard. At that time the rue Vivienne ended at the garden of the convent of the “Daughters-of-Saint- Thomas * (upon which in 1807 a temporary stock- 222 BY WAYS OF PARIS exchange was installed which became definitely fixed in 1826). In 1809 the street was prolonged to rue Feydeau; not till 1824 did it reach the boulevard. Constructed upon the dependences of the Hôtel Montmorency, — a superb high doorway of which may still be seen at No. 10 rue Saint-Marc, - the Passage of the Panoramas was a rival of the gor- geous public gardens of Frascati (at once ice- cream saloon and gambling house), where such beautiful fétes champêtres were given. Those gar- dens extended from the rue Richelieu to the present Passage. It was there that in the best days of the Directory and the Consulate gathered the army of the “incroyables,” the staff officers of the musca- dins, the “camp of good style,” all the fine flower of the contra-revolutionary clubs. Under the trees, lighted by festoons of colored lamps, they held their “ abominate ’’ the gov- circles while eating ices, to ernment, depreciate the assignats, calumniate “la Cabarru,” applaud the last romance of Geoffroy, who proclaimed Voltaire a stupid and Rousseau a madman. The “beloved ones " gave “fan-manifes- tations,” — the fans, bought for 180 to 200 livres each at Mme. Despaix’s, adorned with weeping wil- lows, the ingeniously interlaced branches of which outlined the profiles of the “Martyrs of the Temple.” They discussed the victories of that “little Bona- 95 6 of whom “much was hoped,” and concluded 6 parte, that in France “everything may be done with bayo- nets, except sit down upon them.” Then humming the Reveil du Peuple, the “ aimables,” perruques, “the color of the queen’s hair,’ adorned with ” would ſ - J s. º * ; # i º | | 224 |BY WAYS OF PARIS go upstairs to risk a few bundles of assignats in the neighboring gaming rooms. Such were the first who patronized the Passage of the Panoramas, and such also were the idlers of the boulevard Montansier, which was beginning to be populated. In 1807 Montansier, eager to leave the gloomy Prado hall (opposite the Palais de Justice), whither his gay company of the Palais- Royal had been forced to betake themselves, urged the architect Cellerier to hasten the completion of his new theatre “the Varieties.” Recalling the memories of an almost centenarian, Father Dupin (who died in 1887), the regretted master Ludovic Halévy has given us a very picturesque sketch of the boulevard about 1808: “It was almost the country. Not a single one of those great mansions which you see now was there; nothing but little shops with a single floor above, a few wretched wooden barracks, and the two little panoramas of the Seine and Boulogne. No sidewalk, the street was of earth beaten hard between two rows of great trees; country, in fact it was the country.” " 1 Saturday, July 1, 1871. On the porch of the Varieties I met the most alert and the young- est little old man in the world, Father Dupin. He does n’t tell his age, but in the theatre he was the elder of Scribe; and Scribe would be over eighty to-day. He has only a vague memory of things that occurred under the monarchy of July, but he has perfectly clear and precise impressions of all the little dramatic and literary events of the first twenty years of this century. “When did you first go up the three steps of this porch?” “The evening the theatre was opened.” “What year was that?” “What year? I don’t quite remember. I know that it was summer, mid- summer, under the First Empire. I stood in line, there, in the broiling sun, the whole afternoon.” Father Dupin remembers nothing but the theatre; for him 1815 O §, ... woIS sº **** PE LA MAIso .*** *... * Boulevaro wº *2 1. º' -- **pi, a la f */ºra, rate J. Jacque” ** Priv, du Roi, *o, CHINESE PAVILION BELONGING TO THE House of THE DUKE of MonTMORENCY, Boulevard MostMARTRE 226 BY WAYS OF PARIS These panoramas — two wooden towers lighted from above — gave their name to the Passage and contributed to its fortunes. Imported into France from England by the American Robert Fulton, these panoramas had immense success between 1799 and 1831. A select group of remarkable painters, Pierre Prévost, Daguerre, Bouton, Cochereau, exe- cuted for it “panoramic views" of Toulon, Tilsit, the camp of Boulogne, Amsterdam, Rome, Naples, the battle of Navarino, etc. The spectators, seated in the centre of the rotunda upon a platform sur- rounded by a balustrade, dominated the view on all sides. Each canvas was 97 metres in circumference and nearly 20 metres high. The effect was pro- digious ; the illustrious but captious T)avid ex- claimed: “One can make studies from nature at these panoramas,” and Chateaubriand, in 1829, said in the preface to his “Itinerary from Paris to Jerusalem ’”; “The illusion was perfect; I recognized at the first glance the monuments which I had in- dicated. Never was traveller put to so severe a test. I could not wait for Jerusalem and Athens to be transported to Paris to convince myself of its truth or falsity. Confrontation with witnesses proved favorable: my exactitude was found so great that fragments of the Itinerary have served by is not the year of the Restoration of the Bourbons: it is the year of the first presentation of L'Echarpe blanche, ou le Retour à Paris, one of his own pieces; it is the year of the first representation of M. de la Jobardière ou la Révolution impromptue, another of his own pieces. He knows of the history of our country only so much as he has been able to put into songs. – Notes et Souvenirs de LUDOVIC HALEvy (1871–72), p. 113. THE PASSAGE OF THE PANORAMAS 227 way of program and popular explanation of the pictures in the panoramas.” The success of these panoramas, – strongly re- sembling the present fortunes of the cinematograph, — the vogue of the Varieties Theatre (opened in 1807), the perfect taste which had presided at the arrangement of the attractions, the choice of shops to be installed there, — all these conspired to the success of the new Passage. In addition, the boule- vard, far from being abandoned as in former days, became, after 1815, the centre of fashionable life. Sumptuous buildings were erected there, the owners taking care not to follow the example of the Opéra Comique, which fronted upon a narrow place, owing to the indignant protests which the “King’s Come- dians ?’ of 1782 made to the architect Heurtier, horror-stricken at the idea of being confounded with the plebeian “boulevard comedians.” On sunny days the boulevard (the suggestive word then referred solely to the space included between rue Montmartre and the Chaussée d’Antin ; outside of this, no salvation: toward the Madeleine was the desert, toward the Bastille was vulgarity), the Boulevard, then, with a very large B, was covered with rush-bottomed chairs, where the “Parisian gentry,” under the shadow of the great trees, watched “the passers-by passing.” “Daumonts,” “eight-springs,” tilburys, gigs crowded the Chaus- sée; cavaliers caracoled, followed at twenty paces by their jockeys, or threw the reins of their Eng- lish horses to their “tiger as big as a fist " in order to speak to some beautiful woman shaded by the 228 TRY WAYS OF PARIS laces of her cabriolet hat. The young men, “truly Buckingham,” “ the dandies, the lions, the fre- quenters of the Parisian café carrying audacity to the pitch of smoking in public | These things were going on about 1835. Every quarter hour a heavy yellow vehicle per- ambulated the boulevard — the Bercy-Madeleine omnibus.” In the days when Sunday rest held sway over Paris, loungers still came in crowds to the Boulevard and the Passage of the Panoramas. Musset describes it in Mardoche: Un dimanche (observez qu'un dimanche la rue Vivienne est tout à fait vide, et que la cohue Est aux Panoramas ou bien au boulevard). This explains the success of the passage.” The most elegant shops of Paris were installed here. * MARCEL BOULANGER, Les Dandys, p. 205. * Folk made the best of faults which they deemed inevitable, no capital was exempt from such. And, after all, notwithstanding its blemishes and its excrescences, this Paris surely had its charm! Most of its streets were narrow and without sidewalks. One needed to beware of vehicles even on the steps of the shops, under the porte-cochères, or even on the “safety-points’’ planted here and there for that purpose. In fact, when the circulation was most active, the foot passenger ran fewer risks walking along the middle of the street than nowadays in crossing a boulevard. The boulevard in those days saw only one omnibus in fifteen minutes, plying between the Place de la Madeleine and that of the Bastille, where there was so little danger of being run over that I have seen a curious crowd gathered around a cudgel-player in front of the Madeleine, in the very place where the refuge is now placed. On the Place of the Bastille in those days I used to roll my hoop in all peace around the Elephant and the Column of July. — VICTORIEN SARDOU, Preface to Les Coins de Paris, GEORGES CAIN, Flammarion. * There (in the Passage of the Panoramas) no anxiety about your breakfast. Véron, the magnificent Véron, will send a chocolate to your very bedside. Then for dinner, you may choose between Masson and Prosper. The former will associate you with all gas- º º º THE PAssage of THE PANor AMAs, ABout 1808 From a contemporary water-color 230 BY WAYS OF PARIS There Duvelleroy displayed his fans; Marquis sold his celebrated chocolates and perfumed teas; the pastry-cook Félix his warm little macaroni patties, his unctuous “lemon buns,” his incomparable Malaga wine; the jeweller Janisset spread out his finery; Madame Vincent exhibited her “ Modes, the latest novelties '': Jean Maria Farina perfumed the passers-by with his “true Cologne-water,” and, finally, Susse kept his celebrated gallery of gro- tesques, the Charges of Dantan." The gifted stat- uary Dantan (whose complete works are one of the joys of the Carnavalet Museum) modelled nearly every week from 1827 to 1845 some caricature of a celebrity of the day, writer, comedian, painter, or tronomical delights for a franc sixty centimes a meal; the latter will distribute wonders of his kitchen for no less than a round piece of forty sous; he does n’t care for effigies. - Now, if you are interested in the chapter of distractions, I can offer you a reading room, a music dealer, and a caricaturist in whose show window you may study the transmutation into plaster of all the illustrious characters of the period. — Les Passages de Paris en 1830 (Paris, or the Book of the One Hundred and One), t. X, p. 51. 1 The statuettes and the modelled clays of Daumier are almost the only examples of sculptured caricatures worthy of mention in this nineteenth century. Dantan devoted himself to the study of con- torsioned resemblances. All his contemporaries took their turn, writers, painters, orators, simple illustrators of a fleeting fact. They were found amusing; exaggerations greater or less of certain fads, with puns in rebus inscribed on their pedestals. It is difficult to-day to understand their vogue. Yet if these plaster casts (these bronzes, even, for many of them had the honor of the foundry) go down to future generations, they will be glad to know that Paganini was one- sided beyond measure, that Dumas and Hugo were at this period the handsome melancholy dandies which are seen here. Still, scholars will do well not to exact from Dantan too accurate proportions, nor to measure the facial angles of great men according to these comic statues, which, after all, are all that more than one has been able to extract from human ingratitude. — L’Art du Rire et de la Carica- ture, ARSãNE ALEXANDRE, p. 233, THE PASSAGE OF THE PANORAMAS 231 sculptor, and all Paris rushed to the show windows of Susse’s shop to shout with laughter at these infi- nitely witty extravagances. Each in his turn – Balzac, Tamberlik, Carl and Horace Vernet, the elder Dumas, Rossini, P. J. Mène, Frederick Le- maitre, Vestris, Victor Hugo, Paganini, Berlioz — was “exaggerated * by Dantan, who complicated his labors with the rebus traced on the pedestal. > of THE House of SUSSE ABOUT 1835 extravagances” of the younger Dantan “LETTER-HEAD’ - Showing a few To guess the rebuses and admire the statuettes took time, and loungers gathered at this point to such a degree that on certain days a special police force had to be stationed here. It was in the Passage of the Panoramas that in January, 1817, was made the first official experi- ment of lighting by gas. Who would believe it to-day? The attempt failed ! The Parisian people, always wedded to routine, admired but hesitated long. They trembled before the dangers of this 232 BY WAYS OF PARIS