CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Cornell University Library DC 707.L93 1909 Wanderer in Paris, 3 1924 028 348 757 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028348757 A WANDERER IN PARIS BY THE SAME AUTHOR A WANDERER IN LONDON' A WANDERER IN HOLLAND OVER BEMERTON'S listener's lure anne's terrible GOOD-NATURE THE OPEN ROAD THE GENTLEST ART THE ladies' PAGEANT SOME FRIENDS OF MINE CHARACTER AND COMEDY THE LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB ONE DAY AND ANOTHER h6tel de sens THE RUE DE L'HOTEL DE VILLE A WANDERER IN PARIS BY E. V. LUCAS " I'll go and chat with Paris " ^- Romeo and Juliet WITH SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS iSf COLOUR BY WALTER DEXTER AND THIRTY-TWO REPRODUCTIONS FROM WORKS OF ART THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1909 w.W rights rcKrved inu.i.v Copyright, 1909, By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1909. ^^7vl^i^' Nottaooll }3ttiiB J. S. CusUng Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. PREFACE A LTHOUGH the reader will quickly make -^--^ the discovery for himself, I should like here to emphasise the fact that this is a book about Paris and the Parisians written wholly from the outside, and containing only so much of that city and its citizens as a foreigner who has no French friends may observe on holiday visits. I express elsewhere my indebtedness to a few French authors. I have also been greatly assisted in a variety of ways, but especially in the study of the older Paris streets, by my friend Mr. Frank Holford. E. V. L. CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE The English Gates of Paris i CHAPTER II The Ile de la Cvrk 9 CHAPTER III Notre Dame 31 CHAPTER IV Saint Louis and his Island 54 CHAPTER V The Marais 61 CHAPTER VI The Louvre; I. The Old Masters 78 CHAPTER VII The Louvre: II, Modern Pictures and Other Treasures 97 CHAPTER VIII The TulLERlES 114 CHAPTER IX The Place be la Concorde, the Champs-Elys£es and the Invalides 132 vii viii A WANDERER IN PARIS CHAPTER X PAGE The Boulevard St. Germain and its Tributaries . .158 CHAPTER XI The Latin Quarter 170 CHAPTER XII The Pantheon and Sainte Genevieve 188 CHAPTER XIII Two Zoos 199 CHAPTER XIV The Grands Boulevards : I. The Madeleine to the Opera 214 CHAPTER XV A Chair at the CAFfi de la Paix 227 CHAPTER XVI The Grands Boulevards : II. The Opera to the Place de LA RfiPUBLIQUE 244 CHAPTER XVII MONTMARTRE 260 CHAPTER XVIII The Elysee to the H6tel de Ville 276 CHAPTER XIX The Place des Vosges and Hugo's House .... 299 CHAPTER XX The Bastille, Pere Lachaise and the End . . . 306 Index 321 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR The Rue de l'HStel de Ville The Courtyard of the Compas d'Or . The Ile ue la Cite from the Pont des Arts Notre Dame The Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile The Parc Monceau The Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel . The Place de la Concorde .... The Pont d'Alexandre III The Fontaine de M^dicis .... The Musee Cluny The Rue de Bievre The Boulevard des Italiens .... The Porte St. Denis Montmaktre from the Buttes-Chaumont- . The Place des Vosges, Southern Entrance Frontispiece To face page 20 40 S8 74 116 124 140 160 180 200 222 240 258 280 300 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN BLACK AND WHITE Giovanni Tornabuoni et les Trois Graces — Fresco from the Villa Lemmi. Botticelli (Louvre) To face page 6 The Nativity. Luini (Louvre) .... „ 1 6 From a Photograph by Mansell La Vierge aux Rochers, Leonardo da Vinci (Louvre) ....... „ 26 From a Photograph by Ncurdein Sainte Anne, La Vierge, et l'EnfAnt Jesus. Leonardo da Vinci. (Louvre) ... » 3^ From a Photograph by Neurdein La Pensee. Rodin (Luxembourg) ... ,,46 From a Photograph by Neurdein BALTHASAR CastIGLIONE. Raphael (Louvre) . „ 52 From a Photograph by Neurdein L'Homme au Gant. Titian (Louvre) . . ,,64 From a Photograph by Neurdein Portrait de Jeune Homme. Attributed to Bigio (Louvre) „ 70 From a Photograph by Alinari The Winged Victory of Samothrace. (Louvre) „ 80 From a Photograph by Giraudon La Joconde : MonnA Lisa. Leonardo da Vinci (Louvre) ....... „ 85 From a Photograph by Neurdein X LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Portrait d'une Dame et sa Fille. Van Dyck (Louvre) , To face page 94 From a Photograph by Mansell Le Vallon. Corot (Louvre, Thomy-Thierret Collection) From a Photograph by Neurdein Le Printemps. Rousseau (Louvre, Thomy-Thierret Collection) From a Photograph by Neurdein ViEUX Homme et Enfant. Ghirlandaio (Louvre) From a Photograph by Mansell Venus et l' Amour. Rembrandt (Louvre) . From a Photograph by Neurdein Les Pelerins d'Emmaus. Rembrandt (Louvre) . From a Photograph by Neurdein La Vierce au Donateur. J. van Eyck (Louvre) From a Photograph by Neurdein Le Baiser. Rodin (Luxembourg) .... From a Photograph by Neurdein La Bohemienne. Franz Hals (Louvre) . From a Photograph by Neurdein Ste. GENEVlfevE. Puvis de Chavannes (Pantheon) From a Photograph by Neurdein La Lecon de Lecture. Terburg (Louvre) , From a Photograph by Neurdein La DeNtelliere. Vermeer of Delft (Louvre) From a Photograph by Woodbury Girl's Head. Ecole de Fabriano (Louvre) •. From a Photograph by Mansell La Benedicite. Chardin (Louvre) From a Photograph by Giraudon Madame Le Bkun et sa Fille. Madame Le Brun (Louvre) From a Photograph by Hanfstaengl A WANDERER IN PARIS Le Pont db Mantes. Corot (Louvre, Thomy- Thierret Collection) To face page i.t,2 From a Photograph by Neurdein La Provende des Poules. Troyon (Louvre) . ,• 266 From a Photograph by Alinari The Wind Mill. R. P. Bonington (Louvre) . „ 274 L'Amateur d'Estampes. Daumier (Palais des Beaux Arts) ,,286 Portrait de sa Mere. Whistler (Luxembdurg) . „ 294 Portrait de Mlle. de Moreno. Granie (Luxem- bourg) . . „ 308 Le Monument ahx Morts. A. Bartholome (P6re la Chaise) ,,316 From a Photograph by Neurdein A WANDERER IN PARIS A WANDERER IN PARIS CHAPTER I THE ENGLISH GATES OF PARIS The Gare du Nord and Gare St. Lazare — The Singing Cabman — " Vivent les f emmes ! " — Characteristic Paris — The Next Morning — A Choice of Delights — The Corapas d'Or — The World of Du- mas — The First Lunch — Voisiu wins. MOST travellers from Tvondon enter Paris in the evening, and I think they are wise. I wish it were possible again and again to enter Paris in the evening for the first time; but since it is not, let me hasten to say that the pleasure of re-entering Paris in the evening is one that custom has almost no power to stale. Every time that one emerges from the Gare du Nord or the Gare St. Lazare one is taken afresh by the variegated and vivid activity of it all — the myriad purposeful self-contained bustling people, all moving on their unknown errands exactly a^ they were moving when one was here last, no matter how k)ng ago. For Paris never changes : that is one of her most precious secrets. The London which one had left seven or eight hours before was populous enough and busy enough, Heaven 2 A WANDERER IN PARIS knows, but London's pulse is slow and fairly regular, and even at her gayest, even whep greeting Royalty, she seems to be advising caution and a careful de- meanour. But Paris — Paris smiles and Paris sings. There is an incredible vivacity in her atmosphere. Sings ! This reminds me that oil the first occasion that I entered Paris — in the evening, of course — my cabman sang. He sang all the vjay from the Gare du Nord to the Rue Caumartin. This seemed to me delightful and odd, although at first I felt in danger of attracting more attention than one likes; but as we proceeded down the Rue Lafayette -^ which nothing but song and the fact that it is the high road into Paris from England can render tolerable — I discovered that no one minded us. A singing cabman in London would bring out the Riot Act and the military; but here he was in the picture: no one threw at the jolly fellow any of the chilling deprecatory glances which are the birthright of every light-hearted eccentric in my own land. And so we proceeded to the hotel, often escaping collision by the breadth of a single hair, the driver singing all the way. What he sang I kne^Y not: but I doubt if it was of battles long ago: rather, I should fancy, of very present love and mischief. But how fitting a first entry into Paris ! An hour or so later — it was just twenty years ago, but I remember it so clearly — I observed written up in chalk in large emotional letters on: a public wall the words " Vivent les femmes ! " and they seemed to me also THE FOREIGN-NESS OF IT 3 so odd — it seemed to me so funny that the sentiment should be recorded at all, since women were obviously going to live whatever happened — that I laughed aloud. But it was not less characteristic of Paris than the joyous baritone notes that had proceeded from beneath the white tall hat of my cocher. It was as natural for one Parisian to desire the continuance of his joy as a lover, even to expressing it in chalk in the street, as to another to beguile with lyrical snatches the tedium of cab-driving. I was among the Latin people, and, as I quickly began to discover, I was myself, fbr the first time, a foreigner. That is a discovery which one quickly makes in Paris. But I have not done yet with the joy of entering and re-entering Paris in the evening — after the long smooth journey across the marshes of Picardy or through the orchards of Normandy and the valley of the Seine — whichever way one travels. But whether one travels by Calais, Boulogne, Dieppe or Havre, whether one alights at the Gare du Nord or St. Lazare, once outside the station one is in Paris instantly: there is no debatable land between either of these termini and the city, as there is, for example, between the Gare de Lyons and the city. Paris washes up to the very platforms. A few steps and here are the foreign tables on the pave- ments and the foreign waiters, so brisk and clean, flitting among them ; here are the vehicles meeting and passing on the wrong or foreign side, and beyond that 4 A WANDERER IN ^'ARIS knowing apparently no law at all; here are the deep- voiced newsvendors shouting those' magic words La Patrie! La Patrie! which, should a musician ever write a Paris symphony, would recur and recur continually beneath its surface harmonies. And here, everywhere, are the foreign people in their ordered haste and their countless numbers. The pleasure of entering and re-^tering Paris in the evening is only equalled by the pleasure of stepping forth into the street the next morning in the sparkling Parisian air and smelling again the pungent Parisian scent and gathering in the foreign look of the place. I know of no such exuberance as one draws in with these first Parisian inhalations on a fine morning in May or June — and in Paris in May and Tune It is always fine, just as in Paris in January and Febri^ary it is always cold or wet. His would be a very sluggish or disenchanted spirit who was not thus exhilarated ;' for here at his feet is the holiday city of Europe and the clean sun over all. And then comes the question " What to do ? " Shall we go at once to "Monna Lisa?" But could there be a better morning for the childten in the Champs Elysees ? That beautiful head in the His de la Salle collection — attributed to the school of Fabriano ! How delightfully the sun must be lighting up the red walls of the Place des Vosges ! Rodin's "Kiss" at the Lux- embourg — we meant to go straight to that ! The wheel window in Notre Dame, in the nortlj transept — I have been thinking of that ever since we planned to come. THE COMPAS D'OR 5 So may others talk and act ; but I have no hesitan- cies. My duty is clear as crystal. On the first morning I pay a visit of reverence and delight to the ancient auberge of the Compas d'Or at No. 64 Rue Montor- gueil. And this I shall always do until it is razed to the earth, as it seems likely to be under the gigantic scheme, beyond Haussmann almost, which is to renovate the most picturesque if the least sanitary portions of old Paris at a cost of over thirty millions of pounds. Unhappy day — may it be long postponed ! For some years now I have always approached the Compas d'Or with trembling and foreboding. Can it still be there? I ask myself. Can that wonderful wooden hanger that covers half the courtyard have held so long? Will there be a motor-car among the old diligences and waggons ? But it is always the same. From the street — and the Rue Montorgueil is as a whole one of the most picturesque and characteristic of the older streets of Paris, with its high white houses, each containing fifty families, its narrowness, its bar- rows of fruit and green stuff by both pavements, and its crowds of people — from the street, the Compas d'Or is hardly noticeable, for a butcher and a cutler occupy most of its fa9ade ; but the sign and the old carvings over these shops give away the secret, and you pass through one of the narrow archways on either side and are straightway in a romance by the great Dumas. Into just such a courtyard would D'Artagnan have dashed, and leaping from one sweating steed leap on another 6 A WANDERER IN PARIS and be off again amid a shower of sparks on the stones. Time has stood still here. There is no other such old inn Teft. The coach to Dreux — now probably a carrier's cart — still regularly runs from this spot, as it has done ever since the beginning of the sixteenth century. Rows of horses stand in its massive stables and fill the air with their warm and friendly scent ; a score of ancient carts huddle in the yard, in a corner of which there will probably be a little group of women shelling* peas ; beneath the enormous hanger are more vehicles, and masses of hay on which the carters sleep. The ordinary noise of Paris gives way, in this sanctuary of antiquity, to the scraping of hoofs, the rattle of halter bolts, and the clatter of the wooden shoes of ostlers. It is the past in actual being — Civilisation, like Time, has stood still in the yard of the Compas d'Or. That is why I hasten to it so eagerly and shall always do so until it disappears for ever. There is nothing else in Paris like it. And after ? Well, the next thing is to have lunch. And since this lunch — being the first — will be the best lunch of the holiday and therefore the best meal of the holiday (for every meal on a holiday in Paris is a little better than that which follows it). It is an enterprise not lightly to be undertaken. One must decide carefully, for this is to be an extravagance: the search for the little out-of-the-way restaurant wiU come later. To- day we are rich. This book is not a guide for the gastronome and w u < o o H w o p <; Si o H Z o CHEZ VOISIN 7 gourmet. How indeed could it be, even although when heaven sends a cheerful hour one would scorn to refrain ? Yet none the less it would be pleasant in this commentary upon a city illustrious for its culinary ingenuity and genius to say something of restaurants. But what is one to say here on such a theme ? Volumes are needed. Everyone has his own taste. For me Voisin's remains and will, I imagine, remain the most distinguished, the most serene, restaurant in Paris, in its retired situation at the corner of the Rue Sainte- Honore and the Rue Cambon, with its simple decoration, its unhastening order and despatch, its Napoleonic head- waiter, its Bacchic wine-waiter (with a head that calls for vine leaves) and its fastidious cuisine. To Voisin's I should always make my way when I wished not only to be delicately nourished but to be quiet and philo- sophic and retired. Only one other restaurant do I know where the cooking gives me the satisfaction of Voisin's — where excessive richness never intrudes — and that is a discovery of my own and not lightly to be given away. Voisin's is a name known all over the world : one can say nothing new about Voisin's ; but the little restaurant with which I propose to tantalise you, although the resort of some of the most thoughtful eaters in Paris, has a reputation that has not spread. It is not cheap, it is little less dear indeed than the Cafe Anglais or Paillard's, to name the two restaurants of renown which are nearest to it ; its cellar is poor and limited to half a dozen wines ; its two rooms are minute 8 A WANDERER IN PARIS and hot ; but the idea of gastronomy feigns — everything is subordinated to the food and the cooking. If you order a trout, it is the best trout that France can breed, and it is swimming in the kitchen at the time the sohtary waiter repeats your command ; no such aspara- gus reaches any other Paris restaurant, no such Pre Sale and no such wild strawberries. But I have said enough ; almost I fear I have said too much. These discoveries must be kept sacred. And for lunch to-day? Shall it be chez Voisin, or chez Foyot, by the Senat, or chez Laperouse (where the two Stevensons used to eat and talk) on the Quai des Augustins ? Or shall it be at my nameless restaurant ? Voisin's to-day, I think. CHAPTER II THE ILE DE LA CIT]6 Paris Old and New — The Heart of France — Saint Louis — Old Palaces — Henri IV.'s Statue — Ironical Changes — The Seine and the Thames — The Quais and their Old Books — Diderot and the Lady — Police and Red Tape — The Cbnciergerie — Marie An- toinette — Paris and its Clocks — Meryon's Etchings — French Advocates — A Hall of Babel — Sainte Ciiapelle — French News- papers Serious and Comic — The Only Joke — The English and the French. WHERE to begin ? That is a-problem in the writ- ing of every book, but peculiarly so with Paris ; because, however one may try to be chronological, the city is such a blend of old and new that that design is frustrated at every turn. Nearly every building of importance stands on the site of some other which instantly jerks us back hundreds of years, while if we deal first with the original structure, such as the re- mains of the Roman Thermes at the Cluny, built about 300, straightway the Cluny itself intrudes, and we leap from the third century to the nineteenth ; or if we trace the line of the wall of Philip Augustus we come swiftly to so modern an institution as the Mont-de-Piete ; or if we climb to such a recent thoroughfare as the Boule- vard de Clichy, with its palpitatingly novel cabarets 10 A WANDERER IN PARIS and allurements, we must in order to do so ascend a mountain which takes its name from the martyrdom of St. Denis and his companions in the third century. It is therefore well, since Paris is such a tangle of past and present, to disregard order altogether and to let these pages reflect her character. Expect then, dear reader, to be twitched about the ages without mercy. Let us begin in earnest by leaving the mainland and adventuring upon an island. For the heart of Paris is enisled : Notre Dame, Sainte Chapelle, the Palais de Justice, the Hotel Dieu, the Prefecture de Police, the Morgue — all are entirely surrounded by water. The history of the Cite is the history ctf Paris, almost the history of France. Paris, the home of the Parisii, cbnsisted of nothing but this island when Julius Caesar' arrived there with his conquering host. The Romans built their palace here, and here Julian the Apostate loved to sojourn. It was in Julian's reign that the name was changed from Lutetia (which it is still called by picturesque writers) to Parisea Civitas, from wlych Paris is an easy derivative. The Cite remained the home of govern- ment when the Merovingians under Clovis expelled the Romans, and again under the Carlpvingians. The second Royal Palace was begun by the first of the Capets, Hugh, in the tenth century, and it was com- pleted by Robert the Pious in the eleventh. Louis VII. decreed Notre Dame; but it was Saint Louis, reigning from 1226 to 1270, who was the father of the THE GROWTH OF PARIS 11 Cite as we know it. He it was who built Sainte Chapelle, and it was he who surrendered part of the Palace to the Law. While it was the home of the Court and the Church the island naturally had little enough room for ordinary residents, who therefore had to live,, whether aristocrats or tradespeople, on the mainland, either on the north or south side of the river. The north side for the most part was given to merchants, the south to scholars, for Saint Louis was the builder not only of Sainte Chapelle but also of the Sorbonne. Very few of the smaller buildings of that time now remain: the oldest Paris that one now wanders in so delightedly, whether on the north bank or the south, whether near the Sor- bonne or the Hotel de Sens, dates, with a few fortunate exceptions, from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Nowhere may the growth of Paris be better observed and better understood than on the highest point on this Island of the City — on the sumrnit of Notre Dame. Standing there you quickly comprehend the Paris of the ages : from Caesar's Lutetia, occupying the island only and surrounded by fields and wastes, to the Paris of this year of our Lord, spreading over the neighbouring hills, such a hive of human activity and energy as will hardly bear thinking of — a Paris which has thrown off the yoke not only of the kings that Once were all-power- ful but of the Church too. By the twelfth century the kings of France had be- gun to live in smaller palaces more to their personal 12 A WANDERER IN PARIS taste, such as the Hotel Barbette, the Hotel de Sens, (much of which still stands, as a glass factory, at the corner of the Rue d'Hotel de Ville and the Rue de Figuier, one of the oldest of the Paris mansions), the Hotel de Bourgogne (in the Rue Etienne Marcel : you may still see its tower of Saint Jean Sans Peur), the Hotel de Nevers (what remains of which is at the corner of the Rue Colbert and Rue Richelieu), and, of course, the Louvre. Charles VII. (1422-1461) was the first king to settle at the Louvre permanently. To gain the He de la Cite we leave the mainland of Paris at the Quai du Louvre, and make our crossing by the Pont Neuf. Neuf no longer, for as a matter of historical fact it is now the oldest of afll the Paris bridges : that is, in its foundations, for the visible part of it has been renovated quite recently. The first stone of it was laid by Henri III. in 1578: it was not ready for many years, but in 1603 Henri IVi (of Navarre) ven- tured across a plank of it on his way to the Louvre, after several previous adventurer^ had broken their necks in the attempt. " So much the less kings they," was his comment. He lived to see the bridge fin- ished. Behind the statue of this monarch, whom the French still adore, is the garden that finishes off the west end of the He very prettily, sending its branches up above the parapet, as Mr. Dexter's drawing shows. Here we may stop; for we are now on the Island itself, midway be- tween the two halves of the bridge, and the statue has A DOUBLE-NAPOLEON 13 such a curious history, so typical of the French character, that I should like to tell it. The original bronze figure, erected by Louis XIII. in 1G14, was taken down in 1792, a time of stress, and melted into a commodity that was then of vastly greater importance than the effigies of kings — namely cannon. (As we shall see in the course of this book, Paris left the hands of' the Revolutionaries a totally different city from the Paris of 1791.) Then came peace again, and then came Napoleon, and in the collection at the Archives is to be seen a letter written by the Emperor from Schonbrunn, on August 15th, 1809, stating that he wishes an obelisk to be erected on the site of the Henri IV. statue — an obelisk of Cherbourg granite, 180 pieds d'elevation, with the inscription "I'Empereur Napoleon au Peuple Francais." That, however, was not done. Time passed on. Napoleon fell, and Louis XVIII. returned from his English home to the throne of France and was not long in perpetrating one of those symmet- rical ironical jests which were then in vogue. Taking from the Vendome column the bronze statue of Napoleon (who was safely under the thumb of Sir Hudson Lowe at St. Helena, well out of mischief), and to this adding a second bronze statue of the same usurper intended for some other site, the monarch directed that they should be melted into liquid from which a new statue of Henri IV. — the very one at which we are at this moment gazing — ■ should be cast. It was done, and though to the Rontgcn-rayed vision of the cynic it may appear 14 A WANDERER IN PARIS to be nothing more or less than a double Napoleon, it is to the world at large Hen^i IV., the hero of Ivry. I have seen comparisons between the Seine and the Thames ; but they are pointless. You cannot compare them: one is a London river, and the other is a Paris river. The Seine is a river of light; the Thames is a river of twilight. The Seine is gay; the Thames is sombre. When dusk falls in Paris the Seine is just a river in the evening; when dusk falls in London the Thames becomes a wonderful mystery, an enchanted stream in a land of old romance. The Thames is, I think, vastly more beautiful ; but on the other hand, the Thames has no merry passenger steamers and no storied quais. The Seine has all the advanta!ge when we come to the consideration of what can be done with a river's banks in a great city. For the Seine has ^ mile of old book and curiosity stalls, whereas the Tha*mes has nothing. And yet the coping of the Thames embankment is as suitable for such a purpose as that of the Seine, and as many Londoners are fond of books. How is it ? Why should all the bookstalls and curiosity stalls of London be in Whitechapel and Farringdon Street and the Cattle Market .'' That is a mysteiy which I have never solved and never shall. Why are the West Central and the West districts wholly debarred — save in Charing Cross Road, and that I believe is suspect — from loitering at such alluring street banquets? It is beyond under- standing. THE BOOK STALLS 15 The history of the stall-holders of the quais has been told very engagingly by M. Octave Uzanne, whom one might describe as the Austin Dobson and the Augustine Birrell of France, in his work Bovquinistes et Bouquin- eurs. They established themselves first on the Pont Neuf, but in 1650 were evicted. (The Paris bridges, I might say here, become at the present time the resort of every kind of pedlar directly anything occurs to suspend their traffic.) The parapets of the quais then took the place of those of the bridge, and there the booksellers' cases have been ever since. But no longer are they the gay resort that once they were. It was considered, says M. Uzanne, writing of the eighteenth century, "quite the correct thing for the promenaders to gossip round the book- stalls and discuss the wit and fashionable writings of the day. At all hours of the day these quarters were much frequented, above all by literary men, lawyers' clerks and foreigners. One historical fact, not gener- ally known, merits our attention, for it shows that not only the libraries and the stall-keepers assisted in draw- ing men of letters to the vicinity of the Hotel Mazarin, but there also existed a ' rendez-voiis ' for the sale of English and French journals. It Was, in fact, at the corner of the Rue Dauphine and the Quai Conti that the first establishment known as the Cafe Anglais was started. One read in big letters on the sign board: Cafe Anglais — Becket, proprietaire. This was the meeting place of the greater part of English writers 16 A WANDERER IN PARIS visiting Paris who wished to become acquainted with the literary men of the period, the encyclopsedists and poets of the Court of Louis XV. This Cafe ofifered to its habitues the best-known EngHsh papers of the day, the Westminster Gazette, the London Evening Post, the Daily Advertiser, and the various pamphlet's published on the other side of the Channel. . . . " You must know that the Quai Gonti up to the year 1769 was only a narrow passage leading down to a place for watering horses. Between the Pont Neuf and the building known as the Chateau-Gaillard at the opening of the Rue Guenegaud, were several small shops and a small fair continually going on. "This Chateau-Gaillard, which was a dependency of the old Porte de Nesle, had been granted by Francis I. to Benvenuto Cellini. The famous Florentine gold- smith received visits from the Sovereign protector of arts and here executed the work he' had been ordered to do, under his Majesty's very eyes. . . . "One calls to mind that Sterne, in his delightful Sentimental Journey, was set down m 1767 at the Hotel de Mod^ne, in the Rue Jacob, opposite the Rue des Deux- Anges, and one has not forgotten his love for the quais and the adventure which befell him while chatting to a bookseller on the Quai Conti, of wh©m he wished to buy a copy of Shakespeare so that he might read once more Polonius' advice to his son before starting on his travels. "Diderot, in his Salon of 1761, relates his flirtation with the pretty girl who served in one of these shops THE NATIVITY LUINI i^Louvre) THE FREE READERS 17 and afterwards became the wife of Menze. She called herself Miss Babuti and kept a small book shop on the Quai des Augustins, spruce and upright, white as a lily and red as a rose. I would enter hdr shop, in my own brisk way : " Mademoiselle, the ' Contes de la Fontaine ' . . . a'Petronius' if you please." — " Here you are. Sir. Do you want any other books ?" — "Forgive me, yes." — " What is it ? " — " La ' Religieuse en Chemise.' " — " For shame. Sir ! Do you read such trash ? " — " Trash, is it, Mademoiselle? I did not know. . . ."'" M. Uzanne's pages are filled with such charming gossip and with character-sketches of the most famous booksellers and book-hunters. One pretty trait that would have pleased Mary Lamb (and perhaps did, in 1822, when her brother took her to the "Boro' side of the Seine") is mentioned by M. Uzanne: "The stall- keeper on the quais always has ah indulgent eye for the errand boy or the little bonne [slavey] who stops in front of his stall and consults gratis ' La Clef des Songes ' or the ' Le Secretaire des Dames.' Who would not com- mend him for this kind toleration ? In fact it is very rare to find the bookseller in such" cases not shutting his eyes — metaphorically — and refraining from walk- ing up to the reader, for fear of frightening her away. And then the young girl moves off with a light step, repeating to herself the style of letter or the explanation of a dream, rich in hope and illusions for the rest of the day." But the best description of the book-hunter of the 18 A WANDERER IN PARIS quais is that given to Dumas by Chafles Nodier. " This animal," he said, "has two legs and is featherless, wanders usually up and down the quais and the boule- vards, stopping at all the old bookstalls, turning over every book on them; he is habitually clad in a coat that is too long for him and trousers that are too short; he always wears on his feet shoes that are down at the heel, a dirty hat on his head, and, under his coat and over his trousers, a waistcoat fastened together with string. One of the signs by which he can be recognised is that he never washes his hands." Henri IV. 's statue faces the Place Dauphine and the west fa9ade of the Palais de Justice^ At No. 28 in the Place Dauphine Madame Roland was born, little think- ing she was destined one day to be imprisoned in the neighbouring Conciergerie, which, to those who can face the difficulties of obtaining a ticket of admission, is one of the most interesting of th§ Island's many in- teresting buildings. But the process is not easy, and there is only one day in the week oh which the prison is shown. The tickets are issued at the Prefecture of Police — the Scotland Yard of Paris — which is the large building opposite Sainte Chapelle. One ma^ either write or call. I advise writing; for calling is riot as simple as it sounds : simplicity and sightseeing in Paris being indeed not on the best terms. It was not until I had asked five several officials that I found even the right door of the vast structure, and then having passed a room THE KINDLY POLICE 19 full of agents (or policemen) smoking and jesting, and having climbed to a third storey, I was in danger of los- ing for ever the privilege of seeing what I had fixed my mind upon, wholly because, although I knew the name and street of my hotel, I did not know its number. Who ever dreamed that hotels have numbers ? Has the Savoy a number in the Strand ? Is the Ritz numbered in Piccadilly? Not that I was living in any such splendour, but still, on the face of it, a hotel has a name because it has no number. " C'est egal," the gentleman said at last, after a pantomime of impossibility and reproach, and I took my ticket, bowed to the ground, replaced my hat and was free to visit the Conciergerie on the morrow. Such are the amenities of the tourist's life. Let me here say that the agents of Paris are by far its politest citizens, and in appearance the healthiest. I have never met an uncivil agent, and I once met one who refused a tip after he had been of considerable service to me. Never did I attempt to tip another. They have their defects, no doubt: they have not the authority that we give our police: their management of traffic is pathetically incompetent ; but they are street gentlemen and the foreigner has no better friend. The Conciergerie is the building on the Quai d'Hor- loge with the circular towers beneath extinguishers — an impressive sight from the bridges and the other bank of the river. Most of its cells are now used as rooms for soldiers (Andre Chenier's dungeon is one of their 20 A WANDERER IN TARIS kitchens) ; but a few rooms of the deepest historical interest have been left as they were. These are dis- played by a listless guide who rises to animation only when the time comes to receive his benefice and offer for sale a history of his preserves. One sees first the vaulted Salle Sajnt Louis, called the Salle des Pas Perdus because it wag through it that the victims of the Revolution walked on their way to the Cour de Mai and execution. The terribly significant name has since passed to the great lobby of the Palais de Justice immediately above it, where it has less ap- propriateness. It is of course the cell of Marie Antoin- ette that is the most poignant spot in* this grievous place. When the Queen was here the present room was only about half its size, having a partition across it, behind which two soldiers were continually, on guard, day and night. The Queen was kept here, suffering every kind of indignity and petty tyranny, from September 11th, 1793, until October 16th. Her chair, in which she sat most of the time, faced the window .of the courtyard. A few acts of kindness reached Ijer in spite of the vigilance of the authorities ; but very few. I quote the account of two from the official guide, a poor thing, which I was weak enough to buy : " The Queen had no complaint to make against the coneierges Richard nor their successors the Baults. It i.s told that one day, about the end of August, Richard asked a fruitseller in the neighbourhood to select him the best of her melons, whatever it might cost. ' It is for a very important c H Z O Id td A HUMAN INTERliUDE 21 personage then ? ' said the seller disdainfully, looking at the concierge's threadbare clothes. ' Yes,' said he, ' it is for someone who was once very imjiortant ; she is so no longer; it is for the Queen.' 'The Queen,' exclaimed the tradeswoman, turning over all her melons, 'the Queen ! Oh, poor woman ! Here, make her eat that, and I won't have you pay for it. . . .' " One of the gendarmes on duty having smoked dur- ing the night, learnt the following day that the Queen, whom he noticed was very pale, had suffered from the smell of tobacco ; he smashed his pipe, swearing not to smoke any more. It was he also who said to those who came in contact with Marie Antoinette: 'Whatever you do, don't say anything to her about her children.'" For her trial the Queen was taken to the Tribunal sitting in what is now the First Circle Chamber of the Palais de Justice, and led back in the evening to her cell. She was condemned to death on the fifteenth, and that night wrote a letter to her sister-in-law Elizabeth which we shall see in the Archives Nationales: it is firmly written. The Conciergerie had many other prisoners, but none so illustrious. Robespierre occupied for twenty-four hours the little cell adjoining that of the Queen, now the vestry of the chapel. Madame Du Barry and Madame Recamier had cells adjacent to that of Madame Roland. Later Marechal Ney was imprisoned here. The oldest part of all — the kitchens of Saint Louis — are not shown. 22 A WANDERER IN PARIS The Pont au Change, the bridge which connects the Place du Chatelet with the Boulevard du Palais, the main street of the lie de la Cite, was once (as the Ponte Vecchia at Florence still is) the headquarters of gold- smiths and small bankers. Not the least of the losses that civilisation and rebuilders have brought upon us is the disappearance of the shops and houses from the bridges. Old London Bridge — how one regrets that ! At the corner of the ConciergerieS is the Horloge that gives the Quai its name — a floridly decorated clock which by no means conveys the impression that it has kept time for over five hundred years and is the oldest exposed time-piece in France. Paris, by the way, is very poor in public clocks, and those that she has are not too trustworthy. The one over the Gare St. Lazare has perhaps the best reputation; but time in Paris is not of any great importance. For most Parisians there is an inner clock which strikes with perfect regularity at about twelve and seven, and nd other hours really matter. And yet a certain show pf marking time is made in the hotels, where every roOm has an elaborate ormolu clock, usually under a glass case and rarely going. And in one hotel I remember a large clock on every landing, of which I passed three on my way up- slairs ; and their testimony was so various that it was two hours later by each, so that by the time I had reached my room it was nearly time to get up. On ask- ing the waiter the reason he said ij was because they were synchronised by electricity. MERYON 23 There has been a Tour de I'Horloge at this corner of the Conciergerie ever since it was ordained by Philippe le Bel in 1299 ; the present clock, or at least its scheme of decoration, dates, however, from. Henri III.'s reign, about 1585. The last elaborate restoration was in 1852. In the tower above was a bell that was rung only on rare occasions. The usual accounts of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew say that the signal for that outrage was sounded by the bell of St. Germain I'Auxerrois; but others give it to the bell of the Tour de I'Horloge. As they are some distance from each other, perhaps both were concerned ; but since St. Germain I'Auxerrois is close to the Louvre, where the King was waiting for the carnage to begin, it is prob- able that it rang the first notes. One of Meryon's most impressive and powerful etch- ings represents the Tour de I'Horloge and the fa9ade of the Conciergerie. It is a typical example of his strange and gloomy genius, for while it is nothing else in the world but what it purports to be, it is also quite unlike the Tour de I'Horloge and the fa9ade of the Conciergerie as any ordinary eyes have seen them. They are made terrible and sinister: they have been passed through the dark crucible of Meryon's mind. To see Paris as Meryon saw it needs a great effort of imagination, so swiftly and instinctively do these people remove the traces of unhappiness or disaster. It is the nature of Paris to smile and to forget; from any lapse into woe she recovers with extraordinary rapidity. 