mode of illumination, they feared it would “vitiate the air,” kill the trees, blacken the pictures in the cafés, asphyxiate people, attract the cholera ! It was not until 1830 that the cause of “hydrogen gas '' was won before public opinion, the illumination of the rue de la Paix on January 1st of that year being a perfect success. The inventor of illuminat- ing gas, Philippe Lebon, engineer of roads and bridges, a benefactor of humanity,+could neither enjoy nor profit by his marvellous discovery. On December 2, 1804, the very day of the coronation of the Emperor Napoleon, Philippe Lebon was as- sassinated in the Champs Elysées by mysterious murderers of whom not the slightest trace was ever discovered. Not until 1811 did the Emperor accord a pension of 1200 francs to the widow of this great Frenchman. In 1814 the minor son of Lebon was deprived of his father’s patent, which no one had thought to renew ' " 1 Philippe Lebon was born May 29, 1767. He was thirty years old, and was teaching mechanics at the school of Roads and Bridges in Paris, when the idea occurred to him to study the nature of the gases produced by the combustion of wood. Almost immediately, with extraordinary reflective sagacity, he found the principle upon which is founded the fabrication of carbonated hydrogen gas. He perfected his methods and on the 6th Vendémiaire, year VIII (September 28, 1799), he took out a patent for the invention. Lebon was established in the rue Saint-Dominique-Saint-Germain, in the ancient Hôtel Seignelay, and there he constructed certain apparatus which he called thermolamps, seeking to utilize at once the production of heat and of light. All Paris cried, Miracle! It has been said with reference to his assassination on the evening of December 2, 1804, that certain men of Cadoudal’s band, still in Paris, mistook him for the Emperor and put him to death. In January, 1817, the Passage of the Panoramas was lighted; a society was formed, which was compelled to wind up in 1819 after THE PASSAGE OF THE PANORAMAS 233 The Second Empire saw the glory of the Passage of the Panoramas. Not only were its shops still gorgeous and much patronized, but the Varieties Theatre had its signal triumph with the remark- able repertory of Offenbach. It was the never-to- be-forgotten time when the pianos of the Golden House of the Café Riche, of Tortoni and Brébant seemed to open spontaneously to play the waltzes of the Grand Duchess, the Letter of Périchole, the couplets of Blue Beard. Moreover these charming pieces were sung by the prettiest women in Paris, and the artists’ exit from the theatre opened upon one of the galleries of the Passage. This is what explains better than all else the presence of the most elegant “ clubmen º’ of the epoch. More methodi- cally, more unweariedly than the worthy guardian charged with its oversight, the adorers of all these delightful artists “made ’’ the Passage — and the race of these peripatetics, far from dying out, con- tinued to increase and multiply, for to the pieces of Offenbach, Meilhac, Halévy, succeeded others, no less exquisite, no less Parisian, no less elegant, of Donnay, Lavedan, Capus, De Flers, and De Cail- lavet, of De Croisset. Furthermore, each year Manager Samuel, whose legendary straw hat shel– ters a brain more ebullient than the crater of Etna, mobilizes for his “ Review º' whole battalions of lovely creatures whose comings and goings revolu- tionize the Passage. having put gas into a small part of the Luxembourg and around the Odéon. — Paris, ses organes, ses fonctions; MAXIME DU CAMP, t. W, p. 290. 234 BY WAYS OF PARIS Lucky Passage | Several of the most artistic Parisian merchants have installed their industries here. Here it is that Dewambez and Stern provide the entire globe with impeccable visiting cards, ele- gant letter paper, astounding menus, as carefully wrought as the pages of a missal The fan-maker Duvelleroy is more fashionable than ever, Marquis’s old chocolate shop is never empty, and the show- cases of bookseller Rahir offer to book-lovers an admirable selection of rare books and precious en- gravings. Everything, even to the noise of the im– pact of balls, executed, with what maëstrial by the professors of the “Cure Academy,” adds its sug- gestive note to the thousand memories assembled in this picturesque Passage Who will wonder, after all this, that “ The Pano- ramas " keeps its vogue? Such pretty trinkets, such pretty women are here, I perfectly well understand how there should be superficial minds who prefer all this to mathematics | LA RUIE DE LA HARPE THE STREET of THE HARP Nº. the pot-houses sheltered under the shadow of Saint-Séverin, the rue de la Harpe is to-day without celebrity. Here and there a few finely sculptured porticoes, a few sumptuous window- casings, half a score of splendid stone screens (at Nos. 35 and 45), balconies of wrought iron sur- viving the raids of antiquarians bear witness to the splendor of a forgotten past. At present shabby shops, vague creameries, a bakeshop, certain hotels, “colonial liquor if not blind, certainly weak-eyed, a saloon * (“served by beautiful girls from Sene- gal *), emphasize the present low estate of this poor street, overshadowed as it is by the boulevard Saint-Michel and the boulevard Saint-Germain. The rue de la Harpe is the victim of the Hauss- manization of Paris. In 1855, the time of the great municipal works decreed by Baron Haussmann, the piercing of the boulevards Saint-Germain and Saint- Michel wrought the disappearance of three quarters of the buildings which for centuries had made its glory. Formerly it began at the rue de la Huchette; but far from ending at Cluny Square, the rue de la Harpe extended as far as the old Place Saint- Michel, to the point where the rue Monsieur-le- 236 BY WAYS OF PARIS Prince joins the boulevard — that boulevard which follows the former line of the demolished street. What we now know of it is only the insignificant fragment of what it once was." The cartulary of the Sorbonne shows that as early as 1272 there were schools in this street, which drew its name from a signboard bearing King David playing the harp. In the course of time these schools became colleges; in 1789 the rue de la Harpe possessed no less than seven colleges: the college of Dainville (between the rue des Cordeliers and the rue Pierre-Sarrazin), the old College of Justice, and Harcourt College (on the site of the Lycée Saint-Louis), the colleges of Bayeux, Nar- bonne, and Séez (on the passage of the boulevard itself, before the Lycée Saint-Louis), and the Cluny College, where the great painter Louis David had his studio, and whither, on January 4, 1808, the Emperor Napoleon came in great pomp to visit that chef-d'oeuvre, “the picture of the Coronation ” (Place de la Sorbonne, opposite Harcourt’s Café, the illustrious name of which alone suffices to bring up all this past). t A fine church dedicated to Saint Cosmo stood at * Formerly the rue de la Harpe was divided into two parts, from the rue Saint-Severin to that of the Cordeliers and from that point to the Saint-Michel Gate; it was sometimes known as rue Saint- Cosmo, sometimes as rue aux Hoirs (heirs) d'Harcourt. Above the Porte Saint-Michel, on the left on leaving the city, was built the Parloir aua Bourgeois (Commoners' Parlor), a place of assembly for municipal officers. It was then called Porte d'Enfer (Hell Gate). It was on the occasion of the birth of a daughter to Isabella of Bavaria, January 11, 1394, whom Charles VI named Michelle, that the Porte d'Enfer, repaired and embellished, received the name Porte Saint- Michel. – JAILLOT, Recherches sur Paris, t. V, p. 81. ToMB of THE CARDINAL DE RICHELIEU 238 BY WAYS OF PARIS the angle of the present rue Racine; and finally, at No. 49 of the rue de la Harpe, at the end of a short alley, were the grandiose ruins of the Thermes." The great hall of the palace of the Emperor Julian was utilized in the fifteenth century; pro- vincial comedians gave plays there; later, in 1691, the “public carts * going to Laval put up there at the sign of the “Iron Cross *; in the middle of the eighteenth century the same sign sheltered a coach office. A bathing establishment had been contrived in the ancient therma, and the citizens of 1789 raised gilliflowers and hollyhocks in the rubbish of the old Roman palace. When the Revolution broke out, the rue de la Harpe was in the height of its glory. The Wattin of 1789 — which was the Hachette Almanac of that time — tells us that over and above its seven colleges it could boast of possessing “ 190 doors, 3 notaries, the office of the ‘Court Gazette' (at No. 20), the surgeon Desault’s classes in physi- ology (at No. 151), and the chemistry classes of Sieur Brongniard, apothecary to the king (at No. 182).” The revolutionary government having closed the Sorbonne in 1791, the inmates, expelled from their domiciles, instinctively grouped themselves around their former sanctuary. The rue de la Harpe re- ceived a certain number of them. Other residents * Westiges of an aqueduct which had led water from Arcueil into this palace were discovered in 1544 near the Porte Saint-Jacques. – JAILLOT, Recherches sur Paris, t. V, p. 79. LA RUE DE LA HARPE 239 came: Madame Roland and her “virtuous ” hus- band, urged to quit their “furnished apartment * in rue Guénégaud, took a lease (March 10, 1792), “beginning with Easter, and at the price of 450 livres,” of “a modest lodging looking upon the court, at No. 51, opposite the Church Saint-Cosmo,” and consequently on the site of the boulevard Saint- Michel, in the extension of the present rue Racine. Thirteen days later, Roland, named Minister of the Interior, took possession of the luxurious Hôtel de Calonne, in the rue des Petits-Champs, but Mme. Roland, prudent and judicious, none the less wrote to Bancal: “The little apartment in the rue de la Harpe is getting into order; it is a retreat which one should always have at hand, as certain philoso- phers keep their coffins in sight.” Events cruelly proved her wisdom; on June 17 of the same year the ministry went to pieces, and the Rolands took up their abode in the rue de la Harpe. They remained there until August 11, 1792, when the Girondist ministers were recalled; but they were again driven out, January 23, 1793, and it was to the rue de la Harpe that the officers came, amid great excitement, to arrest Manon Roland and take her to the Abbaye, the antecham- ber of the scaffold ! In 1794, during the incarceration of Fouquier- Tinville, his wife and children took refuge in a wretched apartment, “narrow and gloomy,” in the rue de la Harpe; here the unhappy wife received her husband’s letters: “I know no one willing to wndertake my defence. — I shall find in no country 240 BY WAYS OF PARIS an inch of land where to rest my head. — I would that I had a bottle of brandy, that I might keep up my strength by taking a little.” And on the eve of his execution (May 4, 1795) his last letter closes with the words, “A thousand times adieu — and to the few friends who yet remain to us — adieu! adieu! Thy faithful husband till the very last sigh — ” " Before sheltering the wife of the unfortunate Fouquier, the rue de la Harpe had received a wreck of another order, yet very tragic too. Agonizing must have been the surprise of the Sieur Nicholas Armez when Citizen Cheval, grocer in the rue de la Harpe, mysteriously invited him — probably after having sold him four packets of “sixes * candles and three ounces of pepper or cin- namon — to come into the back shop, where “he had something to show him.” It was 1793, the Terror was reigning over terrified Paris, Nicholas Armez was a priest, and a non-juring priest at that — a deplorable condition in these dangerous times; and Citizen Cheval passed, not without reason, for one of the most ardent patriots of the section of the Thermes. In his back shop, carefully padlocked, Citizen Cheval mysteriously opened a bureau drawer, and drew out of it half of a human head, wrapped in a * Manuscript letters of Fouquier-Tinville preserved in the Library of the City of Paris. LA RUE DE LA HARPE 241 piece of “linen heavily mottled with brown spots.” He unrolled this fragment of a winding sheet, and Armez, consternated, beheld a shrivelled mummy-like mask, sectionized from the top of the skull to the DEATH MAsk (AFTER NATURE) of CARDINAL RICHELIEU Collection of the Carnavalet Museum joint of the jaw bones, covered with a grayish rugged skin. The tightly closed lips were drawn back by a grin which left bare the fine teeth; wrinkled eyelids, still retaining their lashes, veiled an immense and deeply hollowed orbit, the broken nose deviated to the right, a thick moustache, still red, overhung the thin lips, a closely cut beard 242 BY WAYS OF PARIS lengthened the already long chin, - a few gray hairs shaded the magnificent broad head, very full at the temples. Abbé Nicholas Armez had not a moment of hesi- tation; it was indubitably the head of the very high and very powerful lord, Armand-Jean du Plessis, Duke de Richelieu, cardinal-minister, prince of Holy Church and protector of letters, suddenly appearing — and in what a state — from a drawer in the bureau of Citizen Cheval, patriot grocer of the rue de la Harpe' The Abbé’s first moment of stupor past, Cheval told him how this tragic “bibelot * had come into his hands." Charged to oversee the destruction of the Cardinal’s tomb, he had profited by a moment when, the laborers going to dinner, he was left alone in the Church of the Sorbonne, to take pos- session of the remains and carry them away under his cloak. He had taken care, he added, to be back * The vault was opened twice in quick succession. In the minutes of the 19th Frimaire, year II, we read that “Citizens Dubois, Hébert, and Grincourt, charged with the moving of the coffins, told Citizen Bernard, in charge of the key (of the Church), that on the 17th of this month several citizens, among whom was Citizen Saillard, commissary of the section, came for the purpose of searching the said vault. Saillard, interrogated, admitted that he had been ordered by a person whose name he did not recall, but who bore the orders of the department, to search the said vault. They went down into it, but carried nothing away.” The vault was again opened and officially searched the 19th, 20th, 21st, 22d, and 23d of the same month, the report of the labors of each day being regularly drawn up. – Les Tombeaua des Richelieu à la Sorbonne, by a member of the Archaeological Society of the Seine-et-Marne, E. THORIN, publisher, 58 boulevard Saint-Michel Paris (1867). . An unknown person cut off the head of Richelieu and showed it to the spectators. — Revue des Autographes, December, 1866, No. 100. LA RUE DE LA HARPE 243 on the spot when the laborers returned and so to arrange everything that they perceived nothing. It is proper to explain that (between the 19th and 23d Frimaire, laborers had invaded the Sor- bonne and broken open the twenty-seven tombs of the Richelieus, partly in order to “secure lead to FUNERAL CRYPT of CARDINAL RICHELIEU AT THE SorbonNE furnish balls to the defenders of the endangered fatherland,” and partly to ascertain the facts as to a denunciation made by Sieur Leblanc “as to a deposit suspected to be hidden in the ci-devant Church of the Sorbonne.” " * The revolutionary Commissioners charged to open the coffins had found fifty of them, “large and small”; their statement gives the names of the twenty-seven Richelieus, and the twelve doctors of the Sorbonne. With regard to the leaden coffins, it concludes: “We left them in the church, since the bad odor which they exhale infects the small reserved place in which they might be deposited.” — Revue des Autographes, p. 101. 244 BY WAYS OF PARIS Let us hasten to say that the admirable Alexandre Lenoir took care to transport to the Museum of the Petits-Augustins the marble monument of the Cardinal, a chef-d'oeuvre of Girardon, “already slightly mutilated by enemies of the arts who had had access to the chapel.” At the same period a patriot of Limoges hung upon his turnspit, by way of counter weight, a marble head of Richelieu, cut from a statue in the château of La Meilleraye! When the reaction of Thermidor came, the Ter- rorists, terrorized in their turn, made haste to conceal all traces of their violent exploits. It be- came dangerous to keep the “mask * of the Car- dinal, even in a bureau drawer. Wherefore Citizen Cheval’s haste to present it to M. Armez. “I am afraid,” he acknowledged, “ of being ar- rested and deported as an ardent revolutionary. — I have observed that you valued the head of Riche- lieu ; I can do nothing with it; please to accept it.” After first refusing M. Armez yielded to the grocer's entreaties and carried away the treasure." Under the Second Empire, the nephew of the Abbé, then deputy from the Côtes-du-Nord, gave the precious relic to M. Duruy, and on December 16, 1866, Monsignor Darboy, archbishop of Paris, sanctioned its restitution.” * In 1820 M. Armez, nephew of the abbé, was begged by a Dame du Kérouard to give her the head of the great Cardinal, that she might present it to the Duke de Richelieu. M. Armez refused. — Les Tombeaua des Richelieu á la Sorbonne. * M. Duruy, when personally returning the noble relics to Mgr. Darboy in presence of M. Charles Robert, general secretary of the minister, M. Anatole Duruy, then head of his cabinet, M. A. Mourier, vice-rector of the Academy of Paris, and M. the Abbé Bourret, pro- LA RUE DE LA HARPE 245 When the Sorbonne was rebuilt by the eminent architect Nénot, it was decided that the mask of the Cardinal, which until then had been deposited outside of Girardon’s cenotaph (reinstalled after the Revolution), should take its old place in the tomb. It became necessary therefore to proceed to a rec- ognition, which took place under the presidency of M. Hanotaux, then Minister of Foreign Affairs. In company with the Princess of Monaco (guardian of her son, born Richelieu), M. Nénot, M. Henri Roujon, director of the Beaux-Arts, and the Chaplain of the Sorbonne, our great painter Detaille was present at the impressive ceremony. At the Minister’s request, hastily and under the do- minion of poignant emotion, M. Detaille made a water-color sketch of the tragic mask of the great Cardinal reposing upon the cushion of purple silk where it had just been laid by the pious hands of M. Hanotaux." This is the picture, superb and distressing, upon which we gazed long yesterday in the studio of the rue d’Aumale which M. Hanotaux has made his fessor of theology, said, “I deposit in your hands all that remains to us of a great man whose name is always present here, since it made peace in France and increased its territory, honored letters and erected this building which has become the sanctuary of the most advanced studies. The University and the Academy perform a filial duty when together they pay their homage at the foot of this tomb which will never again be violated.” — Les Tombeaua des Richelieu ä la Sorbonne. * “The head was in the leaden coffer on the silken cushion and we did not touch it. I simply lifted the veil of wadding which covered it, and because of some slight traces of decomposition, I laid upon the face another sheet of wadding which had been treated with all antiseptic precautions.” – G. HANOTAUx (Extract from a personal letter, March 26, 1909), Collection G. Cain. 246 BY WAYS OF PARIS study, at the same time enjoying the rare pleasure of listening to the impassioned and impressive his– torian of Richelieu talk of the great Cardinal! “And now, compare,” concluded M. Hanotaux, The MoRTUARY MAsk of THE CARDINAL-M.INISTER Water-color by E. Detaille, Hanotaux Collection placing before our eyes an admirable study by Philippe de Champaigne, Richelieu on his death- bed, which figured in the Exposition of historic portraits in 1878.” “Look at this head, this sublime “I had not lost sight of it,” wrote M. Hanotaux, “and was able to buy it of a picture dealer who had acquired it at the sale of the LA RUE DE LA HARPE 247 brow covered by a linen cap, these eyes hollowed by suffering, this close-cut beard like that of the mask of the Sorbonne! “It is the picture of one of the most remarkable Frenchmen who have honored our country, - not Frenchman only, but also Parisian, for Richelieu, RICHELIEU on His DEATH BED Hanotaux Collection. Ph. de Champaigne, pinacit let us not forget, was born in Paris, in the rue de Bouloy, as his act of baptism shows – and ungrate- ful Paris does not possess, on one of its public places, the effigy of this very great man! And yet is not his statue a matter of obligation, near to Haag collection. It was exhibited in 1900, and M. Lafenestre then made a study of it which left no room for doubt that it is by Philippe de Champaigne. (Personal letter addressed to M. Cain.) 248 BY WAYS OF PARIS that Palais-Royal which he bequeathed to France after having built it near the Louvre close to his king, in order the more promptly to serve the in- terests of our country, to watch over its glory and its greatness?” THE TRUIE “BUITTE * NWONTNAARTRE NE learns something every day. I thought I knew Montmartre; my friend Aristide Bruant, the popular song-writer, took upon himself to show me in a few hours that I was ignorant of the most surprising beauties of this “breast of the world,” as the late Rudolphe Salis, Seigneur of Chat-Noir- ville, quaintly called it. I returned amazed from our excursion through a Montmartre almost unsus- pected by Parisians, a wild, rural, torrent-torn, sylvan Montmartre, which has nothing, absolutely nothing, in common with the Montmartre of noisy amusements trumped up for the entertainment of homesick foreigners. I have always loved Bruant’s rugged talent. Dans la rue, Les Chansons de route are works which will abide. They are certainly not romances for bread-and-butter misses, but all lovers of art admire these songs, with their wrath, their cyni- cism, their violences, overflowing as they are with picturesque observation, and indulgent pity for the unfortunate. Oh, surely, Bruant does not mince his words; the forlorn heroes whom he brings upon the scene speak their own language: costauds of Belle- ville, rouquines of the “Butte,” terrors of Clignan- court, blackguards of La Villette, trimardeurs of Saint-Ouen, “merry fellows of the bat’ §§ But 250 BY WAYS OF PARIS this professor of slang, this singer of the puro- tims, the light-fingered gentry, the unfortunate, the sharpers and the demoiselles of Saint-Lazare, has the tenderness of a mother for the little fellows, the ARISTIDE BRUANT ºf Tºſºr ºs-ºs--- sººn LEN ***** * * **. º # , - A. BRUANT BY STEINLEN poor wretches who never eat their fill, the infirm, the suffering, and also for stray dogs, those lean creatures which one sees searching for problemati- cal bones: – De braves gens, de bonnes bêtes Qu’une caresse rend joyeux, : Ht dont les grands yeux bien honnétes :*::: Wous regardent droit dans les yeux! : ARISTIDE BRUANT 252 BY WAYS OF PARIS The excellent painter Steinlen — another very great artist — and Toulouze-Lautrec have popular- ized by their pictures, their drawings, their posters, the picturesque figure of this devil of a fellow whom Courteline thus describes: “A dog, two dogs, three dogs, boots, corduroy pantaloons, a waistcoat with revers and a hunting-jacket with metal buttons, a red scarf in the month of May, a red shirt at all times | ?” An enthusiast for the army, Bruant keeps ever be- fore him on his desk two photographs of his son, — one as a student in Saint-Cyr, the other in his lieutenant’s uniform. On the wall in the place of honor is the brevet of the medal of Saint Helena which was his grandfather’s, a veteran of the great wars; and it is in this company that our writer of popular songs writes those “constraining marches '' which so well aid our brisk little soldier 6 boys to “gobble up the kilometres.” François Coppée, who was at home in such mat- ters, and who was Bruant’s godfather in the So- ciety of Men of Letters, wrote: “He is a great artist, descended in direct and legitimate line from our Willon,” his company the old, very old Montmartre where and it was a joy to me to explore in he has lived so long. Worthy snobs, knowing only the ferociously hir- sute Bruant who received them with the most abso- lute bluntness when they “dared ” to cross the sill of his wine-shop of Mirliton, on the boulevard Rochechouart, naturally have an imperfect idea of him. They went thither to make themselves eng, ----* ¿∞∞∞ *¿¿.* ！|-！， * ……！！！！！-*： ****** | | | ºººººº ----ººaezāT！ ��■■><！！！！！ MAP OF THE BUTTE MONTMARTRE 254 BY WAYS OF PARIS and I dare affirm that they were copiously so. They had their money’s worth. Who does not remember those two smoky rooms, filled to bursting with an extraordinary public, where the hand in glove with the models, the chahuteuses (disorderly women) of the Élysée-Montmartre, the painters from a neighboring studio, “fine Madames * fond and delighted, academicians who have fallen out with the Cupola, strolling grand dukes and im- penitent bohemians. The room is crowded to the very piano, beside the gilded angel. Customers help in the service, passing to distant drinkers the galopins destined to quench their thirst. “They drink only beer here,” roars Bruant, “and bad beer at that. Another galopin — that beastly kind over there. Now, my children, join the chorus !” And with his sonorous voice, like a brass instrument, he intones A Saint-Ouen, or les P'tits Joyeua, or A la Willette. - But no sooner does two o'clock strike than Bruant shows the whole company to the door, whistles to his dogs, seizes his big ox-goad, and throwing his limousine (coarse woollen cloak) over his shoulder, climbs rapidly “up there * to No. 16 rue Cortot, nestled in its leafy nook in the midst of a wood, to disintoxicate himself from the smoke, the cries of the poivrots (cash-takers), the galopins (errand boys) of human stupidity, to sleep in the open air and to compose songs while listening to the black- bird’s whistle and the warbler’s song among the lilacs of his parc – a park of more than 6000 “swell mob '' were metres | THE TRUE “BUTTE * MONTMARTRE 255 All this is what I wished to visit with this good companion who has seen so many things and knows so well how to relate them. Our paradoxical walk began near the Sacred-Heart and ended at the cabaret of the Assassins, rue des Saules | MoNTMARTRE IN 1850 The weather was of a tragic sort which is not without its charm; this London mist, this “fog º into which we plunged, enveloped the leprous houses with a dreamy atmosphere, — in proportion as we ad- vanced the alleys, the buildings, the trees seemed to emerge from layers of gauze. 256 BY WAYS OF PARIS By the rue André-del-Sarte we reached the inter- minable Sainte-Marie staircase, passed before the high-perched house where the master Gustave Char- pentier composed his masterpiece, Louise, and reached the top of the Butte. There a hideous street-vendor, emerging from the fog, offered us postcards and “medals of the Basilica.” “What! le Rouquin ” exclaims Bruant. “You here, you vile blackleg | – I present to you the worst dog- stealer of the Butte. — Here, Toutou ! But I have warned you, if you are so unlucky as to touch Toutou, you'll take the most awful dose — ” “Oh, no danger, M’sieur Bruant, we respect your four paws.” “Where have you come from ? I heard that you had just drawn two years of obscurity. How did you come by that?” “Just because a policeman saw me give a sou to a poor man. It startled the fellow, my prodigality appeared to him suspicious. He grabbed me — but to-day it's a thick fog. Bad day for the little medals.” “No time to pity you – good-bye. All the same give me two cards.” “Oh, thank you, gentlemen.” And we plunge into the fog. - Passing alongside the Sacred Heart, the immense walls of which seem like some Babylonian construc- tion, and before the stained wall where, on March 18, 1871, were shot Generals Clement Thomas and Lecomte, we go down toward Saint-Ouen, by pic- turesque lanes where halves of old wells are still enclosed in the tottering walls. We descend broken stairways, bordered by withered iris, great box trees white with frost, spindle-bushes powdered with CoNSTRUCTION of THE CHURCH of THE SACRED HEART Houbron, pin.cit. Carnavalet Museum 258 BY WAYS OF PARIS hoar frost, and at No. 22 rue du Mont-Cenis, enter a poor little garden where lean dogs are wandering and roupy hens pecking about. Masses of ivy half conceal the entrances to the cellars, ragged linen hangs lamentably from rusty iron wires. Here in 1834 lived Berlioz, not long after his marriage with the actress Harriet Smithson, his “Sensitive,” the adored Ophelia of an English troupe playing at the Odéon. Rue du Mont-Cenis was at that time called rue Saint-Denys. The house was small — two rooms on the ground floor, two above. But what a marvellous view From their vine-em- bowered windows the young couple could see the whole Saint-Denis plain, even to the Basilica. “I fancy myself at Tivoli, friend. “Come and enjoy our hermitage.” The Master lived here three years, writing his biting criticisms in the Rénovateur and the Débats, finish- ing Harold in Italy, composing Benvenuto Cellini, knocking together romances for Protée, a fashion journal. There a son was born to him, August 14, 1834. How proudly he went to the mayor’s office of Montmartre to declare the fact! There were great doings at the Hermitage, for his friends, Alfred de Vigny, Hiller, J. Janin, Eugene Sue, Chopin, came to celebrate the happy event Poor Hermitage, so gay then, in what a state do we now behold you!" ” wrote Berlioz to a * It was said that Alphonse Karr had hired an old public ball in Montmartre, a Tivoli, half fallen to pieces. All that was left of it was a little grove and the office where canes used to be left. By night Karr slept in the cane office, and by day he walked in the grove. It was there that he wrote Sous les Tilleuls. Berlioz ) RUE DEs RosIERs tJUNE 1871 + THE PºsT OFFICE OF TH Carnavale , Museum 260 BY WAYS OF PARIS Here we are now in the rue Cortot, a curious lane where the tops of the trees overtop palisades and walls blackened by rains, covered with inscriptions impossible to reproduce; the “little correspondence” of the apaches and pierreuses of Montmartre; pro- testations of love, oaths of hatred, insulting epithets of those in power, imprecations against the “flics " — nothing is lacking. At No. 16 Bruant rings; the door opens, and we enter the picturesque dwelling where for so long a time might be read, at the top of the six stone steps which give access to it, the inscription, “Popular Song-writer.” Every trace of the interesting establishment of former days has disappeared; we are in a cabinet- maker’s shop, amid workbenches, planed boards, shavings, saws, gluepots. But the park, the de- lightful park, is intact — it lies before us in its sublime beauty. found for the summer term a country lodging with a garden. Beyond the Barrier of les Martyrs one can see him going up, him and his Harriett, by a broad avenue planted with trees, to- ward the mills. Above the ancient church rises, like a bell- tower, a massive round tower adapted to the curve of the east end and bearing the tall support of a signal telegraph. The church sur- rounded by its cemetery, full of graves and trees, occupies the centre of the village. Before it is a small square with rustic houses, close by is the mayor’s office. Here and there are wineshops with shrub- bery where they play bowls. The Berlioz house is more distant. They pass the church and enter the rue Saint-Denis, which goes down the northern slope, paved only in the middle for the sewage, and shaded by great trees which meet overhead. About one fourth of the way down rue Saint-Denis is cut by rue Saint-Vincent — a picturesque lane run- ning along the brow of the hill, overlooked by terraces, and in its turn overlooking other gardens. At the angle of the two streets, the house on the right is theirs. — ADOLPHE BASCHOT, Un roman- tique sous Louis-Philippe, 1831–1842, p. 232. THE TRUE “BUTTE ". MONTMARTRE 261 The gray fog, forming a thick curtain behind the great trees, hides the wide landscape of the Saint- Ouen plain, but also veils two or three high modern buildings which are already coming up to the as- sault of “ the Butte.” It is amazing to find this bit out of the forests of Fontainebleau or the woods of Meudon here, in the very heart of Paris! Gigantic elms, poplars, oaks, long alleys of lime trees, undu- lating fields, arborescent ferns, A FARM IN MONTMARTRE Etching by Charles-Jacques tall hemlocks upon which the frost hangs its silver lacework, grass, mosses as if sprinkled with powdered sugar, — a fairy realm, whence arise the songs of birds — “For the bearded thickets hide the ousels' nests.” " We descend a series of steep slopes, holding on to the branches to keep from slipping, and from a half-broken-down terrace look down upon the as- tonishing rue Saint-Vincent. Here Bruant used to work, here he took notes from nature. On warm blue summer nights, leaning over this narrow street where irregular Montmartre folk of both sexes love to meet by appointment, he would hear the person- ages of his songs discussing their little affairs, set- tling their domestic differences, gabbling that world- old language, fierce, poetic, full of color, which we call slang, which Bruant has attempted to codify in an amazing and spicy dictionary. All painters * Le Bois sacré, EDMOND Rosta ND. 262 BY WAYS OF PARIS who love the picturesque have reproduced the rue Saint-Vincent; others are preparing to immortalize it anew. Will it be possible henceforth? At the present time the famous little street is closed at its exit into the Street of the Willows, near the Wind- mill of the Galette. Recent storms, washing away the earth, have broken down a part of its enclos- ing walls. Bruant, more moved than he would like to say, Bruant, to whom all this wild verdure recalls his childhood, stands there upon a little mound, chewing a blade of grass, wrapped in his great macfarlane, his big boots sinking into the soft earth, his fine, resolute Chouan head covered by an enormous felt hat, stands out against the fog, clear cut as the profile on a medallion. Bruant is dreaming of his of those bohemians, nomads, brazen- “ Montmartre,’ faced pretty girls, needy folk with their smiling recklessness, those refileurs de comètes, those un- “whose hearts are more footworn happy creatures than the sidewalk,” all that bewildering, terri- fying, cynical, comical, shrewd, artless world which he knows better than anyone else, – and we leave the spot amazed and thoughtful, while Bruant hums: Quand i's l'ont couchée sous la planche Elle était tout' blanche. - Mém’qu’en l'ensev'lissant Les croq’morts disaient qu'la pauv'gosse Etait claquée'l’jour de sa noce Ru’ Saint-Vincent! The fog grows denser, the gaslights are encircled by a blue and yellow halo. We follow narrow slums THE RUE SAINT-VINCENT, IN MostMARTRE (1908) 264 BY WAYS OF PARIS where the foot slips, now and again calling to “Toutou,” who insists upon loafing around the outskirts. Puffs of warm air which seem to drag along the frozen earth issue from the sewer grates. Lights, noises, chords of a guitar. . . . Here we are in Weeping Willow Street, at the “wineshop THE WINDMILLs of MonTMARTRE ABOUT 1845 of the Assassins.” Calm yourselves, gentle readers, the place is terrible only in name. When we enter, the “patroness of the Assassins,” in great distress, is gently trying to introduce a little warm sugared milk into the throat of a tiny cat whose paw has been hurt by a “dirty dog.” A large hall, benches, polished tables, two or three empty casks, posters on the walls, a basket-funnelled fireplace where a fire burns brightly, and the song-maker of the company, a potter by day – a good-looking fellow with a curly beard, wearing a suroit and velvet trousers – tºº * º STREET OF THE WILLows. – WINE SHOP of THE Assassins Collection of M. Fremont 266 BY WAYS OF PARIS catches up his guitar, and with half-closed eyes and a soft voice breathes forth in our honor the lines of Ronsard: Quand au Temple nous Serons, Agenouillés mous ferons Les dévots selon la guise. . . 6 Ronsard’s lines in the “cabaret des Assassins ''' THE FOURTH OF SEPTENBER, J87O THE PLACE OF THE CHATEAUI D’EAUI. — THE GRAND Boulev ARDS. —THE HôTEL DE VILLE. — THE QUIAYS HAT morning — a radiant Sunday, flooded with sunlight — we rose early, my brother and I. At dinner the previous evening our parents had seemed so distressed, the war news appeared to be so discouraging, that we were eager to learn more. The door of our mother’s room being still closed, we steal out furtively from the little family mansion, and run to the Place of the Château d’Eau, now Place of the Republic. In the midst was at that time a vast stone foun- tain which has now been transported to the Place Daumesnil and replaced by a massive statue of the Republic. Six lions of green bronze spouted water into large basins. We were to see these lions again the next year — in the last days of May, 1871, during the death throes of the Commune – find them riddled with balls and fragments of bombs, overturned in the basins filled with water, stained with the blood of combatants and with petroleum from the touries seized by the Army of Versailles at the Prince Eugène caserne and the United Stores (now Hôtel Moderne), the ruins of which were still 268 BY WAYS OF PARIS smoking. In the horrible mixture were floating caps of federates, broken muskets, tattered godillots. A little farther, at the top of the rue Voltaire, at No. 4, was a barricade shouldering a burnt house, and on the barricade a cannon, broken, overturned, one wheel caught under paving stones, the other in the air, its tire half off. At four paces from this bar- ricade Delescluze had been killed ; branches of trees cut off by the fusillade and the mitraille were scat- tered on the ground; the pavement was still red with blood. We had formed the habit, since the first days of the war, of going for news to the angle of the caserne at the corner of the rue de la Douane where the official bulletins were posted. This Sunday, September 