24 A WANDERER IN PARIS Meryon's Paris glowers and shudders ; there is blood on her hands and guilt in her he%rt. I will not say that this concept is untrue, because I believe that the concept formed by a man of genius is always true, al- though it may not contain all the truth, and indeed one has to recall very little history to fall easily into Meryon's mood ; but for the visitor who has Chosen Paris for his holiday — the typical reader, for exa,mple, of this book - — Mr. Dexter's concept of Paris is a more natural one. (I wish, by the way, before it is too Tate, that Mr. Muir- head Bone would devote some time to the older parts of the city — particularly to the Marais. How it lies to his hand !) Since we are at the gates of the Palais de Justice, let us spend a little time among the advocates and their clients in the great hall — the Salle des Pas Perdus. (In an interesting work, by the way, on this building, with a preface by the younger Dumas, the amendment, "La Salle du temps perdu" is recommended.) The French law courts, as a whole, are little different from our own : they have the same stuffiness, they give the same impression of being divided between the initiated and the uninitiated, the little secret society of the Bar and the great innocent world. But the Salle des Pas Perdus is another thing altogether. There is nothing like that in the Strand. Our Strand counsel are a dignified, clean-shaven, be-wigged race, striving to appear old and inscrutable and important. They are careful of ap- pearances; they receive instructions only through soli- THE ADVOCATES 25 citors; they affect to weigh their words; sagacious reserve is their fetish. Hence our law courts, although there are many consultations and incessant passings to and fro, are yet subdued in tone and overawing to the talkative. But the Palais de Justice ! — Babel was inaudible beside it. In the Palais de Justice everyone talks at once ; no one cares a sou for appearances or reticence ; there are no wigs, no shorn lips, no affectation of a superhuman knowledge of the world. The French advocate comes into direct communication with his client — for the most part here. The movement as well as the vociferation is incessant, for out of this great hall open as many doors as there are in a French farce, and every door is continually swinging. Indeed, that is the chief effect conveyed : that one is watching a farce, since there has never been a farce yet without a legal gentleman in his robes and black velvet cap. The chief difference is that here there are hundreds of them. As a final touch of humour, or lack of gravity, I may add that notices forbidding smoking are numerous, and every advocate and every client is puffing hard at his cigarette. Victor Hugo's Notre Dame begins, it will be remem- bered, in the great Hall of the Palais de Justice, where Gringoire's neglected mystery play was performed and Quasimodo won the prize for ugliness. The Hall, as Hugo says, was burned in 1618: by a fire which, he tells us, was made necessary by the presence in the 26 A WANDERER IN J»ARIS archives of the Palais of the docunjents in the case of the assassination of Henri IV. by Ravaillac. Certain of Ravaillac's accompUces and instigators wishing these papers to disappear, the fire followed as a matter of course, as naturally as in China a house had to be burned down before there could be roast pig. Sainte Chapelle, which, with the kitchens of Saint Louis under the Conciergerie, is all that remains of the royal period of the Palais de Justice, is, except on Mondays, always open during the reasonable daylight hours and is wholly free from vexatious restrictions. Sanctity having passed from it, the French sightseers do not even remove their hats, although I have noticed that the English and Americans still find the habit too strong. The Chapelle may easily disappoint, for such is the dimness of its religious light that little is visible save the dark coloured windows. One is, however, conscious of perfect proportions and such ecclesiastical elegance as paint and gold can convey. It is in fact exquisite, yet not with an exquisiteness of simplicity but of design and elaboration. It is like a jewel — almost a trinket — which Notre Dame might have once worn on her breast and tired of. Its flethe is really beauti- ful ; it darts into the sky with only less assurance and joy than that of Notre Dame, and I always look up with pleasure to the angel on the eastern point of the roof. What one has the greatest difficulty in believing is that Saint Chapelle is six hundred and fifty years old. "pfWI^^^r-^ LA VIERGE AUX ROCHERS LEONARDO DA VINCI [Louvre^ A CITY OF JOURNALISTS 27 It was built for the relics brought from the Crusades by Saint Louis, which are now in the Treasury of Notre Dame. The Chapel has, of course, known the restorer's hand, but it is virtually the original structure, and some of the original glass is still here preserved amid reconstructions. To me Sainte Chapelle's glass makes little appeal; but many of my friends talk of nothing else. Let us thank God for differences of taste. Dur- ing the Commune (as recently as 1871) an attempt was made to burn Sainte Chapelle, together with the Palais de Justice, but it just failed. That was the third fire it has survived. From Sainte Chapelle we pass through the Rue de Lutece, which is opposite, across the Boulevard, because there is a statue here of some interest — that of Re- naudon, who lived in the first half of the seventeenth century at No. 8 Quai du Marche Neuf, close by, and founded in 1631 the first French newspaper, the Gazette de France. Little could he have foreseen the conse- quences of his rash act ! It is amusing to stand here a while and meditate on the torrent that has proceeded from that small spring. Other cities have as busy a journalistic life as Paris, and in London the paper boys are more numerous and insistent, while in London we have also the contents' bills, which are unknown to France; and yet Paris seems to me to be more a city of newspapers than even London is. Perhaps it is the kiosques that convey the impression. The London paper and the Paris papers could not 28 A WANDERER IN PARIS well be more different. In the matter of size, Paris, I think, has all the advantage, for oije may read every- thing in a few minutes ; but in the njatter of ingredients the advantage surely lies with us, f®r although English papers tell far too much, and by their own over-curious- ness foster inquisitiveness and busy-bodydom, yet they have some sense of what is important, and one can always find the significant news by hunting for it. In Paris this is less easy. What one will find, however, is a short story or a literary essay written with distinction, an anecdote of the day by no means adapted for the young person, and a number of trumpery tragedies of passion or excess, minutely told. The signed articles are always good, and when critical usually fearless, but the unsigned notices of a new play or spectacle credit it with perfection in every detail; and here, at any rate, as in our best reviews of books, we are in a position to feel some of the satisfaction that proceeds from conscious superiority. But it has to be remembered in Paris, people go to the theatre automatically, whereas we pick and choose and have our reasons ; and therefore an honest criticism of a play is of little importance there. The Paris Daily Mail seems to have fallen into line Yery naturally, for I find in it on the morning on which I write these lines a puff of the Capucines revue, sayihg that it kept the house in continous laughter by its innocent fun, and will doubtless draw all Paris. As if (i) the laughter of any Paris theatre was ever continuous, and as if (ii) THE ONE JOKE 29 there was ever any innocent fun at the Capucines, and as if (iii) all Paris would go near that theatre if there were ! One reason, I imagine, for the diffuseness of the English paper and the brevity of the French, is that the English have so little natural conversation that they find it useful to acquire news on which to base more ; while the French need no such assistance. The English again are interested in other nations, whereas the French care nothing for any land but France. There is no space in which to continue this not un- tempting analysis: it would require much room, for to understand thoroughly the difference between, say, the Daily Telegrafh and the Journal is to understand the difference between England and France. The French comic papers one sees everywhere — ex- cept in people's hands. I suppose they are bought, or they would not be published; but I have hardly ever observed a Frenchman reading one that was his own property. The fault of the French comic paper is monotony. Voltaire accused the English of having seventy religions and only one sauce ; my quarrel with the French is that they have seventy sauces and only one joke. This joke you meet everywhere. Artists of diabolical cleverness illustrate it in colours every week ; versifiers and musicians introduce it into songs ; comic singers sing it; playwrights dramatise it; nov- elists and journalists weave it into prose. It is the oldest joke and it is ever new. Nothing can prevent a Parisian laughing at it as if it were as fresh as his roll, 30 A WANDERER IN PARIS his journal or his petit Gervais. For a people with a world-wide reputation for wit, this is very strange ; but in some directions the French are incorrigibly juvenile, almost infantine. Personally I ei^vy them for it. I think it must be charming never to grow out of such an affection for indecency that even a nursery mishap can still be always funny. One of the comic papers must, however, be exempted from these generalisations. Le Rire^ Le Journal Amus- ant. La Vie Parisienne and the scores of cheaper imita- tions may depend for their living on the one joke ; but L'Assiette au Beurre is more serious. L'Assiette au Beurre is first and foremost a satirist. It chastises continually, and its whip is often scorpions. Even its lighter numbers, chiefly given to ridicule, contain streaks of savagery. At the end of the brief Rue de Lutece is the great Hotel Dieu, the oldest hospital in Paris, having been founded in the seventh century ; and to the left of it is one of the Paris flower markets, where much beautiful colour may be seen very formally and unintelligently arranged. Gardens are among those things that we order (or shall I say disorder ?) better than the French do. And now we will enter Notre Dame. CHAPTER III NOTRE DAME Pagan Origins and Christian Predecessors — The beginnings of Notre Dame — Victor Hugo ^ The Dangers of Renovation — Old Glass and New — A Wedding — The Cathedral's Great Moment — The Hundred Poor Girls and Louis XVI. — The Revolution — Mrs. Momoro, Goddess of Reason — The Legend of Our Lady of the Bird — Coronation of Napoleon — The Communards and the Students — The Treasures of the Sacristy — Three Hundred and Ninety-seven Steps — Quasimodo and Esmeralda — Paris at our Feet — The Eiffel Tower — The Devils of Notre Dame — The Pre- cincts — Notre Dame from the Quai. IF the lie de la Cite is the eye of Paris, then, to adapt one of Oliver Wendell Holmes' metaphors, Notre Dame is its pupil. It stands on ground that has been holy, or at least religious, for many centuries, for part of its site was once occupied by the original mother church of Paris, St. Etienne, built in" the fourth century ; and close by, in the Place du Paryis, have been dis- covered the foundations of another church, dating from the sixth century, dedicated to Saint Marie; while beneath that are the remains of a Temple of Apollo or Jupiter, relics of which we shall see at the Cluny. The origin of Notre Dame, the fusion of these two churches, is wrapped in darkness; but Victor Hugo roundly 31 32 A WANDERER IN PARIS states that the first stone of it was laid by Charlemagne (who reigned from 768 to 814, and whose noble eques- trian statue stands just outside), and the last by Philip Augustus, who was a friend of our Richard Coeur de Lion. The more usual account of the older parts of the Notre Dame that one sees to-day is that the first stone of it was laid in 1163, in the reign of Louis VII. by Pope Alexander III., who chanced then to be in Paris engaged in the task of avoiding his enemies, the Ghibellines, and that in almost exactly a hundred years, in the reign of Saint Louis, it was completed. (I say completed, but as a matter of fact »it is not completed even yet, for each of the square towers was designed to carry a spire, and I remember seeing at the Paris Exhibition of 1889 a number of drawings of the cathedral by young architects, with these spires added. It is, however, very unlikely that they will ever sprout, and I, for one, hope not.) Victor Hugo is, of course, if not the first authority on Notre Dame, its most sympathetic poet, lover and eulogist ; and it seems ridiculous /or me to attempt description when every book shop in Paris has a copy of his rich and fantastic romance, Book III. of which is an interlude in the story wholly given to the glory of the cathedral. You may read there not only of what Notre Dame is, but of what it is hot and should be: the shortcomings of architects and the vandalism of mobs are alike reported. Mobs ! Paris is seared with cicatrices from the hands of her matricidal children, and NOTRE DAME 33 Notre Dame especially so. Attempts to set her on fire were made not only by the revolutionaries but by the Communards too. These she resisted, but much of her statuary went during the Revolution, the assailants sparing the Last Judgment on the fafade, but account- ing very swiftly for a series of kings of Israel and Judah (who, however, have since been replaced) under the im- pression that they were monarchs of native growth and therefore not to be endured. The statue of the Virgin in the centre of the fa9ade, with Adam and Eve on each side, is not, I may say, the true Notre Dame of Paris: She is within the church — much older and simpler, on a column to the right of the altar as we face it. She is a sweeter and more winning figure than that between our first parents on the fafade. When I first knew Notre Dame it was, to the visitor from the open air, all scented darkness. And then as one grew accustomed to the gloom the cathedral opened slowly like a great flower — not so beautifully as Char- tres, but with its own grandeur and fascination. That was twenty years ago. It is not the same since it has been scraped and lightened within. That old clinging darkness has gone. There are times of day now, when the sun spatters on the wall, when it might be almost any church ; but towards evening in the gloom it is Notre Dame de Paris again, mysterious and a little sinister. A bright light not only chases the shade from its aisles and recesses but also shows up the garishness of 34 A WANDERER IN PARIS its glass. For the glass of France, usually bad, is here often almost at its worst. That glorious wheel window in the North transept — whose upper wall has indeed more glass than stone in it — could not well be more beautiful, and the rose window over the organ is beauti- ful too. But for the rest, the glass is either too pretty, as in the case of the window over the altar, so lovely in shape, or utterly trumpery. The last time I was in Notre D'ame I followed a wedding party through the main and usually locked door, but although I was the first after the bride and her father, I was not quick enough to set foot on the ceremonial carpet, which a prudent verger rolled up literally upon their heels. It was a fortunate moment on which to arrive, for it meant a vista of the nave from the open air right up the central aisle, and that, except in very hot weather, is rare, and probably very rare indeed when the altar is fully lighted. The secret of Notre Dame, both within and without, is to be divined only by loitering in it with a mind at rest. To enter intent upon seeing it is useless. Outside, one can walk round it for ever and still be surprised by the splendid vagaries, humours and resource of itsstone ; while within, one can, by making oneself plastic, gradu- ally but surely attain to some of the adoration that was felt for the sanctuary by Quasimodo himself. Let us sit down on one of these chairs in the gloom and meditate on some of the scenes which its stones have witnessed. While it was yet building Raymond VIII., Count of HISTORIC MOMENTS 35 Toulouse, was scourged before the principal doorway for heresy, on a spot where the pillory long stood. That was in 1229. In 1248 St. Louis, on his way-to the Holy Land, visited Notre Dame to receive his pilgrim's staff and scrip from the Bishop. In 1270 the body of St. Louis lay in state under this roof before it was carried to St. Denis for burial. Henry VI. of England was crowned here as King of France — the first and last English king to receive that honour. One Sunday in 1490, while Mass was being celebrated, a man called Jean I'Anglais (as we should now say, John Bull) snatched the Host from the priest's hand and profaned it : for which crime he was burnt. In 1572 Henri IV. (then Henri of Navarre) was married to Marguerite de Valois, but being a Protestant he was not allowed within the church, and the ceremony was therefore performed just outside. When, however, he entered Paris trium- phantly as a conqueror and a Catholic in 1594, he heard Mass and assisted at the Te Deum in Notre Dame like a true Frenchman and ironist. In 1611 his funeral service was celebrated here. Some very ugly events are in store for us ; let some- thing pretty intervene. On February 9th, 1779 (in the narrative of Louise de Grandpre, to whom the study of Notre Dame has been a veritable passion), a large crowd pressed towards the cathedral ; -the ground was strewed with fresh grass and flowers and leaves ; the pillars were decorated with many coloured banners. In the choir the vestments of the saints were displayed : the burning 36 A WANDERER IN PARIS tapers lit up the interior with a dazzling brightness: the organ filled the church with jQJful harmony, and the bells rang out with all their rnight. The whole court was present, the King himself assisting at the ceremony, and the galleries were full to overflowing of ladies of distinction in the gayest of presses. Then slowly, through the door of St. Anne, en- tered a hundred young girls dressed in white, covered with long veils and with orange blossom on their heads. These were the hundred poor girls whom Louis XVI. had dowered in memory of the birth of Marie-Therese- Charlotte of France, afterwards Duchess of Angouleme, and it was his wish to assist personally at their wedding and to seal their marriage licences with his sword, which was ornamented on the handle op pommel with the "fleurdelys." Through the door of the Virgin entered at the same time one hundred young men, having each a sprig of orange blossom in his button-hole. The two rows ad- vanced together with measured steps, preceded by two Swiss, who struck the pavement heavily with their halberds. They advanced as far as the chancel rails, where each young man gave his hand to a young girl, his fiancee, and marched slowly before the King, bowing to him and receiving a bow in return. They were then married by the Archbishop in perSon. A very charming incident, don't you think ? Such a royal gift, adds Louise de Grandpre, would be very wel- come to-day, when there are so many girls unmarried. SAINTE ANNE, LA VIERGE, ET L'ENFANT jtSUS LEONARDO DA VINCI (^Louvre') THE CULT OF REASON 37 for the want of a dot. Every ricbi young girl who is married ought to include in her corbeille de noces the dot of some poor girl. All women, remarks Louise de Grandpre, have a right to this element of love, which is sanctified by marriage, honoured By men and blessed by God. Christian marriage, says Ijouise de Grandpre, is a nursery not only of good Catholics but still more of good citizens, It is much to be wished, she concludes, that obstacles could be removed, because one deplores the depopulation of France. The most fantastic and discreditable episode in the history of Notre Dame occurred one hundred and fifteen years ago, when the Convention decreed the Cult of Reason, and Notre Dame became its Temple. A ballet dancer was throned on the high altar. Our Lady of Paris was taken down, and statues of Voltaire and Rous- seau stepped into the niches of the saints. Carlyle was never more wonderful than in the three or four pages that describe this cataclysm. He begins with the revolt of the Curate Parens, followed by Bishop Gobel of Paris clamouring for an honest calling since there was no religion but Liberty. " The French nation," Carlyle writes, " is of gregari- ous imitative nature ; it needed biit a fugle-motion in this matter ; and Goose Gobel, driven by Municipality and force of circumstances, has given one. What Cure will be behind him of Boissise ; what Bishop behind him of Paris ? Bishop Gregoire, indeed, courageously de- clines ; to the sound of ' We force no one ; let Gregoire 38 A WANDERER IN PARIS consult his conscience ' ; but Protestant and Romish by the hundred volunteer and assent. From far and near, all through November into December, till the work is accomplished, come letters of renegation, come Curates who ' are learning to be Carpenters,' Curates with their new-wedded Nuns : has not the dayof Reason dawned, very swiftly, and become noon ? From sequestered Townships come Addresses, stating plainly, though in Patois dialect, that ' they will have po more to do with the black animal called Cur ay, animal noirappelle Curay. "Above all things, there come Patriotic Gifts, of Church-furniture. The remnant of bells, except for tocsin, descend from their belfries, into the National melting-pot to make cannon. Censers and all sacred vessels are beaten broad ; of silver, they are fit for the poverty-stricken Mint; of pewter, let them become bullets, to shoot the ' enemies du genre humain.' Dal- matics of plush make breeches for him who had none ; linen albs will clip into shirts for the Defenders of the Country: old-clothesmen, Jew or Heathen, drive the briskest trade. Chalier's Ass-Procession, at Lyons, was but a type of what went on, in those same days, in all Towns. In all Towns and Townships as quick as the guillotine may go, so quick goes the axe and the wrench : sacristies, lutrins, altar-rails are pulled down ; the Mass- Books torn into cartridge-papers : men dance the Car- magnole all night about the bonfire. All highways jingle with metallic Priest-tackle, beaten broad ; sent to the Convention, to the poverty-stricken Mint. Good THE GODDESS OF REASON 39 Sainte Genevieve's Chasse is let down : alas, to be burst open, this time, and burnt on the. Place de Greve. Saint Louis's Shirt is burnt ; — might not a Defender of the Country have had it ? . . . "For the same day, while this brave Carmagnole- dance has hardly jigged itself out, there arrive Pro- cureur Chaumette and Municipals and Departmental, and with them the strangest freightage: a New Re- ligion ! Demoiselle Candeille, of the Opera ; a woman fair to look upon, when well rouged ; she, borne on palanquin shoulder-high; with red woollen nightcap; in azure mantle; garlanded with oak; holding in her hand the Pike of the Jupiter-Pewp/e, sails in : heralded by white young women girt in tricolour. Let the world consider it ! This, O National Convention wonder of the universe, is our New Divinity; Goddess of Reason, worthy, and alone worthy of revering. Her henceforth we adore. Nay, were it too much to ask of an august National Representation that it also went with us to the ci-devant Cathedral called of Notre-Dame, and exe- cuted a few strophes in worship of her ? " President and Secretaries give -Goddess Candeille, borne at due height round their platform, successively the Fraternal kiss; whereupon she, by decree, sails to the right hand of the President and there alights. And now, after due pause and flourishes of oratory, the Con- vention, gathering its limbs, does get under way in the required procession towards Notre-Dame ; — Reason, again inher litter, sitting in the van of them, borne, as one 40 A WANDERER IN PARIS judges, by men in the Roman costume ; escorted by wind- music, red nightcaps, and the madness of the world. . . . " ' The corresponding Festival in the Church of Saint- Eustache,' says Mercier, ' offered the spectacle of a great tavern. The interior of the choir represented a landscape decorated with cottages and boskets of trees. Round the choir stood tables overloaded with bottles, with sausages, pork-puddings, pastries and other meats. The guests flowed in and out through all doors : whosoever presented himself took part of the good things: children of eight, girls as well as boys, put hand to plate, in sign of Liberty; they drank also of the bottles, and their prompt intoxication created laughter. Reason sat in azure mantle aloft, in a serene manner; Cannoneers, pipe in mouth, serving her as acolytes. And out of doors,' continues the exaggera- tive man, 'were mad multitudes dancing round the bonfire of Chapel-balustrades, of Priests' and Canons' stalls ; and the dancers, — I exaggerate nothing, — the dancers nigh bare of breeches, neclj and breast naked, stockings down, went whirling and -spinning, like those Dust- vortexes, forerunners of Tempqst and Destruction.' At Saint-Gervais Church, again, there was a terrible 'smell of herrings'; Section or IVTunicipality having provided no food, no condiment, blit left it to chance. Other mysteries, seemingly of a Cabiric or even Paphian character, we leave under the Veil, which appropriately stretches itself ' along the pillars of the aisles,' — not to be lifted aside by the hand of History. CARLYLE 41 " But there is one thing we should hke almost better to understand than any other: what Reason herself thought of it, all the while. What articulate words poor Mrs. Momoro, for example, ^uttered ; when she had become ungoddessed again, and the Bibliopolist and she sat quiet at home, at supper ? For he was an earnest man. Bookseller Momoro; and had notions of Agrarian Law. Mrs. Momoro, it is admitted, made one of the best Goddesses of Reason', though her teeth were a little defective. — And now" if the Reader will represent to himself that such visible Adoration of Reason went on ' all over the Republic,' through these November and December weeks, till the Church wood- work was burnt out, and the business otherwise com- pleted, he will perhaps feel sufficiently what an adoring Republic it was, and without reluctance quit this part of the subject." I quote in the following pages freely from Carlyle, because the Revolution is the most important event in the history of Paris and so horribly recent (you may still see the traces of Buonaparte's whiff of grape-shot on the fafade of St. Roch), and also because when there is such an historian to borrow from direct, para- phrase becomes a crime. None the less, I feel it my duty to say that the attitude of this self-protective contemptuous superior Scotchman towards the excit- able French and their hot-headed efforts for freedom often enrages me as much as his vivid narrative fascin- ates and moves. 42 A WANDERER IN PARIS In 1794, when the New Religion hg,d died down, the Church became a store for wine confiscated from the Royalists. In the year following, after the whiff of grape-shot, the old religion was re-established. A strange interregnum ! How long ago was this ? — only one hundred and fifteen years — not four generations. Could it happen again ? Will it ? . . . These revolutionaries, it may be remarked, were not the only licentious rioters that Notre Dame had known, for in its early days it was the scene every year of the Fete des Fous, an orgy of gluttony and conviviality, in which, however, one who was a true believer on all other days might partake. After these lurid saturnalia it is pleasant again to dip into the gentle pages of Louise de Grandpre, where, among other legends of Notre Dame, is the pretty story of a statue of theVirgin — now known»as the Virgin with the bird. In the Rue Chanoinesse there lived a young woman, very devout, who came every day to pray. She brought with her her son, a little fellow, very- wide awake and full of spirits : his mother had taught him to say his prayers. Cyril would close his little hands to say his "Ave Maria," and he would throw a kiss to the little Jesus, his dear fr,iend, complaining sometimes to his mother that the little Jesus would not play with him. " You are not good enough yet," said his mother ; " Jesus plays only with the little children in Paradise." A very severe winter fell and the young mother THE VIRGIN WITH THE BIRD 43 fell ill and no longer came to church. Cyril never saw the little Jesus now, but he often thought of Him as he played at the foot of his mother's bed. On one of those days when the sky was dull and leaden and the air heavy and depressing, and the poor woman was rather worse and more hopeless than usual, she became so weak they thought each moment would be her last. Cyril could not understand why his mother no longer smiled at him or stroked his hair or called him to her. With his little heart almost bursting and his eyes full of tears, he said, "I will go and tell the little Jesus of my trouble." While they were attending to the poor mother the child disappeared. He ran as fast as his little legs would carry him and entered the cathedral by the cloister door, crossed the transept, and was soon at the foot of the statue of the Virgin Mary, where he was accustomed to say his prayers with his mother. " Little Jesus," said he, " Thou art very happy. Thou hast Thy Mother; mine, who was so good, is always asleep now and I am alone. Little Jesus, wake my mother up, and I will give you my best toys, morning and evening I will send you the sweetest kiss and say my best prayer. And look, to begin with, I have brought you my favourite bird : he is tame and will eat the golden crumbs of Paradise out of your hand." At the same time he stretched out his little closed hand towards Jesus. The divine child stretched out His hand and Cyril let 44 A WANDERER IN PARIS his beloved little bird escape. The bird, who had a lovely coloured plumage, flew straight to the hand of the Infant Christ and has remained there to this day. The Virgin smiled on the child, and her white stone robe at that moment became the Same colour as the bird's plumage. Cyril, with his heart very full, got up to go out, but before leaving the church turned round to have one more look at his little bird he loved so dearly : he was struck with delight and astonishment when he heard the favoured bird singing one of its sweetest songs in honour of the Virgin and her Child. When Cyril returned to his home he went into his mother's room without making the least noise to see if she was still asleep. The young mother was sitting up- right in her bed, her head, still very bad, resting on a pillow, but her wide-open eyes were looking for her little one. "I was quite sure the little Jesus would wake you up," said Cyril, climbing on to her bed. " I took Him my bird this morning to take care of for me in the Garden of Paradise." Life once more returned to the poor woman and she kissed her boy. When you next go to Notre Dame, Louise de Grandpre adds, be sure to visit the Vierge a I'oiseau, who always hears the prayers of the little ones. It was in 1804 that Notre Dajie enjoyed one of its most magnificent moments — at the coronation of THE EMPEROR CROWNED 45 Napoleon and Josephine Beauhariiais. The Duchess d'Abrantes wrote an account of the "ceremony which, in French, is both picturesque and rapturous. " The pope was the first to arrive. At the moment of his entering the cathedral, the clergy intoned Tu es Petrus, and this solemn chant made a deep impression on all. Pius the VII. advanced to the end of the cathedral with a majestic yet humble grace. . . . The moment when all eyes were most drawn to the Altar steps was when Josephine received the crown frora the Emperor and was solemnly consecrated by him Empress of the French. When it was time for her to take qn active part in the great ceremony, the Empress descended from the throne and advanced towards the altar, where the Emperor awaited her. . . . " I saw," the Duchess continues, "all that I have just told you, with the eyes of Napoleon. He was radiant with joy as he watched the Empress advancing towards him ; and when she knelt . . . and the tears she could not restrain fell upon her clasped hands, raised more to- wards him than towards God : at this moment, when Napoleon, or rather Bonaparte, was for her her true providence, at this instant there was between these two beings one of those fleeting moments of life, unique, which fill up the void of years. "The Emperor invested with perfect grace every action of the ceremony he had to perform: above all, at the moment of crowning the Empress. This was to be done by the Emperor himself, who after receiving 46 A WANDERER IN PARIS the little closed crown surmounted by a cross, had to place it on his own head first, and then place it on the Empress's head. He did this in such a slow, gracious and courtly manner that It was noticed by all. But at the supreme moment of crowning her who was to him his lucky star, he was almost coquettish, if I may use the term. He placed the little crown, which surmounted the diadem of brilliants, on her head, first putting it on, then taking it off and putting it on again, as if assuring himself that it should rest lightly and softly on her. "But Napoleon," the Duchess concludes, "when it came to his own crown, hastily took it from the Pope's hands and placed it haughtily on his* own head — a pro- ceeding which doubtless startled his Holiness." Ten years pass and we find Lofiis XVIII. and his family attending Mass at the same altar. Twenty-six years later, in 1840, a service was held to commemorate the restoration of the ashes of the Emperor to French soil, and in 1853 Napoleon III. and Eugenie de Montijo were married here, under circumstarfces of extraordinary splendour. And then we come to plunder and lawless- ness again. On Good Friday, 1871', while Pere Olivier was preaching, a company of Communards entered and from thenceforward for a while the cathedral was occu- pied by the soldiers. For some labyrinthine reason the destruction of Notre Dame by fire was decided upon, and a huge pile of chairs and otheP material soaked in petrol was erected (this was only thirty-eight years ago), and no doubt the building would nave been seriously LA PENS^E RODIN i,Lux emboli rg) SACRED RELICS 47 injured, if not destroyed, had not the medical students from the Hotel Dieu, close by, rushed in and saved it. Among the preachers of Notre Dauie was St. Dominic, to whom in the pulpit the Virgin appeared, bringing with her his sermon all to his hand in an effulgent volume; here also preached Pere Hyacinthe, but with less direct assistance. That the Treasury is an object of interest to English- speaking visitors is proved by the notice at the door: " The Persons who desire to visit the Tresor are kindly requested to wait the guide here for a few minutes, himself charged of the visit ; " but I see no good reason why anyone should enter it. Those, however, that do will see vessels of gold, much paraphernalia of ecclesi- astical pride and pomp, and certain holy relics. The crown of thorns is here, given to St. Louis by the King of Constantinople and carried to Notre Dame, on the 18th of August, 12S9, by the barefoot king. Here also are pieces of the Cross, for the protection of which St. Louis built Sainte Chapelle, the relics afterwards being transferred to Notre Dame; and here is a nail from the Cross — one of the nails of which even an otherwise sceptical Catholic can be sure, because it was given to Charlemagne by Constantine. Charlemagne gave it to Aix la Chapelle, Charles the Bold brought it from Aix to St. Denis, and from St. Denis it came to Notre Dame, where it is enclosed in a crystal case. The menace of 397 spiral steps in a narrow, dark and almost airless turret, is no light matter, but it is essential 48 A WANDERER IN PARIS to see Paris from the summit of Notre Dame. That view is the key to the city, and the traveller -who means to study this city as it deserves, penetrating into the past as industriously and joyously as into the present, must begin here. He will see it all beneath him and around him in its varying ages, and he will be able to proceed methodically and intelligently. Immediately below is the Parvis, the scene of the interrupted exe- cution of Esmeralda, and it was from one of the galleries below that Quasimodo slung himself down to her rescue. Here, where we are now standing, she must often have stood, looking for her faithless Phcebus. Only one of the bells that Quasimodo rang is still in the tower. Hugo draws attention to the shap'e of the island, like that of a ship moored to the mainland by various bridges, and he suggests that the ship on the Paris scutcheon (the ship that is to be seen in the design of the lamps around the Opera) is derived from this re- semblance. It may be so. On each side of us, north and south, are the oldest parts of Paris that still stand ; in the north the Marais, behind the Tour Saint-Jacques, and in the south the district between the Rue de Bievre and the boulevard St. Michel. On the south side of the river lived the students, clerics and professors — Dante himself among them, in this vfery Rue de Bievre, as we shall see ; while in the Marais,<.i,s we shall also see, dwelt the nobility. West of St. Eustache in the Middle Ages was nothing but waste ground and woodland, a kind of Bois, at the edge of which,* where the Louvre A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW 49 now spreads itself, was a royal hunting lodge, the germ of the present vast palace. When the Marais passed out of favour, the aristocracy crossed the river to the St. Germain quarter, which clusters around the twin spires of Sj. Clotilde that now rise in the south-west. And then the Rue Saint-Honore and the Grands Boulevards were bjiilt, and so the city grew and changed until the two culminating touches were put to it: by M. Eiffel, who built the tower, and M. Abadie, architect of the beautiful and unreal Basi- lique du Sacre-Coeur that crowns the heights of Mont- martre. The chief eminences that one sees are, near at hand, the needle-spire of Saintc Chapclle, in the north the grey mass of St. Eustache, the Chatelet Theatre (ad- vertising at this moment "Les Piljiles du Diable" in enormous letters), the long roofs of the Halles, and the outline of the medieval Tour Saint-Jacques. Farther west the bulky Opera, then, right in front, the Tro- cadero's twin towers, with Mont Valerien looming up immediately between them; and so round to the south ■ — to the Invalides and St. Clotilde, the Pantheon and the heights of Genevieve. A wonderful panorama. Of all the views of Paris I think that from Notre Dame is the most interesting, because the point is most central; but the views from Mofitmartre, from the Tour Saint-Jacques, the Pantheon and the Arc de Triomphe should be studied too. The Eiifel Tower has dwarfed all those eminences ; they lie far below it, mere 50 A WANDERER IN PARIS ant-hills in the landscape, althoush they seem high enough when one essays their stepsg yet, although it makes them so lowly, these older coigns of vantage should not for a moment be considered as superseded, for each does for its immediate vicinage what the Eiffel giant can never do. From the,Arc de Triomphe, for example, you command all the luxurious activity of the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, and the wonderful prospect of the Champs Elysees, ending with the Louvre ; ]and from the Pantheon you may examine the roofs of the Latin Quarter and see the children at play in the gardens of the Luxembourg. The merit of the Eiffel Tower is that he shows you not only Paris to the ultimate edges in every direction save on the northern slopes of Montmartre, but he shows you (almost) France too. How long the Eiffel Tower is to stand I cannot say, but I for "one shall feel sorry and bereft when he ceases to straddle over Paris. For though he is vulgar he is great, and he has come to be a symbol. When he goes, he will make a strange rent in the sky. This year (1909) is his twentieth: he and I first came to Paris at the same tiine ; but his life is serene to-day compared with what it was in his infancy. At that time his platforms were congested from morn to dusk; but few visitors now ascend even to the first stage and hardly any to the top. No visitor, however, who wants to synthesise Paris should omit this adven- ture. Only in a balloon can one get a better view, but in no balloon adrift from this green earth would I, for THE DEVILS 51 one, ever trust myself, although I must confess that the procession of those aerial monsters that floated serenely past the Eiffel Tower on the last occasion that I climbed it, suggested nothing but content a,nd security. They rose one by one from the bosky depths of the Bois, five miles away, gradually disentangled themselves from the surrounding verdure, assumed their independent buoyant rotundity and came straight to my waiting eye. In an hour I counted fifteen, and by the time the last was free of the earth the first was away over Vincennes, with the afternoon sun turning its mud-coloured silk to burnished gold. Paris has always one balloon floating above her, but fifteen is exceptional. Notre Dame remains, however, the most important height to scale, for Notre Dame is interesting in every particular, it is soaked in history and mystery. Notre Dame is alone in the possession of its devils — those strange stone fantasies that Meryon discovered. Al- though every effort is made to familiarise us with them — although they sit docilely as paper-weights on our tables — nothing can lessen the monstrous diablerie of these figures, which look down on Paris with such greed and cruelty, cunning and cynicism. The best known, the most saturnine, of all, who leans on the parapet exactly by the door at the head of the steps, fixes his inhuman gaze on the dome of the Invalides. Is it to be wondered at that he wears that ex- pression ? 