4, notwithstanding the early hour, eight or ten persons were already huddled, silent and con- sternated, before the white bulletin. We hurried All my life I shall see that fatal paper, clinging to the stone beside a grated air-hole above a dark cellar; since that day I have never crossed the place but inevitably my eyes have been lifted to that suggestive stone. The bulletin announced the dis- aster of Sedan. “A great misfortune fallen upon the Fatherland — defeat — the Emperor gives up his sword.” We could not believe our eyes; our hearts bursting with sobs, we returned home. In the garden we find our parents in tears; friends come in, - there are kisses, discussions, des– ultory talk. The old chauvinism coming to our help, we begin to hope in spite of all. Names are mentioned – “France, it must never — But what THE FOURTH OF SEPTEMBER, 1870 (Le Monde Illustré) 270 |BY WAYS OF PARIS will Paris do? – What is going on in the streets? — Some one should go and see " — and here we are on the boulevards, in our schoolboy uniforms of the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. It is ten o’clock; the boulevards seem very calm; there are groups before the bulletins and the news- paper kiosks – orderlies are galloping about the streets. At the Porte Saint-Denis groups of men, arm in arm, are defiling in the middle of the street crying, “Downfall! Downfall! Long live Trochu !” Many of the national guard in uniform, sharp- shooters in Tyrolean hats, loungers in short jackets, soldier’s caps on their heads and guns on their shoulders — newsvenders running, crying their papers. Two officers of the mobiles passing in carriages receive ovations; a lady, all in tears, throws flowers to them." There were very few people in the Place de la Concorde; watering-carts were going quietly about their business, and the American omnibus, stationed at the entrance of the Champs-Élysées, near the horses of Marly, was full of people in Sunday ! Our great national painter, Édouard Detaille, then a mobile in the eighth battalion of the mobiles of the Seine, kindly sends us these picturesque memories: “The 4th of September I was in camp. We were a band of jolly fellows upon whom events made very little impression. Germain of the Novelty Theatre was bugler in my company, of which were also Walewski, Frederic Masson, de Marescot, Lecomte, Bertin, Du Paty, Boitelle, etc. I remember that it was Alexander Duval who, sticking his head in at the opening of the tent where we were, told us the terrible news of the war, and the revolution in Paris. We were very young, and little competent to judge of these catastrophes. Only Boitelle, son of the Pre- fect of Police, said sententiously, ‘Well, it’s papa who won’t be pleased.’ “We remained in camp, but all night we were on foot, making the rounds, fearing an irruption of rioters in the cantonments.” THE FOURTH OF SEPTEMBER, 1870 271 clothes, setting out for a day in the woods of Saint-Cloud or a fish dinner at Bas-Meudon . The Tuileries gardens were closed and empty; we fol- lowed the quays; the fishermen were in their usual places. The tri-colored flag was floating over the central pavilion of the palace of the Tuileries, – the Empress-Regent still there, — through the glass galleries of the ground floor we could see the light-horsemen of the guard. In the court of the Carrousel several offi- cers of the palace service were pacing up and down, smoking with a preoccu- pied air. Two cavalry- º - men, motionless, carabine * on hip, were mounting GAMBETTA guard before the wooden tents on the right and left of the small Arc de Triomphe. Luncheon rapidly expedited, we went out again to investigate matters, my brother with my father, I with my grandfather. The aspect of the boule- vards was entirely changed; the crowd, gloomily silent in the morning, was now excited and noisy. Battalions of the national guard were defiling, led by their bands of music; the brass instruments gave out their strident notes, cries arose, “Down- fall! downfall!” A few cried, “Long live Gam- 272 BY WAYS OF PARIS betta! Long live Trochu ! Long live the Repub- lic!” — which amazed us. Not a police officer. We followed a battalion to the Place de la Concorde. The bridge was closed by a double row of mounted gendarmes. Beyond, a compact crowd was massed before the iron gates of the Corps Legislatif. There were loud cries — hurrahs | Some one near us said that Gambetta and Jules Ferry were haranguing the deputies. Soon the gendarmes guarding the bridge were overcome, and the manifestants of the Place de la Concorde rushed across to join those before the Corps Legislatif. Here they were singing the Mar- seillaise, there the Chant du Départ. The crowd parted to give passage to the gendarmes and a squad of policemen going, with sheathed swords, to the barracks, amid cries of “Long live France ’’ | 22 “Long live Gambetta “Long live Trochu !” Some said that Jules Favre and Gambetta had gone to the Hôtel de Ville to proclaim the Republic; the Chamber had been invaded and the downfall of the Empire proclaimed." * How did the crowd succeed in passing the iron gates? The in- cidentis worth noting. “Some officers of the battalion of the national guard posted upon the Pont de la Concorde had occasion to enter the Palace [Corps Legislatifl. M. Steenackers opened the grating and the officers passed through. But how were they to close a gate pushed by the breasts of twenty thousand men? Impossible! The flood passed in with the officers, and in a minute all the halls were filled with people. “It will be said — it has already been said — that it was the deputies of the democratic opposition who desired to urge on the national representatives to proclaim the Republic. It is false! They made unheard-of efforts to drive out the mob and to keep inviolate the Sanctuary of the Chamber. “The Right disappears, the Centre follows General Palikao, and the Left, in the name of the sovereign people, read a preliminary list THE GovERNMENT oF THE NATIoNAL DEFENCE (Le Monde Illustré) 274 BY WAYS OF PARIS Acclamations are redoubled — the iron fence of the Tuileries is broken down — the crowd passes timidly into the garden ; many curious persons “defile ” back of the trees and statues, for they fear a salvo may be fired by the light-horsemen, drawn up in battle array before the palace at the end of the Grand Alley. General Mellinet, a glorious balafré of the First Empire, is in command, and the brave veteran has no cold in his eyes. My grandfather prudently leads me away, and we take the road back to the boulevards. There are heads at all the windows, very few carriages, the streets and sidewalks black with people. At the corner of the rue Le Peletier a crowd is staring at two men, of whom one is a national guard, occupied in cutting down with sabres the imperial arms above the shop door of Dussautoy, Tailor to the Em- peror; but these excited personages whom many applaud take great care not to injure the two- headed Russian eagle which is coupled with the eagle of Napoleon. It is like a signal — the crowd rushes upon the imperial ensigns — the clerks of the “furnishers of LL. M.M. the Emperor and the Empress * seem to be the first in the fray; in less than an hour every dynastic emblem, the crown, the N has disappeared from the fronts of the shops, – a few rabid indi- viduals carry their wrath so far as to scratch from the merchants’ signs the vignettes of Exposition of members proper to form a provisional government. A thousand and a thousand voices cry together, ‘To the Hôtel de Ville!’” — L'Illustration. THE FOURTH OF SEPTEMBER, 1870 275 medals adorned with the mustachioed profile of Na- poleon III. The terraces of the cafés before which collections are made for the wounded are crowded with cus- tomers, drinking deep, howling, shouting “Long live the Republic | * “Long live Gambetta!” News are interchanged; people ask, “What has become THE DEPUTIEs of THE LEFT BANK (4th September) of the Empress?” “Is it true that the red flag has been hoisted?” “What time was it when the Chamber announced the downfall of the Empire?” “Capoul, on the imperial of an omnibus, was sing- ing the Marseillaise just now ; he was applauded !” A moblot on the Boulevard Montmartre, climbing upon a bench, announces that he has just come from the Hôtel de Ville – “Henri Rochefort had just come in covered with flowers – he came in an open 276 BY WAYS OF PARIS carriage — thousands of men were escorting him, ap- plauding — the people broke in the doors of Sainte- Pélagie (prison) and set him free. —Long live Rochefort | * * My grandfather and I, incorrigible Parisian saun- terers, mechanically study the theatre posters: at the Théâtre Français the Emperor’s stock company will give, at half-past seven, le Memteur, Mérope, le Caprice; at the Opéra-Comique, Zampa, with Léon Achard; at the Gayety, la Chatte blanche; at the Palais-Royal, les Diables roses. Ball at the Mabille garden and at Tivoli-Vauxhall. A great crowd is before the Gymnase Theatre * “Olivier Pain broke the lock, the door flew open, and a hundred friends rushed into the passage, lifted me in their arms, and hurried me to an open carriage which was passing. “The crowd around us increased visibly every moment. Our escort soon became an army. “I was in the victoria with Pain, Paschal Grousset, who having been set free a few weeks earlier had come to meet us, Arthur de Fonvielle, Charles Dacosta, so that the carriage, crowded beyond all anticipation, advanced only at a foot pace. “In an instant we were covered with flowers, and I was all striped with scarfs and draped with red ribbons like a greased pole at a fair. We were told that the Chamber had just risen, and that the deputies from Paris were deliberating at the Hôtel de Ville. “We had gathered such a crowd along the way that at the lowest figure we were fifty thousand strong when we arrived before the Hôtel de Ville. “The iron fence would have given way under the pressure of the crowd, but it was finally opened by the porter of the Hôtel de Ville. The door at the foot of the staircase leading to the rooms above had also been bolted, and the mass of our body being jammed into the hall with me, I thought that I should never get out. In fact, I probably should not have done so, had I not taken the resolution to break a pane of glass. The fragments having been carried away by some one, I was enabled to squeeze through. But I was almost in tatters when the ushers introduced me into the hall of deliberations, where the provisional government was already in session.” – HENRI RoCHEFORT, The Adventures of my Life, t. II, p. 200. THE FOURTH OF SEPTEMBER, 1870 277 (where Mlle. Desclée will play this evening le Demi- Monde). The policemen who occupy the little post which hugs the steps of the Bonne-Nouvelle Church charge them with the sword. “ They did well,” said HENRI Rochefort (4 September, 1870) some, “ some blackguards fired upon them with re- * The iron gates are closed; two national volvers.” guards, armed, stand guard before the hermetically closed post. The whole population, nervous, trembling, crowd to the boulevards; many citizens in civilian dress > having on their heads a képi or a shako from which 8- 278 BY WAYS OF PARIS the eagle has been torn, carrying muskets adorned with leaves torn from the trees in the squares, many women, many children; the cocoa merchants do a golden business. The war and our poor soldiers are hardly spoken of. Every one seems to hope, they “will " to hope, that a change of régime will bring about a change of fortune, and strangely enough, yet certainly, on this day of mourning, Paris takes on a festival air At the corner of the boulevard and the rue Saint- Denis two ambulant singers warble obscene couplets about the Empress. Dinner was a feverish meal that day. Each has some episode to relate, terrible or touching, patriotic or comic, picked up by chance in the course of his walks. Our father had met Sardou, who told him of his interview with General Mellinet, the diplomacy he had been obliged to use to induce the general to withdraw his soldiers and avoid a useless effusion of blood. About two o'clock the flag had been brought," the Empress Eugénie having quitted the * A toast to the Empress Eugénie was drunk that same evening of the 4th September in the Palace of the Tuileries. Narrative of M. Delaporte, former advocate before the Tribunal of the Seine, at that time sub-lieutenant of the 5th battalion of the national guard: - “After remaining around at the Place Vendôme until three o'clock in the afternoon, waiting for definite information and orders, the two battalions of the national guard, of which one was mine, were ordered to occupy the Tuileries, which a quiet crowd, in their Sunday best, were visiting without disorder, in amazed surprise. At seven o’clock the officers of the national guard on duty at the Tuileries were informed that dinner awaited them in the palace. I went. The dinner was that destined for the officers of the morning's duty — the Emperor's service. Champagne was served at dessert, and it was there that, not without surprise, we saw one of our comrades, THE FOURTH OF SEPTEMBER, I870 279 palace; at three the light horse of the imperial guard gave place to the national guard, and a few companies of mobiles; hundreds of curious per- sons had walked through the palace, very respect- fully, without doing the slightest damage. One of my friends had met the carriage in which Gambetta, Picard, Magnin, and Laurier had gone from the Corps Legislatif to the Hôtel de Ville — escorted with what shouts There ensued a council of the Provisional Govern- ment; General Trochu presided, with Jules Favre at his right. The long session, begun at half-past nine in the evening, lasted all night long. The Council was held in the “cabinet of the right wing facing the Seine.” At the bottom of the room was a buffet with “various cold meats *; the members of the government of National Defence ate hastily, stand- ing, while continuing to discuss. The adjoining rooms were occupied by the na- tional guard. Outside, on the Place de Grève and along the quay, the crowd was shouting incessant acclamation. At daybreak the members threw them- selves upon the sofas, or upon improvised beds, to snatch a few hours of necessary rest. Rochefort slept in the former bedroom of Mme. Haussmann." wearing a lieutenant's stripes, rise, glass in hand. We supposed that he was going to drink to the Republic, but no. Without em- barrassment he told us that he had had occasion to be present at the departure of the Empress, that he had found her full of dignity and courage, and that he proposed to us a toast, not to the Empress but to the woman, the mother. The proposition found no echo, but neither did it arouse protest, and the speaker seated himself in the midst of silence.” (Private letter.) 1 Figaro, September 4, 1909. 280 BY WAYS OF PARIS No one will be surprised to hear that the name “rue du Quatre-Septembre * dates from that day; until then it had been called the “rue du Dix- Décembre,” souvenir of the proclamation of the Em- pire. That too suggestive blue tablet was the first victim of the new order. THE DANCING CLASSES OF THE OPERA ... ( Y O up five flights, turn to the right, go through (; three doors, go up two more flights, turn again to the right, and there ask your way of the first person you may be so lucky as to meet; for certainly you will not find your way among all the corridors which will open before you.” Such were, pretty nearly, the directions which the concierge of the Opera was so kind as to give me when I asked her to tell me where M. Giraudier, professor of dancing for the men’s class, was giving his lesson. - After having ten times gone astray, disturbing tailors bent over Wagnerian breeches, burst in upon carpenters furbishing up Roman cars, disturbed dressmakers occupied in mending tulle skirts, in- quired of lamp-tenders and firemen, not to speak of two sleepy office clerks, deep in the reading of The Auto, paced corridors in which repose the Egyptian gods of Aida and the standards of Faust’s soldiers, put away till the next representation, interviewed the wooden skeletons of fiery coursers destined to carry the Walkyries in their heroic race, I at last discov- ered a dresser, her arms loaded with rose-colored peplums, who, like a new Ariadne, was kind enough to guide me through the labyrinth. After a quarter 282 BY WAYS OF PARIS hour of breathless attempts I reached M. Giraudier's class-room. At the moment of my entrance a score of young men of unequal height and various ages – children THE ENTRANCE To THE CLAss Rooms of eight years and men of twenty – were making prodigious “cat leaps,” in a vast room with an in- clined floor like the stage of the Opera. At the farther end was a large mirror, at right and left supporting bars; the dancers were in their kid pumps, short breeches, white or gray stockings, THE DANCING CLASSES OF THE OPERA 283 shirts wide open. Violin on shoulder, beating the measure, correcting movements, indicating them pro- fessionally by a skillful inflection of the legs, M. Giraudier was directing and correcting his pupils. “Foot more extended — you go too fast — too fast, I tell you — and your arms, do you think they are THE PRESENCE SHEET aeroplanes? — One, two No bourrée now — the foot farther out — one, two, that's better! Now you, Robert – Remember that examination comes in a week — six cuts' One, two, seven cuts — good! That will do.” And violin on shoulder, the profes- sor circulates among his scholars, with gliding step over the unwaxed floor, marked off with eight great lines by water from the funnels. In its turn the “little class * of children from eight to ten years, 284 BY WAYS OF PARIS with all the grace of little girls, stretch the leg, bend the knee, and try their best to accomplish the redoubtable “entrechat six.” But it is half-past ten: “Come along, sign * and the dancers, in their large childish writing, sign the “ presence sheet.” The little boys poke fun at one another: “See Monsieur, how badly he writes; he THE “LITTLE GIRLs” does not know how to write.” They writhe with laughter, slip on their thin cloaks, and away they fly like a flock of sparrows. A dozen fine large girls take their places – the leaders: Mlle. Theodore's class succeeds that of M. Giraudier. At first all is complaint, “Brrr — how cold it is – we shall freeze here!” These pretty persons bewail themselves loudly. All are in lesson costume, – dancing shoes, pink stockings, tarletan skirt, full white trousers gathered at the knees, bare 286 BY WAYS OF PARIS arms; they wear woollen scarfs crossed over their very low corsages or pink or blue satin morning jackets; their hair is dressed as it may happen; their eyes seem heavy with sleep; several of them have drawn on knitted leggings. Mlle. Theodore appears, fine and slender in her black dress. “Come, come, my children, don’t waste your time. You don’t seem to be very wide awake this morning.” The lesson begins. Snaps of the thumb, clappings of hands indicate the movement; to exercises at the bar succeed toe and leg practice." Oh, the intelligent, bewitching grace of these slender women’s feet, which now skim the floor with- out apparently deigning to rest upon it, now appear to stick into the board like a needle in a cushion. With a precision, a method, a perfect art, the pretty battalion manoeuvres at the command of its colonel, who, for that matter, preaches by example, showing with an adroit gesture the movements to execute. Then they pass to another exercise. “Come, the adagio.” At this moment the pianist (for the piano has succeeded the violin) strikes the first measures of the figure. “Your turn, Bertha, come down — 3. no bourrée. Rise on your toes — better than that — again. That will do! – Come, Pichard, your turn — not bad. — Don’t be in a hurry, Georgette. Leave 1 Salaries of opera dancers in 1842: Mme. Carlotta Grisi, first danseuse, 40,000 francs a year, 60 francs for fires. Mme. Louise Fitz-James, character danseuse, 18,000 francs a year. Mme. Pauline Leroux, character damseuse, 12,000 francs a year, 50 francs for fires. Mlle. Mario, first danseuse, 25,000 francs a year. Mlle. Forster, first damseuse, 6000 francs a year. The sisters DeSmilâtre, dancers of second order, 10,000 francs a year. Each danseuse in the ballet at 1500 francs. – Salon littéraire (October 30, 1842). THE DANCING CLASSES OF THE OPERA 287 your leg well behind you, and when you are well at the arabesque draw in your back, and don’t for- get that it's a jeté below. — Gently, more gently, Blanche, your arm is too high. — And you, Germaine, look out for your toes.” These docile young girls AT THE BAR soon learn to carry out their professor’s orders: but while they are whirling a comb falls, another, a third. Mlle. Theodore gets impatient. “Do fasten your hair better. – This rain of combs is insup- portable! Come, one, two; begin again; bravo, Germaine!”.' * Not only does Mlle. Theodore direct classes of coryphées, she also presides at the ensemble practice of the pupils. 288 BY WAYS OF PARIS Under the great skylight, the crude light of which casts a golden nimbus upon the light-haired ones, all these pretty girls, smiling, form graceful and charming groups. Their eyes are no longer puffed out, they are really awake, their professional love makes them forget their fatigue. For they are greatly mistaken who imagine that a dancer’s existence can admit of considerable leisure. Their work begins at ten in the morning and often does not end till midnight, with the falling of the curtain. Class from nine till half-past ten for the children, from half-past ten till twelve for the sub- jects, the leaders, and quadrilles, rehearsal at half- past twelve, and four times in the week an evening performance — such is the usual time-table. Choregraphic education begins at about eight years, and requires a method continually progressive and severe ; a regular suppling process enables a young girl, almost a child, to endure without injury to her health the excessive fatigue required by the study of dancing. How far we are from the legend º # $ We climb other stairs and follow other corridors. Here is the door of the little children’s class which Mlle. Van Goeten teaches. We enter, and Mlle. Van Goeten exclaims : “Just my luck! You have come on the very day when my pianist, down with a severe case of grippe, has failed me. On the very eve of the examination my poor pupils have to work to my singing, and God knows how ill I sing !” THE DANCING CLASSES OF THE OPERA 289 Mlle. Van Goeten is too modest; she sings very well, keeps good time, and her little quadrille re- sponds the most prettily in the world to her intelli- gent orders." These are all little girls of from MLLE. MAURI's ENSEMBLE CLAss IN THE GRAND Foy ER of THE OPERA twelve to fourteen years; the silver medals of their first communion are still hanging at their slender 1 Friday, June 23, 1871. The little pupils and the coryphées rehearse in full costume for the first time since the closing of the theatre. There are about thirty of them, divided into small groups, their white tarletan gowns lighting up the half darkness of the theatre. They come and go, chatting with animation. Here is one who, leaning over, is fastening her shoestring; another upright, upon the tips of her toes with which she seems to pierce the floor, prolongs her pose, then drops upon her feet after a pirouette, saying with the prettiest gesture in the world: “What was that my mother said, that I had lost my tiptoes 290 BY WAYS OF PARIS throats! There are some charming ones, who already put on a languishing air with enviable proficiency. It would seem, indeed, as if this class were a school of grace, so strongly does the professor combat “bad attitudes.” Almost the entire lesson is devoted to keeping within bounds too prominent elbows and knees. “Now, my children, let’s work at the MLLE. RositA. MAURI examination step.” And, humming the while, Mlle. Van Goeten indicates and imitates the difficult passages. “Ta, ta, ta, ta, Emma, your knee — ta, ta, ta, during the war! I knew well enough that I had nºt – tiptoes don’t get lost so easily!” I approach a group in very animated conversation. A fair and very pretty little coryphée is telling about the fall of the column Vendôme: “I was there,” she said, “in the first row, and I bought a ‘Com- plaint’ that they were selling in the rue de la Paix. I learned it by heart.” – Notes and Memories (1870–1871): LUDovic HALĀvy (p. 107). THE DANCING CLASSES OF THE OPERA 291 one — one, two, three, bend – one, two, ta, ta, ta, cat-leaps – your little foot, Jane – ta, ta, ta,” and Jane looks out for her “little foot ” in its gray coutil shoe. As I admired the charm of these slim young girls, their teacher was so kind as to introduce me to her best scholar, Mlle. Emma Mauller, eleven years old, AT THE SEcond QUADRILLE who covers herself with glory in the ballets of Femina. This “budding star,” as another has said, deigned to dance in my honor the pizzicati of Sylvia, and I left the room with this delightful vision be- fore my eyes. Retracing our steps down the interminable stairs, we find ourselves on the level of the stage and raise the heavy vellum, almost hermetically close, which shuts in the great foyer of the dance behind the scenes. Here in the most sacred place Mlle. Rosita Mauri, but yesterday the glory of our National 292 EY WAYS OF PARIS Academy, holds, with unquestioned