52 A WANDERER IN PARIS A small family dwells in a rooip just behind this chimera, subsisting by the sale of picture-postcards. It is a strange abode, and an imaginative child would have a good start in life there. To him at any rate the demons no doubt would soon lose their terrors and become as friendly as the heavenly host that are posed so radiantly and confidently on the ^.scent to the fleche — perhaps even more so. But to" the stranger they must remain cruel and horrible, creating a sense of disquietude and alarm that it is surely the business of a cathedral to allay. Curious anomaly ! Let us descend. Before leaving the He de la Cite, the Rue Chanoinosse, to the north of Notre Dame, leading out of the Rue d'Arcole (near a blackguard pottery shop), should be looked at. The cloisters of Notre Dame once extended to this street and covered the ground between it and the cathedral. The canons, or chanoines, lived here, and there are still a few attractive old houses; but the rebuilder is very busy just now. At No. 10, Fulbert, the uncle of Heloise, is said to have lived ; at No. 18 was the Tour Dagobert, a fifteenth-century building, by climbing which one had an excellent view of Notre Dame, but in the past year it has been demolished and business premises cover its site. At No. 26 are (or were) the ruins of the twelfth-century chapel of St. Aignan, where the faithful, evicted from Notre Dame by the Reign of Reason, celebrated Mass in secret. Saint Bernard has preached here. The adjacent streets — the Rue de Colombe, Rue Massillon, Rue des Ursins BALTHASAR CASTIGLIONE RAPHAEL {Louvre) LEAVING NOTRE DAME 53 and Rue du Cloitre-Notre-Darae — have also very old houses. For the best view of the exterior of Notre Dame one must take the Quai de I'Archeveche, from vsrhich all its intricacies of masonry may be studied — its but- tresses solid and flying, its dependencies, its massive bulk, its grace and strength. CHAPTER IV ST. LOUIS AND HIS ISLAND The Morgue — The He St. Louis — Old Residents — St. Louis, the King — The Golden Legend — ReUgious Intolerance — Posthu- mous Miracles — Statue of Barye — • The Quai des Celestins. ON the way from Notre Dame to the He of St. Louis we pass a small official-looking building at the extreme east end of the He de la Cite. It is the Morgue. But the Morgue is now closed to idle gazers, and you win your way to a sight of that melancholy slab with the weary bodies on it and the little jet of water play- ing on each, only by the extreme course of having missed a relation whom you suspected of designs upon his own life or whom you imagine has been the victim of foul play. No doubt the authorities were well advised (as French municipal authorities nearly always are) in clos- ing the Morgue ; but I think I regret it. The impulse to drift into that low and sinister building behind Notre Dame was partly morbid, no doubt; but the ordinary man sees not only too little death, but is too seldom in the presence of such failure as for the most part governs here : so that the opportunity it gave was good. 54 A DERELICT ISLAND 55 I still recall very vividly, in spite of all the millions of living faces that should, one feels, have blurred one's prosperous vision, several of the dead faces that lay behind the glass of this forlorn side-show of the great entertainment which we call Paris. An old man with a white imperial ; more than one woman of that dreadful middle-age which the Seine has so often terminated ; a young man who had been stabbed. . . . Well, the Morgue is closed to the public now", and very likely no one who reads this book will ever enter it. The He St. Louis, to put it bluntly ,-is just as common- place as the He de la Cite is imposing. It has a mono- tony very rare in the older parts of Paris : it is all white houses that have become dingy : houses that once were attractive and wealthy and are now squalid. One of the largest of the old palaces is to-day a garage; there is not a single house now occupied by the kind of tenant for which it was intended. Such declensions are always rather melancholy, even when, as, for example, at Ville- neuve, near Avignon, there is the beauty of decay too. But on the He St. Louis there is no beauty : it belongs to a dull period of architecture and is now duller for its dirt. Standing on the Quai d'Orleans, however, one catches Notre Dame against the evening sky, across the river, as nowhere else, and it is necessary to seek the He if only to appreciate the fitness of the Morgue's position. The island was first called L'lle Notre Dame, and was uninhabited until 1614. It was then developed and joined to the He de la Cite and the mainland by bridges. 56 A WANDERER IN PARIS The chief street is the Rue St. Louis, at No. 3 in which lived Fenelon. The church of St. Louis is interesting for a relic of the unfortunate Louise de la Valliere. At No. 17 on the Quai d'Anjou is the Hotel Lauzan, which the city of Paris has now acquired, and in which once lived together for a while the authors of Mademoiselle de Mawpin and Les Fleurs de Mai. Of Saint Louis, or Louis IX., who gives his name to this island, and whose hand is so visible in the He de la Cite, it is right to know something, for he was the father of Paris. Louis was born in 1215,.the year of Magna Charta, and succeeded to the throne while still a boy. The early years of his reign were restless by reason of civil strife and war with England, in which he was victor (at Tailleburg, at Saintes and at Blaize), and then came his departure for the Holy Land, with 40,000 men, in fulfilment of a vow made rashly on a sick-bed. The King was blessed at Notre Dame, ag we have seen, and departed in 1248, leaving his mother Blanche de Castile as regent. But the Crusade was a 'failure, and he was glad to return (with only the ghost of his army) and to settle down for the first time seriously to the cares of his throne. He was a good if prejudiced king: he built wisely and well, not only Sainte Chapelle, as we have seen, but the Sorbonne ; he devised useful statutes ; he established police in Paris ; and, more perhaps than all, he made Frenchmen very proud of France. So much for his ad- ministrative virtues. When we come to his saintliness A ROYAL SAINT 57 I would stand aside, for is he not in The Golden Legend ? Listen to William Caxton: "He forced himself to serve his spirit by diverse castigation or chastising, he used the hair many times next his flesh, and when he left it for cause of over feebleness of his body, at the instance of his own confessor, he ordained the said con- fessor to give to the poor folk, as for recompensation of every day that he failed of it, forty shillings. He fasted always the Friday and namely in time of lent and ad- vent he abstained him in those days from all manner of fish and from fruits, and continually travailed and pained his body by watchings, orisons, and other secret abstinences and disciplines. Humility, beauty of all vir- tues, replenished so strong in him, that the more better he waxed, so, as David, the more he showed himself meek and humble, and more foul he reputed him before God. " For he was accustomed on every Saturday to wash with his own hands, in a secret place, the feet of some poor folk, and after dried them with a fair towel, and kissed much humbly and semblably, their hands, distri- buting or dealing to every one of them a certain sum of silver, also to seven score poor men which daily came to his court, he administered meat and drink with his own hands, and were fed abundantly on the vigils solemn. And on some certain days in the year to two hundred poor, before that he ate or drank, he with his own hands administered and served them both of meat and drink. He ever had, both at his dinner and supper, three ancient poor, which ate nigh to him, to whom he charitably 58 A WANDERER IN PARIS sent of such meats as were brought before him, and sometimes the dishes and meats that the poor of our Lord had touched with their hands, and special the sops of which he fain ate, made their remnant or rehef to be brought before him, to the end that he should eat it; and yet again to honour and worship the name of our Lord on the poor folk, he was not ashamed to eat their relief." Qualities have their defects, and such a frame of mind as that can lead, for all the good motive, to injustice and even cruelty. Christ's lesson of the Roman coin is forgotten as quickly as any. Louis' passion for holiness, which became a kind of self-indulgence, led him into a hard and ugly intolerance and acts of severe oppression against those whom he styled heretics. His short way with the Jews recalled indeed those of our own King John, who was very nearly his contemporary. I know not if he pulled out their teeth, but he once did what must have been as bad, if not worse, for he published an ordinance " for the good of his soul," re- mitting to his Christian subjects the third of their debts to the Jews; and he also expressed it as his opinion that "a layman ought not to dispute with an unbeliever, but strike him with a good sword across the body," the most practical expression of muscular sec- tarianism that I know. Louis' religious fanaticism was, however, his end ; for he was so ill-advised as to under- take a new Crusade against the unbelievers of Morocco, and there, while laying siege to Tunis, he died of the POSTHUMOUS MIRACLES 59 plague. That was in 1270, when he was only fifty- five. Twenty-seven years later Pope Boniface the Eighth raised him to the Calendar of Saints, his day being August 25th. But according to The Golden Legend, which I for one implicitly believe (how can one help it, written as it is .''), the posthumous miracles of Louis did not wait for Rome. They began at once. "On that day that S. Louis was buried," we there read, " a woman of the diocese of Sens recovered her sight, which she had lost and saw nothing, by the merits and prayers of the said debonair and meedful king. Not long after, a young child of Burgundy both dumb and deaf of kind, coming with others to the sepulchre or grave of the saint, beseeching him of help, kneeling as he saw that the others did, and after a little while that he thus kneeled with his ears opened and heard, and his tongue redressed and spake well. In the same year a woman blind was led to the said sepulchre, and by th^ merits of the saint recovered her sight. Also that same year two men and five woman, beseeching S. Louis of help, recovered the use of going, which they had lost by divers sickness and languors. " In the year that S. Louis was put or written in the catalogue of the holy confessors, many miracles worthy to be prized befell in divers parts of the world at the invocation of him, by his merits and by his prayers. Another time at Evreux a child fell under the wheel of a water-mill. Great multitude of people came thither. 60 A WANDERER IN PARIS and supposing to have kept him froni drowning, invoked God, our Lady and his saints to help the said child, but our Lord willing his saint to be enhanced among so great multitude of people, was there heard a voice say- ing that the said child, named John, should be vowed unto S. Louis. He then, taken out of the water, was by his mother borne to the grave of the saint, and after her prayer done to S. Louis, her son began to sigh and was raised on life." We leave the island by the Pont Sully, first looking at the statue of Barye, the sculptor of Barbizon, many of whose best small bronzes are in the Louvre (to say nothing of the shops of the dealers in the Rue LafEtte) and several of his large groups in the public gardens of Paris, one, for example, being near the Orangery in the Tuileries. Barye's monument standing here at the east end of the lie St. Louis balances Henri IV. at the west end of the He de la Cite. Crossing to the mainland we oijght to look at the old houses on the Quai des Celestins, particularly the old Hotel de la Valetle, now the College Massillon, into whose courtyard one should boldly peep. At No. 32 we touch very interesting history, for here stood, two and a half centuries ago, Moliere's Illustre Theatre, the stage entrance to which may be seen at IS Rue de I'Ave Marie. And now for the Marais. CHAPTER V THE MARAI3 A £32,000,000 Rebuilding Scheme — Romance and Intrigue — The Temple — The Archives — Illustrious Handwriting — The " Uncle " of Paris — The Wall of Philip Augustus — Old Palaces now Rookeries — The Carnavalet — The Perfect Museum — Latude — Napoleon — Madame de Sevigne — Chained Streets — John Law — The Rue St. Martin. THE Marais is that district of old streets and palaces which is bounded on the south by the .Rue St. Antoine, on the east by the Rue du Turenne, on the west by the Rue du Temple, and fades away in the north somewhere below the Rue de Bretagne. The Rue des Francs Bourgeois is its central highway east and west. It was my original intention to devote a large propor- tion of this book to this fascinating area — to describe it minutely street by street — and I have notes for that purpose which would fill half the Volume alone. But the publication of the £32,000,000 scheme for renovat- ing this and other of the older parts of Pairs (one of the principal points in which is the isolation of the Musee Carnavalet, which is the heart of the Marais), coming just at that time, acted like a douche of iced 61 62 A WANDERER IN PARIS water, and I abandoned the projects Instead therefore I merely say enough (I hope) to impress on every reader the desirability, the necessity of hastening to the Rue des Francs Bourgeois and its dependencies, and refer them to the two French writers whom I have found most useful in my own researches- — the Marquis de Rochegude, author of a Guide Pratique a travers le Vieux Paris (Hachette) and the Viconite de Villebresme, author of Ce que reste du Vieux Paris (Flammarion). To these I would add M. Georges Cain, the director of the Carnavalet, to whom I refer later. No matter where one enters the Marais, it offers the same alluring prospect of narrow streets and high and ancient houses, once the abode of the nobility and aristocracy, but now rookeries and factories — and, over all, that sense of thorough insanitation which so often accompanies architectural charm in France and Italy and which seems to matter so little to Latin people. Hence the additional wickedness of destroying this district. The Municipality, however, having acquired superfine foreign notions as to public health, will doubt- less have its way. Wherever one enters the Marais one finds the traces of splendour, intrigue and romance ;, howsoever modern conditions may have robbed thein of their glory, to walk in these streets is, for anyone with any imagination, to re-create Dumas. For the most part one must make one's own researches, but here and there a tablet may be found, such as that over the entrance to a narrow SYMMETRY 63 and sinister passage at No. 38 Rue des Francs Bourgeois, which reads thus: "Dans ce passage en sortant de I'hotel Barbette le Due Louis d'Orleans frere du Roi Charles VI. fut assassine par Jean Sans Peur, Due de Bourgogne, dans le nuit du 23 ou 24 Novembre, 1407." Five hundred years ago ! That gives an idea of the antiseptic properties of the air of Paris. The Duke of Orleans, I might remark here, was symmetrically avenged, for his son assassinated Jean Sans Peur on the bridge of Montereau all in due course. The Marais was at its prime from the middle of the fifteenth century to the beginning of the eighteenth; at which period the Faubourg St. Antoine was aban- doned by fashion for the Faubourg St. Germain, as we shall see when the time comes to wander in the Rue de Varenne and the Rue de Grenelle on the other side of the river. Let us enter the Marais by the Rue du Temple at the Square du Temple, a little south of the Place de la Republique. One must make a beginning somewhere. The Temple, which has now disappeared, was the head- quarters of the Knight Templars of France before their suppression in 1307: it then became the property of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, who held it until the Revolution, when all property seems to have changed hands. Rousseau found sanctuary here in 1765 ; and here Louis XVII. and Marie Antoinette were imprisoned for a while in 1792. More tragic =by far, it was here that the little Dauphin died. Napoleon pulled down 64 A WANDERER IN PARIS the Tower : Louis XVIII. on his accession awarded the property to the Princess de Cond6, and Louis-Philippe, on his, took it back again. The Rue du Temple has many interesting old houses and associations. Just north of the Square is the church of Elizabeth of Hungary, the first stone of which was laid in 1628 by a less sainted monarch, Marie de Medicis. It is worth entering to see its carved wood scenes from Scripture history. At 193 once lived Madame du Barry ; at 153 was, in the reign of Louis XV., the barreau des vinaigrettes — the vinai- grette being the forerunner of the cab, a kind of sedan chair and jinrickshaw ; at 62 died Anne de Montmorency, Constable of France, in the Hotel de Montmorency. From the Square du Temple we may also walk down the Rue des Archives, parallel with the Rue du Temple on the east. This street now extends to the Rue de Rivoli. It is rich in old palaces, some with very beauti- ful relics of their grandeur still in existence, such as the staircase at No. 78. The fountain at the corner of the Rue des Haudriettes dates only from 1705. At No. 58 is the gateway, restored, of the old palace of the Constable de Clisson, built in 1371. Later it belonged to the de Guise family and then to the de Soubise. The Revolution made it the property of the State, and Napoleon directed that the Archives should be pre- served here. The entrance is in the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, across the green court; but do not go on a cold day, because there is no heatinfg process, owing to L'HOMME AU GANT TITIAN {Louvre) MOMENTOUS DOCUMENTS 65 the age of the building and the extraordinary value of the collections. The rooms in themselves are of some interest for their Louis XV. decoration and mural paintings, but one goes of course primarily to see the handwriting of the great. Here is the Edict of Nantes signed by Henri IV. ; a quittance signed by Diana de Poictiers, very boldly; a letter -to Parliament from Louis XL, in his atrocious hand; a codicil added by Saint Louis to his will on board a vessel on the coast of Sardinia, exquisitely written. The scriveners have rather gone off than improved since those days ; look at the "Registre des Enquetions royaux en Normande," 1248, for work of delicate minuteness. Marie Therese, wife of Louis XIV., wrote an attractive hand, but Louis XlV.'s own signature is dull. Voltaire is discovered to have written very like Swinburne. Relics of the Revolution abound. Here is Marie Antoinette's last letter to the Princess Elizabeth, written the night before she was executed ; a letter of Petion, bidding his wife farewell, and of Barbaroux to his mother, both stained with tears. Here also is the journal of Louis XVI., 1766-1792, and the order for his inhumation (as Louis Capet), 21st January, 1793. His will is here too; and so is Napoleon's. I say no more because the collection is so vast, and also because a franc buys a most admirable catalogue, with fac- similes, beginning with the monogram of Charlemagne himself. On leaving the Archives we may take an easterly 66 A WANDERER IN PARIS course along the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, with the idea of making eventually for the Carnavalet; but it is well to loiter, for this is the very heart of the Marais. One's feet will always be straying down byways that call for closer notice, and it is very likely that the Carnavalet will not be reached till to-morrow after all. Indeed, let "Hasta manana" be yotir Marais motto. One of the first buildings that one notices is the Mont de Piete, the chief of the Paris pawnbroking establishments. I am told that the system is an ad- mirable one ; but my own experience is against this opinion, for I was unable on a day of unexpected stress at the end of 1907 to effect an entrance at the very reasonable hour of a quarter past five. The closing of the English pawnbrokers at seven — the very moment at which the ordinary man's financial troubles begin — is sufficiently uncivilised ; but to cease to lend money on excellent gold watches at five o? clock in the after- noon (with the bank closed on the morrow, too, being New Year's Day) is a scandal. My adventures in search of relief among French tradesmen who had been at my feet as recently as yesterday, before supplies had broken down, I shall never forget, nor shall I relate them here. This aims at being an agreeable book. It is interesting to note that one of the entrances to the Mont de Piete is reserved for clients who wish to raise money on deeds, and I have seen cabmen very busy in bringing to it people who quite shatnelessly hold their papers in their hands. And why on earth not? And OLD PARIS 67 yet your English pawner seldom reaches the Three Brass Balls with such publicity or by any other medium than his poor feet. Our Mont de Piete for the respect- able is the solicitor's ofBce. A trace of the wall, and one of its towers,' built around Paris by Philip Augustus in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, may be seen in the courtyard of the Mont de Piete; but the wall is better observed in the Rue des Guillemites, at No. 14. All about here once stood a large convent of the Blancs-Manteaux, or Servants of the Virgin Mary, an order which came into being in Florence in the thirteenth century and of whom the doctor Benazzi was the general. After the Blancs-Manteaux came the Hermits of St. Guillaume, or Guillemites, and later the Benedictines took it over. Next the Mont de Piete at the back is the church of the Blancs-Manteaux in its modern form. It is plain and unattractive, but it wears an air of some purpose, and one feels that it is much used in this very popular and not too happy quarter. Just opposite, in a doorway, I watched an old chiffonniere playing with a grey rabbit. Every inch of this neighbourhood offers priceless material to the hand of Mr. Muirhead Bone. One of the old tavern signs of Paris is to be seen close by, at the corner of the Rue des Blancs-Manteaux and the Rue des Archives: a soldier standing by a cannon, representing I'homme arme. It is a comfort- able little retreat and should be encouraged for such antiquarian piety. 68 A WANDERER IN PARIS The pretty turret at the corner of the Rue des Francs Bourgeois and the Rue Vieille du Temple marks the site of the hotel of Jean de la Baule. Turn- ing to the left up the Rue Vieille du Temple we come at No. 87 to a very beautiful anciejit mansion, with a spacious courtyard, built in 1712 for the Cardinal de Rohan. It is now the national printing works : hence the statue of Gutenburg in the midst. Visitors are allowed to see the house itself once "a week, but I have not done so. You will probably not be interfered with if you just step to the inside of the second courtyard to see the bas-relief of- the steeds of Apollo. Nos. 102 to 108 in the same street mark the remains of another fine eighteenth-century hotel. Th^re is also a house which one should see in the lower part of the street, on the south side of the Francs Bourgeois — No. 47, where by penetrating boldly one Comes to a perfect little courtyard with some beautiful carvings in it, and, above, a green garden, tended, when I was there, by a Little Sister of the Poor. The principal courtyard has a very interesting bas-relief of Romulus and Remus at their usual meal, and also an old sundial. This palace was built in 1638. Returning to the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, we find at No. 38 the little impasse already referred to, where the Due d'Orleans was assassinated. At No. 30 is a very impressive red-brick palace with a courtyard, now a nest of offices and factories, once the hotel of Jean de Fourcy. A bust of Henri IV. has a place there. At STREETS IN THE MAKING 69 No. 25 on the other side (seen better from the Rue Pavee) is an even more splendid abode — now also cut up into a rookery — the Hotel de Lamoignon, once Hotel d'Angouleme, built for Diane, Duchess of An- gouleme, daughter of Henri II. : hence the symbols of the chase in the ornamentation. The hotel passed to President de Lamoignon in 1655. And here is the Carnavalet — the spacious building, with a garden and modern additions, on the left — once the Hotel des Ligneries, afterwards the Hotel de Ker- nevenoy, afterwards the Hotel de Sevigne, and now the museum of the city of Paris. The only way to under- stand Paris is to make repeated visits to this treasure- house. You will find new entertainment and instruction every time, because every time you will carry thither impressions of new objects of interest whose past you will want to explore. For in th^ Carnavalet every phase of the life of the city, from the days of the Romans and the Merovingians to our own, is illustrated in one way or another. The pictures of streets alone are inexhaustible: the streets that one knows to-day as they were yesterday and the day before yesterday and hundreds of years ago; the streets one has just walked through on the way here^ in their stages of evolution : such, for example, as the picture of the wooden Pont des Meuniers in 1380 with the Tour Saint- Jacques behind it; the streets with dramas of the Revolution in progress, such as the picture of the em- blems of Royalty being burned before the statue of 70 A WANDERER IN PARIS Liberty (where the Luxor column now stands) in the Place de la Concorde on August lOth, 1793; such as the picture of the famous sermon being preached in the course of the Jeu de Paume op June 20th, 1789 ; such as the picture of the funeral of Marat. For the perfection of topographical drawing look at the series by F. Hoffbauer. But it is impossible and needless to particularise. The visitor with a topographical or historical bent will find himself in a paradise and will return and return. One visit is ridiculous. The catalogue, I may say, is not good, therein falling into line with the sculpture catalogue at the Louvre. Everything may be in it, but the arrangement is poor. In such a museum every article and every picture should of course iiave a description attached, if only for the benefit of the poor visitor, the humblest citizen of Paris whose museum it is. There are a few works of art here too, as well as topographical drawings. Georges Michel, for example, who looked on landscape much as Meryon looked on architecture and preferred a threatening sky to a sunny one, has a prospect from the Plaine St. Denis. Vollon paints the Moulin de la Galette on Montmartre as it was in 1865; Troyon spreads out St. Cloud. Here also are a charming portrait by Chardin of his second wife; the well-known picture of David's Life School; drawings by Watteau ; an adorable unsigned " Mar- chand de Lingerie " ; an enchanting leg on a blue pillow by Boucher; a portrait by Prud'hon of an un- PORTRAIT DE JEUNE HOMME ATTRIBUTED TO BIGIO LATUDE 71 known man, very striking ; and some exquisite work by Louis Boilly. The Musee is strong in Henri IV. and the later Louis', but it is of course in rcHcs of the Revolution and Napoleon that the interest centres. A casquette of Liberty; the handle of Marat's bathroom; a portrait of " La Veuve Capet " in the Concfergeric, in the room that we have seen; a painted life-mask of Voltaire, very horrible, and the armchair in which he died; a copy of the constitution of 1793 Ibound in the skin of a man; Marat's snuff-box; Madame Roland as a sweet and happy child, — these J remember in par- ticular. Latude is, however, the popular %ure — Latude the prisoner of the Bastille who escaped by means of imple- ments which he made secretly and which are now preserved here, near a portrait of the enfranchised gentleman, robust, portly and triumphant, pointing with one hand to his late prison while the other grasps the rope ladder. Latude's history is an odd one. He was born in 1725, the natural son of a poor girl : after accompanying the army in Languedoc as a surgeon, or surgeon's assistant, he reached Paris in 1748 and pro- ceeded to starve. In despair he hit upon an ingenious trick, which wanted nothing but success to have made him. He prepared an infernal machine of infinitesimal aptitude — a contrivance of practically harmless but perhaps somewhat alarming explosives — and this he sent anonymously to the Marquise de Pompadour, and 72 A WANDERER IN PARIS then immediately after waited upon ker in person at Ver- sailles to say that he had overheard some men plotting to destroy her by means of this kind of a bomb, and he had come post-haste to warn her and save her life. It was a good story, but Latude seems to have lacked some necessary gifts as an impostor, for his own share was detected and he was thrown into the Bastille on the 1st of May, 1749. A few weeks later he was transferred to the prison at Vinccnnes, from which he escaped in 1750. A month later he was retaken and again placed in the Bastille, from which he escaped six years later. He got away to Holland, but was quickly recaptured; and then again he escaped, after nine more years. He was then treated as a lunatic and put into confinement at Charenton, but was discharged in 1777. His liberty, however, seems to have been of little use to him, and he rapidly qualified for gaol again by breaking into a house and threatening its owner, a woman, with a pistol, and he was imprisoned once more. Altogether he was under lock and key for the greater part of thirty-five years ; but once he was free in 1784 he kept his head, and not only remained free but became a popular hero, and did not a little, by reason of a heightened account of his sufferings under despotic prison rule, to inflame the revolutionaries. These memoirs, by the way, in the prepq.ration of which he was assisted by an advocate named Thiery, were for the most part untruthful, and not least so in those passages in which Latude described his own innocence and ideals. "A GREAT LADY" 73 Our own canonised prison-breaker, Jack Sheppard, was a better hero than this man. The Httle room devoted to Napoleon is filled with an mtimate melancholy. Many personal relics are here — even to a toothbrush dipped in a red powder. His necessaires de campagne so compactfj arranged illustrate the minute orderliness of his mind, and the workmanship of the travelling cases that hold them proves once again his thoroughness and taste. Everything had to be right. One of his maps of la campagne de Prusse is here ; others we shall see as the Invalides. The relics of Madame de Sevigne, who once lived in this beautiful house, are not very numerous ; but they exercise their spell. Her salon is very much as she left it, except that the private staircase has disappeared and a china closet takes its place. Within these walls have La Rochefoucauld and Bossuet conversed ; here she sat, pen in hand, writing her immortal letters. "Lisons tout Madame de Sevigne" was the advice of Sainte Beuve, while her most illustrious English admirer, Edward FitzGerald, often quotes her. He came to her late, not till 1875, but she never loosened her hold. " I have this Summer," he wrote to Mrs. W. H. Thompson, "made the Acquaintance of a great Lady, with whom 1 have become perfectly intimate, through her Letters, Madame de Sevigne. I had hitherto kept aloof from her, because of that eternal Daughter of hers ; but ' it's all Truth and Daylight,' as Kitty Clive said of Mrs. Siddons. Her Letters from Brittany are best of all, not 74 A WANDERER IN PARIS those from Paris, for she loved the Country, dear Creature ; and now I want to go and visit her ' Rochers,' but never shall." "I sometimes lament," he says (to Mrs. Cowell), "I did not know her before; but perhaps such an acquaintance comes in best to cheer one toward the end." With these pleasant praises in our ears let us leave the Carnavalet. The Rue de Sevigne itself has many interesting houses, notably on the south side of the Rue des Francs Bour- geois; No. 11, for example, was once a theatre, built by Beaumarchais in 1790. That is nothing; the interest- ing thing is that he built it of material from the de- stroyed Bastille and the destroyed church of St. Paul. The fire station close by was once tlie Hotel de Perron de Quincy. It was in this street, on Ihe day of the Fete Dieu in 1392,that the Constable de Clisson, whose house we saw in the Rue des Archives, was attacked by Pierre de Craon. The Rue des Francs Bourgeois is the highway of the Marais, and the Carnavalet is its greatest possession; but, as I have said, the Marais is inexhaustible in archi- tectural and historical riches. We jnay work our way through it, back to the Rue du Temple by any of these ancient streets; all will repay. The Rue du Temple sxtends to the Rue de Rivoli," striking it just by the Hotel de Ville, but the lower portion, south of the Rue Rambuteau, is not so interesting as the upper. There is, however, to the west of it, just north of the Rue de Rivoli, a system of old streets hardly less picturesque 'IHK ARC UK TRIOMPHK HE L'ETOILK (Al'TRnACHIXi; FKi>,M THI". A\'l-:-\L'r-, IH" l-.i'IS IJE JIUUL'JGNE) ST. MERRY 75 (and sometimes even more so) than the Marais proper, in the centre of which is the church of St. Merry, with one of the most wonderful west fronts anywhere — a mass of rich and eccentric decoration. The Saint him- self was Abbot of Autun. He came to Paris in the seventh century to visit the shrines of St. Denis and St. Germain. At that time the district which we are now traversing was chiefly forest, in which the kings of Prance would hunt, leaving their palace in the He de la Cite and crossing the river to this wild district — wild though so near. St. Merry established himself in his simple way near a little chapel in the woods, dedicated to St. Peter, that stood on this spot, and there he died. After his death his tomb in the chapel performed such miracles that St. Peter was forgotten and St. Merry was exalted, and when the time came to rebuild, St. Merry ousted St. Peter altogether. St. Merry's florid west front is in the Rue St. Martin, once the Roman road from Paris to the north and to England, and by the Rue St. Martin we may leave this district ; but between it and the Rue du Temple there is much to see — such as, for example, the Rue Verrerie, south of St. Merry's, the head-quarters of the ancient glassworkers ; the Rue Brisemiche, quite one of the best of the old narrow Paris streets, with iron staples and hooks still in the walls at Nos. 20, 23, 26 and 29, to which chains could be fastened so as to turn a street into an impasse during times of stress and thus be sure of your man ; the Rue Taillepin, also leading out of the Rue 76 A WANDERER IN PARIS du Cloitre St. Merry into the Rue St*. Merry, which has some fine old houses of its own, notably No. 36 and the quaint Impasse du Bceuf at No. 10. Parallel with the Rue St. Merfy farther north is the Rue de Venise, which the Vicointe de Villebresme boldly calls the most picturesque in old Paris. Now a very low quarter, it was once literally the Lombard Street of Paris, the chief abode of Lombardy money- lenders, while the long and beautiful. Rue Quincampoix, into which it runs on the west, w^as also a financial centre, containing no less an establishment than the famous Banque of John Law, the Scotchman who for a while early in the eighteenth century controlled French finance. When Law had matured his Mississippi scheme, he made the Rue Quingampoix his head- quarters, and houses in it, we read, that had been let for £40 a year now yielded £800 a month. In the winter of 1719-20 Paris was filled with speculators besieging Law's offices for shares. But by May the crash had come and Law had to fly. Many a house in th^ Rue Quincampoix, which is now sufficiently innocent of high finance, dates from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. There is a fine doorway at No. 34. We may regain the Rue St. Martin, just to the east, by the Rue des Lombards, which brings us to the flam- boyant front of St. Merry's once more. The Rue St. Martin, which confesses its Roman Origin in its straight- ness, is still busy with trafiic, but neither itself nor the Rue St. Denis, two or three hundred yards to the west. NEW STREETS FOR OLD 77 is one-tenth as busy as it was before the Boulevard Sebastopol was cut between them to do all the real work. It is a fine thoroughfare and no doubt of the highest use, but what beautiful narrow streets of old houses it must have destroyed ! We may note in the Rue St. Martin the pretty fountain at No. 122, and the curious old house at No. 164, and leave it at the church of St. Nicholas-des-Champs, no longer in the fields any more than London's St. Martin's is. And now after so many houses let us see some pictures ! CHAPTER Vr THE LOtrVKE : I. THE OLD MASTERS The Winged Victory of Samothrace — Botticelli's Fresco — Luini — Ingres — The Salon Carre — La Joconde — Leonardo da Vinci — Pater, Lowell and Vasari — Early Collectors — Paul Veronese — • Copyists — The Salle des Primitifs — The Grand Galerie — Landor's Pictorial Creed — The Great Schools — Rembrandt — Van Dyck and Rubens — Amazing Abundance — The Dutch Masters — The Drawings. IT is on the first landing of the EscaHer Daru, at the end of the Galerie Denon, that one of the most priceless treasures of the Louvre — ^ one of the most splendid things in the world — is to be found : it has been before us all the way along the Galerie Denon, that avenue of noble bronzes, the firgt thing that caught the eye: I mean the "Winged Victory of Samothrace." Every one has seen photographs or models of this majestic and exquisite figure, but it must be studied here if one is to form a true estimate of the magical mastery of the sculptor. The Victory is headless and armless and much mutilated ; but that matters little. She stands on the prow of the trireme, and for everyone who sees her with any imagination- must for all time be the symbol of triumphant and splendid onset. The 78 BOTTICELLI: 79 figure no doubt weighs more than a ton — and is as light as air. The " Meteor " in a strong breeze with all her sails set and her prow foaming through the waves does not convey a more exciting idea of commanding and buoyant progress. But that comparison wholly omits the element of conquest — for this is essential Victory as well. The statue dates from the fourth century B.C. It was not discovered until 1863, in Samothrace. Paris is fortunate indeed to possess not only the Venus of Milo but this wonder of art — both in the same building. Before entering the picture galleries proper, let us look at two other exceedingly beautiful things also on this staircase — the two frescoes from the Villa Lemmi, but particularly No. 1297 on the left of the entrance to Gallery XVI., which represents Giovanna Tornabuoni and the Three Graces and is by Sandro Filipepi, whom we call Botticelli. For this exquisite work alone would I willingly cross the Channel even in a gale, such is its charm. A reproduction of it will be found opposite page 6, but it gives no impression of the soft delicacy of colouring: its gentle pinks and greens and purples, its kindly reds and chestnut browns. One should make a point of looking at these frescoes whenever one is on the staircase, which will be often. The ordinary entrance to the picture galleries of the Louvre is through the photographic vestibule on the right of the Winged Victory as you face it, leading to the Salle Duchatel, notable for such differing works as 80 A WANDERER IN PARIS frescoes by Luini and two pictures "by Ingres — repre- senting the beginning and end of his long and austere career. The Luinis are delightful ■ — very gay and, as always with this tender master, sweet — especially " The Nativity," which is reproduced opposite page 16. The Ingres' (which were bequeathed by the Comtesse Ducha- tel after whom the room is named) are the " CEdipus solv- ing the riddle of the Sphinx," dated 1808, when the painter was twenty-eiglit, and the " Spring," which some consider his masterpiece, painted in 1856. He lived to be eighty-six. English people have so few opportunities of seeing the work of this master (we have in oils only a little doubtful po:^trait of Malibran, very recently acquired, which hangs in the National Gallery) that he comes as a totally new craftsman to most of us; and his severity may not always please. But as a draughtsman he almost takes the breath away, and no one should miss the pencil heads, par- ticularly a little saucy lady, from his hand in the His de la Salle collection of drawings in another part of the Louvre. In the Salle Duchatel is also a screen of drawings with a very beautiful head by Botticelli in it — No. 48. From the rooms we then pass to the Salon Carre (so called because it is square, and not, as I heard one American explaining to another, after the celebrated collector Carre who had left these pictures to the nation), and this is, I suppose, for its size, the most valuable gallery in the world. It is doubtful if any other com- THE WINGED VICTORY OF SAMOTHRACE {Louvre) LEONARDO 81 bination of collections, each contributing of its choicest, could compile as remarkable a room, for the " Monna Lisa," or " La Joconde," Leonardo da Vinci's portrait of the wife of his friend Francesco del Giocondo, which is its greatest glory and perhaps the greatest glory of all Paris too, would necessarily be missing. Paris without this picture would not be the Paris that we know, or the Paris that h'as been since 1793 when " La Joconde " first became the nation's property — ever more to smile her inscrutable smile and exert her quiet mysterious sway, not only for kings and courtiers but for all. When all is said, it is Leonardo who gives the Louvre its special distinction as a picture gallery. Without him it would still be magnificent: with him it is priceless and sublime. For not only are there the " Monna Lisa " and (also in the Salon Carre) the sweet and beautiful " Madonna and Saint Anne," but in the next, the Grande Galeile, are his "Virgin of the Rocks," a variant of the only Leonardo in our National Gallery, and the " Bacchus " (so like the " John the Baptist ") and the " John the Baptist " ( so like the " Bacchus ") and the portrait of the demure yet mischievous Italian lady who is supposed to be Lucrezia Crivelli and who (in spite of the yellowing ravages of time) once seen is never for- gotten. The Louvre has all these (together with many drawings), but above all it has the Monna Lisa, of which what shall I say ? I feel that I can say nothing. But here are two descriptions of the picture, or rather two 82 A WANDERER IN PARIS descriptions of the emotions produced by the picture on two very different minds. These I may quote as expressing, between them, all. I will begin with that of Walter Pater : " As we have seen him using incidents of sacred story, not for their own sake, or as mere sub- jects for pictorial realisation, but as a cryptic language for fancies all his own, so now he found a vent for his thought in taking one of these languid women, and rais- ing her, as Leda or Pomona, as Modesty or Vanity, to the seventh heaven of symbolical expression. "La Gioconda is, in the truest sense, Leonardo's masterpiece, the revealing instance, of his mode of thought and work. In suggestiveness, only the Melan- cholia of Diirer is comparable to it; and no crude symbolism disturbs the effect of its subdued and grace- ful mystery. We all know the face and hands of the figure, set in its marble chair, in that circle of fantastic rocks, as in some faint light under sea. Perhaps of all ancient pictures time has chilled it least.' As often happens with works in which invention seems to reach its limit, there is an element in it given to, not invented by, the master. In that inestimable folio of drawings, once in the possession of Vasari, were certain designs by Verrocchio, faces of such impressive beauty that Leo- nardo in his boyhood copied them inany times. It is hard not to connect with these designs of the elder, by- past master, as with its germinal principle, the unfathom- ^ Yet for Vasari there was further magic of crimson in the lips and cheeks, lost for us. Pater's note. A PAGE OF PATER 83 able smile, always with a touch of something sinister on it, which plays over all Leonardo's work. Besides, the picture is a portrait. From childhood we see this image defining itself on the fabric of his dreams ; and but for express historical testimony, we might fancy that this was but his ideal lady, embodied and beheld at last. What was the relationship of a living Florentine to this creature of his thought.'' By what strange affinities had the dream and the person grown up thus apart, and yet so closely together.'' Present from the first incorporeally in Leonardo's brain, dimly traced in the designs of Verrocchio, she is found present at last in II Giocondo's house. That there is much of mere por- traiture in the picture is attested by the legend that by artificial means, the presence of mimes and flute- players, that subtle expression was protracted on the face. Again, was it in four years and by renewed labour never really completed, or in four months and as by stroke of magic, that the image was projected ? " The presence that rose thus so strangely beside the waters, is expressive of what in the .ways of a thousand years men had come to desire. Hers is the head upon which all 'the ends of the world are come,' and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and ex- quisite passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white Greek Goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this 84 A WANDERER IN PARIS beauty, into which the soul with all its maladies has passed ! All the thoughts and experience of the world have etched and moulded there, in that which they have of power to refine and make expressive the outward form, the animalism of Greece, the lust of Rome, the mysticism of the middle age with its spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the return df the Pagan world, the sins of the Borgias. She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave ; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants; and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary ; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the hanging lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands. The fancy of a perpetual life, sweeping together ten thousand experiences, is an old one; and modern philosophy has conceived the idea of humanity as wrought upon by, and summing up in itself all modes of thought and life. Certainly Lady Lisa might stand as the embodiment of the old fancy, the symbol of the modern idea." This was what the picture meant for Pater ; whether too much, is beside the mark. P^ter thought it and Pater wrote it, and that is enough. To others, who are not as Pater, it says less, and possibly more. This, for example, is what " Monna Lisa " suggested to one "MONNA LISA" 85 of the most distinguished and civilised minds of our time — James Russell Lowell : — She gave me all that woman can, Nor her soul's nunnery forego, A confidence that man to man Without remorse can never show. Rare art, that can the sense refine Till not a pulse rebellious stirs, And, since she never can he mine, Makes it seem sweeter to be hers ! Finally, since we cannot (I believe) spend too much time upon this picture, let me quote Vasari's account of it. " For Francesco del Giocondo, Leonardo undertook to paint the portrait of Monna Lisa, his wife, but, after loitering over it for four years, he finally left it un- finished. This work is now in the possession of the King Francis of France, and is at Fontainebleau. Whoever shall desire to see how far art can imitate nature may do so to perfection in this head, wherein every peculiarity that could be depicted by the utmost subtlety of the pencil has been faithfully reproduced. The eyes have the lustrous brightness and moisture which is seen in life, and around them are those pale, red, and slightly livid circles, also proper to nature, with the lashes, which can only be Copied, as these are, with the greatest difficulty ; the eyebrows also are rep- resented with the closest exactitude, where fuller and where more thinly set, with the separate hairs delineated as they issue from the skin, every turn being followed, and all the pores exhibited in a manner that could not 86 A WANDERER IN PARIS be more natural than it is : the nose, with its beautiful and delicately roseate nostrils, might be easily believed to be alive ; the mouth, admirable in its outline, has the lips uniting the rose-tints of their colour with that of the face, in the utmost perfection, and the carnation of the cheek does not appear to be painted, but truly of flesh and blood; he who looks earnestly at the pit of the throat cannot but believe that ^e sees the beating of the pulses, and it may be truly said that this work is painted in a manner well calculated to make the boldest master tremble, and astonishes all who behold it, how- ever well accustomed to the marvel? of art. "Monna Lisa was exceedingly beautiful, and while Leonardo was painting her portrait, he took the pre- caution of keeping someone constarrtly near her, to sing or play on instruments, or to jest and otherwise amuse her, to the end that she might continue cheerful, and so that her face might not exhibit the melancholy ex- pression often imparted by painters to the likenesses they take. In this portrait of Leopardo's, on the con- trary, there is so pleasing an expression, and a smile so sweet, that while looking at it one thinks it rather divine than human, and it has ever been esteemed a wonderful work, since life itself could exhibit no other appearance. King Francis I. (who met our Henry VIII. on the Field of the Cloth of Gold) bought the picture of Monna Lisa from the artist for a sum of money equal now to £20,000. It was on a visit to Francis that LA JOCONDE : MONNA LISA LEONARDO DA VINCI {Louvre) ROYAL COLLECTORS 87 Leonardo died. " Monna Lisa" was the most valuable picture in the cabinet of Francis I. and was first hung there in 1545. It is very interesting to think that this work, the peculiar glory of the Gallery, should also be its nucleus, so to speak. The Venus of Milo and the Winged Victory, which I have grouped with " Monna Lisa" as its chief treasures, were not added until the last century. Among other pictures in the Louvre which date from the inception of a royal collection in the brain of Francis I. are the " Virgin of the Rocks " by Leonardo, Raphael's "Sainte Famille" (No. 1498) and "Saint Michael," Andrea del Sarto's " Charite " and Piombo's "Visitation." Louis XIII. began his reign with about fifty pictures and increased them to two hundred, while under Louis XIV., the Louvre's^ most conspicuous friend, the royal collection grew from these two hundred to two thousand — assisted greatly by Colbert the finan- cier, who bought for the Crown not only much of the collection of the banker Jabach of Cologne, the Pier- pont Morgan of his day, who had acquired the art treasures of our own Charles I., but also the Mazarin bibelots. Under Louis XIV. and succeeding monarchs the pictures oscillated between the Louvre, the Luxem- bourg and Versailles. The Revolution centralised them in the Louvre, and on 8th November, 1793, the collec- tion was made over to the public. During the first Republic one hundred thousand francs a year were set aside for the purchase of pictures. 88 A WANDERER IN PARIS But we are in the Salon Carre. Close beside "La Joconde" is that Raphael which gives me personally more pleasure than any of his pictures — the portrait, beautiful in greys and blacks, of; Count Baldassare Castiglione, reproduced opposite page 52; here is a Correggio (No. 1117) bathed in a glory of light; here is a golden Giorgione; here is an allegory by Titian (No. 1589), not so miraculously coloured as the Cor- reggio but wonderfully rich and beautiful; here is a little princess by Velasquez; and near it a haunting portrait of a young man (No. 1644) which has been attributed to many hands, but rests now as the work of Francia Bigio. I reproduce it opposite page 70. And that is but a fraction of the treasures of the Salon Carre. For there are other Titians, notably the portrait (No. 1592) of a young man with a glove (reproduced opposite page 64), marked by a beautiful gravity ; other Raphaels more characteristic, including " La Belle Jardiniere " (No. 1496), filled with a rich deep calm; the sweetest Luini that I remember (No. 1354), and the immense "Marriage at Cana" by Paolo Veronese, which when I saw it recently was being laboriously engraved on copper by a gentleman in the middle of the room. It was odd to watch so careful a piece of translation in the actual making — to see Veronese's vast scene with its rich colouring and tremendous energy coming down into spider-like scratches on two square feet of hard metal. I did not know that such patience was any longer exercised. This picture, by the way, has a double ABANDONED COPIES 89 interest — the general and the particular. As Wliistler said of Switzerland, you may both admire the mountain and recognise the tourist on the top. It is full of portraits. The bride at the end of the table is Eleanor of Austria; at her side is Francis I. (who found his way into as many pictures as most men) ; next to him, in yellow, is Mary of England. The Sultan Suliman I. and the Emperor Charles V. are not absent. The musicians are the artist and his friends — Paul himself playing the 'cello, Tintoretto the piccolo, Titian the bass viol, and Bassano the flute. The lady with a toothpick is (alas !) Vittoria Colonna. It is, by the way, always student-day at the Louvre — at least I never remember to have been there, except on Sundays, when copyists were not at work. Many of the copies are being made to order as altar pieces in new churches and for other definite purposes. Not all, however ! A newspaper paragraph lying before me states that the authorities of the Louvre have five hundred unfinished copies on their hands, abandoned by their authors so thoroughly as never to be inquired for again. I am not surprised. From the Salle Carre we enter the Grande Galerie, which begins with the Florentine School, and ends, a vast distance away, with Rembrandt. But first it is well to turn into the little Salle des Primitifs Italiens, a few steps on the right, for here are very rare and beautiful things : Botticelli's " Madonna with a child and John the Baptist" (No. 1296); Domenico Ghir- 90 A WANDERER IN PARIS landaio's "Portrait of an old man and a boy" (No. 1322), which I reproduce opposite page 136, that triumph of early realism, and his "Visitation" (No. 1321), with its joyful colouring, culminating in a glori- ous orange gown ; Benedetto Ghirlandaio's " Christ on the way to Golgotha" (No. 1323, on the opposite wall), a fine hard red picture ; two little Piero de Cosimos (on each side of the door), very mellow and gay — represent- ing scenes in the marriage of Thetes and Peleus; Era Filippo Lippi's " Madonna and Child with two sainted abbots" (No. 1344), and the "Nativity" next it (No. 1343); a sweet and lovely "VirgiA and Child" (No. 1345) of the Era Eilippo Lippi school ; another, also very beautiful, by Mainardi (No. 1367) ; a canvas of por- traits, including Giotto and the painter himself, by Paolo Uccello (No. 1272), the very picture described by Vasari in the Lives; and Giotto's scenes in the life of St. Erancis, in the frame of which, as we shall see, I once, for historical comparison, slipped the photograph of M. Henri Pol, charmeur des oiseaux. These I name ; but much remains that will appeal even more to others. To walk along the Grande Galefie is practically to traverse the history of art : Italian, Spanish, British, German, Flemish and Dutch paintings all hang here. Nothing is missing but the French, which, however, are very near at hand. Some lines of Landor which always come to my mind in a picture gallery I may quote hereabouts with peculiar fitness, and also with a desire to transfer the haunting — a very good one even if one LANDOR'S CREED 91 does not agree with the reference to Rembrandt, which I do not : — First bring me Raphael, who alo.ne hath seen In all her purity Heaven's Virgin Queen, Alone hath felt true beauty; bring me then Titian, ennobler of the noblest men; And next the sweet Correggio, nor chastise His little Cupids for those wicked eyes. I want not Rubens's pink puffy bloom, Nor Rembrandt's gUmmer in a dirty room With these, nor Poussin's nymph-frequented woods. His templed heights and long-drawn solitudes. I am content, yet fain would look abroad On one warm sunset of Ausonian Claude. It is no province of this book to take the place of a catalogue ; but I must mention a few pictures. The left wall is throughout, I may say, except in the case of the British pictures, the better. Here, very early, is the lovely "Holy Family" of Andrea del Sarto (No. 1515) ; here hang the four Leooaxdos which I have mentioned and certain of his derivatives ; a beautiful Andrea Solario (No. 1530) ; a Lotto, very modern in feeling (No. 1350) ; a very striking "Salome" by Luini (1355), and the same painter's "Holy Family" (No. 1353) ; Mantegna ; a fine Palma ; Bellini ; Antonello de Messina; more Titians, including "The Madonna with the rabbit" (No. 1578) and " Jupiter and Antiope" (No. 1587) ; a new portrait of a man in armour by Tintoretto, lately lent to the Louvre, one of his gravest and greatest ; and so on to the sweet Umbrians — to Perugino and to Raphael, among whose pictures are two 92 A WANDERER IN PARIS or three examples of liis gay romantic manner, the most pleasing of which (No. 1509), " Apollo and Marsyas," is only conjecturally attributed to him. We pass then to Spain — - to Murillo, who is repre- sented here both in his rapturous saccharine and his real- istic moods, "La Naissance de la Vierge" (No. 1710) and " Le Jeune Mendicant " (No. 1717); to Velasquez, who, however, is no longer credited with the lively sketch of Spanish gentlemen (No. 1734) ; and to Zurbaran, the strong and merciless. The British pictures are few but choice, including a very fine Raeburn, and landscapes by Constable and Bonington, two painters whom the French elevated to the rank of master and influence while we were still de- bating their merits. Such a landscape as " Le Cottage " (No. 1806) by Constable, with its rich-English simplicity, brings one up with a kind of start in the midst of so much grandiosity and pomp. It is out of place here, and yet one is very happy to see it. From Britain we pass to the Flemish and Germans — »to perfect Holbeins, including an Erasmus and Diirer ; to Rubens, who, how- ever, comes later in his full force, and to the gross and juicy Jordaens. Then sublimity again ; for here is Rembrandt of the Rhine. After Leonardo, Rembrandt is to nie the glory of the Louvre, and especially the glory of the Grande Galerie, the last section of which is now hung with twenty-two of his works. Not one of them is perhaps superlative Rembrandt; there is nothing quite so fine REMBRANDT AND RUBENS 93 as the portrait of Elizabeth Bas at the Ryks, or the " School of Anatomy " at the Mauritshuis, or the " Un- just Steward " at Hertford House ; but how wonderful they are ! Look at the miracle of the flying angel in the picture of Tobias — how real it is and how light ! Look closely at the two little pictures of the philosopher in meditation. I have chosen the beautiful "Venus et L'Amour" and the "Pelerins d'Emmaus" for repro- duction ; but I might equally have taken others. They will be found opposite 146 and 154. On the other wall are a few pictures by Rembrandt's pupils and colleagues, such as Ferdinand Bol and Govaert Flinck, who were always on the track of the master; and more particularly Gerard Dou : note the old woman in his "Lecture de la Bible," for it is Rembrandt's mother, and also look carefully at " La Femme Hydro- pique," one of his most miraculously finished works — a Rembrandt through the small end of a telescope. From these we pass to the sumptuous Salle Van Dyck, which in its turn leads to the Salle Rubens, and one is again filled with wonder at the productivity of the twain — pupil and master. Did he never tire, this Peter Paul Rubens ? Did a new canvas never deter or abash him ? It seems not. No sooner was it set up in his studio than at it he must have gone like a charge of cavalry, magni- ficent in his courage, in his skill and in his brio. What a record ! Has Rubens' square mileage ever been worked out, I wonder. He was very like a Frenchman : it is the vigour and spirit of DumaS at work with the 94 A WANDERER IN PARIS brush. In the Louvre there are fifty-.four attested works, besides many drawings ; and it seems to me that I must have seen as many in Vienna, and as many in Dresden, and as many in Berhn, and as many in Antwerp, and as many in Brussels, to say nothing of the glorious land- scape in Trafalgar Square. He,is always overpowering ; but for me the quieter, gentler brushes. None the less the portrait of Helene Fourment an(i their two children, in the Grande Galerie, although far from approaching that exquisite picture in the Lichtenstein Gallery in Vienna, when the boys were a little older, is a beautiful and living thing which one would riot willingly miss. Van Dyck was, of course, more austere, less boisterous and abundant, but his record is hardly less amazing, and he seems to have faced life-size equestrian groups, such as the Charles the First here, without a tremor. The Charles is superb in his distinction and disdain; but for me, however, Van Dyck is the painter of single portraits, of which, no matter where I go, none seems more noble and satisfying than our, own Cornelius Van Voorst in Trafalgar Square. But the "Dame et sa Fille," which is reproduced on the opposite page, is very beautiful. All round the Salle Rubens are arranged the little cabinets in which the small Dutch pictures hang — the Jan Steens and the Terburgs, the Hals' and the Metsus, the Ruisdaels and the Karel du Jardins, the Ostades and the golden Poelenburghs. Of thfese what can I say ? There they are, in their hundreds, the least of them UNE DAME ET SA FILLE VAN DYCK {Louvre') THE WONDERFUL DUTCH 95 worth many minutes' scrutiny. But a few may be picked out : the Jan van Eyck (No. 1986) " La Vierge au Donateur," reproduced opposite page 166, in which the Chancellor RolHn reveres the Virgin on the roof of a tower, and small wild animals happily play around, and we see in the distance one of those little fairy cities so dear to the Flemish painter's imagination; David's "Noce de Cana"; Metsu's "Vierge et Enfant"; the Memling and the Rogier van der Weyden, close by; Franz Hals' " Bohemienne," reproduced opposite page 186; Van der Heyden's lovely " Plain de Harlem" (No. 2382); Paul Potter's "Boisde LaHaye" (No. 2529), almost like a Diaz, and his little masterpiece No. 2526 ; the Terburgs : the " Music Lesson " (No. 2588) and the charming "Reading Lesson" (No. 2591) with the little touzled fair-haired boy in it, reproduced opposite page 206 ; Ruisdael's " Paysage dit le Coup de Soleil " (No. 2560) ; Hobbema's " Moulin a eau " (No. 2404) ; and, to my eyes, almost first of all, Vermeer of Delft's " Lace- maker" (No. 2587), reproduced opposite page 216. These are all I name. So much for the paintings by the masters of the world. The Louvre also has drawings from the same hands, which hang in their thousands in a series of rooms on the first floor, overlooking the Rue de Rivoli. Here, as I have said, are other Leonardos (look particu- larly at No. 389), and here, too, are drawings by Raphael and Rembrandt, Correggio and Rubens (a child's head in particular), Domenico Ghirlandaio and Chardin, 96 A WANDERER IN PARIS Mantegna and Watteau, DUrer and Ingres. I re- produce only one, a study attributed to the school of Fabriano, opposite page 228. Here one may spend a month in daily visits and wish never to break the habit. We have in England hardly less valuable and interesting drawings, but they are not to be seen in this way. One must visit the Print Room of the British Museum and ask for them one by one in portfolios. The Louvre, I think, manages it better. CHAPTER VII THE louvre: II. MODERN PICTURES AND OTHER TREASURES The Early French Painters — Richard Parkes Bonington — Chardin — Historical Paintings — Bonington again; — The Moreau Collec- tion — The Thomy-Thierret Collection — A Bad Catalogue — The Venus of Milo — Beautiful Backs — Modern Sculpture — Exqui- site Terra-cottas — The necessity of Seeing the Louvre every day — Historical Associations — Petty Restitutions. FRENCH pictures early and late now await us. On our way down the Grand Galerie we passed on the right two entrances to other rooms. Taking that one which is nearer the British School, we find ourselves in Salle IX., leading to Salle X. and so on to Galerie XVI., which completes the series. In Salle X. the beginnings of French art may be studied, and in particular the curious Japanese effects of the Ecole d'Avignon. Here also is very interesting work by Le Maitre de Moulins and a remarkable series of drawings in the case in the middle, representing the siege of Troy. Salle XI. is notable for its portraits by Clouet and others ; in Salle XII. we find Le Sueur, and in Salle XIII. the curious brothers Le Nain, of whom there are very interesting examples at the lonidcs collection at South H 97 98 A WANDERER IN PARIS Kensington, but nothing better than the haymaking scene here, No. 542. French painting of the seventeenth century bursts upon us in the great Salle XIV. or Galerie Mollien, of which Nicolas Poussin and Ausonian Claude are the giants, thus completing Landor's pleasant list with which we entered the Grand Galerie in the last chapter. There are wonderful things here, but so crowded are they that I always feel lost and confused. There is, however, compensation and relief, for the room also contains one minute masterpiece which perhaps not more than five out of every thousand visitors have seen and yet which can be studied with perfect quietness and leisure. This is a tiny water-colour in the revolving screen in the middle. There is much delicate work in this screen, dainty aquatint effects by the Dutchmen Ostade and Van de Heyden, Weenix and Borssom, and so forth; but finest of all (as so often happens) is a little richly-coloured drawing of Nottingham by Boning- ton, who as we shall see, has a way of cropping up unsuspectedly and graciously in this great collection — and very rightly, since he owed so much to that Gallery. He was one of the youpgest students ever admitted, being allowed to copy there at the age of fifteen, while at the Beaux Arts. That was in the year after Waterloo. There may in the history of the Gal- lery have been copyists equally young, but there can never have been one more distingbished or who had deeper influence on French art. Paris not only made "SERENELY ARRIVING" 99 Bonington's career but ended it, for it was while sketch- ing in its streets ten years or more later that he met with the sunstroke which brought about his death when he was only twenty-seven, and stilled the marvel- lous hand for ever. Salle XV. is given up to portraits, among them — and shall I say chief of them, certainty chief of them in point of popularity — the adorable portrait of Madame Elizabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun and her daughter, painted by herself, which is perhaps the best-known French picture, and of which I give a reproduction opposite page 246. On a screen in this room are placed the latest acquisitions. When last I was there the more noticeable pictures were a portrait by Romney of him- self, rich and melancholy, recalling to the mind Tenny- son's monologue, and a sweet and ancient religieuse by Memling. There were also some Gorot drawings, not perhaps so good as those in the Moreau collection, but very beautiful, and a charming old-world lady by Fra- gonard. These probably are by this time distributed over the galleries, and other new arrivals have taken their place. I hope so. Galerie XVI., which leads out of the Salle de Por- traits, brings us to French art of the eighteenth century — to Greuze and David, to Fragonard and Watteau, to Lancret and Boucher, and, to my mind, most charm- ing, most pleasure-giving of all, to Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin, who is to be seen in perfection here and in the distant room which contains the Collection La Caze. 100 A WANDERER IN PARIS It is probable that no painter ever had quite so much charm as this kindly Frenchman, whose loving task it was to sweeten and refine homely Dutch art. Chardin is the most winsome of all painters: his brush laid a bloom on domestic life. The Louvre has twenty-eight of his canvases, mostly still-life, distributed between the Salle La Caze and Salle No. XVI., where we now are. The most charming of all, which {s to be seen in the Salle La Caze, is reproduced opposite page 234. Having walked down the left wall of the Salle, it is well to slip out at the door at the* end for a moment and refresh oneself with another View of Botticelli's fresco, which is just outside, before returning by the other wall, as we have to go back through the Salle des Portraits in order to examine Galerie VIII., a vast room wholly filled with French paintings of the first half of the nineteenth century, brjinging the nation's art to the period more or less at which the Luxembourg takes it up, though there is a certain amount of over- lapping. No room in the Louvre: ,so wants weeding and re-hanging as this, for it is a sad jumble, the hard studio brilliance of Ingres conflicting with the charm of Corot, the iron Manet with the gentle Millet, Dela- croix with Scheffer. There are pictures here which if they were only isolated would be unforgettable ; but as it is they are not even to be seen. We leave the room by the door opposite that through which we came and find ourselves again in the Grande Galerie. The way now is to the left, through the MANY MODERNS 101 Italian Schools, through the Salle €arre (why not stay there and let French art go hang?) through the Galerie d'Apollon (of which more anon), through the Rotunda and the Salle des Bijou^ (whither we shall return), to another crowded late eighteenth and early nineteenth century French room chiefly notable for David's Madame Recamier on her joyless little sofa. (Why didn't we stay in the Salon Carre?) In this room also are two large Napoleonic pictures — • one by Gros representing General Buonaparte visiting the plague victims of Jaffa in 1790; the other, by David, of the consecration service in Notre Dame, described in an earlier chapter. To see this kind of picture, at which the French have for many years been extremely apt, one must of course go to Versailles, where the history of France is spread lavishly over many square miles of canvas. From this room — La Salle des Sept Cheminees — we pass through a little vestibule, with Courbet's great village funeral in it, to the very pleasant Salle La Caze, containing the greater part of the collection of the late Dr. IjSl Caze, and notable chiefly for the Chardins of which I have already spoken, and also, by the further door, for a haunting "Bust dc femme" attributed to the Milanese School. But there are other admirable pictures here, including a Velasquez, and it repays study. Leaving by the further door and walking for some distance, we come to the His de la, Salle collection of 102 A WANDERER IN PARIS drawings, from which we gain the. Collection Thiers, which should perhaps be referred to here, although there is not the slightest necessity to see it at all. The Thiers collection, which occupies two rooms, is remark- able chiefly for its water-colour copies of great paint- ings. The first President of the Republic employed patient artists to make copies suitable for hanging upon his walls of such inaccessible works as the " Last Judgment" of Michael Angelo and Raphael's Dresden Madonna. The results are certainly extraordinary, even if they are not precisely la guerre. The Arundel Society perhaps found its inspiration in this collection. Among the originals there is a fine Terburg. On leaving the Thiers collectioJi, one comes to a narrow passage with a little huddle of water-colours, very badly treated as to light and space, and well worth more consideration. These pictures should not be missed, for among them are two Boqingtons, a windmill in a sombre landscape, which I reproduce opposite page 274, and next to it a masterly drawing of the statue of Bartolomme Colleoni at Venice, which Ruskin called the finest equestrian group in the world. Bonington, who had the special gift of painting great pictures in small compass (just as there are men who can use a whole wall to paint a little picture on), has made a drawing in which the original sculptor would have rejoiced. It would do the Louvre authorities good if these Boningtons, which they treat* so carelessly, were stolen. Nothing could be easier; I worked out the THE MOREAU COLLECTION 103 felony as I stood there. All that one would need would be a few friends equally concerned to teach the Louvre a lesson, behind whose broad backfe one could ply the diamond and the knife. Were I a company promoter this is how I should spend my leisure hours. Such theft is very nigh virtue. Among other pictures in these bad little rooms — Nos. XVII. and XVIII. — -are some Millets and Decamps. Two more collections — and theSe really more inter- esting than anything we saw in Galeries XIV. or XVI., or the Salle des Sept Cheminees — await us ; but they need considerable powers of perambulation. Chrono- logy having got us under his thumb, we must make the longer journey first — to the Collection Moreau. The Collection Moreau is to be found at the top of the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, the entrance to which is in the Rue de Rivoli. In the lower part of this building are held periodical exhibitions ; but the upper parts are likely at any rate for a long time to remain unchanged, and here are wonderful collections of furniture, and here hang the few but select canvases brought together by Adolph Moreau and his son, and presented to the nation by M. Etienne Moreau-Nelaton. In the Thomy-Thierret collection in another top storey of the same inexhaustible palace (to which our fainting feet are bound) are Corots of the late period; M. Moreau bought the earlier. Here, among nearly forty others, you may see that portrait of Corot painted in 1825, just before he left for Rome, which his parents 104 A WANDERER IN PARIS exacted from him in return for their consent to his new career and the abandonment of their rosy dreams of his success as a draper. Here you may see " Un Moine," one of the first pictures he was able to sell — for five hundred francs (twenty pounds). Here is the charming marine "La Rochelle" painted in 1851 and given by Corot to Desbarolles and by Desbarplles to the younger Dumas. Here is the very beautiful. Ponte de Nantes, reproduced opposite page 252, belonging to his later manner, and here also is an exceptionally merry little sketch, "Bateau de peche a maree basse." I mention these only, since selection is necessary; but everything that Corot painted becomes in time satisfying to the student and indispensable to its owner. Among the pencil drawings we find this exquisite lover of nature once more, with fifteen studies of his Mistress. One of the most interesting of the Moreau pictures is Fantin-Latour's " Hommage a Delacroix," with its figures of certain of the great and more daring writers and painters of the day, 1864, the year after Delacroix's death. They are grouped about his framed portrait — Manet, red haired and red bearded, a little like Mr. Meredith in feature ; Whistler, with his white feather black and vigorous, and his hand on, the historical cane ; Legros (the only member of tlie group who is still living, and long may he live !) and Baudelaire, for all the world like an innocent professor. Manet himself is repre- sented here by his famous " Dejeuner sur I'herbe," which the scandalised Salon of 1863 refused to hang, and three THOMY-THIERRET 105 smaller canvases. Among the remaining pictures which gave me most pleasure are Couture's. portrait, of Adolphe Moreau the younger ; Daumier's " La Republique " ; Carriere's "L'enfant a la soupiere" (notice the white bowl) ; Decanaps ' " La Battue," curiously like aKouinck ; and Troyon's " Le Passage du Gue," so rich and sweet. From the Collection Moreau, with its early Barbizon pictures, one ought to pass to the collection Thomy- Thierret; but it needs courage and endurance, for the room which contains these exquisite pictures is only to be reached on foot after climbing many stairs and walk- ing for what seem to be many miles among models of ships and other neglected curiosities on the Louvre's top- most floor. But once the room is reached one is per- fectly happy, for every picture is a gem and there is no one there. M. Thomy-Thierret, who died quite recently, was a collector who liked pictures to he small, to be rich in colour, and to be painted by the Barbizon and Romantic Schools. Here you may see twelve Corots, all of a much later period than those bequeathed by M. Moreau, among them such masterpieces as " La Vallon " (No. 2801), reproduced opposite the next page, "Le Chemin de Sevres " (No. 2803), "Entree de Village " (No. 2808), "Les Chaumieres" (No. 2809), and "La Route d'Arras" (No. 2810). Here are thirteen Daubignys, in- cluding "Les Graves de Villerville" (No. 28,177), and one sombre and haunting English scene — " La Tamise a Erith" (No. 2821). Here are ten Diaz', most beau- tiful of which to my eyes is " L'Eploree " (No. 2863). 106 A WANDERER IN PARIS Here are ten Rousseaus, among them " Le Printemps " (No. 2903), with its rapturous freshness, which I re- produce opposite page 116, and "Les Chenes" (No. 2900), such a group of treest as Rousseau alone could paint. Here are six Millets, my favourite be- ing the "Precaution Maternelle " (No. 2894), with its lovely blues, which again reappear in "Le Vanneur" (No. 2893). Here are eleven Troyons, of which "La Provende des poules" (No. 2907), yiith ils bustle of tur- keys and chickens around the gay peasant girl beneath a burning sky, reproduced opposite; page 266, is one of the first pictures to which my feet carry me on my visits to Paris. Here are twelve Dupres, most memorable of which is " Les Landes " (No. 2871). And here also are Delacroixs, Isabeys and Meissoniers. I suppose it is the best permanent collection of these masters. So much for the pictures. There remains an im- mense variety of beautiful and interesting objects to be seen : so immense that it is almost ridiculous to attempt to write of them in such a book as this. The sculpture alone . . . ! Let us at any rate walk through the sculpture gal- leries. To write about painting is -sufficiently difficult and unsatisfactory; to write about sculpture is practi- cally impossible. Another obstacle is that the numbers in the official catalogue that is sold' in the Louvre and the numbers on the statues do not correspond, so that one becomes as perplexed and irritatfed as the King and Queen in Andersen's story of " The. Tinder Box " after o ij < > w 1-1 THE VENUS OF MILO 107 the dog with eyes as big as saucers had chalked the same figure on every house in the street. We in England see so little statuary and know so little about it, that the visits of the English traveller to the sculpture galleries of the Louvre, chiefly made in order that he may say that he has seen the Venus of Milo, are few and hurried. To most of us all sculpture is equally good and equally cold ; but anyone who has an eye for the beauty of form will find these rooms a paradise. We have isolated figures in the British Museum that stand apart, and we have of course the Elgin marbles, which are as fine as anything in the Louvre, nor is there anything there with quite such a quality of tender charm as our new figure of a mourning woman ; but when all is said the Louvre collection, as is only natural in a sculpture-loving nation, is vastly belter than our own. The bronzes alone — in the Galerie Denon — leave us hopelessly behind. You sec the Venus of Milo before you all the way along her corridor : she stands quietly and glimmeringly beckoning at the very end of it, alone, before her dark red background. Why the Venys of Milo is so radi- antly satisfying, so almost terribly beautiful, I cannot explain ; but there it is. It is a cold beauty, but it is magical too ; it dominates, controls. And with it there is peace ; a dove broods somewhere near. The strangest thing of all is that one never misses the arms. It is as though the arms were a defect in a perfect woman. How they can have been disposed by the sculptor I 108 A WANDERER IN PARIS used once languidly to speculate; but I am interested no more. Those, however, that are should remember to look at the neighbouring glass case, where portions of hands and arms, discovered with the Venus in the soil of Milo in 1820 (the world has known this wonder only eighty-nine years : Napoleon never saw her) are preserved. There is little room for me to enumerate the statues that should retard your steps to her ; but the Borghese Mars is certainly one, in the midst of the rotunda, and I personally am attracted by the Silenus nursing Bacchus in the same room. In the Salle du Sarcophage de Medee there is a little torso of Amour on the left of Apollo, also with a beautiful back. In the Salle de I'Hermaphrodite de Velletri notice a draped figure lack- ing a head, close to the Hermaphrodite on the right. From the Venus of Milo one turns to the Giant Mel- pomene keeping guard majestically over the mosaic pavement below her, which at first sight one thinks to be very old, but which dates only from the time of Napoleon, whose genius is symbolised by Minerva. There are few more lovely shades of colour in the Louvre than are preserved in this floor. In the Salle des Caryatides, from which there is an exit into the courtyard of the old Louvre, there is a rugged Hercules, a boorish god with' a club, that always fascinates me. The Hercules who carries Telephe, just at the entrance, though fine, is a far less attractive figure. Also notice the child with the go®se, dug up in the BEAUTIFUL BACKS 109 Appian Way in 1789; the towering Alexander the Great; the Jupiter de Versailles; the "Mercure at- tachant sa sandale " ; the " Bacchus couronne de pam- pes"; the " Discobulus au repos." I give no numbers for a reason explained above — a privation which I re- gret, since I cannot draw attention to two or three torsi with the most exquisite baclcs, one in one of the windows entitled "Amour avec les attributs d'Hercule." In the Salle des Heros Combattant note the mischiev- ous head of the " Jeune Satyre sourlant," in the middle. In the Salle de la Pallas de Velletri, the " Genie du rcpos eternel," most feminine of youths, is alluring, and here are the Venus d'Arles and the Appollon Sauroctone after a bronze by Praxiteles. Note also the life and spirit of the " Centaure dompte par I'Amour," and there are beautiful torsi here, with fluid lides ; also a charming "Jeune homme casque, dit Mars." In the next room, the Salle du Tibre, are other examples of perfect modelling — in the two or three " Jeunes Satyres vetus de la nebride," which are here, and in one or two figures in the window diagonally opposite to the door; and look also at the two Venuses " accroupit " in the middle, with the remains of little hands orj their backs. But the colossal statue of old Father Tiber with Romulus and Remus is the dominating group. I suspect that a census of the visitors to the modern sculpture in the Louvre would yield very low figures. This is not surprising for at least two reasons, one being that the sculpture displayed there is of poor quality. 