authority, the classes in perfectioning." In the middle of the large divan, carefully wrapped in a long white knitted mantle, her hair fastened up and covered with a pale blue mantilla, holding in her hand the tall black cane with its golden head — her baton of command — with authoritative brow, Mlle. Rosita Mauri is giving her lesson. The admirable artist received me with outstretched hands, and yet Mlle. Mauri seemed anxious, her in- telligent eyes were sad. Mlle. Mauri is somewhat nervous, she exaggerates her picturesque Spanish accent. “Hé, dear sir, you happen upon a bad time. I have no one this morning. Last evening it was Faust, to-day it rains torrents, – the poor little things are weary — only two brave girls have defied the storm, Schwarz and Billion — quality must make up for quantity to-day.” Oh, the fine lesson — not only of dancing but of esthetics. “Come, young ladies, go on — grace — still more grace — the arms a little lower — the wrist more supple — turn back now — extend the toes — * The foyer of the dance in the old Opera (1844) is a vast, broad room adjoining the former Hôtel Choiseul. It is ill-lighted, and furnished with a semicircular bench upon which the elect few per- mitted access to this sanctuary are seated. A marble bust of la Guimard, set upon a column of painted wood, like those which can hardly be said to ornament the public foyer, is the sole relic adored in this temple. The wall, covered with sculptured woodwork ou- vragée after the manner of the time, is decorated with mirrors which have successively reflected the freshest and prettiest little faces in the world. At regular distances triangles of iron placed at elbow height serve the dancers, who hang from them with all sorts of pigeon- wings and leg actions while waiting their turn to appear upon the stage. — Les petits Mystères de l'Opéra: ALBéRIC SECOND, p. 134. A LEsso N witH MLLE. MAURI IN THE GREAT Foy ER or DANCING MLLEs. BARBIER, ZAMBELLI, D. LoBSTEIN 294, BY WAYS OF PARIS hop ! bravo, Schwarz Very well — position of the arm, attitude, rest.” The charming dancers, like two Greek statues, became motionless in the “noble pose,” and Mlle. Mauri, satisfied, cried, “There, are they of a fine line? This one is perfect. But con- sider that it demands a whole lifetime of work, and of hard work, I assure you, to attain this perfec- tion. Not an easy trade, this of ours, and not to be taken up by every one; and, besides, what gym— nastics, sometimes what torture, too ! “Did you know that Taglioni, after a two hours’ lesson with her father, fell upon the floor of her room half dead, and was undressed, sponged, and dressed again without having any consciousness of what was being done? And she had to dance that evening, la povera! ” " But Mlle. Mauri’s brow grows more serene. Noise- lessly, one by one, the tardy ones make their ap- pearance. The ranks of the flying squadron of the Opera are nearly full. Mlles. Aida Boni, Urban, Lobstein, Meunier, Johnsson, de Moreira, Dockes, and Guillemin come to the lesson, and it is a wonder to see these lovely persons resolve, while playing, difficulties imposed by their eminent professor. By a word, a gesture, Mlle. Mauri, her left hand on her * A dancer devoured by ambition, Mlle. X, invented S. G. D. G., a very ingenious way of breaking oneself and turning oneself at the same time. Mlle. X. would throw herself down, face to the floor, her leg extended horizontally, then she made her waiting-maid stand upon her with all her weight. In time she became so accustomed to this domestic burden that she was able to carry her mother and her sister. If room had not been wanting, she would have come to carry many others. — Petits Mémoires de l'Opéra: CHARLES DE BoIGNE, 1857, p. 35. - THE DANCING CLASSES OF THE OPERA 295 hip, and beating the measure with that terrible black cane, commands, oversees, sparing neither criticism nor compliments. After a few moments a new dancer appears; after executing certain motions and steps she carelessly raises her slender foot to the highest bar, higher MLLE. MAURI's CLAss than her shoulder, and in this position, strange but professional, she tranquilly looks on till the lesson is over. This charming apparition, dark, fine, ner- vous, is Mlle. Zambelli, the star of the Opera. She dances when her turn comes, and we admire this great artiste, one of the most perfect whom it has ever been my lot to applaud. Mlle. Mauri sums up our sensations in a word, “It is a feu d'artifice.” Then with the infinite charm of a woman speaking with love of an art in which women are superior, Mlle. 296 BY WAYS OF PARIS Mauri enumerates the necessary qualities of a true dancer, elegance of attitude, nobility of position, charming yieldings of the body, slow movements, sinuous lines, and, above all, sportive eyes. When NMlle. Mauri speaks of her art, she is the very apostle of the religion of choregraphy, sowing the good word. Eyes, voice, gesture, everything about her. is serious, – I had almost said pedantic. But — there is always a “but '' in life — from under the black skirt of austere cut peeps out the end of a little foot imprisoned in a narrow polished pump, and this little foot is not pedantic at all. Ah, the rascal, how restive it is, how it arches itself, how it appears and disappears | What a docile pupil, and how intelligently it obeys the professor’s signs! We have known it, shod in rose-colored satin, when it was charming us with le Cid, les Deua Pigeons, la Rorrigame, Coppelia!" Mademoiselle Rosita Mauri, when you wish to be quite serious, look out for your little foot! * I may be permitted in this connection to recall the lines written by A. de Musset to Taglioni, creator of the ballet l'Ombre: Si vous ne voulez plus danser, Si vous me faites que passer Sur ce grand théâtre si sombre, Ne courez plus après votre ombre Et tachez de nous la laisser. A WEEK OF INUINDATION S". JANUARY 23, 1910, three o’clock in the afternoon, from a balcony above Quai Voltaire. — Notwithstanding the snow, which falls in whirl- winds, a dense crowd is besieging the parapets of the quays, contending for the newspapers, counting the stone steps leading down to the inundated banks; there are still twelve — that is good. From the cor- ner of the Bridge of the Holy Fathers the amazed crowd perceives that the river, immensely swollen, almost reaches the entablature of the tunnel which connects the Orsay Station with the Orleans Station. worse news and ever worse. The Friends arrive suburbs of the city are entirely flooded, trains are held up, bridges are falling. Water seems to gush up everywhere — along the walls, the partitions, in the crevices between the stones, under the pavements, along the tramway rails — the registrating barome- ter which marked 773 millimetres is still falling ! The yellow, turbid Seine seems rising as if to assault the bridges, banks, laundry floats, and the great black barges moored beside the quays, the sailors on which are now doubling the cables. Mond AY, two o'clock, Carnavalet Museum. — One attaché and two guards have failed to appear; they live in an inundated suburb: communication is in- terrupted; their little houses must be surrounded 298 IBY WAYS OF PARIS by water. The rue de Sévigné resounds with ill- omened trumpet calls, announcing that a squad of firemen are starting from the nearest engine house to struggle with some new catastrophe. Next to fire, these doughty fellows are ready — heroes that they are! – to brave the water – the treacherous THE SEINE AND THE Pont-Royal, JANUARY 25, 1910 water, insidiously undermining walls, hollowing foundations, opening crevasses. “Halloa Halloa This is the “Annals.” Have you in the Museum any documents concerning former inundations of Paris? Yes? That’s good. I’ll come to look them over.” “Halloa This is the “Illustrated World.” Have and so forth. A card is you in the Museum ” A WEEK OF IN UNDATION 299 brought in, two cards, three, certain reporters would like to consult whatever the Museum may possess concerning inundations. Let us take account of our stock — there is very little. A few illustrations dating from thirty years ago, the reproduction of a curious picture by Loir THE WHARF of THE “Tou RISTE’ Opposite. THE ORSAY STATION, JANUARY 26, 1910 Luigi, a colored engraving by Debucourt, some un- important documents. But in running through Aulard’s “Paris under the Consulate ’’ I find two extracts from the Gazette de France which appear entirely to the point: The 12 Nivose, year X (1802): “The Seine has risen to such an extent that communication is interrupted in several quarters of the city. Only eighteen inches are lacking for 300 BY WAYS OF PARIS the river to attain the height of 1740. People are going about in boats in a greatnumber of streets, –Saint-Florentin, Lille, Seine, Vielle-Boucherie, Git-le-Coeur, Pavée, etc. The Place de Grève is covered with from three to four feet of water, and boats loaded with wheat are moored this morning under the Arcade Saint-Jean.” (The Arcade Saint-Jean at that time passed through the Hôtel de Ville.) Later, 14 Nivose: This morning the scale on the National Bridge (Pont-Royal) marked 7 metres 7 decimetres. The Esplanade of the Invalides, the Champs-Elysées, and the whole plain of Ivry are under water. From the top of the towers of Notre Dame the whole inundation is visible. As to the cataclysm of 1740, we have all the details in Barbier’s Journal: To-day (December 25, Christmas Day) Paris is entirely flooded. On one side the Plain of Grenelle and the enclo- sure of the Invalides, the Champs-Elysées and the Avenue are covered with water. It reaches by way of the Porte Saint-Honoré even to the Place Vendome. There is no going about except by boat: on the side of Bercy, la Râpée, the General Hospital (now the Salpêtrière), it is an open sea. The Place de Grève (now Place de l’Hôtel de Ville) is covered with water, a stream flows over the parapet, all the neigh- boring streets are inundated; where there are porte-cochères boats enter the houses as far as the stairs. Bread is four sols and a half a pound, and everything else is very dear. A boat- man has been imprisoned for having exacted twelve sols to row a poor woman and her child across. Siar o'clock in the evening. At the house of a friend in the rue de Lille, around a bridge table. — Some guests have come in, bringing news; the base- ment of the Orsay Station is flooded. Two electric locomotives were mid-height in water before any A WEEK OF IN UNDATION 301 one had time to move them. All day long the quays have been crowded with gazers, photogra- phers, news-criers. Beams, casks, rubbish of all kinds, - parts of houses, still covered with ivy, roll tumultuously down the greenish river. Some half- frozen magistrates come in from the Palais de Justice, where the furnaces have been flooded; the members of the Chamber of Petitions were forced to meet around a coke fire in the Council Chamber — all doors open, in obedience to the prescriptions of the Law. The waters have reached 7 metres 89 at the Pont Royal ; one centimetre more and they will overpass the high-water mark of 1740. We try to be cheerful, but the game languishes. TUESDAY. THE 25TH, 11 A. M. — The Seine con- tinues to rise, and the people to crowd the quays. Automobiles, coupés stop at the head of the bridges, while the owners get down to get a nearer view. Chauffeurs and coachmen stand on their seats to look over the heads of the others. Infiltrations are beginning to work through to the rue de Lille, rue de Verneuil, rue de Bellechasse. The tramways are overcrowded, the imperial affords so good a place for observing the furious assault of the unbridled river upon the old quays and bridges of Paris. “It’s as good as a cinema | * says a student of the Fine Arts School, in his wide gray velveteen trou- sers, supporting a pretty girl who is nibbling at a bunch of violets. People crowd around the glass door of the Orsay Station, staring in. There is a rumor that the Pont d’Iána is to be blown up, its heavy piers obstructing the passage of the waters. 