110 A WANDERER IN PARIS not made the less inferior by being adjacent to so much of the best sculpture in the world, and the other that it is so exceedingly difficult to find the way in. My advice to the reader is. Don't find it. If, however, you insist, you will have the opportunity of selecting suitable adjectives for the work of Coyzevox and Puget, Coustou and Pigalle (after whom is named the roystering Place Pigalle to which so many cabs and motors urge their giddy way in the small hours), Houdon (who could be rather charming) and Ramly (who couldn't) ; Jeraud and Rude, Chaudet and the vivid Carpeaux. Without the work of these men Paris would not be what it is, for we meet the creations of their mallet and chisel at every turn ; and yet I know of few spots so depressing as the galleries that enshrine their indoor work. Carpeaux for example designed the group called "La Danse" on the wall of the Opera. More charming by far is the Renaissance Sculpture — the Delia Robbias and Donatellos — in the Ren- aissance Galleries, also on the groundfloor in the extreme South East Wing ; but these are often closed. In all the galleries of what may be called the secondary Louvre — the pictures and ancient sculpture coming first — nothing gives me so much pleasure as the wall paint- ings from Rome and Pompeii, of .such exquisite deli- cacy of colour and now and then of design, and the terra-cotta figures, in the rooms above the Renais- sance Gallery: grotesque comedians, cheerful peasants, mothers and children as simple and sweet as Millet's, EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES 111 merry Cupids, hooded ladies, and in Room B. two winged figures (Nos. 86 and 88) that are Hghter than air. In Room L. look particularly at the statuette of a peda- gogue. In the Salle de Clarac, containing the collection of M. Clarac, look also very particularly at the little marble statue, broken but perfect too, of the crouching woman — No. 2631 — who ought to be on a revolving table, so lovely must her back be. I say nothing of the other famous collections of the Louvre — the Egyptian and Assyrian and Chaldean rooms, the furniture, the ceramics, the models of ships and so forth. The riches of this p&lace are too varied and too many. But the little room between the Rotunde d'Apollon and the Salle des Sept Cheminees I must refer to, because that contains one of the most beautiful objects in the whole building — the Etruscan funeral casque, the grey-green and gold of which, but particularly the grey-green — the hue of verdigris — catch the eye so often as one passes and repasses this spot. In this room also are miracles of goldsmith's and silver- smith's art from the ruins of Pompeii, the gift of Baron Edward de Rothschild in 1895; and in the Galerie d'Apollon one must of course spend time to study its priceless goldsmith's work and carved jewels. But the pen swoons at the thought of describing them. Further description of the Louvre collections is not practicable in this book; nor indeed could any book or any library, really do them justice; nor could one obtain more than a faint impression of these riches if 112 A WANDERER IN PARIS one visited the Louvre every morning for a month. But that undoubtedly is what one ought to do. Every day one should for a while loiter there. One entirely loses sight of the fact as one walks through the Louvre that it was ever anything but an interminable museum, so much so indeed that a separate visit is necessary merely to keep our thoughts fixed on the history of the palace, for in almost every room something of extraordinary Interest has happened. Kings and Queens have lived, loved, suffered and died in them; statesmen have met there to declare war; banquets and balls have enlivened them. In the vesti- bule or rotunda at the head of the grand staircase on the left leading into the glorious steel gates of the Galerie d'Apollon, Henri IV., brought hither from the Rue de la Ferronerie where Ravaillac stabbed him, breathed his last. In the Salle La Gaze, where we saw the Chardins, were held the great fetes under Charles IX. and Henri III. In the Salle des Caryatides, where now is only sculpture, once dangled -from the ceiling the hanged assassin of President Bressop. Another visit is necessary for the. examination of the paintings on the ceilings, which one never sees or even thinks of when one is new to the rooms. But this is a duty which is by no means unavoidable. The Louvre is to-day the most wonderful museum in the world ; but what would one noj give to be able to visit it as it was in 1814, when it was in some respects more wonderful still. For then it was filled with the THE PRICE OF HONOUR 113 spoils of Napoleon's armies, who had instructions always to bring back from the conquered cities what they could see that was likely to beautify and enrich France. It is a reason for war in itself. I would support any war with Austria, for example, that would bring to London Count Czernin's Vermeer and the Parmigianino in the Vienna National Gallery; any war with Germany that would put the Berlin National Gallery at our disposal. Napoleon had other things to fight for, but that com- prehensive brain forgot nothing, and as he deposed a king he remembered a blank space jn the Louvre that lacked a Raphael, an empty niche waiting for its Phidias. The Revolution decreed the Museum, but it was Napoleon who made it priceless and glorious. After the fall of this man a trumpery era of restitution set in. Many of his noble patriotic thefts were cancelled out. The world readjusted itself and shrank into its old pettiness. Priceless pictures and statues were carried again to Italy and Austria, Napoleon to St. Helena. CHAPTER VIII THE TUILERIE3 A Vanished Palace — The Most Magnificent Vista — Enter Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette — The Massacre of the Swiss Guards — ■ The Blood of Paris —A Series of Disasters — The Growth of Paris — The Napoleonic Rebuilders — The Arc de Triomphe de Carrousel — ■ The Irony of History — A Frock Coat Rampant — The Statuary of Paris — The Gardens of the Tuileries — Monsieur Pol, Chaimer of Birds — The Parisian Sparrow — Hyde Pack — The Drum. HAD we turned our back only thirty-eight years ago on Fremiet's statue of Joan of Arc (which was not there then) in the Place de RivoH, and walked down what is now the Rue de Tuileries towards the Seine, we should have had on our left hand a beautiful and imposing building — the Palace of the Tuileries, which united the two wings of the Tvouvre that now terminate in the Pavilion de Marsan just by the Place de Rivoli and the Pavilion de Flore on the Quai des Tuileries. The palace stretched right across this inter- val, thus interrupting the wonderful vista of to-day from the old Louvre right away to the Arc de Triomphe — probably the most extraordinary and beautiful civi- lised, or artificial, vista in the world. The palace had, however, a sufficiently fine if curtailed share of it from its own windows. 114 HISTORY AGAI]^ 115 All Parisians upwards of forty-five must remember the Palace perfectly, for it was not destroyed until 1871, during the Commune, and it was some years after that incendiary period before all traces were removed and the gardens spread uninterruptedly from the Carrousel to the Concorde. The Palace of the Tuilerifes (so called because it occupied a site previously covered by tile kilns) was begun in 1564 and had therefore lived for three cen- turies. Catherine de Medicis plahned it, but, as we shall read later, she lost interest in it very quickly owing to one of those inconvenient prophecies which were wont in earlier times so to embarrass rulers, but which to-day in civilised countries have entirely gone out. The Tuileries was a happy enough palace, as palaces go, until the Revolution : it then became for a while the very centre of rebellion and carnage; for Louis XVI. and the Royal Farqily were conveyed thither after the fatal oath had been sworn in the Versailles tennis-court. Then came the critical 10th of August, when the King consented to attend the confer- ence in the Manege (now no more, but a tablet oppo- ite the Rue Castiglione marks the spot) and thus lost everything. The massacre of the Swiss Guards followed : but here it is impossible, or at least absurd, not to hear Carlyle. Mandal, Commander of the National Guard, I would premise, has been assassinated by the crowd ; the Con- stitutional Assembly sits in the Manege, and the King, 116 A WANDERER IN PARIS a prisoner in the Tuileries, but still a hesitant and an optimist, is ordered to attend it. At last he consents. "King Louis sits, his hands leant on his knees, body bent forward; gazes for a space fixedly on Syndic Rcederer; then answers, looking over his shoulder to the Queen: Marchons! They niarch; King Louis, Queen, Sister Elizabeth, the two royal children and governess : these, with Syndic Rcederer, and OiEcials of the Department; amid a double rank of National Guards. The men with blunderbusses, the steady red Swiss gaze mournfully, reproachfully; but hear only these words from Syndic Rcederer : ' The King is going to the Assembly; make way.' It has struck eight, on all clocks, some minutes ago: the King has left the Tuileries — for ever. "O ye stanch Swiss, ye gallant gentlemen in black, for what a cause are ye to spend and be spent ! Look out from the western windows, ye may see King Louis placidly hold on his way ; the poor little Prince Royal 'sportfully kicking the fallen leaves.' Fremescent multitude on the Terrace of the Feuillants whirls parallel to him ; one man in it, very noisy, with a long pole: will they not obstruct the outer Staircase, and back-entrance of the Salle, when it comes to that? King's Guards can go no farther than the bottom step there. Lo, Deputation of Legislators come out; he of the long pole is stilled by oratory; Assembly's Guards join themselves to King's Guards, and all may mount in this case of necessity; the outer Staircase is free, or THE SWISS GUARDS 117 passable. See, Royalty ascends ; a blue Grenadier lifts the poor little Prince Royal from the press; Royalty has entered in. Royalty has vanished for ever from your eyes. — And ye.' Left standing there, amid the yawning abysses, and earthquake of Insurrection ; with- out course ; without command : if je perish, it must be as more than martyrs, as martyrs who are now with- out a cause ! The black Courtiers disappear mostly ; through such issues as they can. The poor Swiss know not how to act: one duty only is clpar to them, that of standing by their post ; and they will perform that. " But the glittering steel tide has arrived ; it beats now against the Chateau barriers g,nd eastern Courts; irresistible, loud-surging far and wide ; ■ — breaks in, fills the Court of the Carrousel, blackbrowed Marseillese in the van. King Louis gone, say you; over to the Assembly ! Well and good : but till the Assembly pronounce Forfeiture of him, what boots it.' Our post is in that Chateau or stronghold of his; there till then must we continue. Think, ye stanch Swiss, whether it were good that grim murder began, and brothers blasted one another in pieces for a stone edifice ? — Poor Swiss ! they know not how to act : from the southern windows, some fling cartridges, in sign of brotherhood ; on the eastern outer staircase, and within through long stairs and corridors, they stand firm- ranked, peaceable and yet refusing to stir. Westermann speaks to them in Alsatian German ; Marseillese plead, in hot Proven fal speech and pantomime ; stunning hub- 118 A WANDERER IN PARIS bub pleads and threatens, infinite, around. The Swiss stand fast, peaceable and yet immqvable; red granite pier in that waste-flashing sea of steel. " Who can help the inevitable issue ; Marseillese and all France on this side ; granite S\yiss on that ? The pantomime grows hotter and hotter f Marseillese sabres flourishing by way of action ; the Swjss brow also cloud- ing itself, the Swiss thumb bringing its firelock to the cock. And hark ! high thundering* above all the din, three Marseillese cannon from the Carrousel, pointed by a gunner of bad aim, come rattling over the roofs ! Ye Swiss, therefore : Fire ! The Swiss fire ; by volley, by platoon, in rolling fire : Marseillese men not a few, and 'a tall man that was louder than any,' lie silent, smashed upon the pavement ; — not a few Marseillese, after the long dusty march, have made halt here. The Carrousel is void ; the black tide recoiling ; ' fugitives rushing as far as Saint-Antoine before thejr stop.' The Can- noneers without linstock have squatted invisible, and left their cannon ; which the Swiss ^eize. . . . "Behold, the fire slackens not; nor does the Swiss rolling-fire slacken from within. Nay they clutched cannon, as we saw ; and now, from the other side, they clutch three pieces more ; alas, cannon without linstock ; nor will the steel-and-flint answer, though they try it. Had it chanced to answer ! Patriot onlookers have their misgivings ; one strangest Patriot onlooker thinks that the Swiss, had they a commlinder, would beat. He is a man not unqualified to judg« ; the name of him CARNAGE 119 Napoleon Buonaparte. And onlo'okers, and women, stand gazing, and the witty Dr. Moore of Glasgow among them, on the other side of the River : cannon rush rumbling past them; pause on the Pont Royal; belch out their iron entrails there, against the Tuileries ; and at every new belch, the women and onlookers ' shout and clap hands.' City of all the Devils ! In remote streets, men are drinking breakfast-coffee; following their affairs; with a start now and, then, as some dull echo reverberates a note louder. And here .'' Marseil- lese fall wounded ; but Barbaroux has surgeons ; Barba- roux is close by, managing, though underhand and under cover. Marseillese fall death-stru6k ; bequeath their firelock, specify in which pocket are the cartridges ; and die murmuring, ' Revenge me. Revenge thy country ! ' Brest Federe Officers, galloping in red coats, are shot as Swiss. Lo you, the Carrousel has burst into flame ! — Paris Pandemonium ! Nay the poor City, as we said, is in fever-fit and convulsion: such crisis has lasted for the space of some half hour. "But what is this that, with Legislative Insignia, ventures through the hubbub and death-hail, from the back-entrance of the Manege ? Towards the Tuileries and Swiss: written Order from his Majesty to cease firing ! O ye hapless Swiss, why was there no order not to begin it ? Gladly would the Swtes cease firing : but who will bid mad Insurrection cease firing.'' To In- surrection you cannot speak; neither can it, hydra- headed, hear. The dead and .dying, by the hundred, 120 A WANDERER IN PARIS lie all around ; arc borne bleeding through the streets, towards help; the sight of them, like a torch of the Furies, kindling Madness. Patriot Paris roars ; as the bear bereaved of her whelps. On, ye Patriots : Ven- geance ! Victory or death ! There are men seen, who rush on, armed only with walking-sticks. Terror and Fury rule the hour. " The Swiss, pressed on from witl^out, paralysed from within, have ceased to shoot; but not to be shot. What shall they do "^ Desperate is the moment. Shelter or instant death: yet How, Where? One party flies out by the Rue de I'Echelle; is destroyed utterly, ' en entier.' A second, by the other side, throws itself into the Garden; 'hurrying across a keen fusil- lade'; rushes suppliant into the National Assembly; finds pity and refuge in the back benches there. The third, and largest, darts out in column, three hundred strong, towards the Champs-Elysees : ' Ah, could we but reach Courbcvoyc, where other Swiss are ! ' Wo ! see, in such fusillade the column ' soon breaks itself by diversity of opinion,' into distracted segments, this way and that ; — to escape in holes, to die fighting from street to street. The firing and murdering will not cease; not yet for long. The red Portersj of Hotels are shot at, be they Suisse by nature, or Suisse only in name. . . . " Surely few things in the history of carnage are pain- fuller. What ineffaceable red streak, flickering; so sad in the memory, is that, of this poor column of red Swiss ' breaking itself in the confusion of opinions ' ; dispers- VICISSITUDES 121 ing, into blackness and death ! Honour to you, brave men ; honourable pity, through long times ! Not martyrs were ye; and yet almost more. He was no King of yours, this Louis; and he forsook you like a King of shreds and patches: ye were but sold to him for some poor sixpence a-day ; yet would ye work for your wages, keep your plighted word. The work now was to die; and ye did it. Honour to you, O Kins- men." Is that too dreadful an association for this spot .'' It is terrible ; but to visit Paris without any historical in- terest is too materialistic a proceeding, and to have the historical interest in Paris and be afraid of a little blood is an untenable position. Paris is steeped in blood. The Tuileries had not seen all its Tiot yet ; July 29th, 1830, was to come, when, after anqther taste of mon- archy, revived in 1814 after its murder on that appalling 10th of August (which was virtualfy its death day, al- though the date of the birth of the First Republic stands as September 21st, 1793), the mob attacked the Palace, the last Bourbon king, Charles X., fled from it and from France, and Louis-Philippe of Orleans mounted the throne in his stead. But that was not all. Another seventeen and a half years and revengeful time saw Louis-Philippe, last of the Orleans kings, escaping in his turn from another besieging crowd, and the establish- ment of the Second Republic. During the Second Empire some of the old splendour returned, and it was here, at the Tuileries, that Napo- 122 A WANDERER IN PARIS leon III. drew up many of his plans for the modern Paris that we now know; and then came the Prussian war and the Third Repubhc, and then the terrible Com- munard insurrection in the spring of 1871, in which the Tuileries disappeared for ever. Napoleon III., as I have said, assisted by Baron Haussmann, toiled in the great pacific task of renovating Paris, not with the imagina- tive genius of his uncle but with an undeniable largeness and sagacity. He it was who added so greatly to the Louvre — all that part in fact opposite the Place du Palais Royal and the Magasins du Louvre as far west as the Rue de Rohan. A large portion of the corre- sponding wing on the river side was his too. But here is a list, since we are on the subjectsof modern Paris — which began with the great Napoleon's reconstruction of the ravages (beneficial for the most part) of the Re- volutionaries — of the efl'orts made, by each ruler since that epoch. I borrow the table froln the Marquis de Rochegude. " Napoleon I. — Arc de Triomphe de Carrousel, Ven- dome Column, Fa9ade du Corps Legislatif, Commence- ment of the Arc de Triomphe de I'Etoile, La Bourse, the Bridges d'Austerlitz, d'lena, des Arts, de la Cite, several Markets, Quais d'Orsay, de Billy, du Louvre, Montebcllo, de la Tournelle ; the Eastern and Northern Cemeteries ; numbering the houses in 1806, begun with- out success in 1728; pavements in the streets and doing away with the streams or flowing gutters in the middle of the streets." (How like Napoleon to get the THE BUILDERS 123 houses numbered on a clear system ! Throughout Paris the odd numbers occupy one side of the street and the even the other. All are numbered from the Seine out- wards.) . " The Restoration. — Chapel Expiatoirc, N.D. de Bonne-Nouvelle, N.D. de Lorette, St. Vincent de Paul ; Bridges of the Invalides, of the Archbishopric, d'Arcole ; Canals of St. Denis and St. Martin ; fifty-five new streets ; lighting by gas." (It was about 1828 that cabs came in. They were called fiacres from the circumstance that their originator carried on his business at the sign of the Grand St. Fiacre.) "Louis Philippe, 1830-1848. — Finished the Made- leine, Arc de Triomphe, erected the Obelisk (Place de la Concorde), Column of July; Bridgfes: Louis-Philippe, Carrousel ; Palace of the Quai d'Orsay ; enlarged the Palais de Justice; restored Notre Dame and Sainte Chapelle; Fountains: Louvois, Cuvier, St. Sulpice, Gaillon, Moliere ; opened the Museupis of Cluny and the Thermes. In 1843—1,100 streets, "Napoleon IIL, 1852-1870. — Embellished Paris — execution of Haussmann's plans, twenty-two new boule- vards ; Streets Lafayette, Quatre-Septembre, de Turbigo ; Bvd. St. Germain ; Rues des Ecoles, de Rivoli, the Champs- Elysees Quarter, the Avenues Friedland, Hoche, Kleber, the Marceau, de L'Imperatrice, many squares ; a part of new Louvre; Churches of St. Augustine, The Trinity, St. Ambroise, St. Clotilde (finishing of) ; Theatres, Chatelet, Lyrique, du Vaudeville; Tribunal of Com- 124 A WANDERER IN PARIS merce. Hotel Dieu, Barracks, Central' Markets (also the ceinture railway) ; finishing of the Laribosiere hospital, the Fountain of St. Michel, the Bridges of Solferino, L'Alma, the Pont au Change. In 1861 — 1,667,841 in- habitants. " The Commune. — Burning of the Tuileries, the Ministry of Finance, the Louvre Library, the Hotel de Ville, the Palace of the Legion of Honour, the Palace of the Quai d'Orsay, the Lyric, the Chatelet and the Porte St. Martin theatres, etc. " The Republic. — Reconstructiqn of the buildings burnt by the Commune ; Avenue de I'Opera, the Opera House ; Streets : Etienne Marcel, Reaumur, Avenue de la Republique, etc. In 1892, 4,090 streets, in 1902 there were 4,261 streets. The Exhibitioil 1878 left the Tro- cadero, and that of 1889 the Eiffel Tower, and that of 1900 the two Palaces of the Chanaps-Elysees and the bridge Alexander III." (To this One should add the Metro, still uncompleted, which has the advantage over London's Tubes of being only just below the surface, so that no lift is needed.) The Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, at the east end of the gardens, is a mere child compared with the Arc de Triomphe de I'Etoile, which stands there, so serenely and magnificently, at the end of the vista in the west, nearly two amazing miles away; it could be placed easily, with many feet to spare, Under that greater monument's arch (as Victor Hugo's cofiin was) ; but it is more beautiful. Both were the work of Napoleon, .J^i ^ ^t^ik I TIME'S REVENGES AGAIN 125 both celebrate the victories of 1805-06. The Carrousel is surmounted by a triumphal car and four horses ; but here again, as in the case of the statue of Henri IV. on the Pont Neuf, there have been ironical changes. Napoleon, when he ordained the arch, which was in- tended largely to reproduce that of Severus at Rome, ravished for its crowning the quadriga from St. Mark's at Venice: those glorious gleaming horses over the door. That was as it should be : he was a conqueror and entitled to the spoils of conquest. But after his fall came, as we have seen, a pedantic disgorgement of such treasure; the golden team t,rotted back to the Adriatic, and a new decoration had to be provided for the Carrousel. Hence the present one, which represents — what ? It is almost inconceivable ; but, Louis XVIII. having commissioned it, it represents the triumph no longer of Napoleon but of the Restoration ! Amusing to remember this under the Third Republic, as one looks up at it and then at the bas-reliefs of the battle of Austerlitz, the peace of Tilsit, the capitulation of Ulm, the entry into Munich, the entry into Vienna and the peace of Pressburg. Time's revenges indeed. Standing under the Arc du Carrousel one makes the interesting but disappointing discovery that the Arc de Triomphe, the column of Luxor in the Place de la Concorde, the fountain, the Arc du Carrousel, the Gambetta monument and the Pavilion Sully of the Louvre do not form a straight line, as by all the laws of French architectural symmetry they should — especially 126 A WANDERER IN PARIS here, where compasses and rulers seem to have been at work on every inch of the ground, and, as I have ascertained, general opinion considers them to do. All is well, from the west, until the Arc du Carrousel ; it is the Gambetta and the Pavilion Sully that throw it out. The Gambetta ! This monument fascinates me, not by its beauty nor because I have any especial reverence for the statesman ; but simply by the vigour of his clothes, the frock coat and the light overcoat of the flamboyant orator, holding forth for evermore (or until his hour strikes), urgent and impetuous and French. To the frock coat in sculpture we in London are no strangers, for have we not Parliameiit Square ? but our frock coats are quiescent, dead even, things of stone. Gambetta's, on the contrary, is tempestuous — surely the most heroic frock coat that ever emerged from the quarries of Carrara. It might have been cut by the Great Mel himself. I have never seen a computation of the stone and bronze population of Paris, but the statues must be thousands strong. A Pied Piper leading them out of the city would be worth seeing, although I for one would regret their loss. Paris, I suppose, was Paris no less than now in the days before Gambetta masqueraded as a Frock Coated Victory almost within hail of the Winged Victory of Samothrace; but Paris certainly would not be Paris any more were some new turn of the wheel to whisk him away and Ipave the Place du Carrousel forlorn and tepid. The loss even of the smug A GREEN SHADE 127 figure of Jules Simon, just outside Durand's, would be sometliing like a bereavement. I once, by the way, saw this statue wearing, after a snowstorm, a white fur cap and cape that gave him a character — something almost Siberian — beyond anything dreamed of by the sculptor. It is not until one has walked through the gardens of the Tuileries that the wealth of statuary in Paris begins to impress the mind. For there must be almost as many statues as flowers. They shine or glimmer everywhere, as in the Athenian groves — allegorical, symbolical, mythological, naked. The Luxembourg Gardens, as we shall see, are hardl;^ less rich, but there one finds the statues of real persons. Here, as becomes a formal garden projected by a king,, realism is excluded. Formal it is in the extreme; the trees are sternly pollarded, the beds are mathematically laid out, the paths are straight and not to be deviated from. None the less on a hot summer's day there are few more de- lightful spots, with the placid bonnes sitting so solidly, as only French women can sit, over their needlework, and their charges flitting like discreet butterflies all around them ; and here are two old philosophers — an- other Bouvard and Pecuchet — discussing some prob- lem of conduct or science, and there a family party lunching heartily, without shame. Pleasant groves, pleasant people ! But the best thing in the Tuileries is M. Pol. Who is M. Pol .' Well, he may not be the most famous man 128 A WANDERER IN PARIS in Paris, but he is certainly the most engaging. M. Pol is the charmer of birds — " Le Charmeur d'oiseaux au Jardin des Tuileries," to give him his full title. There may be other charmers too at their pretty labours; but M. Pol comes easily first: his personality is so attrac- tive, his terms of intercourse with the birds so intimate. His oiseaux are chiefly sparrows, whom he knows by name — La Princesse, Le Loustic, Garibaldi, La Ba- ronne, I'Anglais, and so forth. They come one by one at his call, and he pets them and praises them ; talks pretty ironical talk ; uses them (particularly the little brown I'Anglais) for sly satirical purposes, for there are usually a few English spectators; affects to admonish and even chastise them, shufihng minatory feet with all the noise but none of the illusion pf seriousness ; and never ceases the while to scatter his, crumbs or seeds of comfort. It is a very charming little drama, and al- though carried on every day, and for some hours every day, it has no suggestion of routine; one feels that the springs of it are sweetness and benevolence. He is a typical elderly Latin, this M. Pol, a little unmindful as to his dress, a little inclined to shamble: humorous, careless, gentle. Whed I first saw him, years ago, he fed his birds and went his way : but he now makes a little money by it too, now and then offering, very reluctantly, postcards bearing pictures of himself with all his birds about him and a distich or so from his pen. For M. Pol is a poet in words as well as deeds : " De nos petits oiseaux," he wVites on one card : — M. POL 129 " De nos petits oiseaux, je suis le bienfaiteur, Et je vais tous les jours leur donner la pature, Mais suivant un contrat dicte par nature Quand je donne mon pain, ils me donnent leur cceur." I think this true. It is a Httle more than cupboard love that inspires these tiny creatures, or they would never settle on M. Pol's hands and shoulders as they do. He has charmed the pigeons also; but here he admits to a lower motive : — " lis savent, les malins, que leur couvert est mis, C'est en faisant du bien qu'on se fait des amis." It amused me one day at the Louvre to fix one of these photographs in the frame of Giotto's picture of St. Francis (in Salle VII.), one of the scenes of which shows him preaching to the birds: thus bridging the gulf between the centuries and making for the moment the Assisi of the Saint and the Paris of M. Briand one. London has its noticeable lovers of animals too — you may see in St. Paul's churchyards in the dinner hour isolated figures surrounded and covered by pigeons : the British Museum courtyard also knows one or two, and the Guildhall: quite like Venice, both of them, save that no one is excited about it; while in St. James's Square may be seen at all hours of every day the mysterious cat woman with her pensioners all about her on their little mats. Every city has these humor- ists — shall T say ? using the word, as it was wont to be used long ago. But M. Pol — M. Pol stands alone. It is not merely that he charms the birds but that he is 130 A WANDERER IN PARIS so charming with them. The pigeon feeders of London whom I have watched bring their maaze, distribute it and go. M. Pol is more of a St. Francis than that.: as I have shown, he converses, jokes and exchanges moods with his friends. Although he is acquainted with pigeons, his real friends are the gamins of the air, the sparrows, true Parisians, who have the best news. Pigeons, one can conceive, pick up a fact here and there, but it would have a foreign or provincial flavour. Now "if there is one thing which bores a true Parisian it is talk of what is happen- ing outside Paris. The Parisian's horizons do not extend beyond his city. The sun for him rises out of the Bois de Vincennes, and evening comes because it has sunk into the Bois de Boulogne. Hence M. Pol's wisdom in choos- ing the sparrow for his companion, his oiseau intime. So far had I written when I chanced to walk into London by way of Hyde Park, and there, just by the Achilles statue, was a charming gentleman in a tall white hat whistling a low whistle to a little band of sparrows who followed him and surrounded him and fluttered up, one by one, to his hand. We talked a little together, and he told me that the birds never for- get him, though he is absent for eight months each year. His whistle brings them at once. So London is all right after all. And I have been told delightful things about the friends of the grey squirrels in Central Park; so New York perhaps is all right too. The Round Pond of Paris is at the Tuileries — not so WE LEAVE THE TUILERIES 131 vast as the inare clausum of Kensington Gardens, but capable of accommodating many argosies. Leaving this Pond behind us and making for the Place de la Concorde, we have on the right the remains of a monastery of the Cistercians, one of the many religious houses which stood all about the north of the Gardens at the time of the Revolution and were first discredited and emptied by the votaries of Reason and then swept away by Napoleon when he made the Rue de Rivoli. The building on the left is the Orangery. It is in this part that the temporary pavilions are erected for the banquets to pro- vincial mayors and such pleasant ceremonies, while in the summer some little exhibition is usually in progress. But what is that sound ? The beating of a drum. We must hasten to the gates, for that means closing- time. CHAPTER IX. THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE — THE CHAMPS- ELYSEES AND THE IN^ALIDES A Dangerous Crossing — An Ill-omened Place — Louis the XVII. in Prosperity and Adversity — January 21st, 1793 — The End of Robespierre — The Luxor Column — The Congress of Wheels — - England and France — The Champs-EIysees — The Pare Monceau — A Terrestrial Paradise — Oriental Museums — The Etoile's Tributaries — The Arc de Triomphe — The Avenue du Bois de Boulogne — A Vast Pleasure-ground — Happy Sundays — Long- champ — The Pari-mutuel — Spotting a Winner — Two Crowded Corners — The Rival Salons — ■ The Palais des Beaux-Arts — Dutch Masters — Modern French Painters — Superb Drawing — Fairies among the Statues — The Pont d'Alexandre III. — The Fairs of Paris — A Vast Alms-house — A Model Museum — Relics of Napoleon — The Second Funeral of Napoleon — The Tomb of Napoleon. THE Place de la Concorde by* day is vast rather than beautiful, and by night it is a congress of lamps. By both it is dangerous and in bad weather as exposed as the open sea. But it is sacred ground and Paris is unthinkable without it. The interest of the Place is summed up in the Luxor column, which may perhaps be said to mark what is perhaps the most critical site in modern history; for where the obelisk now stands stood not so very long, ago the guillotine. The Place's name has been Concorde only since 1830. 132 FEU DE TRAGEDIE 133 It began in 1763, when a bronze statue of Louis XV. on horseback was erected there, surrounded by emble- matic figures, from the chisel of Pigalle, of Prudence, Justice, Force and Peace. Hence the characteristic French epigram : — "O la belle statue, O le beau pedestal! Les Virtues sont a, pied, le Vice est a cheval.'" Before this time the Place had been an open and un- cultivated space; it was now enclosed, surrounded with fosses, made trim, and called La Place Louis Quinze. In 1770, however, came tragedy ; for on the occasion of the marriage of the Dauphin, afterwards the luckless Louis XVI., with the equally luckless Marie Antoinette, a display of fireworks was given, during which one of the rockets (as one always dreads at every display) declined the sky and rushed horizontally inLo the crowd, and in the resulting stampede thousands of persons fell into the ditches, twelve hundred being killed outright and two thousand injured. Twenty-two years later, kings having suddenly be- come cheap, the National Convention ordered the statue of Louis XV. to be melted down and -recast into cannon, a clay figure of Liberte to be set up in its stead, and the name to be changed to the Place de la Revolution. This was done, and a little later the guillotine was erected a few yards west of the spot where the Luxor column now stands, primarily for the removal of the head of Louis XVI., in whose honour those unfortunate fireworks had been ignited. The day was January 21st, 1793. 134 A WANDERER IN PARIS "King Louis," says Carlyle, "slept sound, till five in the morning, when Clery, as he had been ordered, awoke him. Clery dressed his hair: while this went forward, Louis took a ring from his watch, and kept trying it on his finger; it was his wedding-ring, which he is now to return to the Queen as a mute farewell. At half -past six, he took the Sacrament ; and continued in devotion, and conference with Abbe Edgeworth. He will not see his Family : it were too hard to bear. "At eight, the Municipals enter: the King gives them his Will, and messages and ejffects; which they, at first, brutally refuse to take charge of : he gives them a roll of gold pieces, a hundred and twenty-five louis; these are to be returned to Malesherbes, who had lent them. At nine, Santerre says the hour is come. The King begs yet to retire for three minutes. At the end of three minutes, Santerre again says the hour is come. 'Stamping on the ground with his right-foot, Louis answers: " Partons, Let us go."' — How the rolling of those drums comes in, through the Temple bastions and bulwarks, on the heart of a queenly wife; soon to be a widow ! He is gone, then, and has not seen us? A Queen weeps bitterly; a King's Sister and Children. Over all these Four does Death also hover: all shall perish miserably save one ; she, as Duchesse d'Angou- leme, will live, — not happily. " At the Temple Gate were some faint cries, perhaps from voices of pitiful women : ' Grace ! Grace ! ' Through the rest of the streets there is silence as of the grave. JANUARY 21sT, 1793 135 No man not armed is allowed to be there : the armed, did any even pity, dare not express" it, each man over- awed by all his neighbours. All windows are down, none seen looking through them. All shops are shut. No wheel-carriage rolls, this morning, in these streets but one only. Eighty thousand armed men stand ranked, like armed statues of men ; cannons bristle, cannoneers with match burning, but no word or movement: it is as a city enchanted into silence and stone : one car- riage with its escort, slowly rumbling, is the only sound. Louis reads, in his Book of Devotion, the Prayers of the Dying: clatter of this death-mlarch falls sharp on the ear, in the great silence ; but the thought would fain struggle heavenward, and forget the Earth. "As the clocks strike ten, behold the Place de la Revolution, once Place de Louis Quinze : the Guillotine, mounted near the old Pedestal where once stood the Statue of that Louis ! Far round, all bristles with cannons and armed men: spectators crowding in the rear ; D'Orleans Egalite there in cabriolet. Swift mes- sengers, hoquetons, speed to the Townhall, every three minutes : near by is the Convention sitting, — vengeful for Lepelletier. Heedless of all, Louis reads his Prayers of the Dying ; not till five minutes yet has he finished ; then the Carriage opens. What temper he is in ? Ten different witnesses will give ten different accounts of it. He is in the collision of all tempers ; arrived now at the black Maelstrom and descent of Death : in sorrow, in indignation, in resignation struggling to be resigned. 136 A WANDERER IN PARIS 'Take care of M. Edgeworth,' he s.traitly charges the Lieutenant who is sitting with them: then they two descend. " The drums are beating : ' Taisez-vous, Silence ! ' he cries 'in a terrible voice, d'une voix terrible.' He mounts the scaffold, not without delay; he is in puce coat, breeches of grey, white stockings. He strips off the coat ; stands disclosed in a sleeve-waistcoat of white flannel. The Executioners approach to bind him: he spurns, resists; Abbe Edgeworth has to remind him how the Saviour, in whom men trust, submitted to be bound. His hands are tied, his head bare, the fatal moment is come. He advances to the edge of the Scaffold, 'his face very red,' and says: 'Frenchmen, I die innocent : it is from the Scaffold' and near appearing before God that I tell you so. I pardon my enemies : I desire that France ' A General on horseback, Santerre or another, prances out, with uplifted hand: ' Tambours ! ' The drums drown the voice. ' Execu- tioners, do your duty ! ' The Executioners, desperate lest themselves be murdered (for Sanferre and his Armed Ranks will strike, if they do not), seize the hapless Louis : six of them desperate, him singly desperate, struggling there ; and bind him to -their plank. Abbe Edgeworth, stooping, bespeaks hiln: 'Son of Saint Louis, ascend to Heaven.' The Axe clanks down; a King's life is shorn away. It is Monday the 21st of January, 1793. He was aged Thirty-eight years, four months and twenty-eight days. VIEUX HOiMME ET ENFANT GHIRLANDAIO {Lcmvre) HEADSMAN SAMSON 137 "Executioner Samson shows the Head: fierce shout of Vive la Republique rises, and swells ; caps raised on bayonets, hats waving ; students of the College of Four Nations take it up, on the far Quais ; fling it over Paris. D'Orleans drives off in his cabriolet: the Townhall Councillors rub their hands, saying, 'It is done, It is done.' There is dipping of handkerchiefs, of pike- points in the blood. Headsman Samson, though he afterwards denied it, sells locks of the hair : fractions of the puce coat are long after worn in rings. — And so, in some half -hour it is done ; and the multitude has all departed. Pastry-cooks, coffee-sellers, milkmen sing out their trivial quotidian cries : the world wags on, as if this were a common day. In the coffee-houses that evening, says Prudhomme, Patriot shook hands with Patriot in a more cordial manner than usual. Not till some days after, according to Mercier, did public men see what a grave thing it was." The guillotine for more ordinary purposes worked in the Place du Carrousel, not far from Gambetta's statue to-day; but from May, 1793, until June, 1794, it was back in the Place de la Concorde (then Place de la Revolution) again, accounting during that time for no fewer than 1,235 offenders, including Charlotte Corday, Madame Roland and Marie Antoinette. The blood flowed daily, while the tricoteuses looked on over their knitting and the mob howled. Another removal, to the Place de la Bastille, and then on 28th July, 1794, the engine of iustice or vengeance 138 A WANDERER IN 'PARIS was back again to end a life and the Reign of Terror in one blow. What life ? But listen : " Robespierre lay in an anteroom of the Convention Hall, while his Prison-escort was getting ready ; the mangled jaw bound up rudely with bloody linen : a spectacle to men. He lies stretched on a table, a deal-box his pillow; the sheath of the pistol is still clenched convulsively in his hand. Men bully him, insult him : his eyes still indicate intelligence; he speaks no word. 'He had on the sky- blue coat he had got made for the Feast of the Eire Supreme ' — O Reader, can thy hard heart hold out against that ? His trousers were nanTseen ; the stockings had fallen down over the ankles. He spake no word more in this world. " And so, at six in the morning, a victorious Convention adjourns. Report flies over Paris as on golden wings ; penetrates the Prisons ; irradiates the faces of those that were ready to perish : turnkeys and moutons, fallen from their high estate, look mute and blue. It is the 28th day of July, called 10th of Thermidor, year 1794. "Fouquier had but to identify; his Prisoners being already Out of Law. At four in the afternoon, never before were the streets of Paris seen so crowded. From the Palais de Justice to the PlacS de la Revolution, for thither again go the Tumbrils this time, it is one dense stirring mass; all windows crammed; the very roofs and ridge-tiles budding forth human Curiosity, in strange gladness. The Death-tumbrils, with their motley Batch of Outlaws, some twenty-three or so. ROBESPIERRE'S TURN 139 from Maximilien to Mayor Fleuriot and Simon the Cordwainer, roll on. All eyes are on Robespierre's Tumbril, where he, his jaw bound in dirty linen, with his half-dead Brother and half -dead Henriot, lie shattered ; their ' seventeen hours ' of agony about to end. The Gendarmes point their swords at him, to show the people which is he. A woman springs on the Tumbril ; clutching the side of it with one hand, waving the other Sibyl-like ; and exclaims : ' The death of thee gladdens my very heart, m'enivre de joie' ; Robespierre opened his eyes; ' Scelerat, go down to Hell, with the curses of all wives and mothers !' ^ — At the foot of the scaffold, they stretched him on the ground till his turn came. Lifted aloft, his eyes again opened ; caught the bloody axe. Samson wrenched the coat off him ; wrenched the dirty linen from his jaw : the jaw fell powerless, there burst from him a cry ; — hideous to hear and see. Sam- son, thou canst not be too quick ! "Samson's work done, there bursts forth shout on shout of applause. Shout, which prolongs itself not only over Paris, but over France, but over Europe, and down to this generation. Deservedly, and also unde- servedly. O unhappiest Advocate of Arras, wert thou worse than other Advocates ? Stricter man, according to his Formula, to his Credo and his Cant, of probities, benevolences, pleasures-of-virtue, and suchlike, lived not in that age. A man fitted, in some luckier settled age, to have become one of those incorruptible barren Pat- tern-Figures, and have had marble-tablets and funeral- 140 A WANDERER IN PARIS sermons. His poor landlord, the Cabinet-maker in the Rue Saint-Honore, loved him ; his Brother died for him. May God be merciful to him and to us ! " This is the end of the Reign of Terror." In 1799 the Place won its name Concorde. The next untoward sight that it was to see was Prussian and Russian soldiers encamping there in 1814 and 1815, and in 1815 the British. By this time it had been renamed Place Louis Quinze, which in 1826 was changed to Place Louis Seize, and a project was afoot for raising a monu- ment to that monarch's memory on the spot where he fell. But the Revolution of 1830 intervened, and " Con- corde" resumed its sway, and in 1836 Louis-Philippe, the new king (whose father, Philippe Egalite, had perished on the guillotine here), erected the Luxor column, which had been given to him by Mohammed Ali, and had once stood before the great temple of Thebes commemorating on its sides the achievements of Rameses II. Since then certain .symbolic statues of the great French cities (including unhappy Strassburg) have been set up, and the Place is a rnodel of symmetry, and at the time that I write (1909) a great part of it is enclosed within hoardings for I know not what pur- pose, but I hope a subway for the saving of the lives of pedestrians, for it must be the most perilous crossing in the world. One has but to set foot in the roadway and straightway motor-cars and cabs spring out of the earth and converge upon one from every point of the compass, in the amazing French way. Concorde, indeed ! -pg < nK* ii 1^^^ it %> H X c c o H P O w H ©iSgi THE ELYSIAN FIELDS 141 If the Place de la Coneorde may be called at night a congress of lamps, the Champs-Elysiees in the afternoon may be said to be a congress of wheels. Wheels in such numbers and revolving at such a pace are never seen in England, not even on the Epsom rpad on Derby Day. For there is no speed limit for the French motor-car. Nor have we in England anything like this superb roadway, so wide and open, climbing so confidently to the Arc de Triomphe, with its groves on either side at the foot, and the prosperous white mansions afterwards. It is not our way. We English, with our ambition to conquer and administer the world, have neglected our own home; the French, with no ambition any longer to wander beyond their own borders, have made their home beautiful. The energy which vs^e as a nation put into greater Britain, they have put into buildings, into statues, into roads. The result is that we have the Transvaal, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and India, but it is the French, foregoing such possessions and all their anxieties, who have the Champs-Elysees. The Champs-Elysees were planned and laid out by Marie de Medicis in 1616, and the Cours la Rcine, her triple avenue of trees, still exists ; but Napoleon is the father of the scheme which culminates so magnificently in the Arc de Triomphe. The particular children's paradise of Paris is in the gardens between the main road and the Elysee, where they bowl their hoops and spin their Diabolo spools, and ride on the horses of minute round-abouts turned by hand, and watch the 142 A WANDERER IN PARIS marionettes, with the tired eyes of Alphonse Daudet, who sits for ever, close by , in very white stojie, watching them. Here also are the open-air cafes, the Ambassadeurs and the Alcazar, while on the other, the river, side are the Jardin de Paris, a curiously Lutetian haunt, and Le- doyen's, one of the pleasantest of restaurants in summer. Just above this point we ought to turn to the left to visit the Petit Palais and cross the Pont d'Alexandre III., but since we are on the way let us now climb to the Etoile, and on to the Bois, first, however, just turn- ing off the Ronde Point for a moment to look at No. 3 Avenue Matignon, where Heine (beside whose grave we are to stand on Montmartre) suffered and died. The Place de I'Etoile might be called a kind of gilt- edged Seven Dials, since so many roads lead from it. Aristocratic Paris comes to a head here. On the right runs from it the Avenue de Friedland, leading to the Boulevard Haussmann, which meets with so inglorious an end at the Rue Taitbout, but is perhaps to be cut through to join the Boulevard Montmartre. Next on the right is the Avenue Hoche, running directly into the Pare Monceau, a terrestrial paradise to which good mondaines certainly go when they die. A little apparte- ment overlooking the Pare Monceaif — there is tangible heaven, if you like ! The Pare itself is small but perfect, elegant and ex- pensive and verdant. The children (one feels) are all titled, the bonnes are visibly miracles of distinction and the babies masses of point lace; thejadies on the chairs THE PARK DE LUXE 143 must be Comtesses or Baronnes, an3 the air is carefully scented. That is the Pare Monceau. It needed but one detail to make it complete, and that was supplied a few years ago: a statue of Guy de Maupassant, consisting of a block of the most radiant marble to be procured, with the novelist as its apex, and at the base a Pari- sienne reading one of his stories. Other statues there are : of Ambroise Thomas the composer, to whom Mignon offers a floral tribute; of Pailleron the dramatist, at- tended by an actress; of Gounod surrounded by Mar- guerite, Juliet, Sappho and a little Love, and of Chopin seated at the piano, with the figures of Night and Harmony to inspire him. These a,re only a few; but they are typical. Every statue in the Pare has a damsel or two, according to his desire. It is the mode. There is also a minute lake, on the edge of which have been set up a number of Corinthian columns ; and before you have been seated a minute, an old woman appears from nowhere and demands twopence for what she poetically calls an armchair, the extra penny being added as a compliment to the two uncomfortable wires at the side which you had been wishing you could break off. Such is the Pare Monceau, the like of which exists not in London: the ideal pleasaunce of the wealthy. Through it, I might add, you may drive; but only at a walking pace — au fas. If the horse were to trot he might shake some petals off. At the western gate is the Musee Cernuschi, contain- ing a collection of oriental pottery and bronzes. I am 144 A WANDERER IN PARIS no connoisseur of these beautiful tilings, but I advise all readers of this book to visit both this museum and the Guimet in the Place d'lena, which is a treasury of Japanese and Chinese art. Returning to the Etoile, the next avenue is the Avenue de Wagram, running north to the? Porte d'Asnieres, while that which continues the Avenue des Champs- Elysees in a straight line west by n6rth is the Avenue de la Grande Armee, running to the Porte Maillot and Neuilly. On the left the first avenue is the Avenue de Marceau, which leads to the Place de I'Alma ; the next the Avenue d'lena, leading to the Place d'lena; the next, the Avenue de Kleber, running straight to the Tro- cadero (into which I have never penetrated) and Passy, where the English live; the next, the Avenue Victor Hugo, which never stops ; and finally the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, the most beautiful roadway in new Paris, along which we shall fare when we have examined the Arc de Triomphe. This trophy of success was begun, as I have said, by Napoleon to celebrate the victories pi 1805 and 1806 ; Louis-Philippe finished it in 1836. Why Louis XVIII. did not destroy it or complete it as a further memorial of the Restoration, I cannot say. JSJ^apoleon's original idea was, however, tampered with by his successors, who allowed a bas-relief representing thd Blessings of Peace in 1815 to be included. The sculptures are otherwise wholly devoted to the glorification of war, Napoleon and the French army; but they are not to be studied THE PERFECT RI^AD 145 without serious inconvenience. My advice to the con- scientious student would be to buy photographs or picture postcards, and examine them at home : the Arc de Triomphe is too great and splendid for such detail. From the top one can see all round Paris, and though one cannot look down on it all as from the Eiffel Tower, or see, beneath one, such an interesting district as from Notre Dame, it is yet a wonderfully interesting view. The Avenue du Bois de Boulogne has the finest road in what is, so to speak, the Marais of the present day ; that is to say, in the modern quarter of the aristocratic and wealthy. We have seen riches and rank moving from the Marais to the Faubourg St. Germain and from the Faubourg St. Germain to the Faubourg St. Honore, and now we find them here, and here they seem likely to remain. And indeed to move farther would be foolish, for surely there never was, and could not be, a more beautiful city site than this anywhere in the world — with its wide cool lawns on either side, and its gay colouring, and the Bois so near. Here too, on the heads of the comfortable complacent bonnes, are the most radiant caps you ever saw. The Bois de Boulogne, which takes its name from the little town of Boulogne to the south of it, now a suburb of Paris, began its life as a Paris park in the eighteen- fifties. Before that it was a forest of great trees, which indeed remained until the Franco-Prussian war, when they were cut down in order that they might not give cover to the enemy. That is why= the present groves 146 A WANDERER IN PARIS are all of a size. I cannot describe the Bois better than by saying that it is as if Hyde Park, Sandown Park, Kempton Park and Epping Forest were all thrown together between Shepherd's Bush, Acton and the river. London would then have something like the Bois ; and yet it would not be like the Bois at all, because it would rapidly become a desert of newspapei:s and empty bottles, whereas, although in the summer populous with picnic parties, the Bois is always clean and fresh. There are several gates to the Bois, but the principal ones are the Porte Maillot at the end of the Avenue de la Grande Armee, and the Porte Dauphine at the end of the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, and it is through the latter that the thousands of vehicles pass on their way to the races on happy Sundays in the spring and autumn. Most English people visiting the Bois merely drive to the races and back again;: it is quite the ex- ception to find anyone who really knows the Bois — who has walked round the two lajjes, Lac Inferieur, which feeds the cascade under which one may walk (as at Niagara), and Lac Superieur; who has seen a play in the Theatre de Verdure, or an exhibition at Bagatelle, the villa of the late Sir Richard Wallace, who gave the Champs-Elysees its drinking fountains and London the Wallace Collection. Bagatelle now belongs to Paris. Every English visitor, however, repiembers the stone animals, dogs and deer, in the lawn of the Villa de Longchamp on the right as one approaches the race- course, and the windmill on the left, one of the several V^NUS ET L'AMOUR REMBRANDT {Louvrt) THE PARI-MUTtlEL 147 inoperative windmills of Paris, which marks the site of the old Abbey of Longchamp, founded by Isabella, the sister of Saint Louis. The Bois has two restaurants of the highest quality and price — Armenonville, close to the Porte Maillot, a favourite dining-place when the Fete de Neuilly is in progress, in the summer, and the Pre Catelan, near Lac Inferieur and close to the point where the Allee de la Reinc-Marguerite and the Allee de Longchamp cross. In the summer it is quite the thing for the young bloods who frequent the night cafes on Montmartre to drive into the Bois in the early morning and drink a glass of milk in the Pre Catelan's dairy, perhaps bringing the milkmaids with them. The Bois has two race-courses, but it is at Longchamp that the principal races are run — the Grand Prix and the Conseil Municipal. Racing m-en tell me that the defect of the pari-mutuel system is that one cannot ar- range one's book, since the odds are always more or less of a surprise ; but to one who does not bet on horses anywhere but in Paris, and who views an English book- maker with alarm, if not positive terror, the pari-mutuel seems perfect in its easy and silent workings and the dramatic unfolding of its surprises. For first you have the fun of picking out your horse ; then quietly putting your money on him, to win or for a place ; and then, after the race is run and your horse is a winner, you have those five to ten delightfully anxious minutes while the actuaries are working out the odds. 148 A WANDERER IN PARIS An experience of my own will illustrate not only the method of the system but the haphazard principles on which a stranger's modest gambling can be done. On the morning of the races I had visited the Louvre with Mr. Dexter, the artist of this book. We had not much time, and were therefore proposing to look only at the Leonardos and the Rembrandts, which are separated by a considerable stretch of gallery hung with other pictures. On leaving the Leonardos we walked briskly towards the Dutch end ; Mr. Dexter, however, loitered here and there, and I was some distance ahead when he called me back to see a Holbein. It was worth going back for. In the afternoon at Longchamp, when the time came before the race to pick out the horses who were to have the honour of carrying my money, I noticed that one of them was named Holbein. Having already that day been pleased with a Holbein, I accepted the circumstance as a line of guidance,* and placed a five- franc piece on the brave animal. IJe came in first, and being an outsider his price was 185.50. The Longchamp course is perfectly managed. There are three places where one may go — to the pesage, which costs twenty francs for a cavalier and ten francs for a dame ; to the pavilion, which, is half that price ; or to the pelouse, where the people congregate, which costs a franc. Perfect order reigns everywhere. For the wanderer who has no carriage awaiting him and no appointments to hurry him there are two enter- taining things to do when the races are over on a fine MODERN ART 149 Sunday afternoon. One is to cross the Seine to Suresnes by the adjacent bridge and sitting at the cafe that faces it, watch the crowd and the traffic, for this is on a main road from Paris to the country; or walking the other way, one may enjoy a similar spectacle at the Cafe du Sport outside the Porte Maillot and study at one's ease the happy French in holiday mood — the husbands with their wives and their two children, and the Sunday lovers arm in arm. And now we return to the Champs-Elysees in order to look at some pictures and admire a beautiful bridge. For the Avenue d'Alexandre III., as for the Pont d' Alex- andre III., Paris is indebted to the 1900 Exhibition. These are her permanent gains and very valuable they are. Of the two white palaces on either side of this green and spacious Avenue, that on the right, as we face the golden dome of the Invalides, is the home of the Salon and of various exhibitions. I say Salon, but Paris now has many Salons, two of which, in more or less amicable rivalry, occupy this building at the same time. In one, the Salon proper, the Salon of the old guard, the Royal Academicians of France, there are miles of paint but few experiments ; in the other, where the more independent spirits — the New Engllshers, so to speak — hang their works in personal groups, there are fewer miles but more outrages. For outrages, how- ever, pure and simple (or even impure and complex), I recommend the Salon that is now held in the early spring in some of the old Exhibition buildings on the 150 A WANDERER IN PARIS banks of the river, close to the Pont d'Alexandre III. I have seen pictures there — nudities, in the manner of Aztec decorations, by the youngest French artists of the moment — which made one want to scream. It was said once that the French knew how to paint but not what to paint, and the EngHsh what to paint but not how to paint it. Since then there has been such a fusing of nationalities, such increased and humble appreciation on the part of the English painters bf the best French methods, that one can no longer talk in that kind of cast-iron epigram; but it is impossible to see some of the crude innovating work now being done without the reflection that France is rapidly and successfully creating a school of artists who not only know what to paint but how to paint too. The Palais des Beaux-Arts, which was built for the collection of pictures at the Exhibition of 1900, is now a permanent gallery for the preservation of the various works of art acquired from time to Jtime by the munici- pality of Paris, thus differing from the Luxembourg col- lections, which are national. The Palais has become a kind of brother of the Carnavalet, the one being the historical museum of Paris and the other — the Palais — the artistic museum of Paris. The Palais undoubtedly contains much that is not of the Ijighest quality, but no one who is interested in modern French painting and drawing can afford to neglect jt, wliile the recent acquisition of the Collection Dutuit, consisting chiefly of small but choice pictures of the Dutch masters, includ- TWO SCULPTORS 151 ing a picture of Rembrandt with his dog, from his own hand, has added a rather necessary touch of antiquity. One of the special rooms is devoted to pictures of the opulent Felix Ziem, painter of Venetian sunsets and the sky at its most golden, wherever it may be found, who is still (1909) living in honourable state on those slopes of the mountain of fame which are reserved for the few rare spirits that become old masters before they die, and who presented his pictures to Paris a few years ago ; another room is filled with the works of the late Jean Jacques Henner, whose pallid nudities, emerging from voluptuous gloom, still look yearningly at one from the windows of so many Paris picture dealers. Henner, I must confess, is not a painter whom I greatly esteem; but few modern French artists were more popular in their day. He died in 1905, and this gift of his work was made by his son. Other French artists to have rooms of their own in the Palais are Jean Carries the sculptor, who died in 1894 at the age of thirty-nine, after an active career in the modelling of quaint and grotesque and realistic figures, one of the best known and most charming of his many works being " La Fil- lette au Pantin " (No. 1338 in the collection) ; and Jules Dalou (1838-1902), also a sculptor, a man of more vigour although of less charm thtyi his neighbour in the Palais. That strange gift of untiring abundant creativeness which the French have so notably, Dalou also shared, his busy fingers having added thousands of new figures to those that already congest life, while he 152 A WANDERER IN PARIS modelled also many a well-known head. I think that I like best his "Esquisses de Travailleurs." Nothing here, however, is so fascinating as Dalou's own head by Rodin in the Luxembourg. Of the picture collection proper I am saying but little, for it is in a fluid state, and ev,en in the catalogue before me, the latest edition, there is no mention of several of its finest treasures: among them Manet's portrait of Theodore Duret, a sketch of an old peasant woman's hand by Madame David, a Rip Van Winkle by that modern master of the grotesque and Rabelaisian, Jean Veber, and one of Mr. Sargent's Venetian sketches — the racing gondoliers. For the most part it is like revisiting the past few Salons, except that the pictures are more choice and less numerous ; but one sees many old friends, and all the expected painters are here. It is of course the surprises that one remembers — the three Daumiers, for example, particularly " L'Amateur d'Estampes," reproduced opposite page 286, and "Les Joueurs d'Echecs," and the fine collection of the draw- ings of Puvis de Chavannes and Daniel Vierge. I was also much taken with some topographical drawings by Adrian Karbowski — No. 494 in the catalogue. Other pictures and drawings which should be seen are those by Cazin (a sunset), Pointelin, Steinlen (some work-girls), Sisley, Lebourg, and Harpignies, who exhibits water- colours separated in time by fifty-ninayears, 1849 to 1908. The drawings on a whole are far better than the paintings. In the collection Dutuit look at Ruisdael's " Environs THE LITTLE DANCERS 153 de Haarlem," Terburg's "La Fiancee," Hobbema's "LesMoulins" and a woodland scenfe, Pot's " Portrait of a Man," Van de Velde's landscape sketches, and the Rem- brandt. The rooms downstairs are not worth visiting. Among the statuary, some of which is very good, particularly a new unsigned and uncatalogued Joan of Arc, is a naked Victor Hugo holding a MS. in his hand ; while Fremiet of course confronts the door, this time with a really fine George and the Dragon, George having a spear worthy of the occasion, and not the short and useless broadsword which he brandishes on the English sovereign. On my last visit to this thinly populated gallery I was for some time one of three "visitors, until sud- denly the vast spaces were humanised by the gracious and winsome presence of a band of Isadora Duncan's gay little dancers, with a kindly companion to tell them about the pictures, and — what interested them more — the statues. These tiny lissome creatures flitting among the cold rigid marbles I shall not soon forget. And so we come to the Pont d' Alexandre III., the bridge whose width and radiance are an ever fresh sur- prise and joy, and make our way to the Invalides, at the end of the prospect, across the great Esplanade des Invalides, so quiet to-day, but for a month of every year so noisy and variegated with round-abouts and booths. It is, by the way, well worth while, whenever one is in Paris, to find out what fair is being held. For some- where or other a fair is always being held. You can 154 A WANDERER IN PARIS get the particulars from the invaluable Bottin or Bottin Mondaine, which every restaurant keeps, and which is even exposed to public scrutiny on a table at the Gare du Nord, and for all I know to the contrary, at the other stations too. This is one of the lessons which might be learned from Paris by London, where you ask in vain for a Post Office Directory even in the General Post Office. Bottin, who knows all, will give you the time and place of every fair. The best is the Fete de Neuilly, which is held in the summer, just outside the Porte Maillot, but all the arrondissements have their own. They are crowded scenes of noisy life ; but they are amusing too, and their popularity shows you how juvenile is the Frenchman's heart. One should enter the Invalides fjom the great Place and round off the inspection of the Musee de I'Armee by a visit to Napoleon's tomb; that, at least, is the symmetrical order. The Hotel des Invalides proper, which set the fashion in military hospitals, was built by Louis XIV., who may be seen on his horse in bas-relief on the principal facade. The building once sheltered and tended 7,000 wounded soldiers \ but there are now only fifty. From its original function as a military hospi- tal for any kind of disablement it has dwindled to a home for a few incurables; while the greater portion of the building is now given up to collections and to civic offices. There could be no greater contrast than that between the imposing architecture of the main structure and the charming domestic fa9ade in the Boulevard des Invalides, LES PELERINS D'EMMAUS HEM BRANDT {Louvre) A PAGEANT OF ARMS 155 which is one of the pleasantest of the old Paris buildings and has some of the simplicity of an English almshouse. It is not until we enter the great Court of Honour that we catch sight of Napoleon, whose figure dominates the opposite wall. Thereafter one thinks of little else. Louis XIV. disappears. Passing some dingy frescoes which the weather has treated vilely, we enter the Musee Historique on the left — unless one has an overwhelming passion for artillery armour and the weapons of savages, in which case one turns to the right. I mention the alternative because there is far too much to see on one visit, and it is well to concentrate on the more interesting. For me guns and armour and the weapons of savages are with- out any magic while there are to be seen such human relics as have been brought together in the Musee His- torique on the opposite side of the Court. The whole place, by the way, is a model for the Carnavalet, in that everything is precisely and clearly labelled. This, since it is a favourite resort of simple folk — soldiers and their parents and sweethearts — is a thoughtful provision. The Musee Historique has at every turn something profoundly interesting, and incidentally it tells some- thing of the men from whom numbers of Paris streets take their names ; but the real and poignant interest is Napoleon. The Longwood room is to me too painful. The project of the admirable administrator has been to illustrate the whole pageant of French arms; but the Man of Destiny quickly becomes all-powerful, and one 156 A WANDERER IN PARIS finds oneself looking only for signs and tokens of his personality. So it should be, under the shadow of the Dome which covers his ashes, I would personally go farther and collect at the Invalides all the Napoleonic relics that one now must visit so many places to see — the Carnavalet Fontainebleau, the Musee Grevin, our own United Service Museum in Whitehall (as if we had the right to a single article from St. Helena !), Madame Tussaud's, and Versailles. There is even a room at the Arts Decoratif s devoted nominally to Napoleon, but it has few articles of personal interest and none of any intimacy — merely splendid costumes for occasi,ons and ceremonials of State, with a few of Josephine's laCe caps among them. Its purpose is to illustrate the Empire rather than the Emperor, but the Invalides should have what there is. At the Invalides you may, I suppose, see in three or four rooms more Napoleonic relics of a personal charac- ter than anywhere else. In Whitehall is the chair he died in ; but here is his garden-seat from* St. Helena, one bar of which was removed to allow him as he sat to pass his arm through and be more at his ease as he looked out to the ocean that was to do nothing for him. At Whitehall is the skeleton of his horse Marengo; here is the saddle. Here are his grey redingote and more than one of his hats. Among the relies in the special Napoleonic rooms those of his triumph and his fall are mixed. Here is the bullet that wounded him at Ratis- bon : here are his telescopes and hislnaps, his travelling desks and his pistols ; here are the toys of the little Duke THE MIGHTY DEAD 157 of Reichstadt; here is the walking stick on which Napo- leon leaned at St. Helena, his dressing-gown, his bed, his armchair and his death-mask. Here are the railings of the tomb at St. Helena, and a case of leaves and stones and pieces of wood and other natural surroundings of the same spot. Here also is the pall that covered his coffin on the way to its final burial under the Dome close by. It is a fitting end to the study of these storied corri- dors to pass to the tomb of the protagonist of the drama we have been contemplating. The Emperor's remains were brought to Paris in 1840, nineteen years after his death at St. Helena. Thackeray in his Second Funeral of Napoleon wrote a vivid, although lo my mind hateful, description of the ceremonial: a piece of complacent flippancy, marked by the worst kind of French irrever- ence, which shows him in his least admirable mood, particularly when he is pleased to be amusing over the difference between the features of the Emperor dead and living. None the less it is an absorbing narrative. One looks down upon the sarcophagus, which lies in a marble well. It is simple, solemn and severe, and to a few persons, not Titmarshes, inexpressibly melancholy. The Emperor's words from his will, " Je desire que mes ccndrcs reposcnt sur les bords de la Seine, au milieu de ce peuple fran9ais que j'ai tant aime," are placed at the entrance to the crypt. He had not the Invalides in mind when he wrote them; but one feels that the Invalides is as right a spot for him as any in this land of short memories and light mockeries. CHAPTER X THE BOtJLEVABD ST. GERMAIN AND ITS TRIBUTARIES An Aristocratic Quarter — Adrienne Lecouvreur — A Grisly Museum — A Changeless City — The Pasteur Institute — The Golden Key — The Stoppeur — Sterne — The Beaux Arts — A Wilderness of Copies — Voltaire Clad and Naked — The Mint — An Inquisitive Visitor — Bad Money, FROM the Invalides the Boulevard St. Germain, the west to east highway of the Surrey side of Paris, is easily gained ; but it is not in itself very in- teresting. The interesting streets either cross it or run more or less parallel with it, such as the old and wind- ing Rue de Grenelle, which we come to at once, the home of the Parisian aristocracy aft«r its removal from the Marais. The houses are little changed : merely the tenants ; and certain Embassies are now here. No. 18 was once the Hotel de Beauharnais, the home of the fair Josephine; at the Russian Embassy, No. 79, the Duchesse d'Estrees lived. In an outhouse at No. 115 was buried in unconsecrated ground Adrienne Lecouv- reur, the tragedienne who made tragedy, the beloved of Marechal Saxe. Scribe's drama has made her story known — how her heart was too much for her, and 158 OLD CURIOSITY SHOPS 159 how Christian burial was refused .her by a Christian priest. The Rue St. Dominique, parallel with the Rue de Grenelle nearer the river, is equally old and august. At No. 13 lived Madame de Genlis, the monitress of French youth. Still nearer the river runs the long Rue de rUniversite, which also has an Illustrious past and a picturesque present, some great French noble having built nearly every house. One of the first old streets to cross the Boulevard St. Germain is the Rue du Bac, a roadway made when the Palace of the Tuileries was building, to convey materials from Vaugiraud to the bac (or ferry boat) which crossed the Seine where the Pont Royal how stands. This street also is full of ancient palaces and convents. Chateaubriand died at 118-120. At 128 is the Semi- naires des Missions Etrangeres, with a terrible little museum called the Charabre des Martyrs, very French in character, displaying instruments of torture which have been used upon missionaries in China and other countries inimical (like poor Adrienn«'s priest) to Christi- anity. The Rue des Saints-Peres resembles the Rue du Bac, but is more attractive to the loiterer because it has perhaps the greatest number of old curiosity shops of any street in Paris. They touch each other: per- haps they take in each other's dusting. I never saw a customer enter; but that of course means nothing. One might be sure of finding a case made of peau de chagrin here and be equally sure that Balzac had trodden 160 A WANDERER IN PARIS this pavement before you. You will see, however, nothing or very little that is beautiful, because Paris does not care much for sheer beauty. The Rue des Saints-Peres runs upwards into the Rue de Sevres, where old convents cluster and the Bon Marche raises its successful modern bulk. It was in the Abbaye-aux-Bois, once at the corner of the Rue de Sevres and the Rue de la Chaise but now buried beneath a gigantic block of new flats, that Madame Recamier lived from 1814 until her death in 1849, visited latterly every day by the faithful Chateaubrfand. M. Georges Cain has a charming chapter on this friendship and its scene in his Promenades dans Paris, pf which an English translation, entitled Walks in Paris, has recently been published. Returning to the Boulevard St. Germain, which we leave as often as we touch it, I remember that, on the south side, between the Invalides end and the statue of the inventor of the semaphore, used to be a little shop devoted to the sale of trophies of Joan of Arc. And since it used to be there, it follows that it is there still, for nothing in Paris ever changes. One of the great charms of Paris is that it is always the same. I can think of hardly any shop that has changed in the last ten years. This means, I suppose, that the French rarely die. How can they, disliking as they do to leave Paris .' It is the English and the Scotch, born to forsake their homes and live uncomfortably foreign lives, who die. If one is interested in seeing the Pasteur Institute, r. i o a, W a- i ti THE COUR DU DRAGON 161 now is the time, for it is not far from the Rue de Sevres, in the Rue Falguiere, named after Falguiere, the sculptor of the memorial to Pasteur in the Place Breteuil: one of the best examples of recent Paris statuary, with a charming shepherd boy playing his pipe to his ilock on one side of the pediment, and grimmer scenes of disease on the others. This monument, however, is some dis- tance from the Institute, the Place Breteuil being the first carrefour in that vast and endless avenue which leads southwards from Napoleon's tomb. The Institute itself has a spirited statue of Jupille the shepherd, one of its first patients, in his struggle with the wolf that bit him. Pasteur's tomb is here, but I have not seen it, as I arrived on the wrong day. One of the most attractive of the Boulevard St. Germain's byways is entered just round the corner of the Rue de Rennes. This is the Cour du Dragon, which is not only a relic of old Paris, but old Paris is still visible hard at work in it. The Cour du Dragon is a narrow court gained by an archway over which a red dragon perches, holding up the balcony with his vigorous pinions. It was the Hotel Taranne in the reigns of Charles VI. and VII. and Louis XI,; later it became a famous riding and fencing school. It is now a cheerful nest of artisans — coppersmiths, lock- smiths, coal merchants and the like, who fill it with brisk hammerings, while at the windows above, with their green shutters, the songs of caged birds mingle in the symphony. 