302 BY WAYS OF PARIS At the Jardin des Plantes the bears have been rescued from their submerged pits. - Seven in the evening. — How hard it is to climb the five flights of stairs which the elevator used to overcome so rapidly! At the corner of each land- ing is a candle in a brass candlestick. And in the evening we gather around the long-discarded lamp, which smells of petroleum. WEDNESDAY, 26TH, half-past seven in the morning. —The sparrows come at my call in greater num- bers than ever. They and I are old friends. Every morning at half-past seven they mount guard on the balustrade of the balcony and vociferously de- mand their daily bread. Usually I find a score of clients awaiting me — among them a lame one, who never misses his daily visit, and a little gray bird of delightful effrontery. This morning the number is doubled — my little comrades must have sent out invitations. Of course we shall augment the portions. Eight o’clock. — I open my Figaro. A single phrase admirably sums up the experiences of yes- terday: “It seems as if we were besieged by an intangible enemy.” The Seine is still higher — the metre shows 8* 29. The situation is becoming very grave at the Pont-Royal. The river is crowded with driftwood — forests of white timbers, casks, pitiful bodies of dead dogs, floating rapidly, the four paws stiffly upright. The dirty yellow water forms great ripples around the floats and the boats moored to the shore. A tempest of snow, hail, rain, comes up suddenly. There are 1* 40 of water in our cellars, A WIEER OF IN UNDATION 303 on the Quay Voltaire – pumping engines have been installed next door, at the offices of the “Illustrated World,” and lower down, at the “Official Journal,” to clear out the low vaults where the machines are at work. In the afternoon, 3.30. Municipal Council Cham- liº - º - º - . -- - - - ºill - - QUAY SAINT-MICHEL, JANUARY 26, 1910 ber. — M. de Selves, Prefect of the Seine, makes known to the Councillors the precise situation of Paris, and shows the hourly increasing peril. He enumerates the measures already taken, not only against imminent dangers, but also to insure the existence of thousands of homeless people who are pouring in from all directions, for the care of the sick, for the oversight of his army of engineers and other experts. The dark rings around the Prefect’s eyes, his rigid features, speak of the overwrought 304 BY WAYS OF PARIS condition of this man of superior intelligence. After him comes the Prefect of police; he comes from the inundated suburbs. In many cases they are falling in, and his brief address ended, he hastens away – as is ever his custom – to the point of greatest QUAY Wolt AIRE AND THE PUMPING ENGINE of THE “OFFICIAL Journal ‘’ danger, setting the example of bravery, sustaining by his presence the heroic phalanx of policemen, soldiers and sailors, requisitioned for the service! Massed upon the steps leading to the tribune, crowded behind stenographers, clerks, and their col- leagues of the municipal building, the Councillors pay an ovation to the two Prefects. Standing be- fore them, very elegant in his black coat with the A WEEK OF IN UNDATION 30.5 rosette of the Legion of Honor in the buttonhole, M. E. Caron, President of the Council, eloquently emphasizes the importance of this patriotic mani- festation. The credits they ask for are unanimously voted, a great wave of fraternal enthusiasm, of pas- sionate love for our dear Paris, brings together men QUAY SAINT-MICHEL, JANUARY 26, 1910 usually of widely differing views. It is very simple, very beautiful, very impressive. Half-past four. — M. Quentin-Bauchart, Council- lor from the flooded Champs-Élysées district, who presides over the Committee of Old Paris, hastily expedites the most urgent matters to return to the post of danger in his own quarter. The quays are always crowded — by people even more curious than moved. Wendors are crying, “Paris under water! The deluge in Paris. – In- 306 BYWAYS OF PARIS stantaneous pictures, one franc a dozen.” The Pont des Arts is closed, passage is forbidden. Ropes are stretched across, watched by a sentinel wrapped in his cloak. Another barrage on the quay du Louvre — the ground has been pressed up, water pours out of the sewers. — The old Pont-Neuf is once again open to traffic. The water is still rising. Since the beginning the level of the Seine has risen 6 metres 10. Ten o’clock. — This evening Quay Voltaire is a lamentable sight. People are tramping through the sticky mire in the middle of the street, shrieking engines are emptying the cellars of the “Official Journal * and belching clouds of smoke upon the passers-by. Fear begins to prevail, - gossips are prognosticating all sorts of horrors. Women are weeping: one who sells newspapers asks (these are her very words), “Sir, you know the Prefect of police — can you tell how soon this will end?” The rue de Lille is completely flooded, people are going about in boats. M. Lemercier, judge in the Tribunal of the Seine, has moored a canvas canoe at the foot of his staircase ! A frightful odor of gas pervades the whole region; the caving in has burst the mains, – no one knows where to find the leaks. Agents are going about, shutting off all the metres; there has just been an explosion in the tobacco shop at the corner of the rue de Beaune, under the historic apartment where Voltaire died. My concierge is beside herself — “Three steps more, sir, and the water is in the court.” Behind the porte-cochère, under the arch, A WEEK OF IN UNDATION 307 there are bags of cement and a pile of bricks; the cellar is full of water, and it is proposed to put up a dike at the top of the cellar stairs and before the entrance door of the house. The tunnel of the Orsay railway runs under our Nº THE FootBRIDGE OF THE RUE DE Beau NE, JANUARY 27, 1910 house; we can distinctly hear the water running in spurts. THURSDAY, THE 27th, 9 A.M. – It freezes, but the day is fine. The Seine is still higher; the laundry floats, lifted above the level of the parapets of the quays, shut out the view of the Louvre' Four in the afternoon. — At the corner of the rue du Bac, which has been closed since noon, a great mob of people has gathered, laughing, joking. Four 308 BY WAYS OF PARIS sewer men, booted to the middle, are carrying in their arms, from one sidewalk to the other, the unlucky dwellers in the flooded streets — rue de Verneuil, rue de Lille, rue de Poitiers, rue de Beaune. The water is up to their thighs. The women weep, the children laugh. This picturesque going and coming recalls the interesting picture of Petit after Garnier, where in a Parisian street a stout fellow, bare-legged, car- ries on his back a pretty muscadine of the year IX with impeccable legs, her dainty feet encased in high-heeled shoes. Ten o’clock in the evening. — The view from my balcony is 'splendid and appalling. The quays are almost deserted — in the dark distance voices are crying the “latest news.” The electric light still shines on the right bank, red fires showing the piles of bridges give a sanguinary note to the SCéI16. On the quay of the Louvre the great flames of two acetylene fires flash upon the black and troubled 66 waters with precisely the effect of the “showers of gold * of fireworks. - The moon is very bright. Here and there along the quays are little flames — bivouac fires of the sol- diers who will pass the night there, guarding us, protecting us from the malefactors whose sinister countenances begin to show themselves in the darker alleys. The friend who stands beside me contemplates the gloomy view: suddenly he exclaims, “ Well, good enough here I am shut out. The water which had hardly touched the street below the rue Bonaparte A WEEK OF IN UNDATION 309 has covered it all. How am I to get back home?” And he leaves me, in some perturbation. FRIDAY, THE 28th, four o'clock in the morning. – The night is mild, the sky very calm, yet without a star. There is no sound except the dull, incessant moaning of the river. The water appears to have - - - THE SEINE AND THE Pont DEs SAINTs-PèREs, JANUARY 28, 1910 reached the level of the Pont des Saints-Pères, the apron of which seems to lie directly upon the Seine. Shadows of cyclists pass rapidly in the night; the great red fires of the quay du Louvre continue to burn. Seven o’clock. – The gray day is dawning. On the servants’ staircase are sounds of domestics hastening to get provisions: it recalls the bad days 3I.0 BY WAYS OF PARIS of the siege. The butcher himself comes up for orders; he is flooded and will close his shop. The Seine seems ever more threatening, great gray clouds are dragging like sails over the roofs of the Louvre, the towers of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, the pepper- box turrets of the Conciergerie. The rosy little ray of the early morning does not come, as usual, to touch the spire of the Sainte-Chapelle. Carriages begin to roll, their red lanterns still alight; echoing blows of hammers are heard on the still shadowy quays — the shopkeepers are barricading themselves | Half-past seven. — Shouts beneath my windows – with the aid of a basket fastened to a broom handle, a young man has just fished up a magnificent carp weighing three pounds. The cook returning from market brings news. Crowds are pressing into the grocery shops to buy provisions; the shops are encumbered with goods brought up from the cellars, where the water would long ago have drowned them. Mineral waters and kerosene are entirely lacking; butter is sold at 2 francs 30 a pound, a dozen eggs for 1 franc 80. Green stuff is rare; the price of potatoes and cab- bages has doubled. Ten o’clock. — Locomotion becomes more and more difficult; the wooden pavements, displaced by the water, dance under the feet. Many women fall in the street. That “ rivulet of the rue du Bac,” so dear to Mme. de Staël, is charming this morning ! Street boys, liveried servants, loungers are curi- ously inspecting the little dikes of brick and cement RUE Viscostſ, JANUARY 28, 1910 312 BY WAYS OF PARIS which the shopkeepers and porters have put up be- fore the openings of shops and porte-cochères. At the angle of the rue de Bellechasse and the terrace of the Legion of Honor is a lake — a tor- rent. A pocket of water has fallen in, and the water spurts up like a cascade, covering the blue plate bearing the name of the street. This rue de Bellechasse forms a canal a metre and a half deep. A sort of hanging stage affords a landing place for several barks which ply along the flooded streets, rue de Lille, rue de Verneuil, rue de Poitiers. Some provision-laden folk embark, great loaves under the arm. M. Maréchal, the energetic police commissary of the quarter, though exhausted by three nights of watching, is superintending the improvised ferry- men, members of his force. Many of them are first-rate fellows, whose devotion is admirable, but apaches have sneaked into the ranks; did not two scoundrels yesterday undertake to hold a poor woman for ransom P. M. Maréchal has great difficulty in keeping off the crowd from the dangerous platform in front of the station, the undermined foundations of which may give way at any moment. The thin layer of macadam trembles beneath our feet; it is easy to imagine the rushing water below. Eleven o'clock. — The court of the École des Beaux Arts: a lake reflects Gaillon’s exquisite arch. Young girls coming out from the studios venture themselves laughingly upon the narrow plank which will give them access to the rue Bonaparte. The rue Visconti, entirely flooded, might be a Venetian canal in the Giudecca, a water way in A WEEK OF IN UNDATION 313 Rotterdam. The inhabitants are compelled to go in and out of their homes by ladders to the first- floor windows ' Barks are plying in the dark nar- row street where lived Jean Racine, Adrienne Lecou- vreur, and our immortal Balzac. Mounted on a pile of boards, we never tire of gazing along this nar- THE PALACE of THE LEGION of HoNort, JANUARY 28, 1910 row way, where the sky is mirrored in the water. It is incontestably one of the most unexpected sights of inundated Paris. We return home; the rain has begun again, idlers become less frequent, the shops are closed, but the vendors continue to cry, “Ask for the Deluge in Paris! 24 instantaneous photographs for one franc | * 314 BY WAYS OF PARIS At four o’clock the Pont des Saints-Pères is barred. SATURDAY MoRNING, JANUARY 29, eight o’clock. – An unclouded sun seems to bring hope with him. The Seine is falling; no one can doubt it who sees the narrow white line which the falling water leaves THE Court of THE School of FINE ARTs, JANUARY 28, 1910 upon the black piles of the bridges. On the other hand, there are no papers this morning, nor gas, nor electricity, nor telephone, nor elevator, and two bridges only afford communication with the other side of the river — the Pont-Neuf and the Pont- Royal; that is to say, the two oldest bridges in Paris. Is progress only a vain word? Life begins again. Small messenger boys appear A WIEER OF IN UNDATION 315 to find prodigious amusement in watching the in- defatigable fishermen, deeply engaged in “wetting the line in the water " : painters have set up their easels and “pigent les motifs '' of the inundation : janitors state joyfully that “it has n’t risen in the cellar,” — the Seine seems less ill-natured, less vio- lent. It is the end, let us hope. 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