162 A WANDERER IN PARIS As in all Parisian streets or courts where signs are hung, the golden key is prominent. (There is one in Mr. Dexter's picture of the Rue de I'Hotel de Ville.) What the proportion of locksmiths is to the population of Paris I cannot say ; but their pretty symbol is to be seen everywhere. The reason of their numbers is not very mysterious when we recollect that practically every- one that one meets in this city, arid certainly all the people of the middling and working classes, live in flats, and all want keys. The streets and streets of the small houses with which East London is covered are unknown in Paris, where every fa9ade is but the mask which hides vast tenements packed with families. No wonder then that the serrurier is so busy. Another sign which probably pufezles many English people is that of the stoppeur. Bellows' dictionary does not recognise the word. What is a stoppeur and what does he stop ? I discovered the answer in the most practical way possible; for a Frenchman, in a crowd, helped me to it by pushing his liglited cigar into my back and burning a hole in it, right in the middle of the coat, where a patch would necessarily show. I was in despair until the femme de chambre reassured me. It was nothing, she said : all that was needed was a stop- peur. She would take the coat herself. It seems that the stoppeur's craft is that of mending Jioles so deftly that you would not know there had been any. He ascertains the pattern by means of a magnifying glass, and then extracts threads from some part of the garment that FLANDRIN AND DELACROIX 163 does not show and weaves them in. I paid three francs and have been looking for the injured spot ever since, but cannot find it. It is a modern miracle. Diagonally opposite the Court of the Dragon is the Church of St. Germain — not the St. Germain who owns the church at the cast end of the Louvre, but St. Ger- main du Pre, a lesser luminary. It has no particular beauty, but a number of frescoes by Flandrin, the pupil of Ingres, give it a cachet. Flandrin's bust is to be ob- served on the north wall. The frescoes cannot be seen except under very favourable conditions, and therefore for me the greatness of Flandrin has to be sought in his drawings at the Luxembourg and the Louvre — suffi- cient proof of his exquisite hand. Before descending the Rue Buonaparte to the river, let us ascend it to see the great church of St. Sulpice and its paintings by Delacroix in the Chapel of the Holy Angels. Under the Convention St. Sulpice was the Temple of Victory, and here General Buonaparte was feasted in 1799. The church is famous for its music and an organ second only to that of St. Eustache. And now let us descend the Rue Buonaparte to the quais, where several buildings await us, beginning with the Beaux-Arts at the foot of the street; but first the Rue Jacob, which bisects the Rue Buonaparte, should be looked at, for it has had many illustrious inhabitants, including our own Laurence Sterne, who lodged here, at No. 46, in the Hotel of his friend Madame Ram- bouillet (of the easy manners) when he was studying the 164 A WANDERER IN PARIS French for A Sentimental Journey. It was here per- haps that he penned the famous opening sentence: " ' They order,' said I, ' these things better in France ' " — which no other writer on Paris has succeeded in for- getting. At No. 20 Hved Adrienne Lecouvreur, and hither Voltaire must often have com^, for he greatly ad- mired her. At No. 7 is a fine old staircase and an old well in the court. The Palais des Beaux-Arts, where' the Royal Academy Schools of Paris are situated, is an unexhilarating build- ing containing a great number of Unexciting paintings. Indeed, I think that no public edifice of Paris is so dreary : within and without one hag a sense, not exactly of decay, but certainly of neglect. This is not the less odd when one thinks of the purpose of the institution, which is to foster the arts, and when one thinks also of the spotless perfection in which tlie Petit Palais, the latest of the Parisian picture galleries, is maintained. The spirit, however, is willing, if the flesh is weak, for in the first and second courts are examples of the best French architecture, and a bust of Jean Goujon is let into the wall of the Musee des Antiques. The building contains a number of casts of the best sculptures and an amphitheatre with Delaroche's pageant of painters on the hemicycle and Ingres' Victory of Romiulus over the Sabines opposite it; but there is not always enough light to see ei ther well. For the best view of Delaroche's great work one must go upstairs to the Gallery. The library also is upstairs, with many thousand of valuable SINCEREST FLATTERY 165 works on art and a collection of draw'ings by the masters, access to which is made easy to genuine students. By returning to the first court we come to the Musec de la Renaissance, which now occupies an old chapel of the Convent des Petits-Augustins, on the site of which the Palais de Beaux-Arts was built. Here are more casts and copies, and there are still more in the adjoin- ing Cour du Murier, where stands the memorial of Henri Regnault, the painter, and. the students who died with him during the defence of Paris in 1870-71. We then enter the Salle de Melpomene, so called from the dominating cast of the Melpomene at the Louvre, and are straightway among what seem at the first glance to be old friends from all the best galleries of the world but too quickly are revepled as counterfeits. Rembrandt's School of Anatomy aiid the Syndics, our own National Gallery Correggio, the Dresden Raphael, the Wallace Collection Velasquez (the Lady with a Fan), one of Hals' groups of arquebusiers, and Paul Potter's Bull : all are here, together with countless others, all the work of Beaux-Arts students, and some exceedingly good, but also (like most copies) exceedingly depressing. In other rooms almost pitch dark are modelled studies of expression and paintings which have won the Grand Prix of Rome during the past two hundred years. It is odd to notice how few names one recognises : it is as though, like the Newdigate, this prize were an end in itself. Having contemplated the statue of Voltaire in his 166 A WANDERER IN PARIS robes outside the Institut, the next building of import- ance after the Beaux Arts, you may, if you so desire, gaze upon the same philosopher in a state of nature by entering the Institut itself, and ascending to its Bib- liotheque. There he sits, the skinny cynic, among the books which he wrote and the books which he read and the books which would not have been written but for him. I was glad to see him thus, for it showed me where our own Arouet, Mr. Bernard Shaw, found his inspiration when he too subjected recently his economi- cal frame to the maker of portraits. Mr. Shaw sat, how- ever, only to a photographer (although a very good one, Mr. Coburn) ; when he visited Rodin it was for the head, a replica of which may be seen at the Luxembourg. Speaking of heads, the Institut is a wilderness of them : heads line the stairs; heads line the walls not only of its own Bibliotheque but of the Bibliotheque de Mazarin, which also is here, a haven for every student that cares to seek it: heads of the great Frenchmen of all time and of the Caesars too. The Pont des Arts, which leads direct from the old Louvre to the Institut (a connectioii, if ever, no longer of any importance), is for foot passengers only. One is therefore more at ease there in observing the river than on the noisy bridge of stone. But it is inexcusably ugly, and leaves one continually wondering what Napoleon was about to allow it to be built — and of iron too — in his day of good taste. Looking up stream, the Pont Neuf is close by with the thin green end of the Cite's LA VIERGE AU DONATEUR J. VAN EYCK {Lojivre) THE MINT 167 wedge protruding under it and, in winter, Henri IV. riding proudly above. In summer, as Mr. Dexter's drawing shows, he is hidden by leaves. A basin has been constructed at this point from which the tide is excluded, and here are washing houses and swimming baths ; for Parisians, having a river, use it. The Hotel des Monnaies, close by the Beaux Arts, is another surprise. One would expect in such a country as France, with its meticulously exact control of its public offices, that its Mint, the institution in which its money was made, would be a miracle of precision and efficiency. Efficiency it may have ; but its proceedings are casual beyond belief : the workmen in the furnaces loaf and smoke and stare at the visitors and exchange comments on them; the floors are cluttered up with lumber; the walls are dirty; the doors do not fit. A very considerable amount of work seems to be accom- plished — there are machines constantly in movement which turn out scores of coins a minute, not only for France but for her few and dispiriting colonies and for other countries; and yet the feeling which one has is that France here is noticeably below herself. I was shown around by a very charming attendant, who handled the new coins as though he loved them and took precisely that pride in the place that the Government seems to lack. The design on the French franc, although it ought to be cut", I think, a little deeper, a little more boldly, is very attractive, both obverse and reverse, and it is a pleasant sight to see the 168 A WANDERER IN TARIS bright creatures tumbling out of the machine as fast as one can count. Pleasanter still is it to the frail human eye when the same process is repeated with golden Louis' — basketfuls of which stand" negligently about as though it were the cave of the Forty Thieves. An Englishman's perhaps indiscreet questions as to what precautions were taken to prevent leakage amused the guide beyond all reason. "It is impossible," he said ; " the coins are weighed. They must correspond to the prescribed weight." " But who," my countryman went on, in the relentless English way, "checks the weigher.?" "Another," said the guide. "But a time must come," continued the Briton, Who probably had a business of his own and had suffereci, " when there is no one left to check — when the last man of all is officiat- ing : how then ? " Our guide laughed very happily, and repeated that there were no thieves there ; and I dare- say he is right. "Perhaps," I said, to the English inquisitor, " perhaps, like assistants iti sweet shops, they are allowed at first to help themselves so much that they acquire a disgust for money." Hq looked at me with eyes of stone. I think he had Scotch blood. " Per- haps," he said at last. My own contribution to the guide's entertainment was the production, before a machine that was shooting five-franc pieces into a bowl at the rate of one a second, of the four bad (demonetise) coins of the same value which had been forced upon me during the few days I had then been in Paris. They gave immense delight. DEMONETISE 169 Several minters (or whatever they are called) stopped working in order to join in the inspection. It was the general opinion that I had been badly treated : although, of course, I ought to have known. Three of the coins were simply those of other nations no longer current in France, and for them I could get from two to three francs each at an exchange. Unless, of course, a man of the world put in, I liked to sell them to a waiter, and then I should get perhaps a slightly better price. " Be careful, however," said he, " that he does not give them back to you in the next change." The fourth coin was frankly base metal and ought not to have taken in a child. That, by the way, was given to me at a Post OflBce, the one under the Bourse, and I find that Post Offices are notorious for this habit with foreigners. The minters generally agreed that it was a scandal, but they did so without heat — bearing indeed this mis- fortune (not their own) very much as their countryman La Rochefoucauld had observed men to do. After the coins we saw the medal^stampers at work, each seated in a little hole in the ground before his press. The French have a natural gift for the designing of medals, and they are interested in them as souvenirs not only of public but of private events — such as silver weddings, birthdays and other anniversaries. Upstairs there is a collection of medals by the best designers — such as Rotz, Patz, Carial, Chaplain, Dupuis, Dupre — many of them charming. Here also are collections of the world's coinage and of historical French medals. CHAPTER XI THE LATIN QUARTER Old Prints — Procope, Tortoni, and Le Pfere Lunette — The Luxem- bourg Palace — Rodin — Modern Paintings — A Sinister Ciypt — A Garden of Sculpture — The Students of the Latin Quarter — The Sorbonne — A Beautiful Museum — The Cluny's Treasures — Marat and Danton — Old Streets and Dirty — The River Bifevre — Inspired Topography — Dante in Paris. THE high road from the centre of Paris to the Latin Quarter is across the Pont du Carrousel and up the narrow Rue Mazarin, which skirts the Institut; and the Rue Mazarin we may now take if only for its old print shops, not the least interesting department of which is the portfolios containing students' sketches, some of them very good. (I might equally have said some of them very bad.) We have seen on the Quai des Celestins the site of one of Moliere's theatres : here, at Nos. 12'-14, is the house in which he established his first theatre, on the last day of 1643. The Rue Mazarin runs intp the Rue de I'An- cienne Comedie Fran9aise, at No. 14 in which was that theatre, whose successor stands at Ihe foot of the Rue Richelieu. Crossing the Boulevard St. Germain we climb what 170 PROCOPE AND TORTONI 171 is now the Rue de I'Odeon to the Place and theatre of that name, with the statue of Augier the dramatist before it. The Place de I'Odeon demands some atten- tion, for at No. 1, now the Cafe VoJtaire, was once the famous Cafe Procope, very significant in the eighteenth century, the resort of Voltaire and the Encyclopsedists, and later of the Revolutionaries. Camille Desmoulins indeed made it his home. You may see within port- raits of these old famous habitues. Procopio, a Sicilian who founded his establishment for the shelter of poor actors and students (whom Paris then loathed in private life), was the father of all the Paris cafes. The Cafe Procope was to men of" intellect what some few years later Tortoni's was to men of fashion. The Cafe Tortoni was in the Boulevard des Italians. Let Captain Gronow tell its history : " About the commence- ment of the present [nineteenth] century, Tortoni's, the centre of pleasure, gallantry and entertainment, was opened by a Neapolitan, who came to Paris to supply the Parisians with good ice. The founder of this cele- brated cafe was by name Veloni, an Italian, whose father lived with Napoleon from the period he invaded Italy, when First Consul, down to his fall. Young Veloni brought with him his friend Tortoni, an industrious and intelligent man. Veloni died of an affection of the lungs, shortly after the cafe was opened, and left the business to Tortoni ; who, by dint of care, economy and perseverance, made his cafe renowned all over Europe. Towards the end of the first Empire, and during the 172 A WANDERER IN PARIS return of the Bourbons, and Louis Philippe's reign, this establishment was so much in vogue that it was difficult to get an ice there; after the opera and theatres were over, the Boulevards were literally 'choked up by the carriages of the great people of the court and the Fau- bourg St. Germain bringing guests to Tortoni's. "In those days clubs did not exist in Paris, conse- quently the gay world met there. The Duchess of Berri, with her suite, came nearly ev.ery night incognito ; the most beautiful women Paris could boast of, old maids, dowagers, and old and young men, pouring out their sentimental twaddle, and holding up to scorn their betters, congregated here. In fact, Tortoni's became a sort of club for fashionable people'; the saloons were completely monopolised by them, and became the ren- dezvous of all that was gay, and I regret to add, immoral. " Gunter, the eldest son of the founder of the house in Berkeley Square, arrived in Paris about this period, to learn the art of making ice; for prior to the peace, our London ices and creams were acknowledged, by the English as well as foreigners, to be detestable. In the early part of the day, Tortoni's became the rendezvous of duellists and retired officers, wiio congregated in great numbers to breakfast; which consisted of cold pates, game, fowl, fish, eggs, broiled kidneys, iced champagne, and liqueurs from every part of the globe. "Though Tortoni succeeded in. amassing a large fortune, he suddenly became morose, and showed evi- dent signs of insanity : in fact, he was the most unhappy THE GREAT RESTAURATEURS 173 man on earth. On going to bed one night, he said to the lady who superintended the management of his cafe, 'It is time for me to have done with the world.' The lady thought lightly of what he said, but upon quitting her apartment on the following mornitig, she was told by one of the waiters that Tortoni had hanged himself." Someone should write a book — but perhaps it has been done — on the great restaurateurs. Paris would, of course, provide the lion's share ; but there would be plenty of material to collect in other capitals. The life of our own Nicol of the Cafe Royal, for-example, would not be without interest ; and what of Sherry and Delmonico ? While on the subject of meeting-places of remark- able persons, I might say that a latter-day resort of intellectuals who have allowed the wprld and its tempta- tions to be too much for them is not so very far away from us at this point — the cabaret of Le Pere Lunette at No. 4 Rue des Anglais. I do not say that this is a modern Procope, but it has some of "the same character- istics : men of genius have met here.and illustrious por- traits are on the wall ; but they are not frescoes such as could be included in this book, for old Father Spectacles puts satire before propriety. In the colonnade round the Odeon theatre are book- stalls, chiefly offering new books at very low rates. We emerge on the south side in the Rue Vaugiraud, with the Medicis fountain of Ihe Luxembourg just across the road. The Luxembourg Palace was built by Marie de Medicis, the widow of Henri IV., and it fulfilled the 174 A WANDERER IN PARIS functions of a palace until the Revolution, when, prisons being more important than palaces, iit became a prison. Among those conveyed hither were the Vicomte de Beauharnais and his wife Josephine, who was destined one day to be anything but a prisoner. After the Revolution the Luxembourg became the Palace of the Directoire and then the Palace of thfe First Consul. In 1800 Napoleon moved to the Tuilcries, and a little while afterwards he established the Senate here, and here it is still. I cannot describe the Palace, for I have never been in it, but the Musce I know well. The Luxembourg galleries are dedicated to modern art. They have nothing earlier than the nineteenth century, and may be said to carry on the history of French painting from the point where it is left in Room VIII. at the Louvre, while little is quite so modern as the permanent portion of the Petit Palais. One plunges from the street directly into a hall of very white sculp- ture, which for the moment affects Ijie sight almost like the beating wings of gulls. The difference between French and English sculpture, which is largely the differ- ence between nakedness and nudity, literally assaults the eye for the moment ; and then* the more beautiful work quietly begins to assert itself — - Rodin's " Pensee," on the left, holding the attention first and gently sooth- ing the bewildered vision. Rodin indeed dominates this room, for here are not only his " Pensee " (the " Penseur " is not so very far away, two hundred yards or so, at the Pantheon), but his "John the Baptist," gaunt and LE BAISER RODIN {Lrixemboiirg) RODIN 175 urgent in the wilderness (with Dubois' "John the Baptist as a boy" near by, to show from what material prophets are evolved) and the exquisite "Danaides" and the "Age d'Arain," and the giant heads of Hugo and Rochefort, and the little delicate sensitive Don Quixotic head of Dalou the sculptor, which has just been added, and the George Wyndham and the G.B.S. and other recent portraits ; while through the doorway to the next room one sees the "Baiser," immense and passionate. I reproduce here the "Baiser" and the "Pensee," opposite page 46. Other work here that one recalls is the charming group by Fremiet, " Pan and the Bear Cubs," Dubois' fascinating "Florentine Singing-boy of the Fifteenth Century," a peasant by Dalou, a great Dane and puppies by Le Courtier, and the very beautiful head in the doorway to Room I. — "Femme de Marin," by Cazin the painter. But other visitors, other tastes, of course. Before entering Room I. there are two small rooms on the right of the .sculpture gallery which should be en- tered, one given up to the more famous Impressionists and one to foreign work. The chief Impressionists are Degas, Renoir, Monet, Sisley and their companions, al- most all of whom seem to me to have painted better else- where than here. Monet's " YachtS in the River " rise before me as I write with the warm sun upon them, and I still see in the mind's eye the torso of a young woman by Legros : but this room always^ depresses me, the effect largely I believe of the antipathetic Renoir. The 176 A WANDERER IN PARIS other room has a floating population. Recently the painters have been Belgian: but at another time they may be German or English, when the Belgians will re- cede to the cellars or be lent to provincial galleries. The pictures in the Luxembourg are many, but the arresting hand is too seldom extended. Cleverness, the bane of French art, dominates. In the first room Rodin's "Baiser" is greater than any painting; but Harpignies' "Lever de Lune" is here, and here also is one of Pointelin's sombre desolate moorlands. In a glass case some delicate bowls by Dammouse are worth attention ; but I think his work at the Arts Decoratifs at the Louvre is better. The second room is notable for the Fantin-Latour drawings in the middle, with others by Flandrin and Meissonier ; the third for Caro- lus-Duran's "Vieux Lithographe" and a case of draw- ings by modern black and white masters, including Legros and Steinlen ; here also is another Pointelin. In Room IV. is a coast scene — " Les Fajaises de Sotteville, in a lovely evening light, by Bouland, which falls short of perfection but is very grateful to the eyes. In Room V. is a portrait group by Fantin-Latour recalling the "Hommage a Delacroix," which we saw in the Collec- tion Moreau, but less interesting. The studio is that of Manet at Batignolles. Here also rs a beautiful snow scene by Cazin — an oasis indeed. In Room VI. we find Cazin again with "Ishmael," *and two sweet and misty Carrieres, a powerful if hard Legros, Carolus- Duran's portrait of the ruddy Papa Fran9ais the painter. LUXEMBOURG PICTURES 177 Blanche's vivid group of the Thaulow family, with the gigantic Fritz bringing the strength of a bull-fighter to the execution of one of his tender landscapes, and finally Whistler's portrait of his mother, which I repro- duce opposite page 294 — one of the most restful and gentlest deeds of his restless, irritable life. Room VII. is remarkable for Rodin's " Bellona " and Tissot's curious exercises in the genre of W. P. Frith — the story of the Prodigal Son. But the picture which I remember most clearly and with most pleasure is Victor Mottez's "Portrait of Madame M.," which has a deep quiet beauty that is very rare in this gallery. In the same room, placed opposite each other, although probably not with any conscious ironical intention, are a large scene in the Franco-Prussiad War by De Neu- ville, and Carriere's "Christ on the Cross." In Room VIII. are a number of meretricious Moreaus, Caro-Del- valle's light and, to me, oddly attractive, group, " Ma Femme et ses Soeurs," and the portrait of Mile. Moreno of the Comedie Fran9aise by Granie, which is repro- duced opposite page 308, a picture with fascination rather than genius. In the doorway between Room VlII. and Room IX. hangs a small water-colour by Harpignics, but in Room IX. itself is nothing that I can recollect. Room X. has Picard's charming "Femme qui passe," Harpignies' Coliseum, very like a Moreau Corot and a Flandrin; and in Room XI. are Bastien Lepage's " Portrait of M. Franck," Le Sidaner's "Dessert," Vollon's "Port of 178 A WANDERER IN PARIS Antwerp," very beautiful, and Carolus-Duran's famous portrait of " Madame G. E. and her children." On leaving the Musee it is worth while to take a few steps more to the left, for they bring us to another sinister souvenir of the Reign of Terror — to St. Joseph des Carmes, the Chapel of the Carmelite monastery in which, in September, 1792, the Abbe Sicard and other priests who had refused to take the oath of the Con- stitution were imprisoned and massacred, as described by Carlyle in Book I., Chapters IV. and V. of "The Guillotine," with the assistance of the narrative of one of the survivors, Mon Agonie de Trent-Huit Heures, by Jourgniac Saint-Meard. In the crypt one is shown not only the tombs but traces of thfe massacre. A walk in the Luxembourg gardens would, if one had been nowhere else, quickly satisfy the stranger as to the interest of the French in the more remarkable children of their country. In these gardens alone are statues, among many others, in honour of Chopin, Watteau, Delacroix, Sainte Beuve, Le Play the econ- omist, Fabre the poet, Georges Sand% Henri Murger, the novelist of the adjacent Latin Quarter, and Theodore de Banville, the modern maker of ballades and prime instigator of some of the most charming work in French form by Mr. Lang and Mr. Dobson and W. E. Henley. There are countless other statues of mythological and allegorical figures, some of them very striking. One of the most interesting of all is the " Marchand de Masques " by Astruc, among the masks offered for sale being those of Corot, Dumas, Berlioz and Balzac. THE SOUTHERN HEIGHTS 179 The Luxembourg gardens lead to the Avenue de rObservatoire, a broad and verdant pleasaunce with a noble fountain at the head, in the midst of which an armillary sphere is held up by four undraped female figures representing the four quarters of the globe, at whom a circle of tortoises spout water from the surface of the basin. Beneath the upholders of the sphere are eight spirited sea horses by Fremiet, the sculptor who de- signed " Pan and the Bear Cubs " in the Luxembourg. A few yards to the west of this fountain is one of the simplest and most satisfying of Parisian sculptured memorials, at the corner of the Rue d'Assas and the Boulevard de I'Observatoire — the bas-relief on the Tar- nier maternity hospital, representing the benevolent Tarnier in his merciful work. Let us now descend the Boulevard St. Michel to the Sorbonne, which is the heart of the Latin Quarter (or perhaps the brain would be the better word), disregard- ing for the moment the Pantheon, and turning our backs on the Observatoire and the Lion- de Belfort, in the streets around which, every September, the noisiest of the Parisian fairs rages, and on the Bal Bullier, where the shop assistants of this neighbourhood grasp each other in the dance every Thursday and Sunday night. Not that this high Southern district of Paris is not interest- ing; but it is far less interesting than certain parts nearer the Seine, and this book may not be too long. The Sorbonne is not exciting, but it is not unamus- ing to watch young France gaining knowledge. I have called it the heart of the Latin Quarter, although when 180 A WANDERER IN PARIS one thinks of the necessitous, irresponsible youthful populace of these slopes, it is rather in a studio than in a lecture centre that one would fix its cardiac energy. That, however, is the fault of Du Maurier and Murger ; for I suppose that for every artist that the Latin Quarter fosters it has scores of other studertts. But here I am in unknown territory. This book, which describes (as I warned you) Paris wholly from without, is never so external as among the young bloods who are to be met at night in the Cafe Harcourt, or who dance at the annual ball of the Quatz Arts, or plunge themselves into congenial riots when unpopular professors mount the platform. I know them not ; I merely rejoice in their existence, admire their long hair and high spirits and happy indigence, and wish I could join them among JuUien's models, or in the disreputable cabaret of Le Pere Lunette, or at a solemn disputation, such as that famous one in which the sophist Buridan, after being thrown into the Seine in a sack and rescued," maintained for a whole day the thesis that it was lawful to slay a Queen of France." The Sorbonne takes its name from Robert de Sorbon, the confessor of St. Louis, who haii suffered much as a theological student and wished others to suffer less; for students in his day existed absolutely on charity. St. Louis threw himself into his confessor's scheme, and the Sorbonne, richly endowed, was opened in 1253, in its original form occupying a site in a street with the de- pressing name of Coupe-Gueule. Prom a hostel it soon DEXTErt-R-BA- THp: FONTAINE I)E IIEIUCIS (i;ai;ukn (IF -niT.: luxemi^mukc;) THE SORBONNE 181 became the Church's intellect, and for five and a half centuries it thus existed, almost eorltinually, I regret to say, pursuing what Gibbon calls " the exquisite rancour of theological hatred." Its hostility to Joan of Arc and the Reformation were alike intense. Richelieu built the second Sorbonne, on the site of the present one. The Revolution in its short sharp way put an end to it as a defender of the faith, and in 1808, under Napoleon, it sprang to life again with a broader and humaner programme as the Universite de France. Although arriving on the wrong day (a very easy thing to do in Paris) I induced the concierge to show me Puvis de Chavannes' vast and beautiful fresco in the Sorbonne's amphitheatre, entitled " La Source " — which is, I take it, the spring of wisdom. Thursday is the right day. In the chapel is the tomb of Richelieu, a florid monument with the dying cardinal and some very ostentatious grief upon it. Near by stands an elderly gentleman who charges twice as miach for postcards as the dealers outside ; but one must n*qt mind that. The church is not impressive, nor has a. tecent meretricious work by Weerts, representing the Love of Humanity and the Love of Country — the crucified Christ and a dead soldier — done it much good. Before it is a monu- ment to Auguste Comte. And now let us descend the hill and cheer and enrich our eyes in one of the most remarkable museums in the world — the Cluny. Paris is too fortunate. To have the Louvre were enough for any city, but Paris also has 182 A WANDERER IN PARIS the Carnavalet. To have the Carnavalet were enough, but Paris also has the Cluny. The Musee de Cluny is devoted chiefly to apphed art and is a treasury of medieval taste. It is an ancient building, standing on the site of a Roman palace, the ruins of whose baths still remain. The present mansion v^as built by a Benedictine abbot in the fifteenth century: it became a storehouse of beautiful and rare objects in 183S, when the collector Alphonse du Sommerard bought it; and on his death the nation acquired both the house and its treasures, which have been steadily increasing ever since. Without, the Cluny is a romantic blend of late Gothic and Renaissance architecture : within, it is like the heaven of a good arts-and-craftsman ; or, to put it another way, like an old curiosity shop carried out to the highest power. I do not say that v?e have not as good collections at South Kensington ; bift it is beyond doubt that the Cluny has a more attractive setting for them. To particularise would merely be to convert these pages into an incomplete catalogue *(and what is duller than that.''), but I may say that -one passes among sculpture and painting, altar pieces and knockers, pottery and tapestry, Spanish leather and lace, gold work and glass, enamel and musical instruments, furniture (the state bed of Francis I.) and ivories (note those by Van Opstal), ironwork and jewels, fireplaces and exquisite slippers. The old keys alone are worth hours : some of them might almost be called jewels ; be sure to look at Nos. 6001 and 6022. Everything is remarkable. Writ- THE CLUNY 183 ing in London, in a thick fog, at some distance of time since I saw the Cluny last, I remember most vividly those keys and a banc d'orfevre near them ; a chimney-piece, beautiful and vast, from an old house at Chalons-sur- Marne ; certain carvings in wood in the great room next the Thermes : the " Quatre Pleurants " of Claus de Worde ; a dainty Marie Madeleine by a Fleming, about 1500 (there is another Marie Madeleine, in stone, in an adjacent room, kneeling with her ala,baster box of oint- ment, but by no means penitent) ; and the Jesus on the Mount of Olives with the sleeping disciples. I remem- ber also, in one of the faience galleries, two delightful groups by Clodion — a " Satyre male " with two baby goat-feet playing by him, and a " Satyre femelle," very charming, also with two little shaggy mites at her knees. The " Fils de Rubens," in his little chair, is also a pleas- ant memory; and there is one of those remarkable Neapolitan reconstructions of the Nativity, of which the museum at Munich has such an amazing collection — perhaps the prettiest toys ever made.- But as I have said, the Cluny is wonderful through- out, and it is almost ridiculous to particularise. It is also too small for every taste. For the lover of the hues that burn in Rhodian ware il is most memorable for its pottery; while of the many Parisians who visit it in holiday mood a large percentage make first for the glass case that contains its two famous ceintures. The Curator of the Carnavalet, a^ we have seen, is a topographer and antiquary of distinction ; the Director 184 A WANDERER IN PARIS of the Cluny, M. Haraucourt, is a "poet, one of whose ballads will be found in English form in a later chapter. He is in a happy environment, although his Muse does not look back quite as, say, Mr. Dobson's loves to do. The singer of the "Pompadour's Pan" and the "Old Sedan Chair" would be continually inspired at the Cluny. In the Gardens of the Musee we can feel ourselves in very early times ; for the baths are the ruins of a Roman palace built in 306, the home for a while of Julian the Apostate ; a temple of Mercury stood on the hill where the Pantheon now is; and a Roman road ran on the site of the Rue St. Jacques, just at the east of the Cluny, leading out of Paris southwards to Italy. On leaving the Cluny let us take a few steps westward along the Rue de I'Ecole de Medicine, and stop at No. 15, where the Cordeliers' Club was held, whither Marat's body was brought to lie in state. His house, in which Charlotte Corday stabbed him, was close by, where the statue of Broca now stands. In the Boulevard St. Germain, at the end of the street, we come to Danton's statue and more memories of the Revolution. " What souvenirs of the past," says Sardou, " does the statue of Danton cast his shadow upon. At No. 87 Boulevard St. Germain — where the woman Simon keeps house ! it was the 31st March, 1793 — at six o'clock in the morn- ing, the rattling of the butt ends of muskets was heard on the pavement in the midst of wild cries and protesta- tions of the crowd, they had dared to arrest Danton, MEDIEVAL RELICS 185 the Titan of the Revolution, the mkn of the 10th of August ! — at the same time on the Place de I'Odeon, at the corner of the Rue Crebillon, Camille Desmoulins had been arrested. An hour later they were both in the Luxembourg prison, and it was there Camille heard of the death of his mother. " The Passage du Commerce still iexists. It is a most picturesque old quarter, rarely visited by Parisians. At No. 9 is Durel's library, where Guillotin in 1790 prac- tised cutting ofif sheep's heads with ' his philanthropic be- heading machine.' It is generally given out that he was guillotined himself, but ' Lempriere '^ays he died quietly in his bed, of grief at the infamous abuse his instru- ment was put to. In the shop close by was the print- ing office of the rAmi du Peuple, and Marat in his dressing-gown (lined with imitation panther skin) used to come and correct the proofs of his bloody journal." Between the Cluny and the river is a network of very old, squalid and interesting streets. Here the students of the middle ages found both their schools and their lodgings : among them Dante himself, who refers to the Rue de Fouarre (or straw, on which, follow- ing the instructions of Pope Urban V., the students sat) as the Vico degli Strami. It has now been demolished. The two churches here are worth a visit — St. Severin and St. Julien-le-Pauvrc, but the reader is warned that the surroundings are not too agreeable. In the court ad- joining St. Julien's are traces of the wall of Philip Augus- tus, of which we saw something at the Mont de Piete. 186 A WANDERER IN PARIS All these streets, as I say, are picturesque and dirty, but I think the best is the Rue de Bievre, which runs up the hill of St. Etienne from the Quai de Montebello, opposite the Morgue, and can be gained from St. Julien's by the dirty Rue de la Boucherie, of which this street and its westward continuation, the Rue de la Huchette, Huysmans, the French novelist arid mystic, writes — as of all this curious district — ■ in his book, La Bihvre et Saint Severin, one of the best examples of imaginative topography that I know. Let us see what he says of the Bievre, the little river which gives the street its name and which once tumbled down into the Seine at this point, but is now buried underground like the New River at Islington. " The Bievre," he writes, " represents to-day one of the most perfect symbols of feminine misery exploited by a big city. Originating in the lake or pond of St. Quentin near de Trappes, it runs quietly and slowly through the valley that bears its name. Like many young girls from the country, directly it arrives in Paris the Bievre falls a victim to the cunning wide-awake industry of a catcher of men. . . . To follow all her windings, it is necessary to ascend the Rue du Moulin des Pres and enter the Rue de Gentilly, and then the most extraordinary and unsus- pected journey begins. In the middle of this street a square door opens on a prison corridor black as a sooty chimney and not wide enough for two abreast : this is the alley of the Reculettes, an old lane of ancient Paris. It ends in the Rue Croulebarbe, in a delightful landscape where one of the arms, remaining nearly free, of the LA EOH^MIENNE FRANZ HALS {Lonvre) A LOST RIVER 187 Bievre appears. Then under a little tunnel the Bievre disappears again. . . . "To find the mournful river once more you must pass in front of the tapestry manufactory in the Rue des Gobelins. . . . "The Rue des Gobelins leads to a little bridge bordered with a fence ; this little bridge stretches across the Bievre, which loses itself on one side under the Boulevards Arago and Port Royal and the other under the Alley of the Gobelins, which is the most surprising corner of concealed contemporary Paris. It is a crooked alley or lane, built on the left of houses that are cracked, bulging out and falling. . . ." Inspired by this passage I set out one day to trace the Bievre to daylight, but it was a Cheerless enterprise, for the Rue Monge is a dreary street, and the new Boulevards hereabouts are even drearier because they are wider. I found her at last, by peeping through a hoarding in the Boulevard Arago, with tanneries on each side of her ; and then I gave it up. At the Cluny we saw the Thermes, a visible sign of Roman occupation; in the Rue Monge is another, the amphitheatre, still in very good condition, with the grass growing between the crevices of the great stone seats. Returning to the Rue de Bievre, of which Mr. Dexter has made so alluring a picture, let us remember that Dante in exile wrote part of the Divine Comedy in one of its houses. And now for the Pantheon, which ];ises above us. CHAPTER XII THE PANTHEON AND ST. GENEVIEVE A Church's Vicissitudes — St. Genevibve — A Guardian o£ Paris — Illustrious Converts — The Golden Legend — A Sabbath-breaker — Genevifeve's Sacred Body — Her Tomb — The Pantheon Frescoes — Joan of Arc — The Pantheon Tombs — Mirabeau and Marat — Voltaire's Funeral — The Thoughts of the Thinker — From the Dome — St. Etienne-du-Mont — The Fate of St. Genevieve — The Relic-hunters — - The Mystery of the Wine-press. THE Pantheon, like the Madeleine, has had its vicissitudes. The new Madeleine, as we shall see, was begun by Napoleon as a splendid Temple of military glory and became a church ; the new Pantheon was begun by Louis XV. as a splendid cathedral and became a Temple of Glory, not, however, military but civil. Louis XV., when he designed its erection on the site of the old church, intended it to be the church of St. Genevieve, whose tomb was its proudest possession ; when the Revolution altered all that, it was made secular and dedicated "aux grands hommes la patrie reconnaissante," and the first grand homme to be buried there was Mirabeau (destined, however, not to remain a grand homme very long, as we shall see), and the next Voltaire. In 1806 Napoleon made it a church again; 188 HOLY SHEPHERDESSES 189 in 1830 the Revolutionaries again secularised it; in 1851 it was consecrated again, and in 1885 once more it became secular, to receive the body of Victor Hugo, and secular it has remained; and Considering every- thing, secular it is likely to be, for whatever of change and surprise the future holds for France, an excess of ecclesiastical ecstasy is hardly probable. So much of Louis XV. 's idea remains, in spite of the perversion of his purpose, that scenes from the life of St. Genevieve are painted on the Pantheon's walls and sculptured on its fa9ade ; while in its last sacred days the church was known again as St. Genevieve's. Pos- sibly there are old people in the neighbourhood who still call it that. I hope so. The life of St. Genevieve as told in The Golden Legend is rather a series of facile miracles than a human document, as we say. She was born in the fifth century at Nanterre and early became a protegee of St. Ger- main, who vowed her to chastity and holiness, from which she never departed. Her calling, like that of her new companion on the canon, St. Joan, was that of shepherdess, and one of Puvis de Chavannes' most charming frescoes in the Pantheon represents her as a shadowy slip of a girl kneeling to a crucifix while her sheep graze about her. I reproduce it opposite the next page. Her mother, who had, lik« most mothers, a desire that her daughter should marry and have chil- dren, once so far lost her temper as to strike Genevieve on the cheek; for which ofi'ence she became blind. 190 A WANDERER IN PARIS (A very comfortable corner of heaven is, one feels, the due of the mothers of saints.) She remained blind for a long time, until remembering that St. Germain had promised for her daughter miraculous gifts, she sent for Genevieve and was magnanimously cured. After the death of her parent, Genevieve moved to Paris, and there she lived with an old woman, dividing the neighbourhood into believers and unbelievers in her sanctity, as is ever the way with saints. Here the Devil persecuted and attacked her with much persistence and ingenuity, but wholly without effect. During her long life she made Paris her principal home, and on more than one occasion saved it: hence her importance not only to the Parisians, who set her above St. Denis (whom she reverenced), but to this book. Her power of prayer was 'gigantic ; she liter- ally prayed Attila the Hun out of' his siege of Paris, and later, when Childeric was the besieger and Paris was starving, she brought victuals into the city by boat in a miraculous way ; another scene chosen by Puvis de Chavannes in his Pantheon series. 'Childeric, however, conquered, in spite of Genevieve, but he treated her with respect and made it easy for her to approach Clovis and Clotilde and convert them to Christianity — hence the convent of St. Genevieve, which Clovis founded, remains of which are still to be seen by the church of St. Etienne-du-Mont, in the two streets named after those early Christians — the Rue Clovis and the Rue Clotilde. Christianity had been introduced into Paris by Saint THE SIMPLEST LIFE 191 Denis, Genevieve's hero, in the third century ; but then came a reaction and the new faith lost ground. It was St. Genevieve's conversion of Clovis that re-established it on a much firmer basis, for he made it the national religion. "This holy maid," says Caxton, "did great penance in tormenting her body all her life, and became lean for to give good example. For sith she was of the age of fifteen years, unto fifty, she fasted every day save Sunday and Thursday. In her refection she had no- thing but barley bread, and sometime beans, the which, sodden after fourteen days or three weeks, she ate for all delices. Always she was in prayers in wakings and in penances, she drank never wine ne other liquor, that might make her drunk, in all her life. When she had lived and used this life fifty years, the bishops that were that time, saw and beheld that she- was over feeble by abstinence as for her age, and warned her to increase a little her fare. The holy woman durst not gainsay them, for our Lord saith of the prelates : Who heareth you heareth me, and who despiseth you despiseth me, and so she began by obedience to eat with her bread, fish and milk, and how well that, she so did, she beheld the heaven and wept, whereof it is to believe that she saw appertly our Lord Jesus Christ after the promise of the gospel that saith that. Blessed be they that be clean of heart for they shall see God ; she had her heart and body pure and clean." Caxton also tells quaintly the story of one of the 192 A WANDERER IN PARIS first miracles performed by Genevieve's tomb: "An- other man came thither that gladly wrought on the Sunday, wheref or our Lord punished him, for his hands were so benumbed and lame that he might not work on other days. He repented him and confessed his sin, and came to the tomb of the said virgin, and there honoured and prayed devoutly, and on the morn he returned all whole, praising and thanking our Lord, that by the worthy merits and prayers of the holy virgin, grant and give us pardon, grace, and joy perdurable." To St. Genevieve's tomb we shall come on leaving the Pantheon, but here after so much about her adven- tures when alive I might say something about her adventures when dead. She was buried in 511 in the Abbey church of the Holy Apostles, on the site of which the Pantheon stands. Driven out by the Nor- mans, the monks removed the saint's body and carried it away in a box ; and thereafter her remains were destined to rove, for when the monks returned to the Abbey they did not again place them in the tomb but kept them in a casket for use in processions whenever Paris was in trouble and needed supernatural help. Meanwhile her tomb, although empty, continued to work miracles also. Early in the seventeenth century her bones were re- stored to her tomb, which was made more splendid, and there they remained until the Revolution. The Revo- lutionists, having no use for saints, opened Genevieve's tomb, burned its contents on the Place de Greve, and melted the gold of the canopy into money. They also THE MAID IN ART 193 desecrated the church of St. Etienne-du-Mont (which we are about to visit) and made it a Temple of Theo- philanthropy. A few years later the stone coffer was removed to St. Etienne-du-Mont, where it now is, gor- geously covered with Gothic splendours ; but as to how minute are the fragments of the saint that it contains which must have been overlooked by the incendiary Revolutionaries, I cannot say. They are suflScient, how- ever, still to cure the halt and the laine and enable them to leave their crutches behind. The Pantheon is a vast and dreary building, sadly in need of a little music and incense to humanise it. The frescoes are interesting — those of Puvis de Chavannes in particular, although a trifle too wan — but one cannot shake off depression and chill. The Joan of Arc paint- ings by Lenepveu are the least satisfactory, the Maid of this artist carrying no conviction with her. But when it comes to that, it is difficult to say which of the Parisian Maids of art is satisfactory : certainly not the audacious golden Amazon of Fremlet in the Place de Rivoli. Dubois' figure opposite St. Augustin's is more earnest and spiritual, but it does not quite realise one's wishes. I think that I like best the Joan in the Bou- levard Saint-Marcel, behind the Jardin des Plantes. The vault of the Pantheon may be seen only in the company of a guide, and there is a charge. To be quite sure that Rousseau is in his grave is perhaps worth the money; but one resents the fee none the less. Great Frenchmen's graves — especially Victor Hugo's — 194 A WANDERER IN PARIS should be free to all. There is no charge at the Invalides. You may stand beside Heine's tomb in the Cimitiere de Montmartre without money and without a guide, but not by Voltaire's in the Pantheon ; Balzac's grave in Pere Lachaise is free, Zola's in the Pantheon costs seventy-five centimes. The guide hurries his flock from one vault to another, at one point stopping for a while to exchange badinage with an echo. Rousseau, as I have said, is here ; Vol- taire is here; here are General Carnot, President Car- not with a mass of faded wreaths, Soufflot, who designed the Pantheon, thinking his work was- for St. Genevieve, and who died of anxiety owing to a subsidence of the walls, Victor Hugo, and, lately moved hither, not with- out turmoil and even pistol shots, the historian of the Rougon-Macquart family and the author of a letter of accusation famous in history. Not without turmoil ! which reminds one that the Pantheon's funerals have been more than a little gro- tesque. I said, for example, that Mirabeau was the first prophet of reason to be buried here, amid a concourse of four hundred thousand mourners.; yet you may look in vain for his tomb. And there is a record of the funeral of Marat, in a car designed by David ; yet you may look in vain for Marat's sarcophagus also. The explanation (once more) is that we are in France, the land of the fickle mob. For within three years of the state burial of Mirabeau, with the "National Guard on duty, the Convention directed that he should be ex- STE. GENEVIEVE PUVIS DE CHAVANNES {Pantheon) VOLTAIRE'S RUINED OBSEQUIES 195 humed and Marat laid in his place, Mirabeau's body therefore was removed at night and thrown into the earth in the cemetery of Clamart. Enter Marat. Marat, however, lay beneath this imposing dome only three poor months, and then off went he, a discredited corpse, to the graveyard of St. Eti^nne-du-Mont close by. Voltaire, however, and Rousseau held their own, and here they are still, as we have seen. Voltaire came hither under circumstances at once tragic and comic. The cortege started from the site of the Bastille, led by the dead philosopher in a cart drawn by twelve horses, in which his figure was being crowned by a young girl. Opposite the Opera house of that day — by the Porte St. Martin — a pause was made for the singing of suitable hymns (from the Ferney Hymnal !) and on it came again. Surrounding the car were fifty girls dressed by David for the part; in the procession were other damsels in the costumes of Voltaire's char- acters. Children scattered roses before the horses. What could be prettier for Voltaire ? But it needed fine weather, and instead came the most appalling storm, which frightened all the young women (including Fame from the car) into doorways, and washed all the colour from the great man's effigy. Remembering all these things, one realises that Rodin's Penseur, who was placed before the Pantheon in 1906, has something to brood over and break his mind upon. I noticed also among the graves that of one Ignace Jacqueminot, and wondering if it were he who gave his 196 A WANDERER IN PARIS name to the rose, I was so conscious* of gloom and mor- tality that I hastened to the regions of light — to the sweet air of the Mont du Paris and the blue sky over all. And later I climbed to the lantern — a trifle of some four hundred steps — and lodked down on Paris and its river and away to the hills, and realised how much better it was to be a live dog than a dead lion. For the tomb of St. Genevieve we have only a few steps to take, since it stands, containing all of her that was not burned, in the church of St Etienne-du-Mont. The first martyr, although he gives his name to the church and is seen sufl'ering the stone-throwers in the re- lief over the door, is, however, as nothing. St. Gene- vieve is the true patron. St. Etienne's is one of the most interesting churches in Paris, without and within. The fafade is bizarre and attractive, with its jumble of styles,, its lofty tower and Renaissance trimmings, and the sacristan's prophet's- housc high up, on the northern side of the odd little extinguisher. You see this best, and his tiny watch- dog trotting up and down his tiny garden, by descend- ing the hill a little way and then turning. Within, the church is fascinating. The pillars of the very lofty nave and aisles are slender and sure, the vaulting is delicate and has a unique carved marble rood-loft to divide the nave from the choir, stretching right along the church, with a rampe of great beauty. The pulpit is held up by Samson seated upon his lion and" grasping the jaw- bone of an ass. A FETE DAY 197 The last time I saw this pulpit was during the Fete of St. Genevieve, which is held early in January, when it contained a fluent nasal preacher to whom a congrega- tion that filled every seat was listening with rapt atten- tion. At the same time a moving procession of other worshippers was steadily passing the tomb, which was a blaze of light and heat from some hundreds of candles of every size. The man in front of* me in the queue, a stout bourgeois, with his wife and two small daughters, bought four candles at a franc each. He was all ner- vousness and anxiety before then, but having watched them lighted and placed in position, his face became tranquil and gay, and they passed quickly out, re- entered their motor-cab and returned to the normal life. Outside the church was a row of- stalls wholly given up to the sale of tokens of the saint — little biographies, medals, rosaries, and all the other pretty apparatus of the long-memoried Roman Catholic' Church. I bought a silver pendant, a brief biographj^, and a tiny metal statue. I feel now that had I also bought a candle, as I was minded to, I should have escaped the cold that, developing two or three days later, kept me in bed for nearly a fortnight. One must be thorough. The church not only has agreeable architectural features and the tomb of this good woman, it has also some admirable glass, not exactly beautiful but very quaint and interesting, including a famous window by the Pinaigriers, representing the mystery of the wine-press, as drawn from Isaiah : " I have trodden the wine-press 198 A WANDERER IN PARIS alone, and of the people there was none with me." The colouring is very rich and satisfying, even if the design itself offends by its literalism and want of ima- gination — Christianity being figured by the blood of Christ as it gushes forth into barrejs pressed from his body as relentlessly as ever was juice of the grape. All this is horrible, but one need not study it minutely. There are other windows less remarkable but not less rich and glowing. Other illustrious dust that lies beneath this church is that of Racine and Pascal. CHAPTER XIII TWO ZOOS The Tour d'Argent — Frederic's Homage to America — A Marquis Poet — The Halle des Vins — A Free Zoo — Peacocks in Love — A Reminiscence — The Museums of the Jardin des Plantes — A Lifeless Zoo — Babies in Bottles — The Jardin d'Acclimatation — The Cheerful Gallas — A Pretty Stable — Dogs on Velvet — A Canine Pere Lachaise — The Sunday Sportsmen — Panic at the Zoos — The Besieged Resident — The Humours of Famine. ON the day of one of my visits to the Jardin des Plantes I lunched at the Tour d'Argent, a restaurant on the Quai de la Tournelle, famous among many dishes for its delicious canard a la presse. No bird on this occasion passed through that luxurious mill for me : but the engines were at work all around distilling essential duck with which to enrich those slices from the breast that are all that the epicure eats. Over a simpler repast I studied a bewildering catalogue of the " Creations of Frederic " — .Frederic being M. Frederic Delair, a venerable cordon bleu with a head like that of a culinary Ibsen, stored with strange lore of sauces. By what means one commends oneself to Frederic I cannot say, but certain it is that if he loves you he will 199 200 A WANDERER IN PARIS immortalise you in a dish. Americans would seem to have a short cut to his heart, for I find the Canape Clarence Mackay, the Filet de Sole Loie Fuller, the Filet de Sole Gibbs, the Fondu de Merlan Peploe, the Poulet de Madame J. W. Mackay, ajid the Poire Wana- maker. None of these joys tempted me, but I am sorry now that I did not partake of the Potage Georges Cain, because M. Georges Cain knows more about old Paris than any man living; and who knows but that a few spoonfuls of his Potage might n6t have immensely enriched this book ! The Noisette de Pre-Sale Bodley again should have been nourishing, for Mr. Bodley is the author of one of the best of all the many studies of France. Instead, however, I ate very simply, of ordinary dishes — foundlings, so to speak, named after no one — and amused myself over my coffee in examining the Marquis Lauzieres de Themines' poesie sur les Creations de Frederic (to the air of "La Gorde Sensible"). Two stanzas and two choruses will illustrate the noble poet's range : — Que filets de sole on y consotnme! Sole Neron, Cardinal, Maruka. Dosamentfes, Edson . . . d'autres qu'on nomme Victor Renault, Saintgall, Her^dia. La liste est longue ! rognons, cfitelettes, Poulet Sigaud et Canard MacArthur, Filets de lifevre Arnold White et Noisettes De Pre-sal^, Langouste Wintherthur,- Ce que je fais n'est pas une reclame, Je vous le dis pour ^tre obligdant. Je m'en voudrais 'd'encourir votre blime Pour avoir trop vant6 La Tour D'A-rgent. THIi MUSKK (•^,^■^•^• (fOl-KTVAkD) RAW WINE 201 Les noms des QJuis de cent fajons s'etalent, (Eufs Btlcheron, oeufs Claude Lowther, CEiifs Tuck, Rathbone, ceufs Mackay que n'egalent Que les chaud-froids de volaille Heniiiker. Que d'entremets ont nom de "la Tournelle"! Et plus souvent, le vocable engageant Du restaurant, car plus d'un plat s'appelle (Gibier, beignets, salade)"Tour d'Argent." Ami lecteur, pour faire bonne chere, Ecoute-moi, ne sois pas negligent, Va-t-en diner, si ta santS t'est chfere, Au Restaurant nomme La Tour D'Argeni. (Odd work for Marquises !) On the way to the Jardin des Plantes from this restaurant it is not unamusing to turn aside to the Halles des Vins and loiter a while m these genial cata- combs. Here you may see barrels as the sands of the sea-shore for multitude, and raw wine of a colour that never yet astonished in a bottle, and I hope, so far as I am concerned, never will: unearthly aniline juices that are to pass through many dark processes before they emerge smilingly as vins, to lend cheerfulness to the windows of the epicier and gaiety to the French heart. Even with the most elementary knowledge of French one would take the Jardin des Plantes to be the Parisian Kew, and so to some small extent if is ; but ninety-nine per cent, of its visitors go not to see the flora but the fauna. It is in reality the Zoo of the Paris proletariat. Paris, unlike London, has two Zoos, both of which hide beneath names that easily conceal their zoological char- 202 A WANDERER IN PARIS acter from the foreigner — the Jardin des Plantes, where we now find ourselves, which is free to all, and the Jardin d'Acclimatation, on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne, near the Porte Maillot, which costs money — a franc to enter and a ridiculous supplement to your cabman for the privilege of passing the fortifications in his vehicle : one of Paris's little, mistakes. To the Jardin d'Acclimatation we shall come anon : just now let us loiter among the wild animals of the Jardin des Plantes, which is as a matter of fact a far more thorough Zoo than that selccter other, where frivolity ranks before zoology. Our own Zoo contains a ^ner collection than either, and our animals are better housed and ordered, but this Parisian people's Zoo has a great advantage over ours in that it is free. All zoological gardens should of course be free. The Jardin des Plantes has another and a dazzling superiority in the matter of peacocks. I never saw so many. They occur wonderfully in the most unexpected places, not only in the enclosures of all the other open-air animals, but in trees and on roofs and amid the bushes — burning with their deep and lustrous blue. But on the warm day of spring on which I saw them first they were not soquiescent. Regardless of the proprieties they were most of them engaged in recommending them- selves to the notice of their ladies. On all sides were spreading tails bearing down upon the beloved with the steady determination of a three-masted schooner, and now and then caught like that vessel in a shattering THE PEACOCKS 203 breeze (of emotion) which stirred eVery sail. In Eng- land one might feel uncomfortable in the midst of so naked a display of the old Adam, but in Paris one be- comes more reconciled to facts and •(like the new cat in the adage) ceases to allow " I am ashamed " to wait upon "I would." The peahens, however, behaved with a stolid circumspection that was beyond praise. These vestals never lifted their heads from the ground, but pecked on and on, mistresses of the scene and incident- ally the best friends of the crowds of ouvriers and ouvri- eres ("Via le paon ! Vite ! Vite!") at every railing. But the Parisian peacock is not easily daunted. In spite of these rebuffs the batteries of glorious eyes continued firing, and wider and wider the tails spread, with a corre- sponding increase of disreputable deshabille behind ; and so I left them, recalling as I walked away a comic occurrence at school too many years ago, when a travel- ling elocutionist, who had induced our headmaster to allow him to recite to the boys, was noticed to be discharg- ing all his guns of tragedy and humour (some of which I remember distinctly at the moment) with a broadside effect that while it assisted the ear had a limiting in- fluence on gesture and by-play, and completely elimi- nated many of the nuances of conversational give and take. Never throughout the evening did we lose sight of the full expanse of his shirt front ; never did he turn round. Never, do I say ? But I am wrong. Better for him had it been never : for the poor fellow, his task over and his badly heeded guinea earned, forgot under our 204 A WANDERER IN PARIS salvoes of applause the need of caution, and turning from one side of the platform to the other in stooping ac- knowledgement, disclosed a rent precisely where no man would have a rent to be. My advice to the visitor to the Jardin des Plantes is to be satisfied with the living animals — with the seals and sea-lions, the bears and peacocks, the storks and tigers ; and, in fair weather, with the flowers, although the conditions under which these are to be observed are not ideal, so formally arranged on the flat as they are, with traffic so visibly adjacent. But to the glutton for museums such advice is idle. Here, however, even he is like to have his fill. Let him then ask at the Administration for a ticket, which will be handed to him with the most charming smile by an official who is probably of all the bureaucrats of Paris the least deserving of a tip, since zoological and botanical gardens exist for the people, and these tickets (the need for which is, by the way, non-existent) are free and are never withheld — but who is also of all the bureaucrats of Paris the most determined to get one, even, as I observed, from his own countrymen. Thus supplied you must walk some quarter of a mile to a huge building in which are collected all the creatures of the earth in their skins as God made them, but lifeless and staring from the hands of taxidermic man. It is as though the ark had been overwhelmed by some such fine dust as fell from Vesuvius, and was now exhumed. One does not get the same effect from the Natural BIOLOGY FOR THE CROWD 205 History Museum in the Cromwell Rqad ; it is, I suppose, the massing that does it here. Having walked several furlongs amid this travesty of wild and dangerous life, one passes to the next museum, which is devoted to mineralogy and botany, and here again are endless avenues of joy for the museephile and tedium for others. Lastly, after another quarter of a mile's walk, the palatial museum of anatomy is reached, the ingenious art of M. Fremiet once more providing a hors d'oeuvre. At the Arts Decoratif s we find on the threshold a man dragging a bear cub into captivity; at the Petit Palais St. George is killing the dragon just inside the turnstile; and here, near the umbrella- stand, is a man being strangled by .an ourang-outang. Thus cheered we enter, and are at once amid a very grove of babies in bottles : babies unready for the world, babies with two heads, babies with no heads at all, babies, in short, without any merit save for the biologist, the distiller, and the sightseer with strong nerves. From the babies we pass to cases containing examples of every organ of the human form divine, and such approximations as have been accomplished by ele- phants and mice and monkeys — all either genuine, in spirits, or counterfeited with horrible minuteness in wax. Also there are skeletons of every known ci'eature, from whales to frogs, and I noticed a case illustrating the daily progress of the chicken in the egg. And now for the other Zoo, the Zoo of the classes. Perhaps the best description is to call it a playground 206 A WANDERER IN PARIS with animals in it. For there are children everywhere, and everything is done for their amusement — as is only natural in a land where children bersist through life and no one ever tires. In the centre of the gardens is an enclosure in which in the summer of 1908 were encamped a colony of Gallas, an intelligent and attrac- tive black people from the border of Abyssinia, who flung spears at a target, and fought duels, and danced dances of joy and sorrow, and rounded up zebras, and in the intervals sold curiosities and photographs of them- selves with ingratiating tenacity. It was a strange bizarre entertainment with greedy ostriches darting their beaks among the spectators, and these shock- headed savages screaming through their diversions, and now and again a refined slip of a Black girl imploring one mutely to give a franc for a five centimes picture postcard, or murmuring incoherent rhapsodies over the texture of a European dress. All around the enclosure the Parisian children were playing, some riding elephants, others camels, some driving an ostrich cart, and all happy. But the gem of the Jardin is the Ecurie, on one side for ponies — scores of little ponies, all named — the other for horses ; on one side a riding school for children, on the other side a riding school for grown-up pupils, perhaps the cavalry officers of the future. The ponies are charm- ing : Bibiche, jument landais, Volubilite, cheval landais, Ceramon, cheval finlandais, Farceur, from the same country. Columbine, nee de Ratibor, and so forth. LA LEgON DE LECTURE TERBURG {Louvre) A CHILDREN'S PARADISE 207 There they wait, alert and patient too, in the manner of small ponies, and by-and-by one is led off to the Petit manege for a little Monsieur Paul or Etienne to bestride. The Ecurie is a model of its kind, with its central courtyard and ofSces for the various servants, sellier, piqueur and so forth. Near by is a castellated fortress which might belong to a dwarf of blood but is really a rabbit house. Every kind of rabbit is here, with this difference from the rabbit house in our Zoo, that the animals are for sale; and there is a fragrant vacherie where you may learn to milk ; and in another part is a collection of dogs — tou-tous and lou-lous and all the rest of it — and these are for sale too. This is as popular a department as any in the .Tardin. The expressions of delight and even ecstasy which were being uttered before some of the cages I seem still to hear. The Parisians may be kind fathers and devoted mothers : I am sure that they are ; but to the observer in the streets and restaurants their finest shades of protective affection would seem to be reserved for dogs. One sees their children with bonnes ; their dogs are their own care. The ibis of Egypt is hardly more sacred. An English friend who has lived in the heart of Paris for some time in the company of a fox terrier tells me that on their walks abroad in the evening the number of strangers who stop him to pass friendly remarks upon his pet or ask to be allowed to pat it — or who make overtures to it without permission — is 208 A WANDERER IN PARIS beyond belief. No pink baby in Kensington Gardens is more admired. Dogs in English restaurants are a rarity : but in Paris they are so much a matter of course that a little patee is always ready for them. It was of course a French tongue that first gave utter- ance to the sentiment, "The more I see of men the more I like dogs;" but I cannot pretend to have ob- served that the Frenchman suffers any loss in prestige or power from this attention to the tou-tou and the lou- lou. Nothing, I believe, will ever diminish the confidence or success of that lord of creation. He may to the in- sular eye be too conscious of his charms ; he may suggest the boudoir rather than the field of battle or the field of sport ; he may amuse by his hat, astonish by his beard, and perplex by his boots ; but the fact remains that he is master of Paris, and Paris is the cfintre of civilisation. The Parisians not only adore thcit dogs in life : they give them very honourable burial. We have in London, by Lancaster Gate, a tiny cemetery for these friendly creatures; but that is nothing as compared with the cemetery at St. Ouen, on an island in the Seine. Here are monuments of the most elaborate description, and fresh wreaths everywhere. The most striking tomb is that of a Saint Bernard who saved forty per.sons but was killed by the forty-first — a hero of whose history one would like to know more, but the gate-keeper is curiously uninstructed.' ^ I have since learned that this Is the same dog, Barry by name, who has a monument on the St. Bernard Pass and is stuffed in the THE DOG-LOVEJIS 209 I walked among these myriad graves, all very recent in date, and was not a little touched by the affection that had gone to their making. I ftoted a few names : Petit Bob, Esperance (whose portrait is in bas-relief accompanied by that of its master), Peggie, Fan, Pincke, Manon, Dick, Siko, Leonette (aged 17 years and 4 months), Toby, Kiki, Ben-Ben ("toujours gai, fidele et caressant" — what an epitaph to strive for!), Javotte, Nana, Lili, Dedjaz, Trinquefort, Teddy and Prince (whose mausoleum is superb), Fifi (who saved lives), Colette, Dash (a spaniel, with a little bronze sparrow perching on his tomb), Boy, Biz'dn (who saved his owner's life and therefore has this souvenir), and Mosque (" regrette et fidele ami "). There must be hun- dreds and hundreds altogether, and it will not be long before another " Dog's Acre " is required. Standing amid all the little gravea I felt that the one thing I wanted to see was a dog's funeral. For surely there must be impressive obsequies as a preparation to such thoughtful burial. But I did not. No melancholy cortege came that way that afternoon; Fido's pompes funebres are still a mystery to me. But to my mind the best dogs in Paris are not such toy pets as for the most part are here kept in sacred memory, but those eager pointers that one sees on Sunday morning at the Gare du Nord, and indeed at all the big stations, following brisk, plump sportsmen with Natural History Museum at Berne. But I know nothing of his connection with Paris. 210 A WANDERER IN PARIS all the opera bouffe insignia of the chase — the leggings and the belt and the great satchel and the gun. For the Frenchman who is going to shoot likes the world to know what a lucky devil he is : he has none of our furtive English unwillingness to be known for what we are. I have seen them start, and I have waited about in the station towards dinner time just to see them return, with their bags bulging, and their steps spring- ing with the pride and elation of success, and the faith- ful pointers trotting behind. Everything is happy at the Jardins des Plantes and d'Acclimatation to-day : but it was not always so. During a critical period of 1870 and 1871 the cages were in a state of panic over the regular arrival of the butcher — not to bring food but to make it. Mr. Labou- chere, the " Besieged Resident," writing on December 5th, 1870, says: "Almost all the arfimals in the Jardin d'Acclimatation have been eaten. They have averaged about 7 f . a lb. Kangaroo has been.sold for 12 f. the lb. Yesterday I dined with the correspondent of a London paper. He had managed to get a large piece of mufHon, and nothing else, an animal which is, I believe, only found in Corsica. I can only describe it by saying that it tasted of mufflon, and nothing else. Without being absolutely bad, I do not think that I shall take up my residence in Corsica, in order habitually to feed upon it." On December 18th Mr. Labouchere was at Voisin's. The bill of fare, he says, was ass,» horse and English wolf from the Zoological Gardens. According to a MR. LABOUCHERE'S DAY 211 Scotch friend, the EngHsh wolf was Scotch fox. Mr. Labouchcre could not manage it ahd fell back on the patient ass. Voisin's, by the way, was the only restau- rant which never failed to supply its patrons with a meal. If you ask Paul, the head waiter, he will give you one of the siege menus as a souvenir. Mr. Labouchere's description of typical life during the siege may be quoted here as offering material for reflection as we loiter about this city so notable to-day for pleasure and plenty. "Here is my day. In the morning the boots comes to call me. He announces the number of deaths which have taken place in the hotel during the night. If there are many, he is pleased, as he considers it creditable to the establishment. He then relieves his feelings by shaking his fist in the direction of Versailles, and exit growling ' Canaille de Bismarck.' I get up. I have breakfast — horse, cafe au lait — the lait chalk and water — the portion of horse about two square inches of the noble quadruped. Then I buy a dozen newspapers, and after having read them discover that they contain nothing new. This brings me to about eleven o'clock. Friends drop in, or I drop in on friends. We discuss how long it is to last — if friends are French we agree that we are sublime. At one o'clock get into the circular raihoad, and go to one or other of the city gates. After a discussion with the National Guards on duty, pass through. Potter about for a couple of hours at the outposts ; try with glass to make out Prussians; look at bombs bursting; creep 212 A WANDERER IN PARIS along the trenches ; and wade knee-deep in mud through the fields. The Prussians, who have grown of late male- volent even towards civilians, occasionally send a ball far over one's head. They always fire too high. French soldiers are generally cooking food. They are anxious for news, and know nothing about what is going on. As a rule they relate the episode of some combat d'avant-poste which took place the day before. The episodes never vary. 5 p.m. — Get back home ; talk tp doctors about interesting surgical operations ; then drop in upon some official to interview him about what he is doing. Official usually first mysterious, then com- municative, not to say loquacious, and abuses most people except himself. 7 p.m. — Dinner at a restaurant, conversation general; almost eve^ryone in uniform. Still the old subjects — How long will it last ? Why does not Gambetta write more clearly.'' How sublime we are ; what a fool everyone else is. Food scanty, but peculiar. . . . After dinner, potter on the Boulevards under the dispiriting gloom of petroleum ; go home and read a book. 12 p.m. — Bed. Thef nail up the coffins in the room just over mine every night, and the tap, tap, tap, as they drive in the nails, is the pleasing music which lulls me to sleep." Here is another extract illustrating the pass to which a hungry city had come : " Until the weather set in so bitter cold, elderly sportsmen, who did not care to stalk the human game outside, were to be seen from morning to night pursuing the exciting sport of gudgeon fishing THE SIEGE 213 along the banks of the Seine. Each one was always surrounded by a crowd deeply interested in the chase. Whenever a fish was hooked, there was as much excite- ment as when a whale is harpooned in more northern latitudes. The fisherman would play it for some five minutes, and then, in the midst of the solemn silence of the lookers-on, the precious capture would be landed. Once safe on the bank, the happy possessor would be patted on the back, and there would be cries of ' Bravo ! ' The times being out of joint for fishing in the Seine, the disciples of Izaak Walton have: fallen back on the sewers. The Paris Journal gives jthem the following directions how to pursue their new game: 'Take a long strong line, and a large hook, bait with tallow, and gently agitate the rod. In a few minutes a rat will come and smell the savoury morsel. It will be some time before he decides to swallow it, for his nature is cunning. When he does, leave him five minutes to meditate over it ; then pull strongly and steadily. He will make con- vulsive jumps ; but be calm, and do not let his excite- ment gain on you, draw him up, et voila voire diner.' " There is still hardly less excitement when a fish Is landed by a quai fisherman, but the emotion is now purely artistic. CHAPTER XIV THE GRANDS BOULEVABDS : I. THE MADELEINE TO THE OPERA From Temple to Church — Napoleon the Christian — The ChapeBe Expiatoire — More Irony of History — Mi-Carfeme — The Art of Insolence — Spacious Streets — The Cljampions of France — Marius — Letter-boxes and Stamps — The Facteur at the Bed — Killing a Guide no Murder — The LargestjTheatre in the World — A Theatrical Museum. THE Madeleine has had a curious history. The great Napoleon built it, on the site of a small eighteenth-century church, as a Temple of Glory, a gift to his soldiers, where every year on the anniversaries of Austerlitz and Jena a concert was to be held, odes read, and orations delivered on the duties and privileges of the warrior, any mention of the Einperor's own name being expressly forbidden. That was in 1806. The building was still in progress when 1815 came, with an- other and more momentous battle in it, and Napoleon and his proposal disappeared. Tlie building of the Temple of Glory was continued as a church, and a church it still is ; and the memory of Jena and Auster- litz is kept alive in Paris by other means (they have, for example, each a bridge), no official orations are delivered on the soldier's calling, no official odes recited. It was 214 THE MADELEINE 215 a noble idea of the Emperor's, and however perfunctorily carried out could not have left one with a less satisfied feeling than some of the present ceremonials in the Madeleine, which has become the most fashionable Paris church. Napoleon, however, is not wholly forgotten, for in the apse, I understand, is a fresco representing Christ reviewing the chief champions of Christianity and felici- tating with them upon their services, the great Em- peror being by no means absent. Herr Baedeker says that the fresco is there, but I have not succeeded in seeing it, for the church is lit only by three small cupolas and is dark with religious dusk. Within, the Madeleine is a surprise, for it does not conform to its fine outward design. One expects a classic severity and simplicity, and instead it is paint and Italianate curves. The wisest course for the visitor is to avoid the steps and the importunate mendicants at the railings, and slip in by the little portal on the west side where the discreet closed carriages wait. Louis XVIII., with his passion — a very natural one — to obliterate Napoleon and the revolutionaries and resume monarchical continuity, wished to complete the Madeleine as a monument to Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette; but he did not persevere with the idea. He built instead, on the site of the old cemetery of the Madeleine, where Louis XVI. and the Queen had been buried, the Chapelle Expiatoire. It is their memory only which is preserved here, for, after Waterloo, their bones were carried to St. Denis, where the other French 216 A WANDERER IN dPARIS kings lie. Their statues, however, are enshrined in the building (which is just off the Boulevard Haussmann, isolated solemnly and impressively among chestnut trees and playing children), the king being solaced by an angel who remarks to him in the words used by Father Edgeworth on the scaffold, "Fils de St. Louis, montez le ciel ! " and the queen by religion, personified by her sister-in-law, Madame Elizabeth. The door-keeper, who conducted me as guide, was in raptures over Louis XVI. 's lace and the circumstance that he was hewn from a single block of marble. I liked his enthusiasm : these unfortunate monarchs deserve the utmost that sculptor and door-keeper can give them. Paris has changed its mind more completely and frequently than any city in the world ^ — and no illustra- tion of that foible is better than this before us. Con- sider the sequence: first the king; then the prisoner; then the execution — the body and head being car- ried to the nearest cemetery, the Madeleine, where the guillotine's victims were naturally flung, and carelessly buried. Ten months later the queen's body and head follow. (It is said that the records of the Madeleine contain an entry by a sexton, whieh runs in English, "Paid seven francs for a coffin for the Widow Capet.") That was in 1793. Not until 1815 do they find sepul- ture befitting them, and then this chapel rises in their honour and they become saints. Among other bodies buried here Was that of Charlotte Corday. Also the Swiss Guards, whom we saw meeting LA DENTELLIERE JAN VERMEER OF DELFT MI-CAREME 217 death at the Tuileries. A strange place, and to-day, in a Paris that cares nothing for Capets, a perfect example of what might paradoxically be called well- kept neglect. To me the Madeleine has always a spurious air: nothing in it seems quite true. Externally, its Roman proportions carry no hint of the Christian religion; within, there is a noticeable lack of reverence. Every- one walks about, and the Suisses are of the world peculiarly and offensively worldly. Standing before the altar with its representation of the Magdalen, who gives the church its name, being carried to Heaven, it is diflfi- cult to realise that only thirty-eight years ago this very spot was running red with the blood of massacred Com- munards. I remember the Madeleine most naturally as I saw it once at Mi-Careme, from an upper window at Dur- and's, after lunch. It was a dull day and the Made- leine frowned on the human sea beneath it; for the Place before it and the Rue Royale were black with people. The portico is always impressive, but I had never before had so much time or such excellent oppor- tunity to study it and its relief of the Last Judgment, an improbable contingency to which few of us were giving much thought just then. Not only were the steps crowded, but two men had climbed to the green roof and were sitting on the very apex of the building. The Mi-Careme carnival in Paris, I may say at once, is not worth crossing the Channel for. It is tawdry 218 A WANDERER IN PARIS and stupid; the life of the city is dislocated; the Grands Boulevards arc quickly some inches deep in confetti, all of which has been discharged into faces and even eyes before reaching the ground ; the air is full of dust; and the places of amusement are uncomfortably crowded. The Lutetian humours of the Latin Quarter students and of Montmartre are not without interest for a short time, but they become tediotus with extraordin- ary swiftness and certainty as the mprning grows grey. Each side of the Madeleine has* its flower markets, and they share the week between them. Round and about Christmas a forest of fir-trees springs up. At the back of the Madeleine omnibuses and trams con- verge as at the Elephant. For a walk along the Grands Boulevards this temple is the best starting-point; but I